Tag: racism

Farage Not Welcome!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

Here’s my weekly comment column sent to the Plymouth Herald for publication on 20th October – the same day as Nigel Farage was speaking to 300 loyal RUKs at Plymouth’s arena (which holds 2,500!),  My article was sent to lawyers and declined – only the second time I’ve been cut in a full three years of weekly columns. The Herald published pages of interview with Farage, allowing his bile full publicity. The question is why? I will not fall into conspiracy theories and editorial alliances, but instead observe that local newspapers are extremely afraid of litigation, probably because of cost rather than reputational damage, used as a tool by those with power to bully and cajole. Ironically the UK press is probably more constrained than in the USA. Of course, with 85% of all media owned by billionaires, there’s little chance of either unbiased or objective investigative journalism. I have raised the simple issue of the lack of space for any commentary or statements to the Left of the Labour Party, leaving all socialist commentary and ideas strictly curtailed if not invisible. Yet socialists number in our millions here, and socialist movements across the USA and Europe are growing is scale and activity very fast. Given Britain’s political history its more than ironic, isn’t it, and a signal of an increasingly authoritarian right wing society. We must protest, and we did on the day!

I’ve added below a similar comment, probably defamatory by comparison with mine, published in London by an associate, as an example of the differences in editorial control. And a picture of our 100+ people protest outside the Farage rally. Anyway, here’s the unpublished article. See what you think.

The moment you believe that every criticism is a lie, that each alternative view is nonsense, that every allegation is false, all rational inquiry is gone. Such is the closed mind of the bigot.

The bigot is obstinate and unreasoning, laid rigid in a coffin of narrow-minded opinion, buried by intolerance.

Racism is a form of bigotry. Racism is the opinion that humans can be divided into separate races with human traits and capacities that produce inherent superiority of a particular race. Racism is an idea with no scientific fact to back it up. Politicians use racism, so-called “anti-woke” bigotry, sexism and prejudice to bolster their personal power and control.

Racism is having a renaissance, being made respectable by political groups furthering their own self-interest by spreading fear and loathing of “others”. For example, the idea that some human beings are “illegal” is broadcast so loudly that it is being stated as “fact”.

No human being is illegal. Those attacking “the illegals” are focussed upon people arriving on boats without a visa or prior agreement to enter the UK. The Law says the process is illegal, not the person.

The person risking a small boat to get into Britain is seeking asylum from conditions they faced elsewhere that, frankly, anyone with ability would seek to flee from. You would. But, unlike most other countries – States who have taken-in and accepted far more asylum seekers than has Britain – there is no legal route here for a person to claim asylum before they are in the country.

The Tories passed the Nationality and Borders Act in 2022, stating that if a person is in danger in their country of origin or residence and want the UK to grant them international protection, they can only claim asylum once they are in the UK. It is not possible to claim asylum from outside the UK. Most people in peril have no choice but to enter the UK without permission. There is no legal route.

Any reasonable human being would agree that the law should be changed in order to allow asylum seekers a “safe route” to apply. This would end the flow of boats and the business of those profiteering from human suffering and death by drowning.

Instead, the chancers and ideologues of the far-Right are using the situation they themselves have created to win power and influence and personal wealth. It is no coincidence that most of the prominent Tory MPs who pushed that law back in 2022 are now prominent members of Reform UK. They created the “enemy” around which they could organise reactionary opinion, hoping to regain the votes the Tories lost through their avarice and incompetence when in government.

These established racists have produced a false demon that they cannot easily control. The fascist gangs are on the streets. All Farage can do is up-the-racism! Farage’s party is intensifying the bigotry as it faces more competition from the fascist parties, promising the end of asylum altogether. Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe’s far-Right breakaway from Reform UK, is soaking up votes from Farage by promoting hatred of Muslims and Black people.

The racist Reform candidates displayed on ITV, screaming to deport all Asian people from Britain and training up white men to drag Muslims from their homes are competing with Restore Britain for credentials as the true British Fascists. The fascist street thugs, the Blackshirt bigots are baying for blood. They must be exposed and put down.

Nigel Farage is in-league with them, challenging for leadership of an authoritarian establishment based upon white male supremacy. He should not be welcome in Plymouth!


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We Need an International Socialist Movement

Tony Staunton1 Comment

My weekly Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (29th September 2026), addressing the Labour Party Conference from afar. This was written a day before Burnham’s speech which sought to rally a beleaguered Party around working class issues. I stand by what I wrote. It was pie-in-the-sky with sleight-of-hand pledges, for example, cutting the pensioners triple-lock security while promising unspecified future help with social care. No mention of the challenge of rising fascism, racism and misogyny, and whispered asides on climate change and war. Capitalism is in global polycrisis globally and this Prime Ministerial address drowned in its denial. Time will unravel the pledges and expose the deceit. 

Below is my unedited draft, or please expand the picture to read the published version. I would not have chosen their headline. Here’s mine.

We need an international socialist movement

When a prime minister declares they will not be calling a general election you can be sure they’re under mounting pressure to do so. The honeymoon period, the “Burnham Bounce”, is already over. Burnham is facing a winter of crisis and chaos borne of Austerity economics, war and climate catastrophe.

Political activists, left, right and centre wanted to see the back of Starmer. Whatever your concern, he wasn’t helping. Of course, in a class society based upon extremes of wealth and deprivation, individual power and competition, you can’t please everyone all the time. But it takes a special skill to please no-one at all. 

You have to choose sides and take a political position. And Burnham has.

Quietly, and with a smile that Starmer could never manage, he’s carrying-on the same old “pro-growth” Great Lie of all his predecessors. In this rapacious class society, “growth” and “re-industrialisation” can only mean more profits for the super-rich and their corporations, almost exclusively the military-industrial complex. 

Labour, as always, ends up doing the jobs for the Rich that the Tories couldn’t get away with. 

How? By tying the trade union leadership to its governmental coat tails. Generally, unions don’t fight a Labour Government even when their members re under terrible assault. The collective strike wave of 1978-9, labelled by Tories as the “Winter of Discontent” was an exception driven very much “from below” by workers plunged into poverty by Labour policies forcing wage restraint and welfare cuts amidst high inflation. 

Overall, UK poverty was lower in 1979 than today despite a much larger economy. The rich have gotten richer, billionaires’ wealth rising five times as fast as the average earner.

The lack of TU action has allowed the far-Right to fill the vacuum of zero representation for the beleaguered working class. It’s happened time-and-again in our history. But this time the level of fascist organisation across the world funds and informs the most serious threat to democracy.

Yet Burnham is looking rightwards, seeking to compete and placate the racist bigots when he should be beating back the corrupt profiteering of the super-rich landlords and corporate executives. 

Rather than taxing the super-rich and spending the money on council homes, he’s announced loans from the taxpayer for the private purchase of first homes, protecting the profits of the banks and mortgage companies.

Rather than repealing Tory laws and producing a legal and safe application route for asylum seekers, he’s using the refugees from the global south as whipping posts to outdo the neo-fascists.

Rather than publishing last year’s UK government climate national security report suppressed by Starmer, he’s briefing other governments on impending collapse of ecosystems across the world whilst opening-up Rosebank and other fossil fuel sources at home.

Rather than damning Israel’s genocide in Gaza he’s still licensing the supply of weapons made in the UK to Israel, and allowing the United States to use UK bases to wage Trump’s illegal wars in Iran and Yemen. 

Through all this runs the reason why the ruling capitalist class sometimes prefer the ostensibly pro-worker Labour Government to an honestly pro-Capitalist class Tory or Reform led government. Labour can get away with more without a class war.

Labour plays the bait-and-switch approach, offers the sweetener for the bitter pill, provides a prettier fig-leaf over the latest abuse, the window-dressing hiding the back-stage offensive.

So give a small amount of extra cash to councils and communities to cover-up the massive tax-allowances to the finance corporations. 

Allow Milliband wax-lyrical about green energy targets whilst continuing to subsidise and protect fossil-fuel use and the extreme profits of the oil companies.

Labour has not committed to anything called “socialist” for many generations now. Callaghan made cuts to the Welfare State much larger in one full-swoop than anything Thatcher managed. Blair privatised more of the public estate than any other prime minister ever. Starmer followed in Blair’s shadow, and worse. 

Capitalists depend on our taxes to fund the modicum of social infrastructure they need for workers to be fit enough and able to travel to work. We pay for our health and social care, not them. Sometimes they accept a  about Government to rebuild the modicum of social infrastructure they need for workers to be fit enough and able to travel to work. We pay for our health and social care, not them.

Burnham is not a socialist. He’s a player. And his Labour government will continue the role of administering Capitalism on behalf of the interests of the capitalist ruling class. This will result in more racism and persecution of minorities, more war, more climate chaos, more inequality and poverty. 

And every Party to the Right will produce an even worse result.

The political divide is strengthening across Europe and the US with new socialist forces growing rapidly. It’s time to reassert international socialist principles and fight for workers’ rights. In Germany the far-Right has electorally taken the East whilst the big cities have shifted far to the socialist Left. In the United States the openly Democratic Socialist Party has endured the election of Mamdani in New York and is building a serious left alternative to Trump’s militarism, racism and misogyny. 

Its time to reassert socialist principles and fight for workers’ rights. Declare yourself a socialist, for a system based upon meeting human need not private profit, challenging exploitation and oppression, for equality, Peace, climate action and redistribution of wealth to eradicate poverty now!

Racism is Whipped-up on Purpose to Divide Us

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly published Comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (4.8.26), responding to the previous day’s outrageous press conference staged by Reform UK detailing the use of naval warships to prevent refugees crossing the English Channel “by all means possible”. They had the audacity to invoke the European Human Rights Charter in defence of their proposed military challenge to asylum seekers, all the while pledging to delete human rights laws the moment they gain office. RUK must be stopped! Prior to their announcement I had planned to publish commemoration of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the peril we face with continued nuclear proliferation and threats. We have a stall on Saturday 8th challenging the nuclear weapons manufacturer, Babcock, in Plymouth City Centre (Armada Way Piazza, 11-2pm). But that has to wait – the immediate challenge to the far-Right has to remain paramount. Expose the threat of fascist rule.

The full text below, or expand the pic for the published version (much the same):

There can be no such thing as an illegal human being. Our individual actions may break a nation’s laws, and different countries have different laws, making The Law different from universal human conditions. But no-one can be called “an illegal”. 

Those who choose to label others as illegals are dehumanising the person and devaluing life. It suits those who seek power and privilege and status in the pecking order of class society. Creating division through proffering privilege and entitlement does a job for class rule. Identifying a group as unworthy, undeserving or illegitimate has been an overused and ancient ploy of those seeking or wielding power.

