Tag: israel

Third World War is a Real threat

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly column in the Plymouth Herald (16.4.24) linking the various recent quotes from Grant Shapps, Kier Starmer, Sharon Graham and Rishi Sunak but without naming them during this period of electoral party-political media purdah (space wouldn’t allow for inclusion of Biden and Netanyahu). The signs of war are with us. The plans are being laid, whilst a single error of judgement of mistake could start the conflagration now. Organise to Stop the War!

The unedited version below:

Historians can describe the signs of coming war: crisis of economy, class tensions at home, scarcity of resources, competition for land and food, pestilence and poverty forcing mass migration.

But war does not begin before they’ve built their armies. War needs advanced planning, not just of the military hardware but of the emotional commitment of the populations involved.

Politicians need to begin making carefully contrived propaganda speeches years in advance. Allying the individual citizen with national interests is a starting point.

Identifying and detailing the alien nature of ‘The Enemy” and broadcasting their atrocities is an essential prerequisite to the conscription of the population ready to fight and kill the subhuman hoards threatening all borders.

The guns and tanks, fighters and mass uniforms must be produced well in advance. New factories have to be built, paid for by a raise in the tax percentage of the Gross Domestic Profit siphoned-off for weapons in spite of any other social concerns and needs of the day.

A sense of national pride must be reestablished, especially if the nation has, to date, been internationalist and multicultural. This can take years and years. Friends who enjoy a variety of cultural lifestyles or faiths have to be set against each other. A new hierarchy of acceptable and unacceptable behaviours and beliefs must be enforced, mirroring the nations’ elite.

This takes a concerted effort that crosses all other political drives within the ruling class. There has to be governance that espouses national unity to the masses – the working class. Corporations that are in constant competition can unite in favour of the flag, even while seeking fresh profits inside a war economy.

Politicians begin public statements early on. Some of their kites fly immediately, others need to be thrown-up over and over again on the run. A likely lad, easily disposed of if scorned and derided by public opposition, has to be chosen to say, for example, “we are moving from a post-war to a pre-war world”, and “Britain needs to be prepared for war”. Now.

It’s important that the Leader of the Opposition agrees, amplifying the call that the tax-payer must “raise the UK’s defence spending to 2.5% of GDP as soon as resources allow”.

Better still, outdo the policies of the current Party of government. Emphasise the barbarity of the Enemy. Expel the anti-imperialists. Promise to extend and accelerate current development of weapons of mass destruction. Ultimate support for, say nuclear weapons, should trump all other pledges.

All tensions between employees and employers, profiteers and wage-slaves, must be eliminated, class consciousness replaced with nationalist fervour.

Most vitally, the spokespeople for the working class – the people who will be transferred into military uniforms to die for King and Country or be moved to essential military production – must be forcefully cajoled into accepting the changes and bundled into common effort for the coming conflagration.

Trade union leaders have that role to play, primarily to oppose and isolate all anti-warfare activists inside their ranks. In park until they must witchhunt “groups that look to build networks inside trade unions to undermine the defence industry. Jobs for death must replace jobs for life.

An enormous degree of top-down propaganda promoting the need for war is needed because working class people know war is no good.

There has to be a period of one-off clashes, escalating violence and heightened tension between the opposing sides in order to prove that war is essential. Alliances need to be formed and tested between nations before the global war begins.

An enormous amount of top-down propaganda promoting the need for war is required because working class people know that war is no good. The doubters have to be identified as “The Enemy Within”.

War doesn’t make life better for us. Mostly, we die. A military economy is one of shortages and rationing, the absence of welfare, long queues for medical aid or charitable distribution of food aid.

War does make big money for the arms manufacturers and their big shareholders. On all sides. It produces long-term suffering for the rest.

It is time, in fact past time, for a fresh movement against war. The signs are with us, echoing the pre-war years of 1912-14 or 1937-39. The Third World War will dwarf the 70 million deaths of the last world war. All the efforts of those who care for the future of humanity have to combine to prevent the current drive to world war.

