Last year I raised £1,132 for
the victims of torture please help me raise more this year
Cuckmere Haven in East Sussex with the Seven Sisters in the background(Image: Adam
Last year I raised £1,132 for ESFF. Please help me raise even more this year. Freedom from Torture is part of a
coalition groups who came together to successfully prevent the first deportation
flight to Rwanda. It does vital work in helping refugees cope with the traumas
associated with torture and that is why I am happy to do this walk each year.
My son Daniel and me
The walk takes about 3 hours and
involves walking up and down 4 or 5 hills in what is known as 7 Sisters. I
shall be doing it with my son, Daniel, who is autistic. Whilst I was puffing
and panting as I ascended the hills Daniel, who is 32, barely had a bead of
sweat! But I am happy to put myself through this in order to try and raise a
similar amount of money again.
I will be travelling from what was the
ancient village of Exceat(now the 7 Sisters Country Park) to
East Dean. Walking up and down 5 of the
Sisters or hills with my son, Daniel.
A picture from last year's walk
Exceat was a bustling fishing village
founded in Saxon times. It was sheltered from the weather by the protection of
the Cuckmere Valley. The village was also said to have been one of the most
important naval bases for King Alfred the Great, widely recognised as the first
King of England.
Alfred was thought to have
had a palace at nearby West Dean, and it is believed that Exceat served as one
of his main naval bases in his wars against the Danish.
A picture from last year's walk
However, the village's glory days would
be cut short in the 14th century.
Along with most of Europe, England
suffered heavily when the Black Death arrived in 1347. It was the deadliest
pandemic in human history, with some estimates guessing that the plague wiped
out 60 per cent of Europe's population.
We are witnessing
the biggest strike wave in over 30 years as workers say they have had enough of
neo-liberal capitalism
We are all Jake
Today and next Saturday there is a strike at the St James
Tavern in Brighton. There will be a picket next Saturday at 4 pm. Driving to the picket I
turned into Madeira Place only to find the exit blocked as a massive crowd was at the corner of St James Street. Kemptown’s major shopping street.
The strike picket was wholly successful as the pub was closed
and shuttered. Meanwhile the picket was more of a party than the traditional
picket with hundreds of local people, mainly young people, gathered with home
made posters in their support.
The strike was organised by an independent trade union, United
Voices of the World which describes itself as ‘a members-led, campaigning trade union of
low paid, precarious & migrant workers.’ It is a union which is outside
the TUC structure as traditional unions have avoided organising the leisure
industry as it is hard to organise and there isn’t much money in it to maintain
high paid, lazy union bureaucrats.
Matt Webb, President Brighton & Hove TUC
As a former
Vice-President of Brighton and Hove Trades Union Council it is essential that
Trades Councils, which have delegates from local union branches, welcome into their ranks non-TUC affiliated trade unions which are the most
militant unions organising some of the most oppressed workers, such as
migrant workers cleaners.
Some traditional unions, like the right-wing
GMB, have acted as parasites on the work of unions like UVW and the IWGB. At
Deliveroo where the IWGB did all the work of organising the workers, the
GMB leadership stepped in to sign a sweet
heart deal with the management.
As The Canary put it The
GMB Union just scabbed on Deliveroo workers regarding a
video which the management and the GMB put out claiming that the GMB is working together with the management
If the GMB is working
“together” with Deliveroo – then who is the union “standing up for”? What
exactly do they think riders care about? It could be they care about inflation
that keeps making their slave wages worth even less?
No, of course not. If GMB are in bed with Deliveroo, then they’re
saying that the most basic function of a trade union – standing up to bosses –
is surplus to their requirements.
The demands of the bar staff at Brighton’s
St James Tavern are modest to the point of parsimony! £11.50 an hour, no zero
hour contracts, sick pay, no harassment and discrimination at work and
protection from violent customers.
Scenes from the picket line
But they were too much for the new owners of St James Tavern,
Victoria Ann Bennett and Zak Abedi. They suspended the manager, Jake Marvin, on
trumped up charges and behaved like all tyrannicalemployers do when their authority is
challenged.All credit to the
independent union United Voices of the World.