So calling refugees “illegals” has a big job to do for the far-Right everywhere. Trump deploys his power through his ICE thugs kicking down doors to seize “illegals” from their beds or workplaces. The neo-Nazi AfD in Germany organise street gangs to burn migrants homes. The far-Right nationalists, Reassemblement National, rabble-rouses for xenophobia and antisemitism. Spanish fascist groups smash-up migrant meeting places. 

In Britain, Reform UK and their fascist breakaway, Restore Britain, utilises all the lessons from the far-Right across the globe to build hatred and division here, targeting Black people seeking refuge by undertaking one of the ostensible perilous sea journeys across the English Channel. 

On the surface, “Stop the Boats” is a very sensible suggestion. No-one should need to risk their life to reach safety. And no-one should profit from another person’s misfortune. But the boat campaign is a cover for ultra-nationalism, white-supremacy and racism. 

The call of reform UK for a “Fortress Britain”, pledging to launch ‘the biggest military operation in the Channel since World War Two’ to end migrant crossings. They picture British warships capsizing small boats and dumping survivors back on “foreign” shores. Engaging the UK military against Africans and Asians is designed to evoke a mythical and fanatical patriotism from a British Empire that was always questioned and can never exist again. 

In truth, they seek power for themselves by blaming and scapegoating the most powerless and stateless of human beings for all the ills of the society. 

Be clear, an immigrant is someone who has crossed a border and can still go home in safety if they choose. A refugee is someone who has crossed a border because home is no longer safe at all. Asylum seekers are simply refugees waiting for that truth to be recognised on paper. 

Confusing, misnaming or bad-mouthing these categories is a purposeful and deceitful lie with the intention of “othering” the “foreigner” and people-of-colour in its broadest racist incarnation. It is the tip of the ice-berg of propaganda aimed at putting a white-supremacist government into power to protect big business and the billionaire financiers of this bile.

The people on boats are homeless and stateless. Those seeking refuge come mainly from countries where UK-based corporations have sold arms for the wars over extraction of fossil fuels or rare metals, wars that have pulverised entire regions. And they escape regions rendered no longer habitable for human communities because of the climate catastrophe scorching and deluging their lands with floods and famine. Should we expect them simply to die, presumably because we view them as lesser humans, inferior to us?

Let them in! Refugees are Welcome Here! 

Britain can afford to help. Our NHS is not in crisis because of migrants – it depends upon them. Our housing is not in crisis because of migrants – rents and mortgages are too high and property speculators only invest in high short-term returns. Our water is not overpriced and rivers wholly polluted because of migration – it’s the avarice of private shareholders! Our low wages are not caused by immigration – Capitalist, large and small, always seek to pay the least to gain the most private income from their business.  

Racism is whipped-up intentionally to divide the working class one from the other and prevent collective opposition to the profiteering, landlordism and exploitation of the ruling class. We should not be fooled. Trade unions will openly expose and challenge racist and fascist organisations targeting Plymouth.

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There is No Such Thing as Common Sense!

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My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (9.6.26), predicting the outcry by Tory leader Badenoch, calling today for “Common Sense”! Her focus, racism experienced by white people in a predominantly white society! Another weaponisation of prejudice in the pursuit of power. No mention of institutional racism that systemically marginalises and criminalises people of colour. The culture wars continue, amplified to the extreme by an Establishment fragmented and floundering. We must keep up the pressure – no to racism, fascism and misogyny!

And yes, I know Palestine is not in the World Cup finals, but, just like FIFA, we should still fly the flag!

My unedited text below (not my chosen headline) or expand the pic to read the printed version.

World Cup: Let’s hope the Best team Wins!

Everyone’s shouting for Common Sense! Apparently, the Truth should be obvious to all. The only problem being, there is no such thing as common sense. We each have different experiences and receive the world differently. This diversity makes humanity dynamic and resilient. We’re not all the same – enjoy!

We commonly live in a class society. Deny that if you can. The stratification of the 70+ millions of us is such that the entire experience of the 20% (14 million people) at one end of the class spectrum has absolutely nothing in common with the opportunities and privileges afforded the 20% at the other end. That much is obvious the moment we walk down the street. Rolls Royces speeding past the tents of the homeless.

Fewer than one million of us, one in 70, will ever experience flight in a private jet. However much we dream of it or transport ourselves into the lives of the billionaires, the class system will not allow any level of social mobility that can possibly allow you to get that rich.

The private schools for the top 6% of society protect offspring and inheritance from seeping down let alone having any poor wretch be accepted into the multimillionaire class. We speak different languages inside broad the English vocabulary. We perceive a very different world, Britain, England dependent upon our class placement.

The England-based company director, protected by private millions of pounds in share holdings, expects returns on stock market gamblings many thousands of times greater per day than we, the majority, looking for a 10% return on a £10 bet using the smartphone bingo app. Or the 14m:1 potential of Lotto. The dice is heavily weighted. Money goes to money.

The banking investor wants maximum returns on capital, benefitting from high interest rates. The working class family whose home is mortgaged to the bank wishes for low interest rates. No commonality there.

The house-builder expects to make a hefty profit and stops building unless so assured. The large landlord wants to charge the highest rental, and does so to such a degree that we have a housing crisis. The renter wants a fair if not low rent in exchange for a well cared-for building. One side’s gain is the other’s loss.

Oxfam’s research gives evidence that the wealth gap between rich and poor in the UK is stark: just 58 billionaires in the UK hold more combined wealth than 27 million other people (39% of the population). Oxfam highlights that an estimated 14.5 million people – nearly a quarter of the UK population – live in poverty, while the richest 1% own over a fifth of the nation’s total wealth.

It makes no sense for working class people to demand that the rich get richer at our expense! What’s the sense in that? It does make sense for billionaires to tell the working class we must accept welfare cuts and higher prices in order to protect and grow their profits! That is the “Common Sense” spouted by the politicians seeking to protect the current state of things, a status quo that has overseen serious deterioration to working class living standards and expectations over the past forty years.

Nationalism is the primary vehicle for demanding common sense. After all, we all live on this Island and therefore should have something in common, shouldn’t we? It’s only common sense for us to support our military for our shared security, isn’t it? It is apparently common sense that we should ration health, education and welfare in order to put more billions into the private military-industrial arms corporations. Only sections of society benefit from military arms expenditure, by no means the majority. Surely, common sense would agree that war is not in our interests.

And there can be no common sense where racism and sexism exist in society. Racism divides on the basis of one perceived ethnicity or skin colour being superior to another, with a baseline of white supremacy. Sexism is the exercise for imposing male supremacy. White people do not commonly experience the different and detrimental looks and behaviour experienced daily by people of colour. Men do not experience levels of rape and domestic abuse that women daily receive in Britain. The prejudice that flood the senses of being Black or female in a society based upon competition and discrimination are not common to all.

Perversely, those demanding common sense usually align such an imposition with racism and religious prejudice. Their common sense is meant as common only to Christian white-skinned people. Right now, such nationalist common sense demands for us all to support England at the World Cup. We should be proud to be British as opposed to care about any of the 48 competing FIFA Nations, shouldn’t we, even when Scotland has a much better squad!

Hold on, why should we compete to be superior to the peoples of other nations and regions, when all the other countries live under the same class divisions, their working class experiencing the self-same exploitation, oppression, repression and deprivations as us? We have more in common with working class people living in Africa, South America and Asia than we have with the English billionaires holed-up in the Cotswolds.

Can we have some “Class Sense” please? Can we prioritise and cheer-on what’s in the interests of the majority – the working class – not seek some fake allegiance with billionaires who push nationalism and “common sense” in their property-owning class’s self-interests, not ours?

In the meantime, wouldn’t a human, caring common sense want the best team to win, or care for the underdog? It’s only a game of football after all, but, for what it’s worth, c’mon Palestine!

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Women’s Safety Must Not Be a Tool for Racism

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (19.5.26) keeping-up the assault of the Left against the far-Right, following the previous Saturday’s excellent Palestine Solidarity/Stand Up To Racism demonstration in London, overwhelming the much-reduced far-Right “Unite the Nation” march called by the Islamophobe, Tommy Robinson. Plymouth has a range of fascist and racist organisation competing against each other for pride of place, pretending to demand protecting of women and children from refugee men whilst, in practice, working alongside white men with convictions for abuse. The Left is also in their sights, our charge of racism having a serious effect upon their credibility and support. We must not be complacent and must increase and deepen our efforts until they are off our streets. The next counter demonstration is next Monday.

Unedited version below, or expand the pic for the published version.

Women’s liberation would benefit men. Working class men, at least. The ability of the Bosses to pay women less than men for doing the same work, having the same or even more skills but being denigrated, denied recognition and  prevented from rising-up the management hierarchy, harms everyone…except the bosses. Unequal pay holds down the general pay-rate. Any excuse is used to hold down wages in order to increase profits, including ideas that women are not worth as much as men.

Women’s oppression, the consideration of women as less than men – weaker, more emotional and therefore fickle and untrustworthy – is increasing again in Britain. After a few decades of winning better women’s rights at work and at home, there’s now a push back. And misogyny is the hard end of this – male hatred of women – a political campaign for male supremacy overwhelming the online Manosphere and poisoning young men’s minds.

Sexism doesn’t make sense. If women had the same rights as men, men would be freed from the results of women’s oppression. If we broke the stereotypes assigned to gender roles we could be honest about our emotions, we could share responsibilities, mix our teams and, oh yes, increase the rate of pay for all, setting the bar at the highest common denominator, not the lowest.

Women in the UK still get paid on average of 18% below men’s pay rates for work of the same value. Trade unions still shout about this. The essential priority for campaigners for women’s rights is correctly focussed upon male coercion, sexual abuse and rape. It is estimated that up to 900,000 people across the country experience sexual assault each year, including attempted rape and penetration. Much has been done to strengthen laws against sexual violence and yet it is widespread, less than 3% of reported rapes ending up in a successful prosecution and punishment. 

Predatory abusive men have little to fear. One-in-three women in the UK experience an average of 7-years of domestic abuse at the hands of their partners, statistics that hasn’t changed for the past 50 years. Around 90% of rapes are committed by people known to the victim, often by someone who the survivor previously trusted or even loved. Rapists are usually friends, colleagues, clients, neighbours, family, partners or exes. 

Sexual abuse happens in every community. In England, where more than four out of five of the population are white-skinned, this means that the vast majority of sexual abusers are white men abusing white women. 

Yet a new campaign group, publicised by the Plymouth Herald, is calling for action against Black men. “Women Reclaim The Streets Plymouth” (WRTSP) is claiming that our streets have been made unsafe by immigrants seeking to abuse women. 

WRTSP states “We will feel safer on the Right than the Left always, with rising amounts of illegal undocumented men coming here on boats and the amounts of rapes and murders by these men We Stand (sic) together for closed borders and the illegal undocumented men send (sic) straight back.”