May be an image of map and text

Western nations refusing to break with Israeli Alliance

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My letter in the Plymouth Herald (10.4.2024) – keep up the protests! The bank holiday week including Easter Monday found my article missing, although the Thought of the Day column was inhabited. The column I wrote for 2.4.24 later appeared as this letter giving me two shouts in one week. It just goes to show what a difference the political beliefs of a sub-editor makes!

Unexpurgated below:

After 6 months, it is not going away. Indeed, the occupation of Gaza by Israeli forces appears likely to expand into Lebanon, and possibly beyond. The destruction of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus by Israeli bombs last week cannot be understood as anything other than a provocation towards a wider war.

The plight of 2.3million Palestinians remains wholly unresolved. At least 32,000 people have been killed by Israeli troops, now enforcing famine and allowing deadly diseases to spread without medical aid, the hospitals all but destroyed.

On 7th October 130 Israeli children were killed by Palestinian fighters. Since then, 13,000 Palestinian children below teenage years have been killed, according to the United Nations aid workers who are on the ground.

There can be no moral defence of such a disproportionate response. Even the UK and USA governments are forced to publicly state that much. In truth, the Palestinians have been suffering subjugation and land grabs for 75 years and more.

So the dehumanisation of Palestinians, and, by implications, all Muslims, continues as a major global propaganda exercise. What makes Gaza stand-out amidst the endless litany of wars across the world, is the sheer weight of military might unleashed by Israel, using weapons provided by the USA and UK upon a civilian population.

The imagery is of colonisation and ethnic cleansing. Israel clearly wants the land and resources of Gaza for itself in a way the Europeans succeeded in taking the continent of North America for themselves by exterminating the native Americans – some 56 million indigenous Americans killed within 100 years of the sailing of the Mayflower.

The difference today is that the whole world can see what’s going-on, and with the knowledge of recent history, can recognise it as wrongdoing. They cannot kill 2 million in plain sight.

That is why we have seen so many people protest for a permanent ceasefire and for freedom and self-determination for the Palestinian people.

Every Saturday for the past six months, people have protested in Plymouth city centre on behalf of the Palestinians. Twice each month, national demonstrations in London have seen hundreds of thousands marching on the streets, shouting for an end to genocide.

The largest gathering was 800,000 in London alone, with hundreds of local protests adding to the noise. Millions have been actively engaged across Britain, and millions more beyond. These are the largest numbers counted on protests for peace and justice in our entire history. The majority of Britons want an immediate ceasefire.

The pressure on politicians is immense. Their problem? Israel represents the interests of the Capitalist West in the Middle East, that alliance ensuring corporate profits from oil and political control of the Arab World. And sales of armaments add to the drive, making huge profits for the super-rich.

Western governments cannot break allegiance to Israel. And that allegiance blackmails them into supporting the racist ideology of Zionism that is in charge in Tel Aviv.

At the same time, the public outrage at the broadcast injustice, the inhumanity, the genocide, is a material pressure from below that risks votes and regime change at home.

So our protests must and will continue, and grow. The immediate demand is to stop exporting arms to Israel. The demand for a permanent and immediate ceasefire is the demand for a halt to the spread of war which threatens us all.

Beware, Fascism is on the Rise.

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald (27.2.24) trying to say too much in too little space. But the point is made, I hope, that the political games at Westminster about Gaza are intended to divide and rule us, at a time when polls and protests suggest more than two-thirds of the UK population want a Ceasefire. The unedited version is below:

Beware, Fascism is on the Rise.

For those of us concerned for the advancement of human rights and social justice, last week’s chaos in the Commons offered many warnings.

Parliament was supposed to debate a motion about the destruction of Gaza and deaths of at least 30,000 civilians, including no fewer than 12,000 children under the age of 14, all trapped without means of escape.

By the weekend we could all be excused for believing that the debate had actually been about the mortal threat to MPs at the hands of extremists and terrorists inside the UK. The original motion, tabled by the Scottish nationalists, deploring the very apparent “collective punishment” of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli State and calling for an immediate Ceasefire had been cancelled-out by self-interested politicking.

