Scottish Communists

June 2010

'The Israeli state believes it has the right to kill anybody, anywhere under any circumstances', Kevin Halpin reported to the Communist Party's political committee on Thursday.

'The slaughter aboard the Gaza convoy ship Mavi Marmara is an extension of the serial killing of men, women and children carried out for decades in the occupied Palestinian territories, in defiance of basic human rights and international law', he declared.

Britain's Communists called for national and international action to 'bring the rogue state of Israel under control'. This should include a trade embargo, withdrawal of the invitation to Israel to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and - following the lead given by South Africa, Ecuador and Nicaragua - recalling Britain's ambassador from Israel.

Marc Livingstone’s 179 vote, though relatively small, was better than any Communist vote in Scotland for many years. Marc’s performance was particularly strong given he was a new candidate contesting a seat not fought by the Communist Party since the 1970s. The Communist vote in the Central Glasgow constituency in the 2005 parliamentary election was 80 (0.3 per cent). In the 2001 election there were 174 Communist votes in Govan. This seat had been contested over many years.

Marc Livingstone, the Communist Party’s candidate for the Glasgow North West constituency, has launched the Communist Party’s Manifesto for Scotland. 13 April marks the start of the official election campaign.

The manifesto highlights three key issues which the Communist Party believes are at stake in the election: the survival of the welfare state, the right to work and the right to organise freely in trade unions.  The manifesto warns that all three are in danger.  It calls for united resistance to the demands of big business that ordinary people pay for the crisis caused by the banks.

The Communist Party of Britain election manifesto has urged working people to rise up and fight against attempts to make them pay for the capitalist crisis.

It warned that the three main parties are sharpening their knives for the biggest attack on public services and living standards since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The manifesto, For a People's Britain not a Bankers' Britain, demands that the fat cats must be made to pay for the bailout from the capitalist crisis.

1931 saw what was called the Bankers Ramp destroying the Ramsay MacDonald government. We see it in full cry today across whole of EU. In Ireland, Spain and Greece the EU Commission is intervening directly in domestic policy. Greek government officials described EU intervention in early January, which required ‘reforms’ in labour contracts and pensions, as a gross infringement of sovereignty. Everywhere the EU Commission has laid down targets by which deficits must be cut. Their motivation is the traditional monopoly capital response to crisis: solve it by reducing working class incomes and the social wage. For Britain the target is a cumulative 10 per cent cut in public spending over four years. The people of Iceland are subject to similar blackmail without even being members of the EU and we should offer them all support to their rejection of these demands in their referendum next month.

Copenhagen also brings us to the issue of US strategy and the US ruling class. The presence of Obama at Copenhagen represented an advance. Bush would not have attended. But Obama had to operate on terms set by a big business dominated Congress: a minimal cut of emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020 – not a 30/40 per cent cut from 1990 Kyoto agreement levels. It was this minimal US offer that constituted the failed accord.

So what should the Left make of Obama in the context of US as an imperial power?

The Copenhagen Summit saw a complex clash of positions. As a summit, it failed and therefore represents a serious crisis for efforts to halt climate change. But the summit also marked a turning point and one which represents challenge for Communists and the Left in Britain.

The mass media presented the summit as a struggle for dominance between the G7 countries and the new economies of the south and east. They portrayed China, Venezuela and Sudan as those responsible for the breakdown and as playing politics with the future of the planet. There is no doubt that that the US and its allies did not get what they wanted. They failed in their bid to use the UN bureaucracy to impose their own settlement as they have done in the past. Hence a turning point.

Communist Party international secretary John Foster has warned the party's executive of the importance of developing a mass movement around the People's Charter.

That movement must fight to halt the cuts, resist closures and demand that the government intervenes to rebuild the productive economy, he insisted.

The British labour movement is heading for the rocks in 2010. The biggest rock on the horizon is the general election.

If as still seems likely the Tories win in May or early June, then the ruling-class offensive against public services, trade union and employment rights and civil liberties will intensify.

The poor and the elderly, single parents, the homeless and others who need the welfare state safety net will be hit by at least two massive waves of public spending cuts.

The trouble is that this ruling-class offensive will continue even if new Labour is re-elected.

The eleventh annual meeting of the world's communist and workers' parties last month represented another step forward in the renewal of the international communist movement.

Financial and travel difficulties reduced the attendance in New Delhi from last year in Sao Paulo, Brazil, when more parties from Latin America were able to attend.

Moreover, on this occasion, delegates due to arrive from Russia, Peru and Palestine were refused exit visas.

Nonetheless, this year's three-day event drew together representatives from 57 parties in 48 countries from every continent.