They have no evidence, and as such this is hate speech, a hate crime, promoting fear and racial hostility through the false claim that asylum seekers are responsible for a rising number of rapes. 

They wrongly raise the threat of “stranger danger” when women and children are most likely to be abused by someone known to them. Their propaganda is placing women and children at more risk, intentionally or not, implying that family and friends are always safe.

This outcry against asylum seekers and young refugee men as rapists is being fomented by organised fascists. The misogynists who hate women also hate Black people. The ultra-nationalists framing patriotism as white-supremacy are waving flags to intimidate ethnic minorities. The men in high-viz jackets waving Union jacks with the Reclaim the Streets group outside Theatre Royal last week have amongst them thugs convicted for violence against women. 

These racist groups are planning a series of local protests against refugees, starting next Monday. They threaten to hold more demonstrations outside our primary schools, claiming to “protect our children” and targeting local Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) as if they all house illegal refugees. Their sheer ignorance is jaw-dropping.

Far-right organisations are springing-up across the city, competing with each other for pole position as the most racist, the most patriotic. They plan to protest outside the Plymouth Courts at a hearing of Black men of a sexual attack. Yet all six cases of serious rape and abuse of women heard in Plymouth last year had no such protests outside in the cause of keeping women and children safe – all six were white men – no protests to keep us safe from them, was there?

Women’s safety must not be a tool for racism. Women and children are at risk from low wages, insecure housing, inadequate access to support and benefits as well as sexual abuse. Women are at risk from the sexism and misogyny in our general culture. Women’s sexist oppression and abuse cannot be defeated through the racist oppression and abuse of Black men. We must counter these racist demonstrations and honestly campaign for women’s liberation. 

Join us in Challenging the Rise of the Far Right

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (24.3.26), obviously advertising the mass demonstration against the far-Right taking place at the weekend. The back-room complexities of fund-raising and organising coaches, and filling them with activists, remains unseen. Commercial hire is absurdly overpriced. We are in debt and need donations, if you can. But more, we need to fill the coaches and build the mass movement against fascism.

Join us in Challenging the Rise of the Far Right

Hundreds of people will be travelling from Plymouth to London on Saturday to join the national demonstration against the far-Right. The protest by the Together Alliance and accompanying festival of diversity in Trafalgar Square will be the largest assembly against race-hate and fascism in British history.
The threat of fascism is very real and present. The numbers of fascist organisations in Britain have grown, and their ranks expanded, greater than the National Front in the 1970’s or the British National Party in the 1990’s. At the same time, the level of public awareness has decreased as we have been separated and isolated into private social bubbles by financial Austerity, the Covid Pandemic and the sense of vulnerability caused by wars and climate crisis.
We are emotionally jostled by conspiracy theorists seeking power through spreading fear and threat. We are lied to by far-Right politicians blaming and scapegoating minorities for all society’s ills. We are confused by politicians broadcasting conflicting fake facts in the name of Truth, just to further their own influence.
Our children are subjected to all this in a concentrated form of professionally produced propaganda on-line, the Incel “Manosphere” telling boys they must be ready to fight, and girls they must submit to men’s needs. The saturating levels of You Tube generated sexism and misogyny is alive in the playground and classrooms, daily observed and documented by teachers themselves, taking a collective toll on the mental health and wellbeing of all concerned.
Racism, the learnt prejudgment and assumptions of people of colour or minority ethnic group, is being encouraged and organised by antisemites, white supremacists and Christian fundamentalists, the targeting of Muslims most prevalent. Powerful political forces and social dynamics are being forged to develop fascist organisation here and across the world.
In the United States of America, President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) armed street thugs are terrorising minority communities, a style of para-military State organisation that Nigel Farage of Reform UK and all to his Right are pledging to bring here the moment they achieve power, targeting a million or more people of colour for forced deportation. Yet we know it’s not migrants that have created the cost of living crisis, food and fuel poverty, our austerity has been caused by the blatant profiteering of the richest multi-millionaires on the planet.
Across Europe, openly racist and Islamophobic parties including the AfD in German, with whom Britain’s Tory Party are allied, is building street organisation to assert white privilege and forcibly smash all resistance. In France the same is happening with the leadership of the ultra-nationalist and openly racist National Rally set to win the Presidency within the next year.
It is not an extreme view to be concerned about these developments. It is not politically extreme to oppose racism and fascism. Opposing the far-Right is essential to personal preservation as a member of the working class. It is now essential that we counter the rise of fascism on our streets and in our workplaces. We remember the history of the twentieth century, the death and devastation caused by the fascist parties that took power in Spain, Italy and Germany.
We know that the totalitarian dog-eat-dog militarised organisation of society in the interests of a small super-rich all powerful elite produces a life of fear and subjugation, threat and violence for the majority. For example, after Hitler’s fascists, the Nazis, seized power in 1933 they banned political parties, trade unions and civil society organisations. They were “razing to their foundations” the institutions of any and all working class democracy. No semblance of resistance was tolerated.
Key to this was the funding and organisation by the wealthy of violent street gangs recruited from the dispossessed, to “take the streets” and destroy all opposition. This is the blueprint and the goal of the fascist organisations in Britain today. Funded and informed by USA groups including the Homeland Party, the successors to the BNP including Patriotic Alternative and Britain First are joined by the reformed UKIP group led by the self-styled fascist Nic Tenconi, and others.
The Flag Force groups encouraged by the White-supremacist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) are raising the English flag and Union Jack as symbols of neighbourhood domination in order to intimidate minorities. They are mirroring the 1930’s fascist strategies in a new era of capitalist crisis, nationalism and expanding warfare.
In Britain there are currently many more anti-racists than racists. We must not allow ourselves to be out-organised.
When we show our strength in numbers, the bullies and dominators disappear back into the shadows.
Now is the time to stop the far-Right. Challenge far-right propaganda. Counter fascist-led demonstrations. It will only get harder, the longer they are left alone to breed hate and division. Join the demonstration in London, coaches from Plymouth and across the South West: go to togetheralliance.org.uk/getting-there

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Bombing Iran will NOT liberate the People

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (3.3.26), damning the suggestion that bombing women liberates women, anywhere. International Women’s Day on 8th March should see a battle cry rage against Trump’s misogyny, racism, anti-Trans bile and deadly military imperialism. They’re all linked!

Bombing Iran Will Not Liberate the People!

Welfare not Warfare!

The illegal Israeli military mass-bombing of the girls’ school in Minab in the south of Iran killed at least 153 women and girls last Saturday. This cannot claim to be in the interests of the liberation of women in Iran.

The rights of Iranian people have never been on the agenda of Western powers. Women, and men in Iran have protested heroically to change their government towards women’s rights, with death their only answer. The bombing of Iran offers no solution to women’s oppression there or anywhere. War always treats women as targets.

There’s so much hypocrisy spoken about women’s rights that we should all take responsibility for calling it out. We live in a deeply sexist human world. A global system based upon individual power and control vested primarily in super-rich men. The Epstein files show how corruption and sexism are so pervasive and entrenched. Andrew represents the corruption, both financial and sexual, of unaccountable wealth. Trump symbolises white male supremacy. Women’s oppression and capitalist class society are intertwined.

The genocide in Gaza has exposed the brutality of war and the unique impact on women, famine, physical abuse and incarceration impacting menstrual health and pregnancy. We still have a long way to go to win a world free of women’s oppression.

Let’s be clear: women’s oppression encompasses all social, economic, and political spaces causing personal subjugation for simply being a woman. Its is based upon class: wealthy women whilst suffering the indignity of being considered primarily as sexual objects have sufficient agency to combat much of the oppression. They side with the class privilege of wealthy men and collude in the exploitation and oppression of other women as low-paid nannies, personal assistants and cleaners.

Most working class women’s experiences of oppression are internalised into self-blame. Interactions and relationships are all based upon sexism – the portrayal of women as objects to be used, owned and controlled permeate all aspects of women’s lives. The modern capitalist family requires women to fund the domestic budget by working as well as running the home as carer, educator, nurse, chef, bottle-washer and on-call lover.

Next weekend we celebrate International Women’s Day, March 8th, in deteriorating circumstances. The backlash against campaigns for women’s liberation is well-funded and growing. In the name of women’s rights, the far-Right now proclaim themselves the defenders of the “traditional” heterosexual family as the “natural order”, recruiting women to specific roles in political organisations, “Pink Ladies” mobilised to protest outside refugee hostels for traditional women’s roles and heterosexual family values, and to keep white children safe from Black men. Disgusting!

Farage and his Reform UK private business echoes vice President J D Vance in demanding women should have more babies, referring to Musk’s “population apocalypse” of white families in the face of migration, inter-marriage, LGBT+ parents and left-wing “wokism”. The far-Right are reawakening the fascist campaigns of last century, for “children, kitchen and Church”, opposing women’s rights and imposing a woman’s place apart from any self-determination.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has been celebrated for over 100 years, born from mass revolts of young women workers challenging exploitation and the abusive power of the Boss class. Today many companies and businesses use IWD to sell cosmetics and gimmicks to reinforce the cardboard cut-out female rather than address the issues women face.

But IWD has radical roots and is a day to remember those who have fought for women’s liberation – from the Suffragettes in the UK to the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran. The women trade unionists and the men who have joined their cause remain clear-eyed – the working class have nothing to gain from women’s oppression. Free domestic labour, tasks still primarily allocated to women, protect the profits of big business not having to pay for the child care and raising of the next generation of the workforce.

And so, women are kept down. One-in-four women in Britain suffer domestic violence and abuse, often sexual, an average for a period of 6 years of their adult life. Rape in this country is lawless, only 3% of alleged cases followed through to a conviction. Child sexual abuse is reportedly on the increase again, the vast majority of cases girls abused inside the family, the majority of families being white. Sexual abuse is not the preserve of the black male refugee but the privileged white misogynist.

The cuts to social welfare, repeated and enforced in order to divert essential funding away from our health and welfare services and into war and military spending, affect women most acutely. Women’s rights depend upon a well-funded Welfare State alongside the ideological struggle for liberation from this system enforcing roles and relationships of power-and-control.

Here in Plymouth, trade unionists are fighting the cuts to health services, including stopping the closure of Plymouth’s Sexual Abuse Referral Centre, reducing the support that women and children receive following rape and abuse. You won’t see the far-Right protesting about that except as a “drain on the tax-payer” and a symbol of the “Nanny State” they want demolished.

For socialists, the challenge to class exploitation has to have the fight against oppression at its heart. We encourage and support the struggle by women against all forms of oppression, including gender stereotyping, role-segregation and being made scapegoats blamed for the imposition of low wages, high child care costs and poor social conditions. Welfare not Warfare! On this International Women’s Day we must remember the struggles of the past and unite for social justice and women’s liberation today!