The shenanigans in the House of Commons saw both Tory and Scottish MPs walk out in disgust, leaving a Labour amendment to be voted for, unanimously by the Labour benches, declaring there should be a humanitarian ceasefire (without explanation of what that may look like), no military assault on Rafah, release of all hostages and immediate humanitarian relief.

There’s no sign of that happening amidst growing reports of hundreds of thousands now suffering malnutrition in a collective condition of enforced starvation. Instead, the UK’s Prime Minister accused the Speaker of the House of Commons to have “sided with terrorists”. 

The Tory Party had stood with Israel’s right to self-defence in opposition to the Scottish motion. The Labour Party had carefully manipulated the proposed debate to prevent the UK agreeing to an immediate Ceasefire, effectively condoning the continuation of the killing of civilians. 

It was later revealed that Keir Starmer spoke to the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, before drawing-up Labour’s amendment, whilst the Speaker of the House, Lyndsey Hoyle recently visited Israel and that his father, Doug Hoyle, helped found Labour Friends of Israel. The complicity is obvious to all. Hoyle helped Starmer to block a vote on the humanitarian SNP motion, depriving the public of any voice.

Criticism of the policies and actions of the Israeli State is not a criticism or attack on Jews. Support for Palestinian rights – equal to the human rights of everyone else – is not anti-semitic. The level of active protests across Britain, numbering into millions of people on our streets since the 7th October proves beyond doubt that the majority opinion in Britain is of horror and outrage at the level of death and destruction in Gaza. Once again, Parliament has not represented The People, not just in Scotland but across the entirety of Britain, including England.

It is astounding, even in comparison with all the morally bankrupt political games of the past few years, that a debate on human rights – civilians should not be intentionally bombed in their thousands under any circumstances – has been used to introduce yet more laws against our freedoms and suffrage. 

This is political gaslighting: the psychological manipulation of the electorate, repeatedly challenging our understanding and perception of reality, seeking to confuse and create uncertainty, creating a passivity, giving-in to the perpetrators of the abuse.

Gaslighting can be a very effective tool for the abuser to control an individual. It’s done slowly so the victim writes-off the event as a one-off or oddity and doesn’t realize they are being controlled and manipulated.

Just as politicians impose ever-greater authority over us, they claim they are the victims. New laws are proposed for lawful assembly and protest to be further curtailed this week specially to protect MPs from us, adding to the most extreme laws against strike action and protest already enacted in the last year. Those supporting war abroad are also using it to force tighter social controls at home.

This is important. Democracy here is in chaos and being undermined daily. Authoritarianism is being advanced and ramped-up through a mix of gaslighting, warmongering and racism. Ministerial statements minimising the impact of war whilst dehumanising entire populations are used to promote the UK production and sale of ever-more deadly arms to dictatorships, warlords and gangsters on all sides.

The ramping-up of Islamaphobia by back-benchers such as Lee Anderson, Liz Truss and Suella Braverman calling for “direct action” against refugees, minorities and the Left – that is, those of us protesting for human rights – and praising the likes of Tommy Robinson, sees them empowering the home-grown fascist thugs to go on the attack, not only with their vile on-line threats and abuse but with violence on the streets. They are building a new Party of the Far-Right, of which Reform UK is seeking to become the mass vehicle. 

For the record, the majority of those here protesting for a ceasefire in Gaza are White working class anti-racists, not least because we know that racism divides and weakens us.  Our  protests for Freedom for Palestine need to be ramped-up. Those moved into action by the horror must recognise that this is not only a call for a ceasefire and international social justice but also human rights at home. 

In these volatile times it is not difficult to imagine Britain falling into a totalitarian state. All that is needed is for working class people to be convinced of imminent risk and attack from a “foreign force” alongside personal risk from the “enemy within”. This falsehood, this “Great Lie”, is being enacted. Now.