This led to the defining chant of the strike ‘We are all Jake’
– echoing the slogan of the workers’ movement through the ages – ‘an injury to
one is an injury to all’.
The staff voted 100% for a strike. The employers are also
being sued for harassment and discrimination, including allegations of
transphobia, sexism and anti-Semitism. I suspect that the Board of Deputies of British
Jews won’t be interestedhowever as it
doesn’t involve the Apartheid State of Israel!
Jake
Marvin said he and his co-workers at the pub in Madeira Place are striking for
“the basic right to respect in the workplace”.
“We as workers
have felt consistently undermined, the physical and emotional welfare of the
staff as a whole feels entirely neglected
Those on strike say they have “had enough of low
wages” and are calling for a sick pay scheme which includes cover for
Covid-19-related absences, rather than the basic Statutory Sick Pay (SSP)
“Feeling undervalued and disrespected by people you
are generating money for, money that is barely seen by us, feels so humiliating
and degrading on such a personal level.
“For me and my friends and fellow workers at St James Tavern, for the
bare minimum conditions and respect at work, that is why I am striking.”
For more information about the strike and UVW see here you can
also contribute to their strike fund.Make cheques out to UVW and send them to 140
Cambridge Heath Rd, London, E1 5QJ. and here.
The Socialist Labour Network is launching a
national Can’t Pay Won’t Paycampaign with a public meeting this Friday
at 6.30 p.m. Speakers include Tommy Sheridan, the
former Scottish Socialist MSP, Paula Peters of Disabled
People Against the Cuts and Ian Hodson, the
President of the Bakers Union, who was expelled
from the Labour Party by Starmer last year.
30 years ago a mass non-payment
campaign defeated
Thatcher’s Poll Tax and forced Thatcher out of office. Why? Because people
could not afford to pay the tax and furthermore they refused to pay a tax that was
the same for a Duke and a Dustman.
Tommy Sheridan led the Poll Tax Campaign
Today people can’t afford their
energy bills. Even before the next massive rise in prices in October one-third
of people are
unable to afford to heat their homes. By the end of the year this is going
to rise to over half the population.
Even before the current price rises
1 in 4 people were
forced to live in cold conditions. What this means quite simply is that thousands
more people, the sick and elderly, will die for the sake of the massive profits
that the energy producers make. Thousands
are already dying each year because they can’t afford to heat their homes.
According to The
Telegraph energy bills are set to pass £3,000 per annum by next January. In
October 2021 they stood at £1,278. Last April prices rose by 54% to £1,971 per year. In October the
price cap on annual bills will go up to £2,980. In other words a rise of 133%
in 1 year.
Yet the railworkers are being
savaged by the Government and the Tory Press for demanding 7% wage increases. The
nurses who the Tories were happy to clap for are being offered just 3%. The
unemployed and claimants have had their benefits increased by just 3%.
Rishi Sunak’s Windfall Tax (which
was more
generous than Starmer’s proposals) is just sticking plaster. Most people
will get a £400 rebate in October and that will be it. Claimants will get £650
in two stages and disabled claimants an extra £150 or £300 if they are
pensioners. Pensioners will also receive an additional £300 on top of the
existing winter fuel payment. For details see here.
The strange thing is that gas
prices are
falling yet prices are rising. Why?Because of the nature of our privatised energy market which is divided
into those who generate the energy, those who transmit it and those who sell
it.
Massive profits are being made by
the energy sector at the same time as prices are going sky high. That is why
the French company EDF can increase prices by just 4%
in France because Macron has forced them to cut their profits. Boris
Johnson of course is in hock to his friends in the City.
This waste of space has nothing to say but opposes the rail strike
Privatisation in the 1980s meant giving
away assets built up by the tax payer over succeeding generations to the City
for a pittance. Billions have been made at the consumers’ expense and with the
latest price rises billions more will be made.
In March 1991 John Major, for instance, was asked by the
Soviet defence minister, Marshal Dmitry Yazov, about eastern Europe’s interest
in joining Nato. Major, according to the diaries of the British ambassador to
Moscow, Rodric Braithwaite, assured
him“nothing of that sort will ever
happen”.