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UK must Not Accept the Euqivalent of US’s ICE!

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My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (13.01.2026) making the links between ICE in the USA and the political direction of travel in the UK. It’s obvious really. If you agree, please build the largest ever anti-racist/anti-fascist protest in London on 28th March. You have time to recruit at least 10 of your colleagues and friends, through patient explanation and exposure of the implications of a far-Right government in Britain by 2029.

UK must Not Accept the Euqivalent of US’s ICE!

The media headlines were bold. “Bring ICE to Britain, says Farage” and “Trump should put Starmer on trial, says Tommy Robinson”.
The racist ultra-nationalist, Farage, multi-millionaire owner of the ReformUK brand, would wish to see hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people of colour from across Britain snatched from their homes and workplaces and forcibly expelled.
The fascist misogynistic white-supremacist, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is so keen on national sovereignty that he would like a foreign President to reign over us, and accepts cash from fascist groups from across Europe and the USA. He wants to see millions of Black and Brown British citizens rounded-up and deported.
The violence implicit in both far-right leaders is for all to see. Britain’s far-Right are applauding the violence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Trump’s federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security. In 2025 more than 131 people died while in ICE detention, agents filmed pepper-spraying clergy and medical staff, tear-gassing children and systematically terrorising Latino communities.
ICE is a $12BN armed paramilitary wing of the central State, empowered to carry out armed raids on schools, hospitals, courts, places of worship, weddings, funerals and workplaces. These involve raids by masked agents carrying automatic weapons who drive unmarked armoured vehicles.
ICE targets people of colour, anywhere and everywhere, regardless of their status.
ICE is a paramilitary group, intentionally recruiting from the volunteers of the organised far-Right, encouraged to pursue a racist white-supremacist ideology. Trump openly targeted the Somali community in Minneapolis, calling them “garbage”.
The video of a high court judge, a Black citizen, assaulted by ICE in a supermarket car park offers one picture of the millions of public assaults taking place across the USA with, as vice-President Vance insists, total immunity from legal challenge or charge. No rules.
Other film shows women being dragged across tarmac roads and beaten, children forcefully taken from private residencies, families crammed into wired cages without proper sanitation or drinking water. This is the imagery of a fascist state, of Hitler’s militia in 1930’s Nazi Germany, of the concentration camps across fascist Europe a century ago.
The murder in Minneapolis of Renee Good, 37-year old mother, shot three times in the head by an ICE agent, was greeted by Trump suggesting she deserved to die and labelling Renee as a ”professional agitator”. Thankfully, more than one thousand protests took place across America last weekend by those who do care, chanting “ICE is Trump’s Gestapo!” and “No justice, no peace—get Ice off our streets!”
A month earlier more than 7 million Americans marched against Trump. Opposition and challenge to the President’s federal boot-boys is rising, from elected officials and Police through to local white citizens outraged by such flagrant injustice and ready to defend multiculturalism and democracy.
The anti-racist majority in Britain today, thus far quite quiet and acquiescent, had better get out in the streets too. We have to show the far-Right that we will not accept the equivalent of ICE in the UK.
Whilst Starmer and Mahmood seek to appease the racists with tougher immigration laws and the incarceration of civil rights protesters, Farage and Yaxley-Lennon are preparing for power. They are stating their racist intentions should Farage be prime minister. Yaxley-Lennon is building his Black Shirt street squads in preparation for a far-Right government that will target and scapegoat minorities in order to divide the working class and rule by fear. Trump offers them a blueprint, and they are applauding him.
We have to get organised and get active here, now. Down with racism and fascism! Join and build https://www.togetheralliance.org.uk

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Here’s Hoping for a Happy New Year!

Tony Staunton1 Comment

My final weekly comment column of 2025 in the daily Plymouth Herald (30.12.25) inevitably rounding-up my priorities for the coming year, whilst coldly acknowledging how much more needs to be addressed. No, I haven’t mentioned Your Party, not from any lack of commitment but because this new socialist potential will only succeed by the action it takes to secure the priorities as listed below. If it is yet another organisation created of and for itself, a Party existing in order to simple exist, then it will fail. The point is to raise the socialist banner high and, most importantly, know what we’re fighting for!

Here’s hoping for a Happy New Year!

New Year, whichever and whenever it occurs for you, offers space for reflection as well as projection. The Gregorian calendar fixes ours as 1st January each year, irrespective of the position of the sun or the moon, but close enough to the winter solstice to symbolise new light and fresh beginnings.
New Year is worthy of a wish list, fresh aspirations. In a human world of significant turmoil and uncertainty, so much needs fixing that it’s difficult to prioritise. But here goes. Let’s hope in 2026:

  1. The fascist-led racist movements of Farage and Yaxley-Lennon are finally and overwhelmingly defeated by mass mobilisations of working class people outraged by racism and misogyny and challenging the false culture-wars that decry empathy as weakness;
  2. The £13billion a year UK tax-funding for illegal nuclear weapons of indiscriminate mass-destruction is ended, the cash transferred into the National Health Service to fully fund our health and welfare needs rather than warfare. Let’s also ensure an anti-racist campaign in hospitals to value the one-in-three doctors working here from oversees, and encourage our health staff to stay because we value, not abuse, them. Oh, and ensure the NHS is protected from plans to fully privatise our services – the selling of our health records to the private corporation Palantir to be roundly rejected;
  3. An emergency plan for funding to address the housing crisis, including skills apprenticeships for our unemployed young people, for good quality new build of social housing and refurbishment of our 13 million homes in need of repair and insulation, placing rent caps and legal liabilities on private landlords and taxing large landlords to fund the reparations they should have undertaken;
  4. The end of this seemingly endless period of Austerity economics, where workers wages have stagnated since the banking crisis of 2008, our real spending-power actually fallen despite our taxes bailing out the banks without any prosecutions or detriment to the bankers incomes, dividends and bonuses. End the low wage long working hours culture where employers are subsidised by our taxes to keep our wages low. Make the rich pay proportionally the same taxes as the working class instead of being allowed to hide their riches in off-shore accounts;
  5. The acceleration, depth and seriousness of the Climate Crisis is finally accepted and understood, all the lies and denial defeated and replaced by urgent action to end emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, Britain playing a lead role on the international stage to force climate action onto the US Presidency and win funding for the vital transformation of the world economy away from oil and gas and into funded renewable energy delivery North and South. Stop subsidising the oil companies who are reaping record profits from inflated prices causing our fuel poverty;
  6. Child poverty is ended, the 1 in 3 working class kids no longer deprived of some of the basics of life, and our schools refunded under state control;
  7. The genocidal racist Netanyahu is brought to trial and jailed, his far-Right government collapsed. Starmer’s Government support for Zionism and funding of arms to Israel is ended, the protesters against the persecution of Palestinians vindicated and applauded.
    There are so many more issues that must be addressed. Well, we have to live in hope. We are in a period of very fast moving human history, and nothing is impossible. The course of human history has always been determined by the mass movements of working people, not the feeble compromises of the self-promoting political class.
    Best wishes for a campaigning New Year for Peace with Social Justice!
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National Flags used as Weapons to Intimidate

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My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (9.12.25), almost incandescent with anger at the amount of apolitical claptrap being spouted about “finding common ground” with the flag-waving, hate-spouting racists. I’m being told I should “listen to the other side” and “respect the opinions of others”. I refuse! After 50+ years of political activity I know very well what a fascist is, thank you. I know humanity is capable of such a vast spectrum of beliefs and actions that you cannot have common cause with them all. There is a left and a right of the political spectrum, and always has been. And it’s not me but the fascists who will be the first and last to shut you up and shut you down. They must not only be opposed, ardently and collectively, but they must be defeated.

Unedited:

Another racist march through Plymouth last Saturday, and more threatened. A small and bedraggled and of fewer than 60 paraded huge union jacks and flags of St George around the Barbican and Frankfort Gate with clear intent. To use Britain’s national flags as weapons to intimidate all people of colour.
They wish for Britain to be a white-supremacist Apartheid State, those of colour to be subjugated as second or third-class citizens or forcibly deported in their millions. They spout absurd assertions that Britain has been taken-over by Muslims or Black power.
They scream “save our kids” to present the lie that migrants en-masse are sex-abusers, without any evidence and when the vast majority of child sexual abuse occurs in white families, because Britain is an 85% white-skinned population. They demand “stop the boats” when the total costs of offering asylum to those suffering is a fraction of one-percent of the country’s gross domestic product, and Britain is fuelling the wars and climate chaos from which they’re escaping.
Those who called the demonstration publicised their rallying cry across the entire South West from Bristol to Truro for extremists to converge upon Plymouth. A few of the most mouthy on the day have been seen demonstrating outside a hotel where traumatised people who are totally innocent and have every right to be here. They brandish emblems of “Britain First”, a fascist organisation formed out of the failed British National Party in 2011 and allied with fascists across Europe such as Germany’s AfD, supported by Donald Trump.
Members of Patriotic Alternative, a white-supremacist hate-group have also been involved. Flag Force Plymouth, the ones hanging flags from lampposts to intimidate and claim communities as ruled by them, are directly allied to these far-right and neo-nazi groups. The question has to be asked, by what right do they have freedom to march in Plymouth or anywhere else, spouting racial hatred and misogyny?
Police data, publicly available, shows that over 40% of the far-Right protesters arrested in the last year had previous offences of violence against women or had been reported for domestic abuse. Perhaps their calls for justice for women and girls are another example of the actual perpetrators hiding in plain sight.
Thankfully, the people wanting to expose the lies of the far-Right turned-out on Saturday, as we always do, to swamp the fascist-led flag-usurpers, trade unionists and human-rights protesters outnumbering them three-to-one. But the vast majority of decent Plymothians should be up-in-arms against the far-Right, not just a dedicated few.
The media and government are broadcasting much of the same racist mythology, with one aim in mind. To distract and desert attention from the crisis of low pay and high prices, poor housing and the fragmentation of health and social care services. “Blame the Boat people” just doesn’t work. Asylum seekers are not the landlords hiking unaffordable rents, refugees are not the directors and shareholders of the banks extorting our cash through high interest rates, and do not own the energy companies creating our fuel poverty. Black migrant workers are the ones propping-up our caring services despite the efforts of Starmer’s government to expel them.
Now, trade unions and campaign groups have formed a fresh alliance to challenge the lies and hatred. The Together-Alliance against the far-Right is uniting the country, from civil organisations through to celebrities, Friends of the Earth to Paloma Faith and Lenny Henry, to Stand Up To Racism. Join us and defeat hatred. http://www.togetheralliance.org.uk

Labour feeds far-Right Racism

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My weekly Comment in the daily Plymouth Herald (18.11.25), seriously outraged by the latest racist policy drive of the UK so-called Labour government. Writing on Sunday for a Monday morning deadline, the article could not consider the later praise heaped-upon Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud by the Tory Badenoch and Reform UK’s Farage. Most notably the fascist Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) claimed a victory over the government, won by street protest and flag-hanging he boasted. Of course, the open racists bay for more – the more you give the more they demand – arguing for the withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. And of course, the few Labour backbenchers raising concerns are too few and too whimpy to have any effect on the coming Commons vote. Starmer emptied-out the Labour Party of the entire Left – there’s no-one to call-out Mahmoud’s reactionary anti-human bile.