Support for Palestine Will Be Maintained

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald, published on 6th February 2024, ranting again about the genocide in Gaza. This 100+ days of rabid slaughter and wanton destruction exposes the true face of western imperialism, and the level of institutional hegemony sustained by the military-industrial complex, apparently unassailable. So confident are our masters that we can put into print almost anything, we can protest in our millions, yet they do as they please, and they bomb with pleasure. The Movement must grow.

Almost absent from news media has been the prolonged and immense amount of protest for Palestine. The numbers are enormous.

Last Saturday more than 200,000 marched from the BBC to Downing Street in London, demanding coverage of the call for a ceasefire in Gaza and the end of financial and military support to Israel  from the British Government.

The numbers in London were fewer than the November march of 800,000 largely because of the simultaneous numbers of local protests in most towns and cites, including Plymouth.

This time, a large array of of trade union banners were brandished and trade union General Secretaries spoke at the rally. Their call was for a workplace day of action on Wednesday 7th February, with students and workers showing their solidarity with stoppages, lunchtime walkouts and open air meetings. There will be such a lunchtime protest at Plymouth University.

The horror of the last 100+ days of the War on Gaza is observable through social media and on the Al Jazeera news channel, so transparently opposite to all coverage on BBC, ITV and Ch4 News as to question the ideological bent of editors on all media.

Much of the mortal statistics cannot be denied simply because of the video imagery. To see the entire North of Gaza flattened by aerial and ground bombardment makes any challenge to the numbers said to be dead and injured quite incredible. High Tech weaponry and high explosives against defenceless and homeless civilians.

67,000 Palestinians injured and 35,000 killed including at least 30,000 civilians: 15,000 children and 7,000 women, 700 healthcare professionals killed. Two million people displaced, more than two-hundred thousand homes collapsed, three hundred schools destroyed, twenty six hospitals bombed. Cultural centres, universities and mosques completely destroyed in an effort to eradicate any trace of the heritage and culture of Palestine completely.

Perhaps of the most immediate concern, the denial of food, clean water, sanitation and medicines is now resulting in hundreds of thousand of the entrapped two million human beings suffering all the deadly illnesses that sit alongside disease, malnutrition and starvation. 

All this is visible daily online. 

Quite openly, Israeli government ministers state their aim of permanently occupying the entire area and ending Gaza as a Palestinian homeland.

It should be of little wonder that the International Court of Justice has opened an inquiry into the charge of “genocide” against the Israeli State military and government. Probably of more surprise is the United States demanding Israel stop the killing and displacement in Palestine’s West Bank, albeit at the same time as supplying more military aid to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

The hypocrisy and duplicity of the United States and United Kingdom, continually blocking any negotiated permanent ceasefire should be investigated as part of the crime of genocide. 

It is impossible for anyone to suggest this is a two-sided war. The scenes of suffering in Gaza are indescribable. The withdrawal of US/UK/German aid the the UN relief agency UNWRA on the challenged basis that a handful out of their hundreds of thousands of local staff may or may not have worked with Hamas is now so questionable and unconscionable that many countries are increasing their funding for UNWRA, including Span, Portugal, Ireland and Scotland.

Why is this so poorly reported? And why is our political class supporting and funding this horror so enthusiastically? The answer is a toxic mix of political opportunism, support for the power of western imperialism to impose economic and military control across the rest of the world, and protection of the profits of the oil corporations and arms manufacturers over-and-above any humanitarian considerations.

The question of social justice is always paramount for trade unionists, focussed as we are upon challenging oppression and exploitation, at home and abroad. There are undoubtedly those who seek to condemn the entire Palestinian people as deserving of this fate, but the vast majority recognise the suffering of fellow human beings as a cause for care and compassion.

Justice for the Palestinian people will require more than compassion. We need to challenge the corporations here who fund the Israeli military either by investments or the selling of Israeli goods. To end the mass killing we have to challenge the Israeli State as a settler-colonialist endeavour based upon forcing Palestinians out of their homelands. And we have to expose the political creed of Zionism as a wholly abhorrent racist ideology wholly separate from Judaism and the human rights of Jewish people. It s not antisemitic to challenge Zionism.