Ironically Russia has also benefitted
from the sanctions that have been imposed because of the increase in prices. It
has been impossible for Europe to cut its dependence on gas and this has led the
ruble to hit an all-time high, contrary to predictions in February that their
economy would tank. According
to CBS News the ruble is the strongest currency in the world this year!
The sanctions which have been imposed only benefit the United
States energy market whose extraction of shale oil is far more expensive than
Russia’s gas and oil. The other beneficiary is US arms manufacturers such as
Raytheon and Lockheed Martin who have seen massive increases in profits as Jo
Biden has handed them $40 billion in arms orders on top of previous orders.
Of course the United States can’t afford to fund a National
Health Service or waive student debt but there is always money to fight NATO
wars, be it in Ukraine or Afghanistan. Similarly in Britain. There isn’t enough
money for things like free school meals but every time Johnson visits Zelensky
in Ukraine, usually when things become too hot for him at home, he comes with
promises of hundreds of millions of pounds of arms supplies. That is capitalism
and the system we live under.
Our demands are simple.
ØFreeze energy prices at what they were before April
2022.
ØNationalise the energy companies without compensation.
ØAbolish pre-payment meters. One of the more outrageous
feature of the present crisis is that those on pre-payment meters, the poorest
people in society, are paying the highest prices.
Machover looks
back on life since his childhood under the Palestine Mandate and describes both
his own family and political background
There are not many people who can justly be described as
legends in their own lifetime but Moshe Machover is one such person. An indefatigable
optimist he was the ‘one who got away’. Targeted by the Zionists and expelled
summarily by the Labour Party’s discredited Sam Mathews, there was such a
groundswell of opposition both within and without the Labour Party, that Moshe
was reinstated
within a month after Corbyn’s office had been forced to intervene with the
Compliance Unit.
Unlike the cowards of the Socialist Campaign Group, Dianne Abbot et al, Moshe was proud to appear in Zoom meetings alongside expelled members like myself and Chris Williamson, the only MP who did not subscribe to the false 'antisemitism' narrative
Moshe has subsequently been suspended by Starmer as part of
his purge of anti-Zionist Jews (its official name, as befitting such
doublethink, is ‘rooting out anti-Semitism’).
The first pamphlet that I read, at the age of 18 when I was
coming out as an anti-Zionist, was by Moshe Machover and two fellow members of
Matzpen, Akiva Orr and Haim Hanegbi. Up to then my opposition to Zionism was
largely instinctive rather than theoretically worked out. This was a time when
the very word ‘Palestinian’ was disputed. I had been brought up to consider Palestinians
as just ‘Arabs’. It is as if Romanians or Swiss nationals were referred to as Europeans.
Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister famously declared that
there was no such thing as the Palestinians.
Moshe as a child
‘The Class Nature of Israeli society’ was published by New Left Review in January/February 1971
although I read it in a pamphlet published by the International Socialists (SWP).
It helped me to clarify my intuitive feelings about Zionism, that it was an exclusivist
and chauvinist project that rejected the basic ideas of Socialism. The pamphlet
helped me to jettison many of the ideas that I had grown up with in a Zionist
environment.
A Young Moshe Machover & Jabra Nicola
Matzpen (Compass), which Moshe helped form in 1962, was the
first Israeli anti-Zionist organisation. In the film Moshe describes briefly
the origins of the organisation and the influence of the Palestinian Marxist
Jabra Nicola over him and others. Nicola saw the solution to the dispossession and
oppression of the Palestinians as being a regional one involving workers and
peasants struggle in the Arab East to overthrow the corrupt and repressive
regimes which dot the landscape.
The Israeli Communist Party, from which Matzpen broke, never
rejected Zionism. Indeed it has never had any analysis of Zionism worthy of the
name. It sees Zionism as largely irrelevant and doesn’t see the Israeli working
class as a settler working class.