The unexpurgated original below:

Britain is NOT being torn apart by illegal immigration. We are NOT divided by migrant workers or cultural differences. This country is NOT being overwhelmed by asylum seekers or Islamic Sharia Law. Labour’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is completely wrong.
There IS an attempt to tear Britain apart – not by young Black men but by racist and Islamaphobic hatred. People of colour are being threatened by violent white thugs on our streets, organised and whipped-up by Nazi-Seig-heiling fascist cadre. The Union Jack and Cross of St George flags have been weaponised as public emblems of white supremacy, flying lamppost-high, hoisted on the testosterone of male dominance spewing misogyny as well as racist threats throughout our communities.
It is the far-Right that must be challenged, not those escaping war, climate devastation and famine. The flaggers follow a fascist ideology, an import from the White-nationalists of the USA and the so-called-Saxon Aryan descendants of Nazis from greater-Germany and Scandinavia. Check out the AfD in Germany or the rebranded ultra-nationalists of Denmark and France. Patriotism my arse!
Britain IS at risk of being torn apart by false propaganda of the far-Right, much of it imported and funded by white supremacists in the United States of America and Europe, including the World’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk. Mahmood, Badenoch and Farage are shifting to echo the fascists Yaxley-Lennon and Tenconi in importing Trump’s violent deportation policies. Will we soon see plain clothes thugs deputised as Border Force state agents terrorising the streets and rounding-up non-whites in workplaces and communities, caging and deporting them without appeal?
People seeking refuge and asylum from are human beings with families. Yet Labour is looking to end Article Eight of the human Rights law – the right to family life – and Article three, the right to protection from violent or degrading treatment. Asylum seekers in permanent limbo, refugee families at risk of eviction, their children whisked away from schools, deported to a country they fled with no means to survive.
Labour is looking to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. Just what the fascists have demanded! Idiots! Fewer than two-and-a-half thousand asylum seekers have used human rights legislation in their appeal to stay. It should not be an issue.
Withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights will mean the end of the rights to family life and protection from abuse. This will make us all more vulnerable, especially children experiencing abuse from relatives – 83% of which occurs inside white families here. The withdrawal will produce no material benefits, it will only strengthen the far-right.
Mahmoud’s announcement is an official call to white racists: “it’s official – refugees are not welcome here, regard people of colour with suspicion, as cheats and “illegals”, as people who should be hounded-out of their accommodation and communities.” She thinks she’s appealing to the mass of voters to support Labour, but in fact she’s only appeasing the racists.
The history of the twentieth century proves you can’t appease fascism. This month’s Poppy Day commemorated more than half-a-million Brits who died fighting fascism in the Second World War. They would be outraged to see the flags now adopted by the far-Right they died to protect us from!
People who have lived here for up-to twenty years will, under Labour plans, be liable to be sent back to the place they fled. The threat to kick out refugees having first offered them protection is unprincipled and immoral. Mahmoud is viciously perpetuating a living condition of vulnerability, statelessness, discrimination and “otherness”. People who “look like refugees – obviously Black people – will be branded as “do not belong”, creating a caste-system of racist hierarchy.
This Labour government should be held to full account on the basis of fact and human decency. Working class people in Britain are not mean and spiteful. Our culture is inclusive and diverse, and we must keep it that way or we will live under the yolk of far-Right militarised authoritarian control.
Labour’s Mahmoud is not producing a more harmonious and stable nation at all, she is whipping-up the divisions advocated by the far-Right!
In Plymouth the fascist-led “Flag Force” racists are planning a march through the City on 6th December, terrorising people-of-colour and spouting fascist threats against humanists and whoever they consider to be “lefties”. We are all at risk from them. Their racism and misogyny must be exposed, and they must be stopped. Stand Up To Racism!

Palestine Recognition is Merely Posturing

Tony Staunton1 Comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (23.9.25), reflecting upon the cardboard cut-out commitment to a Palestinian State by Starmer, the kid-starver. There has to come a point where we openly discuss the fact that there is no possibility of a two-state solution to the plight of Palestinians. Apartheid Israel, of whatever colour of political governance, will not and cannot allow for it. Racial supremacy is an anti-human scourge upon humanity and must be deposed.

The unedited version below:

It has to be a definition of hypocrisy to make a pledge you know can never happen. It is just a ploy to maintain the status quo. In this case, recognising Palestine whilst not condemning the genocide of the Palestinian people is the pinnacle of forked-tongue posturing.
It’s nothing new. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration declared its commitment to the Palestinian homeland at the same time as supporting Zionism, the European-contrived political creed of Israeli supremacy, racism and settler colonialism. Why would anyone choose to believe the pledges of the British State?
The resulting Arab revolt of 1936 against British control was violently put down by the British, Zionist militants then using terrorist force to kill Britain’s soldiers, finally taking control of a small patch of land in 1948. Ever since, Israel has forcefully expanded to occupy the land that had been independent Palestine.
The recognition of Palestine by the UK government was a promise made to the Palestinian people more than 100 years ago and repeated, recognising two countries in the region – Israel and Palestine. Under the international accord signed by Israel in 1995 all of Palestinian land occupied by Israel in 1967 was to be handed-back to Palestinian control. Instead, new settlements have been created across Palestine’s West Bank ever since, including hundreds in the last two years alone.
Israel is taking over large parts of the West Bank through military violence and murderous gangs of settlers. These actions, threatening any chance of a sovereign Palestinian State, are politically intentional and supported by the UK.
How can we believe that Starmer supports Palestinians when he refuses to act against the genocide in Gaza? Evidence published in the medical Lancet magazine last week proved that 186,000 Gazans have died since October 7th 2023, largely women and children. 90% of buildings have been destroyed. The indiscriminate blanket bombing is killing the hostages.
We see the serious expansion of settler violence in the West Bank, with the intention of the E1 construction proposal. In Gaza, the murderous clearance of Gaza City is part of the published intention to create a new Mediterranean seaside resort for the super-rich, Trump’s “Middle East Riviera”, quietly supported by the capitalists of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Russia all investing in “Mar-Gaza-Lago”.
Gaza is a property-speculators dream built on the crushed bones of hundreds of thousands of poor civilians, administered by a “Palestinian Authority” controlled by Israel and financed by BlackRock, J P Morgan Chase, Bank of America, not to mention finance companies across the City of London. The plan is in much the same vein as the US private contractors running the evocatively named dystopian “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” food aid sites, not to mention America’s own privatised Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “mission”.
Israel is using the methods of destruction waged upon Gaza now in the West Bank, destroying buildings and infrastructure to ethnically cleanse area E1 and close down any link between Palestine and Jerusalem, the Palestinian capital.
The annexing of the West Bank is intended to create Greater Israel, eradicating any vestige of Palestinian land and heritage. Last week, Israel’s Prime Minister, Netanyahu, repeated the claims of his self-identified fascist cabinet ministers: “The West Bank is our heritage, our land and our security”. The Israeli government says the very idea of Palestine should not be considered, and that there will never be a Palestinian state.
There is no possibility of a two-state solution. It is a foil. Israel remains a military Apartheid State with a racist constitution ensuring Israelis enjoy high levels of human and legal rights, social provision and suffrage above and over any and all other ethnic groups and nationalities inside that country.
Starmer must recognise this is illegal invasion and genocide and act accordingly. Stop selling arms to Israel. Start to prosecute and sanction Israeli ministers. Demand the end of settlements and occupation in tune with the hundreds of resolutions voted upon by the United Nations.
There is a solution – a single secular democratic state in the region where Jews and Arabs and anyone can live together. Coexistence with shared rights irrespective of religion and heritage is the only possibility. For that to happen the current Apartheid State of Israel has to be deconstituted. Impossible?
Internationally, tens of millions of people have protested on the streets in defence of Gazans and against Israel, forcing at the very least mealy-mouthed pledges from governments. Such enormous political mobilisation across nations is unprecedented.
Despite their massive propaganda machine weaponising claims of Antisemitism and funding organised race-hatred based upon Islamaphobia, Israel’s actions have made that State a pariah across the world. More than 153 out 194 nation States have condemned Israel’s actions, the United Nations identifying multiple elements of genocide, ethnic-cleansing, use of illegal weapons, assassinations, incarceration and torture. Countries are sanctioning Israel and its leaders listed as war criminals identified by international courts. Trade unionists are boycotting Israeli goods and blocking trade routes.
Palestine is the flag and campaign of all those demanding human rights, equality and decency. We know, deep down, that if international imperialism get away with mass slaughter in pursuit of corporate profits there, they can and will do it anywhere and everywhere. The political concept of “disposable people” is very real whether considering war, climate justice or fascism. Gaza tells us we are all at risk.
The anti-human Israeli government can be deposed. Palestinians don’t need the empty pledges of cynical politicians, they will survive and prosper through the accelerating actions of millions of ordinary people across the world. Plymouth is sending coachloads of us to the national demonstration in London on 11th October. Free Palestine!

Say it Loud – Refugees are Welcome Here!

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My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald, challenging the racists in this city. In the wake of the huge anti-racist demonstration against fascist-led racist gatherings in Glasgow and Epping, the call has to be to confront the racist mobs everywhere – Whose streets? Our Streets! Thanks to Julie for timely research on the facts. Keep on protesting – join Stand Up To Racism! https://standuptoracism.org.uk/

My unedited version below:

Say it Loud – Refugees are Welcome Here!