The protests will not end until there is a permanent ceasefire, and that means challenging support for Israel in workplaces and colleges. We need to increase the mass pressure for a ceasefire. We’ll be marching again locally every Saturday, and nationally on the 17th. The campaign will not end without justice for the Palestinian people – Freedom for Palestine!

Christmas was Cancelled in Bethlehem this year

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My column in the daily Plymouth Herald this week (27.12.23), brief and to the point, pointing to the hypocrisy and endemic racism of the Western Establishment. What more is there to say?

Bethlehem town, just South of Jerusalem in the Palestinian West Bank, has shut down in solidarity with the people of Gaza, the Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean Coast. 

People of every Faith recognise Bethlehem as the stated birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. For Christians Jesus is the Son of God, for Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Rastafari and other Abrahamic religions He is a crucial holy prophet. In any case, His birthplace is a place of global pilgrimage, with two million people visiting the town each year out of curiosity or deep faith. 

The shops are shut, the town deserted, and the Church of the Nativity built on the site of the stable where the faithful believe Jesus to have been born has constructed, instead of the traditional nativity scene of Mary, Joseph and Jesus in a manger, a pile of stone rubble and dust with a baby in swaddling lying in the middle.

This is a Christian church, not an outlet for Hamas propaganda. The shut-down is in recognition of the twenty thousand Palestinian civilians who have been killed inside 9 weeks, the sixty thousand casualties suffering without proper hospital or medical support, and the nearly two-million now living without clean water and experiencing enforced starvation and associated deadly diseases.

The Church’s local Reverend Munther Isaac spoke from the pulpit, “This year Christmas feels different…It is impossible to celebrate when there is a genocide taking place in our land…and we are wondering is this our fate too, in Bethlehem, in Ramallah, across the West Bank?” 

Already, 300 have been killed in the Palestinian West Bank by Israeli settlers and troops since October 7th, turfed out of their homes and shot on their streets.

In Gaza, the number of children – at least seven thousand – now recorded as the largest casualty rate of children in such a period of war, any war in the history of humanity, is a devastating indictment that lies on the conscience of us all. 

In a very real and historical sense, this devastation of a civilian population is of Biblical proportions. 

Christians worldwide, and, increasingly Jewish groups everywhere, have called-out the carnage and called for a Ceasefire, to no avail.

And here’s the rub. This military invasion and occupation of the Palestinian territory of Gaza is not a religious war. It can hardly be recognised as a war at all given the immense difference of military power and resource between the Israeli Defence Forces, backed-up by US and UK fire-power, and the small number of street-fighters associated with the Hamas government.

This is a conflict not of Islam against Jew or the Holy against heathens. This is a territorial war born of imperial domination and colonial power. Most vitally, this is western Imperialism maintaining its interests over the Arab World. 

Those who, out of prejudice and ignorance, hate Arabs or Islam or both, wish to perpetrate the lie that Jews everywhere are at existential risk from terrorists, and that the extermination of all potential enemies is the only reasonable response. 

In reality, the Israeli State is not the same as the Jewish people, nor do the Zionist settlers represent Judaism. Zionism is a separatist political creed whilst Judaism is a world faith. 

Those who support Israel in this so-called war number a small minority of the human race and an even smaller number of nation States. 

Indeed, in a vote at the United Nations a last week, only the United States voted against a ceasefire, the power of the World’s most armed and dominant imperialist nation ever conceived being enough to veto the wishes and concerns of the rest of humanity.

On Christmas Eve Israeli fighter planes bombed residences and killed nearly 200, not by precision but as an expression of total power against a captive population of over 2 million people. This is a politics of domination, one over another.

Such wars do not ensure a peaceful outcome.

We who demand a ceasefire and oppose the war are not antisemitic, on the contrary we are anti-racists. And we want peace with social justice and human rights for all.

The New Year beckons with the question, where does this end? War against those in Lebanon? Expansion of western forces into Yemen, or even Iran? In these days of growing conflict, the demand for Peace on Earth must not be confined to Christmas. 

We Have to Keep protesting for Gaza!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly column published in the Plymouth Herald on 5th December 2023. I am in tears and choked by the horror of the genocide in Gaza, the Second Nakba (Catastrophe) in which twice the numbers of Palestinians have now been displaced compared with the first Nakba in 1948, and 5 times the number of civilians killed, including at least 6,000 children. This will never be forgotten, but, as the bombing and destruction starts again, with 1.9 million people suffering without food, water or shelter, I can only voice my outrage and call everyone onto the streets.

It’s no good. We have to talk about Gaza.

There can be no greater expression of absolute power than in having fighter planes, drones, ships, tanks and super-armed militia pummel civilian neighbourhoods and then stop, let in tiny amounts of water and food, and then begin the killing all over again.

You may say “It’s War”. You may point to an enemy hidden amongst the civilians. You may choose sides. 

But, by any reckoning, 14,000 casualties in 7 weeks, set against 1500 (max) Israelis, is asymmetrical, in military terms, 10:1.

And for every person killed in Gaza there are at least 3 others injured with life-changing, debilitating wounds and without any decent hospital treatment as the fuel and medical supplies have run out. Now amounting to 38,000 injured – more than the entire population of Barnstaple.

The Israeli government this week declared that the entire region of Gaza is now subject to their military occupation and assault. This will not stop, they say, until all their goals are achieved. Their published goals include the extermination of the Hamas governance and infrastructure, but they do not disclose their entire plan. What happens afterwards?

There remains more than 2 million Gazan Palestinians – human beings by the way, now corralled into Southern Gaza, an area measuring 12 miles by 7 miles – smaller than our PL postcode area which crams-in fewer than 320,000. These people, to repeat, these 2 million people, include more than 1 million offered no more than crowded tents in winter weather conditions. They are now being continuously strafed by fighter planes, bombed, with reports of incendiary weapons that continue to burn on contact with skin, and targeted if they dare to move.

There are over 1,000 bomb craters visible from space in Gaza, the result of over 8,000 bombs drops on 12,000 targets in an area of just over six square miles – the size of Plymouth’s Devonport.  

We should remind ourselves that more than 5,000 of the dead are children below the age of 13, and 45% of those killed are women according to the United Nations medical officials there on the ground. The world has watched, the West supporting the death and destruction, the Global South (the majority of the world’s governments) condemning the deaths yet all nations united in doing nothing to end it. 

This so-called “war” is to continue at least over our Christmas period. In fact, it is intensifying. The United States have suggested that Israel should lower the proportion of civilian deaths during their “exercises”, but last Saturday, in one single day, 700 were killed. 

Most crucially for us, the UK has ramped-up its military support to Israel and activity in the occupation of Gaza. The Royal Air Force is conducting the drone surveillance flights using Shadow R1 reconnaissance aircraft over Gaza to track and target movements on the ground, whilst Commandos are deployed and Vanguard-class nuclear submarine supports two US aircraft carrier convoys in the southern Mediterranean Sea.

Such a huge use of military might against the impoverished and besieged people of Palestine is not only questionable, it is unconscionable. 

The British trade union movement called early-on for a ceasefire, mindful of the inequality in the level of military power and consequential one-sided civilian casualties. We cautiously welcomed the “lull” of last week, giving hope that it could be made permanent. The sheer horror of the continuation of the mass killing is made all more unjust by the sheer proven fact that it can be stopped at will. 

Specifically, the UK must stop arming Israel. Now! We have nothing to do but shout-out our opposition. The trade unions’ Day of Action on Thursday 7th December will see many workplaces and students stage walkouts for an immediate cessation to the killing.

The demand for a ceasefire is the only humane approach. The fact that our MPs and local politicians refuse to call for an end to the mass killing of children and civilians is the most seering indictment of their complicity, their support for UK military involvement tantamount to support for genocide, a war crime. 