There is something worse than despicable about people who want to assault and abuse refugees. Yet there they are, forming-up to rage in protest outside squalid buildings, some of them trying to burn them down with the people trapped inside.
These buildings, hardly passing as “hotels” – never improved, never refurbished, never invested in – now being used as cheap accommodation and a fast-buck for the tax-cash grabbing owners, cramming-in people who have foot-slogged across continents to risk their lives in flimsy rubber boats to get here.
These people are refugees – between 60 and 80% of people in those small boats are granted asylum -they are refugees as a class. They don’t get given jobs here – they cannot work for ages until their applications are processed and successful. They don’t come here to hang around shopping centres, they come here to contribute to the economy, have a life and pay taxes.
Asylum is a human need and a human right. When you’re being attacked by military or armed gangs, your family raped and killed, your homes and lands destroyed either by war or extreme weather, you should be helped.
And we should be incredibly proud of helping. Thankfully, most people in every city, every town, from student through to pensioners, are ready to help those in need. But now, with violent racist thugs seeking to take-over our streets, anti-racists need to come out and challenge them, to Stand Up To Racism!
The fascist-led thugs attacking the hotels across the country, throwing bricks and attacking Police this Summer are more than ready to be treated in hospital by the migrant workforce on which the NHS and many other public services depend. Immigrant doctors are saving lives, immigrant teachers are teaching our children, immigrant workers are cleaning our buildings and driving our public transport.
But rampaging racists don’t care about facts. Not least, asylum-seekers in the UK get no privileges. Asylum seekers cannot choose where they live. People seeking asylum receive little financial support and are not allowed to work, usually getting £49.18 a week to pay for things like food, clothing and toiletries, but if the accommodation provides meals this is reduced to £9.95 a week. The UK is not overrun with asylum seekers. In a country of 66,000,000 people, 32,345 refugees were living in so-called “hotels” last year.
The UK is home to just 1% of the world’s refugees. As of 2024, the number of refugees in the world stands at 27.1 million. Last year, 108,000 applied for asylum in the UK, which is 1/3 the number in Germany and only 1/10 of the total applications in the EU.
Net migration to the UK last year was about 450,000, with small boat migrants a tiny proportion of that. Here, 1 in 6 (or 16%) of the population were born outside the UK. The idea that Black people are taking over the UK is an impossible racist lie. More than 90% of land across the UK has no buildings on it – hardly overcrowded! Britain is comprised of at least 55million white-skinned humans out of a population of 66 million – hardly “taken-over” – as if that should matter! Do you really think that a human born with darker skin pigmentation is inferior to “white” or lighter skin – are you stupid or just ignorant or lazy-minded or just fooling yourself that you’re more important than other people?
And those who say Black men are sexual abusers need to look at the list of paedophile celebs, politicians and royals who are White, including many of the racists’ own heroes. In fact, the vast majority of child sexual abuse happens inside the family, and the vast majority of families in Britain are White – you don’t see the racists protesting against white gangs organising child sexual exploitation. The racists don’t really care about children, they just use them to exploit racist ideology.
So who is raping and pillaging our country, exactly? The top 50 richest families (that’s just 2,000 people) in the UK now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population (33 million of us). The greed and avarice of the super-rich, their exploitation and maltreatment of the UK’s working class dwarfs any misbehaviour of any migrant.
It is the super-rich who are funding the fascist-led far-right racist demonstrations and their vile racist propaganda, and given the oxygen of publicity by the politicians and media led by those who are actually responsible for our housing crisis, our crumbling NHS and schools – the big landlords and corporate executives who deserve all our bile.
Stand up and clear our streets of the racists. Say it loud and proud – Refugees are Welcome Here!

We must call out racists as racists!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (28.5.25), prompted by the racist protest of 200 in Plymouth City Centre the previous Saturday, organised on a national platform by confirmed fascists, and screaming-out “Stop the Boats, Save Our Children”, meaning let asylum seekers drown, and all sexual abuse happens at the hands of Black people. Not only is the opposite the truth – 87% of sexual abuse in the UK is perpetrated by white British – but the violence implicit in their chants represents their intention to take-over our streets and communities through fear. That fear is primarily for Black people to experience, instantly recognisable and to be targeted. 

We witnessed this in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and we fought it and fascism back in the 1980’s to the point that people felt unable to make racist comments in workplaces and social events because they would always be challenged.

It would appear that the confidence of anti-racists to expose and challenge racism has gone, replaced by some ideologically nieve quest for consensus. It’s easy for white people to argue that the two sides – racists and anti-racists – have common ground and should talk instead of contest, but the question is begged – on what basis should the White protesters on each side debate with each other the terms of acceptance and treatment of Black people looking-on? Isn’t this a white-racist process of itself?

We have to listen to and ensure the involvement of people of colour in challenging racism. How can we best stand with you, and how can we best help ensure safety and respect? Why are white anti-racists prioritising talking with racist protesters over-and-above talking with Black and Muslim communities facing this rise of racist groups and protests?

Last Saturday, of the 200 in Plymouth City Centre there was no challenge to the racism from within their own ranks, meaning everyone on that far-Right protest were racist and had taken the trouble to come into the town centre in order to express their racism. These “Great British Protests”, with more planned, represent more violent gang attacks on lone people of colour in the streets, at home and at places of worship. We’ve seen it before and it’s happening again, this time worse. Never mind dialogue with the violent racists, get them off our streets!

My article in print, a pale shadow of the above:

Democracy requires a vibrant and engaged population with sufficient agency to affect society. Citizens have to act to ensure we’re heard. Passivity and silence give space for tyrants.

So, for those of us who want real democracy, we may feel pleased that Prime Minister Starmer is considering a U-turn of Winter Fuel Payments. Has he listened to the clamour of opposition? 

Scrape the surface and his back-track appears to be a sleight-of-hand. What trade unionists have labelled “Austerity Mk II” is still in place by a government voted-in on the basis of real change from the Tory years of welfare cuts and price hikes. 

Starmer’s attack on people with disabilities, some £5billion in cuts to support payments for those unable to work, remain in place. We’ll see what he has to say about the two-child cut-off for support, but overall the attack on the working class is continuing.

The public sector pay offers to teachers, health workers and civil servants are below inflation, once again. We are reminded that governments changed the measure of inflation from RPI to CPI to remove housing costs from the equation. The government’s current 3.5% CPI inflation-rate equals well-over 4% RPI, eating all of next years pay rise despite workers having already suffered years of pay cuts. No wonder there’s talk of strike action!

Schools get a below-inflation 3% budget increase needing to make yet more cuts to crumbling classrooms and jobs, and have to find that extra 1% for the pay deal. Hospitals are in an even worse position, massively underfunded and under-staffed, now facing the loss of migrant workers due to absurd and counter-productive new immigration rules.

Meanwhile there are more millionaires and billionaires lauded each week. The 2025 Rich List identifies just 50 families in the UK owning more wealth and resources than the bottom 50% of our citizens – that’s 1,000 versus 34 million people. The increased wealth of the rich comes directly from keeping wages low, evading paying taxes to the tune of £130billion each year, and raising housing, fuel and food prices over market value because governments let them do so. 

The super-rich live off our backs but tell us to blame migrants and the disabled for all our discomforts.

Last weekend in Plymouth and around the country, two poles of political organisation rallied on the streets, neither side satisfied with Starmer. But we have nothing in common. 

For the far-Right, Starmer is a socialist establishment stooge, soft on immigration and child-sex gangs, putting the two together to proclaim that Black people, and particularly Muslims, are all paedophiles. Their racism is rabid, hiding behind Union Jacks to represent the goal of Apartheid white-supremacy in Britain, and shouting for convicted fascist, Tommy Robinson.

For the counter-demonstrators demanding human rights and social justice for all, Starmer is a stooge of the billionaires, using racism to hide the rip-off ruling class and destroying the Welfare State to increase the private profits of the big corporations. His funding of war abroad, bombing of civilians in Gaza, and his anti-migrant racism has allowed fascist organisers to whip-up racist attacks, antisemitism and Islamophobia. 

The only possible common experience is of a harsh and unjust economic environment where the working class is being screwed. But the answers are polar opposites. 

We know from history that fascists use discontent to take violent control of the streets and demolish democracy. We know that trade unions encourage collective action to defend democracy and win better pay and conditions in organised workplaces. We Demand Change!

Blame the Billionaires not the migrants and asylum seekers! Fight for social justice for all!

Oppose the Drive to War!

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My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (13.5.25), once again rattling-on about the drive to war. We need to rise-up against warmongering, costly rearmament at the expense of health and education, militarism and the authoritarianism it promotes. Nationalism and racism – the fear of “the Other” is a prerequisite to winning the population to war and death “in the national interest’. But whose interest? Not the working class – ever.

PS. I laughed at the editor’s placement of a picture of Putin alongside my name. I have always lived by the adage, “Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism”.

All this wondrous talk of Peace is actually the opposite – it’s War Talk! The government’s Strategic Defence Review is proof enough of that. Why would we need to declare an emergency uplift in military spending, at a direct and crippling cost to welfare benefits for people with disabilities, unless we were preparing for war?
The second question is two-fold. Who is about to attack us and who are we about to attack? Talk of Russia taking-over Europe is beyond nonsense. On the one hand the western military strategists say the Russian economy is in tatters and at the same time they argue that Putin wants to invade Britain. Both arguments cannot be correct.
The hypocrisy gets worse. Our leaders and those across the West are wringing their hands at the enforced famine and mass starvation of two million Palestinians, whilst actively providing the arms and hardware with which to pound and systematically murder people across Gaza.
The stated desire for ceasefire is not what it seems. They are reconfiguring towards fresh battle lines in Europe, the Middle East and the far-East.
Labour’s so-called ‘defence’, by which they mean the promotion of war and militarism, represents an offensive ideology competing with the right-wing of the Tories and chasing the ultra-nationalism of Reform UK. Not only a ‘triple lock’ on Trident replacement, producing a new generation of outrageously expensive but illegal weapons of mass destruction, but also prioritising rearmament tied into the US ideological and military framework.
The global tensions are being ramped-up by the West. The West is worried by the fact of a multi-polar world where newly industrialised countries are strengthening and new values are being asserted, such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, led by the states of the global South.
The West does not accept this new world and is willing to go to war to prevent it, apparently even to nuclear war.
There is no Peace in Palestine, because the UK’s F-35 exports are more important than stopping genocide. The UK placing its bombers in Diego Garcia and firing on Yemen represent preparations for war against Iran, a country whose people and economy cannot afford war.
The fragile ceasefire between India and Pakistan represents a ramping-up of more proxy hostilities, the West seeking India’s allegiance in preparation for an offensive upon China.
These battles represent new spheres of influence, changing the old certainties of Western imperialist domination. Ultimately these wars are about the assertion of power by force by competing regional elites to extract enormous personal wealth. They should be exposed and opposed.
Meanwhile the transfer of workers’ tax-money from education, health and social welfare to increase arms spending to 2.5% and then 3%+ of our Gross Domestic Product sets us on a war-footing. It provides a big boost to the British arms industry under the Big Lie of re-industrialisation.
We’re not conned by this false impression that military production can generate economic growth. The decline of manufacturing industries is separate from the arms industry, tax investment in weapons systems diverting all possible investment from the civil production and climate adaptations urgently required.
War batters the international working class, destroying our security, welfare and wellbeing. The continuation of enforced Austerity – the destruction of our social infrastructure – intensifies working class vulnerability.
The destruction of hundreds-of-thousands of jobs in education and health in order to pay for a rise of a few tens-of-thousands of jobs associated with the military should not be condoned by trade unions.
Next Saturday’s huge national demonstration will shout for Peace with Social Justice, in Palestine and everywhere. Welfare not Warfare!