For our part, we shall continue to protest and expose the hypocrisy and warmongering of our elected leaders. We can only ask that everyone of conscience and with any moral compass join us.

Protests are a call for Peace and basic Humanity

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald published on 7th November. The censorship of the media still in accelerating swing, with employers banning discussion of Gaza or any signs of support for Palestinians in or around the workplace (a social work colleague of mine hauled before her manager last week fo stating her support for Gaza’s on Facebook!). The protests continue to build.

What would you most associate with Remembrance Day: the commemoration of a ceasefire at the end of the most horrific of all wars to date, or endorsing and celebrating war?

The answer is remembering the joy of Peace, of course. The remembrance element of 11th November each year is the emotional engagement with the moment the war ended, the two-minutes silence at 11am offering a moment of reflection of the sheer horror of warfare and empathising with all the individual war dead and their grieving relatives.  Initially the remembrance of those killed in the First World War, Remembrance Sunday has developed over recent decades to recall and ponder all wars, the dead, the injured and the scarred emotional memory of those who survive. 

In Britain, Remembrance Sunday has the King, Prime Ministers past and present, and all sections of the military establishment march through Whitehall, London, to the Cenotaph to lay wreaths and stand silently still in commemoration of those who died for the Country. It is a yearly moment of overt nationalism and military pride.

On the 11th November there is a two minute silence, usually falling on a busy week day. This year the 11th is a Saturday. Apart from the two-minutes of silence, often drowned-out by the beeping horns and cash-til pings of commerce, nothing else happens. The remembrance is for Sunday.

So it is with the utmost hypocrisy that a section of our Government and national media choose to vilify the huge numbers of people across Britain organising for one of the largest ever demonstrations in London taking place on Saturday. The march, sprawling across the centre of London but nowhere near to the Cenotaph, will be calling, resolutely, for Peace. 

An immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Occupied West Bank, as demanded by the United Nations but denied by the military Israeli State, is all that will be called for.

The USA and UK deny that even a pause in the War in Gaza should take place. It is, by any standard, hardly a war. The Palestinian fighters have no tanks or fighter aircraft but have been constantly bombarded for 4 weeks by the most heavily armed State across the entire Middle East, resulting in more than 10,000 Palestinians killed including 4,000 children. 

Why shouldn’t we protest to put a halt to that? Millions in Britain and across the world are currently engaged in mass vigils, meetings and protest marches calling for a ceasefire in the war on Gaza, Palestine.

Nevertheless, our Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, calls us all supporters of terrorism and calls the protests, “hate marches”. The double standard is jaw-dropping in its sheer hypocrisy. The Prime Minister has warned of disruption at the Cenotaph on Sunday, when the Ceasefire march is taking place the previous day! This is baseless scaremongering of the highest order, and should be exposed as propaganda – the government’s ideological weaponisation of Remembrance Sunday is outrageous. 

Peace protesters care for humanity. We cannot stand by and watch war crimes without shouting-out for the carnage to stop. The Government, intent upon supporting western supremacy and imperialist interests across the Middle East, what is actually the “Arab World”, will obviously stop at nothing to shut down all opposition. 

Yet the protests are building, upwards of a million people expected on the streets of London this Saturday, with coachloads travelling from across the country including from Plymouth, despite a promised Police crackdown on all of us who protest. This Government-sponsored political offensive comes from the very far-right of the political spectrum, seeking urgent legislation to outlaw protests that oppose the ideology of a single political party, soon to be ousted from office. Whilst Prime Minister Sunak calls for arrests of those defending Palestinians, he will stand at the front of a march which will, in its ranks, host a contingent of the British fascist party, the National Front. 

It would seem it is no longer fascism that is the enemy, but, ironically, freedom of association. There are growing numbers of statements from individuals at work and students in colleges threatened with discipline and even dismissal over wearing badges or carrying flags in support of the Palestinian people. School students and teachers are being instructed not to discuss the War. The danger to democracy is quite obvious.

Trade unions will defend its members against such repression.