The far-Right and Fascism are the most immediate threats

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My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (7.1.25), raging against the far-Right. Once again, not my chosen headline. We have to call out Farage and Reform UK and stop the growth of fascism. I could go on. Build Stand Up To Racism and challenge racism in our workplaces and communities while fighting for our rights.

The unedited version below.

The fact that the repulsive Nigel Farage and his toxic Reform UK are central stage has little to do with any mass popular support. It is testimony to the fast development of support for the far-Right by the world’s powerful billionaires who have control of the mass online media, printed and TV news, and right-wing control of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The worlds richest man, Elon Musk, is insisting that statements of white supremacy and racism are hallmarks of free speech, and he’s ready to fund politicians across the world who want to spout ultra-nationalism. Farage, pictured recently with arch-misogynist and Islamaphobe, Andrew Tate, is publicising Musk’s bile as his own, operating merely as a parrot of the Trump doctrine.

Musk’s support for the fascists’ pin-up boy, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka “Tommy Robinson” leaves little doubt that Musk wants Reform UK transformed into an openly fascist party akin to the AfD in Germany. Despite calling-out the UK Prime Minister as “complicit in the rape of Britain”, the self-proclaimed English nationalist Farage offers support for Musk in the hope of funding. Farage’s political gamble backfired. But in this polarised country operating in a polarised world now descending ever-deeper into strife and open conflict, there is oxygen for extreme views.

The question must be asked, where is the opposition? Starmer is going out of his way to appease Trump and court Farage. Labour Party grandees salute him rather than challenge. When Farage says “forcibly deport more refugees”, Starmer boasts he is and will do even more.

Any decent person should damn the implicit racism and shout from the rooftops that the UK depends upon migrant labour and we uphold the human rights of asylum seekers to sanctuary here. Starmer’s spineless ministers assert precisely the opposite.

Where is the challenge to the Islamaphobic bile spewing from Musk and Farage about Muslim sex-abusers? Numerous well-funded reports have repeatedly offered evidence that over 90% of child sexual exploitation is at the hands of white men, with Asian abusers proportionately lower than across the white population. Where is the Reform UK outrage about the sexual abuse inside the white Christian churches, the Royals and the “play-boy” super-rich?

Reform UK is whipping-up a racist lynch-mob mentality, when the cost of asylum-seekers reaching here in boats is a fraction of the costs to the exchequer in unpaid taxes of those who can more than afford to pay them.

We require active, vocal, constant and collective challenge to such discrimination and prejudice. Anything other than direct challenge to Farage’s racist bigotry represents acquiescence to far-Right rule in Britain and across the world.

Despite the Reform UK’s insistence on challenging the Establishment, this is an organisation in league with the Capitalist ruling class and doing their bidding, diverting attention away from the huge increases in private profit and accumulation of private wealth at the expense of mass of working people.

Farage has ten times the air-time of the Prime Minister on prime-time TV. Despite his various political organisations never having more than five elected MPs, the BBC has invited Farage onto the weekly Question Time politics show more than any other politician, his groups represented on around 24% of all the show’s broadcasts. You’d think it was Reform UK who won the landslide!

The multi-millionaire Farage is not planning to make life better for the working class. His purpose is to divide us to rule us on behalf of the super-rich, and thereby become one of them. His appeal is not to average-wage-earning workers but to the wealthier amongst the middle classes who, sensing the vulnerabilities of the Age, are reacting to all shifts away from the crumbling status quo that has benefitted them.

The far-right Reform UK is for the protecting of the well-off as the buffer for the super-rich to end joy the tax-cuts and freedoms that Farage and Trump and Musk promise. Workers, young and old, white and of colour, of any ethnicity and anyone condemned as “woke” will not receive any joy from a Farage government.

This far-right Reform UK is seeking to ignite the understandable anger of the disaffected into more street violence aimed at scapegoating minorities. The real aim is to atomise working class organisation by setting us each against the other in pursuit of unchallengeable exploitation, stabilising and engorging the landlords and business grandees through low taxes at the cost of unaffordable health services, low wages, extortionate rents and mass poverty.

This is the class base of Reform UK and the multi-millionaire Farage. We saw their like grow and take charge across Europe one hundred years ago and now they’re back.

The trade union movement back then was key to exposing their lies and breaking their popularity, challenging racism and scapegoating in the streets and in the workplaces. We have to rise-up against bigotry and division as a matter of extreme urgency.

The Left must Stand Up To Racism and campaign for the super-rich to be taxed accordingly (the loopholes, tax-evasion and subsidies plugged), the bloated Corporations forced to pay-up to fund our NHS and welfare services, for a mass-build of affordable housing with rent controls, and a proper living wage that prevents the 7million of us currently living with food insecurity and 14 million in poor housing.

The chancers and deceivers of Reform UK are offering none of that and will deliver none of this, and sadly neither will Starmer’s Labour government. It is down to us to organise for workers rights.

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The Banks are Funding the Fascists

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My weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald (22.10.24). The huge upsurge in organised racist protests have to be challenged on the streets, and in print, especially when this local newspaper prints so many letters from the far-Right. This was published before the national demonstration in London called by the fascist Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) who was imprisoned the day before it took place. The united front group, Stand Up To Racism correctly called a counter-protest, and two rallied at either end of Whitehall, London on 26th October: the racist anti-muslim march numbered over 25,000 brandishing giant Union Jacks and flags of Israel. The anti-racists saw 26 trade union banners, 13 General Secretaries and 3 MPs speak to upwards of 20,000. This is a warning from history. The fascists are well funded and better organised, and all those interested in democracy, freedom, multiculturalism, diversity and human rights had better step-up and take back our streets and workplaces. Or it will be, suddenly, too late. Fascists have called a regional South West demonstration on 30th November in Torquay and we are all required to mobilise to stop them.

There is almost universal agreement that the big banks and corporations wield too much power over humanity and are motivated by greed. The service or product they offer is secondary to the gross salaries of their owners and executives and the huge shareholder payouts. Theirs is the drive for a never-ending growth in profits, exploiting workers with productivity demands and low wages, exploiting the consumer with higher prices for low-quality goods, and evading their tax liabilities. 

The Forbes Rich List identifies around one-hundred large, transnational corporations that own just about everything, globally. The brand names we know are often subsidiaries or larger conglomerates with internal economies larger than entire countries. This reality is cited by economists as “monopoly capitalism”, consortia or cartels of individuals using inherited wealth to become wealthier and more powerful, scheming to beat all competition and corner markets, locally and globally.

The largest companies are headed by the world’s richest billionaires, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates being household names. There are 12 people who are worth more than £100,000,000,000, their fortunes growing by $220 billion in the past 6 months. 700 individuals are responsible for half the world’s wealth, their assets multiplying with nothing trickling down.

It is observable to all that the gap between rich and poor is obscene and unsustainable. And so the human world is descending into wars between the contending owners of wealth, and rising tensions inside each country between the classes competing for the right to life, liberty and social justice.

The United States of America holds the lease on the wealthiest and most powerful, the global economy remaining US-centric. Corporate power infects all of life, the natural world and the way we live. These corporations dominate not only our working lives but our media, our education systems, our environment, our diets, health and recreation. The actions of industry, why and how we produce things, is determined not by need but by profit margins. We see destruction everywhere as a direct consequence of this systemic dysfunction. If society were a family, we would require restraint of such predatory, gaslighting, sociopathic domination, the perpetrator judged to be breaking basic laws of acceptable behaviour. 

The deepening debate, nay, the conflict, is about how to overcome this tyranny.

Working people and our trade unions have long sought reforms for a greater share and more say – redistribution of wealth and power. It is becoming clear that no reforms are likely or even possible. The rich won’t have it.

To prevent us organising for a better society, they not only strengthen their laws against our protestations, but fund and encourage an ideology that says this state of affairs is natural and unchangeable. Theirs is the law of “survival of the fittest” by which is inferred the meanest, most violent, most self-centred should run the world.

Onto this stage has come the far-Right, rising once again across the western world and beyond, being organised into fascist parties and pretending to be in opposition to the billionaires but all the time working in their interests.

Fascism does not represent any sort of freedom or hope. Fascism is not anti-capitalist, just anti-democracy. It is the totalitarian domination of elite power, liquidating any inkling of human rights, equality or social justice. Fascism divides and scapegoats in order to destroy all sense of self-determination and personal freedom. Its main tools are hatred, spreading race-hate and misogyny and the promise of male-white-supremacy for the chosen few. Fascism is organising here, now.

We have seen fascism rise and be overthrown by mass mobilisations and at huge human cost through the twentieth century. We must learn the lessons of history, rise again and demonstrate our determination, in our millions – Never Again!

Speak Out Against Racism and Fascism

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With the far-Right Farage ramping-up white-British supremacy at the ReformUK Conference, and the fascist “Tommy Robinson” calling for street demonstrations across Britain this weekend, including in Torquay, Devon, my weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald (24.9.24) had to call for mass opposition to fascism and the rise of authoritarian governance. Strangely, it was edited to leave-out my call to get to get to London for the national demonstration on 26th October to Stand Up To Racism, but at least it was printed!

The full Comment below:

It’s Time for Mass Action Against Racism and Fascism

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist and racist political ideology. The fascist movement organises for a centralised autocracy: militarism; forcible suppression of opposition; and a dictatorial leader of a militarised Party machine.

The fascist believes in strict social hierarchy, often portrayed in mystical terms of genetic and ancestral birthright, concocting the superiority of the land and so-called “Race” you are born into. Fascism demands a strong regimentation of society and the economy with no democratic say.

The most important ingredient of fascism is the mass movement. Fascism depends upon the building and mobilisation of street gangs and mobs ready to physically attack any and all opposition, and embed fear into the general culture and daily experience of working class communities, destroying trade unions.

Any political litmus test would show Britain to be at risk from fascist organisation, having become more deeply polarised over decades, the gap between rich and poor stretched to an extreme, the fear of “the other”, and the targeting of the non-compliant purposefully ramped-up by politicians seeking power.

The fear shuts working class people into our homes and shuts down open debate in workplaces and families.

This is why it is so vital that we do not shut up, that we do speak out, and that we show our collective opposition to racism, misogyny and authoritarianism on the streets. Right now, active anti-racism requires constant challenge to Islamaphobia and anti-semitism as well as championing the equal rights of people of colour alongside the politically identified “White” population.

We must be highly sensitised to the signs and symptoms of authoritarian governance and fascist organisation. Targeting all Muslims as “Islamist extremists” is a piece of propaganda nonsense easily exposed – the vast majority of adherents to any religion do not support the extreme-fundamentalist wing of their church. Scapegoating a tiny number of asylum-seekers as the enemy supposedly “invading” a nation of sixty-seven million people is a toxic distraction from the real causes of poverty.

The twentieth-century experiences of fascism proves the rule. Those organising for fascism first seek legitimacy and wear a mask of reason and justice, engaging with democracy in order to later smash it. They voice the growing anger against poverty and inequality in a pretence of challenge to the rich and powerful.

In fact, they only grow with the active funding and encouragement of sections of the super-rich ruling class, using the mob to smash any collective working class fight against exploitation and oppression.

And history shows that when faced with fascists on the one hand and working class socialists on the other, the property-owning comfortable middle classes will invariably side with fascism.

This is happening right now across Europe and the United States, and here in Britain.

Starmer’s meeting with Italy’s Premier Meloni last week is a signal of our political class courting the far-right. Macron’s imposition of a government of the far-right despite the Left winning the majority vote in the recent French election is another warning of the lurch of the ruling class towards fascism. The 30% vote for the fascist AfD across Eastern Germany a further example.

The drive to war, with the nationalism and militarism it transmits into civil society, is perhaps the greatest warning.

All this means we have to challenge the forces of fascism directly, nationally and internationally. Against war and racism, ultranationalism and oppression.

Trade unionists will be supporting the national demonstration in London to Stand Up To Racism and Fascism on Saturday 26th October. We will travel together from Plymouth and across the country to push back against fascism and the authoritarian powers that promote it.

Trade unionists will be supporting the national demonstration in London to Stand Up To Racism and Fascism on Saturday 26th October. We will travel together from Plymouth and across the country to push back against fascism and the authoritarian powers that promote it.

We Stood Up To Stop Fascists from Destroying Plymouth

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Fascist cadre came to Plymouth on Monday 5th August 2024 to whip-up violence against migrants and people of colour, with phrases like “Stop the Boats”, a one time slogan of the Tory Prime Minister, Richi Sunak. The reporting of the violence suggested two tribes, two sides fighting each other as if in turf warfare. I had to complain. We had called a protest with the Stand Up To Racism organisation to stop the fascists. 700 of us faced 500 of them. They threw bricks and bottles and fireworks. We shouted “Refugees Are Welcome here!” and “Fascists off Our Streets!”. My letter was challenged by the Editor of the Plymouth Herald, but published in full. I stand by the challenge against poor journalism and biased reporting.

Dear Editor

The reporting of Monday night’s violence in Plymouth represented an extraordinary level of ignorance of the facts. Your narrative was of a clash between two protest groups. It was portrayed as a clash between two tribes, both violent and in the wrong.y

In fact, the Unity Rally at the Guildhall Square, called by the Stand Up To Racism group in the City and supported by the Plymouth Trade Unions, was a statement of city pride in multiculturalism and peace. 

When told that fascist organisers were travelling to Plymouth to whip-up race hate and misogyny, we rallied to defend our rights. We stopped their intended destruction of our city centre.

Yet we are presented as two-sides of the same coin. Let’s be clear, there is no currency between social harmony and fascism. 

Militarised fascist cadre, ideologically tied to far-right groups in the USA and funded by millionaires organising a fast rise in fascist organisation across Europe and America, came into Plymouth to test our resolve. They are seeking fertile ground for fascist organisation. They include those who emulate the Nazis of the Second World War who bombed Plymouth. They present Nazi salutes and symbols in public.

The most horrific and violent aspect of their organisation is the intention to find the most righteously angry of the dispossessed youth in the poorer cities and towns, to pull together into street fighting gangs to target minority groups – essentially tho’ not only Muslims, refugees and asylum seekers.

The local young people on the Racist demonstration came from the most deprived areas of our city are easy prey for political manipulators seeking personal power and control.

Race-hate is not their only tool. The powerful millionaire actors on social media whip-up misogyny, homophobia and trans-hate, ridiculing actions to manage the very obvious climate change we are experiencing, and whipping-up nationalist fever towards world war. These are the proponents of male white nationalist supremacy. Why would the media not expose this?

And more importantly, why is the propaganda from local politicians not only saying we should not challenge the fast rise of organised racism and fascism, but actually defend our cities? It was exactly this position of politics as in the 1930’s that allowed Hitler’s Nazis come to power in Germany. Know your history.

Our politicians should be out, working tirelessly to build the social infrastructure so desperately needed to end poverty and division. 

Fortunately, more than 700 anti-racists defied political demands to “stay at home” and ensured the insurgent fascists could not smash our city centre. We should be applauded, not damned. Plymouth must not be seen as fertile ground for fascist organisation.

There is an urgent need for action against racism in our City. And to prevent the adoption of race hate by our forgotten and disposed youth we need urgent funding for housing and education, welfare and security. We need politics of hope not hate. And we must stand up to racism, as a mass and in action, or our streets will quickly become unsafe, firstly for any person of colour and then for the entire working class.

Trade unions have a proud history of fighting racism and fascism, because fascism destroys all working class organisation to ensure totalitarian control from above. We stepped-up to the plate on Monday, against violence, intimidation, racism and fascism. We will continue to do so.

Tony Staunton

President, Plymouth Trades Union

Plymouth Stand Up To Racism held a meeting on Thursday 8th August at 7pm at the Quaker House, 74 Mutley Plain, Plymouth, with 70 people attending, organising a Unity Rally the following Saturday that was attended by 200. Altogether a good start, but nearly enough activists to combat this growing threat.

Election will Not Alter Class-based Society

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My Comment this week in the daily Plymouth Herald (4.6.24). The rigged “balance” required of the media during an election period means I can’t get published what I’d really like to say: Farage’s Reform Party offers an embryonic fascist rally which threatens the entire working class, the Greens are a pro-Capitalist Party with a terrible anti-working class record in Europe and indeed, against trade unions when running local councils; Galloway is socially conservative with adherence to religious family values that opposes a women’s right to choose, gay marriage and trans-rights, his Workers’ Party inviting cross-class alliances with Farage and ex-UKIP  candidates. Starmer is more than ready to lead us into World War Three within the duration of the next Government term (for which the imperialist ruling classes already undertaking the preparations). And anyway, putting one’s faith in bourgoisie democracy and the election of a socialist pro-working class government has been thoroughly destroyed by the ruling class offensive against Corbyn (not to mention the various corporate-funded right-wing coups against socialist reformers across the globe). The Left, historically infiltrated by chancers, turn-coat careerists, renegades, police spies and agent-provocateurs, continues to fragment just when political unease and renewed strike action in our class offers a chance to build a coherent mass organisation. The rise and falls of mass movements: Black Lives Matter; Me Too!; Climate Strikes and now Freedom for Gaza each represent missed opportunities for decisive leadership for whole-system change, linking all the issues together into an anti-Capitalist offensive. It’s no longer any good to say you’re a “socialist” without saying you’re anti-Capitalist. It is Capitalism and its current development of Imperialism that links all these movements and issues. The Capitalists will not allow you to reform their System out of existence! The only way out of this is revolution, which may well be brewing elsewhere in the world for us to jump-on and build here. One mass strike is worth ten general elections!

But none of this can be printed.

So instead, here’s the long version of the printable edition:

The candidates are about to be declared, the stage about to be set. General elections are theatres for Party activists.

People join together into political parties with reason. There are ideas that conjoin and ideas that splinter into opposition. It’s very difficult, for example, to believe in universal human rights whilst promoting racial superiority – is it okay that some people are born with more privileges and entitlements than others?

Some beliefs come together towards a whole and encompassing world view.  To act upon the our formed “way of seeing” we need to join together in sufficient numbers to have impact and change the direction of social organisation towards our preferred conditions. Hence parties.

On a very superficial level, that’s what putting a cross on a piece of paper at election day represents – a personal alliance with a world view.

The current drive towards politicians “independent” of any world view is probably a short-term proposition. A non-Party “independent” may be elected because they catch the majority view on a single issue but soon get into trouble when people disagree with other views they now espouse but were not in their manifesto. 

They may be elected as forthright and unbending on their stated goal, but find that, to achieve anything they will have to compromise into a coalition with others, watering down their mandate and starting to link together into a new political Party. 

The rise of the “Independents” is a necessary reaction to the general sense of “they’re all the same” which has swept into the consciousness of the electorate. The lack of faith in democracy as currently organised is prevalent across the Western world whilst still being fought for in the Global South. 

The point is, there are real differences in preferences for social organisation. There are Right and a Left wings of the political spectrum. Social organisation to share resources to ensure everyone’s needs and human rights are met is a world view and ambition that is the complete opposite of a belief in individual competition and personal enrichment at the expense of others. 

The best example is our National Health Service, loathed by Right-wingers as a construct of “socialism” because people pay into the common purse in order to get free health care at the point of need. The privatisation of the NHS is a right-wing strategy to turn our health service into a fee-paying, for-profit capitalist enterprise run by transnational pharmaceutical companies, not the State.

Any NHS charging essentially separates those who can afford to pay from those who can’t, into a society where your right to health care is based upon your personal income and inherited wealth. To accept charging in order to lower taxes is to accept individual competition as the social norm – a world view with wider implications.

It is difficult to ride on the back of two horses running in opposite directions. There are new parties seeking to go beyond, or bring together, Right and Left, despite the inherent conflict at the core of those ideologies. This may be an honest attempt to rebuild democracy away from the current two-party system which offers no real difference in policies or outcomes. But it’s a project doomed to failure.

A white-supremacist cannot be, at the same time, anti-racist and for a multi-cultural State. Someone who believes men should have power over women is unlikely to defend the rights of LGBTQ+. Warmongers don’t vote for Peace. Anyone who believes that the majority of Muslims are extremist “Islamists” is unlikely to believe in the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. Beliefs coalesce into world views.

The inescapable fact is that we live in a polarised society based upon class, the conditions we are born into determining much of how we see the world and what we believe. We are born into a System, not of our choosing or making, where social policy either benefits the wealthy elite or it benefits the working class and the poor. Either we raise taxes to pay for social need, which requires the rich to pay-up in full, or we collapse the State and engage with a dog-eat-dog system where those without are left to perish. 

History provides many examples of where this class conflict which produces trade union strikes, mass movements, protests and community campaigns, produce real social changes far more profound and more often than general elections. 

So the core question to candidates should be, are you for the People (the majority of whom are working class reliant upon day-to-day income) or the Rich ruling class few who extract and exploit in order to maintain their privileges? Everything else stems from this divide. Whatever the result, we’ll still have to fight for our rights.