The Irgun, a terrorist militia which perpetrated the massacre at Deir Yassin in April 1948 before the declaration of independence
By way of contrast Matzpen developed an understanding of
Zionism and Israel as a settler-colonial ideology and movement or what Moshe
describes, using Kautsky’s terminology a ‘work’ or ‘exclusion’ colony as
opposed to an ‘exploitation colony’.
In my view these categories are too rigid, as some colonies
like South Africa could be both exploitation and exclusion colonies. Hence South
Africa’s Bantustan policy.
Jabra Nicola
Rakah, the Israeli CommunistParty believed and still believes that the Israeli state can be reformed
and that Israeli Palestinians can achieve equality within it. They never
understood that it was Zionism which ensured that Israel could never become a
state of its own citizens. Rakah was a Stalinist party that went along in 1948 with
Stalin’s support for the establishment of a ‘Jewish’ state, a policy which all
but destroyed the Arab Communist Parties in the region.
The idealised image of the Kibbutzim and Jewish Labour - what wasn't shown were the evictions of Arab peasants with the help of the British army to make way for the Kibbutzim
Today the Palestine solidarity movement and academia takes it
for granted that Israel is a settler colonial state, but for many years people
saw Israel as either a liberal democracy or a social democratic, if not socialist
society, with the Kibbutzim as their idea of socialism in practice. The idea 60
years ago that Israel was a settler colonial state was ground breaking.
I freely confess that Moshe has been an enormous influence
over my own political development although, as often happens with one’s mentors,
we disagree on certain issues. I don’t for example accept Moshe’s belief that
the Israeli or Hebrew people constitute a nation in their own right with a right
to self-determination as a Hebrew state in the future. In my view such a state
would inevitably contain within it forces seeking to reconstitute themselves as
a Zionist and Jewish Supremacist state with all that entails. Hebrew culture in
Israel is inevitably a culture of oppression.
Zionist 'socialism' was a strictly Jewish only affair and thus it negated the basic principle of socialism, the unity of the working class whatever its ethnic or religious origins. Today that has played out in the presence in a far-right coalition of the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz
Unlike Moshe I also believe that the idea or concept of a unitary
democratic secular state is one that the Palestine solidarity movement should
adopt. Why? Firstly because it negates the concept of a Jewish State, which the
two state solution does nothing to challenge. But also because a solidarity
movement that is unable to present a vision of what it is striving for will in
the end succumb to partial solutions such as a repartition. How such a goal will
be achieved is a separate question.
I also have less faith in the future potential of the Israeli
working class than Moshe because experience has shown that in settler colonial
states, be it South Africa or Ireland, the settler working class is to the
right of its own bourgeoisie. Their support for an ethno-supremacist state
means that they are incapable of acting as a class for itself.
The ethnic cleansing of Jaffa - the only people driven into the sea were the Palestinians
I see no progressive or socialist potential in the Israeli Jewish
working class because its identity wrapped up in the super oppression of the Palestinian
working class.
Today the idea of Israel as an Apartheid State has become widely
accepted. This idea, that Israel is a state in which racial oppression is not a
side effect or by-product of its other policies but inbuilt into the state
itself, has gradually taken hold. Ideologically Israel and its defenders are in
a weaker position now than they have ever been.
The flight of the Palestinians was necessary to create an artificial Jewish majority in Israel
This development has taken place at the same time as Israel
is militarily and economically stronger than it has ever been although still dependant
on its benefactor, the United States.
Where I agree with Moshe is that the Question of Zionism or
Palestine cannot be solved within the borders of Palestine. The great mistake
of the Palestinian leadership, the PLO, was to believe that they could become yet
another corrupt Arab leadership in a Palestinian state of their own side by
side with the Israeli state. The PLO leaders desired nothing more than the
right to oppress their own people, as the Palestinian Authority today
demonstrates.
Tel Aviv, a Jewish only city in its early days in British Palestine
It was this that led to the disaster that is the 1993 Oslo
Accords. At the time those of us who opposed Oslo were very much in a minority.
Fateh activists were enthusiastic about its prospects and their prospects. This
enthusiasm derived from the belief that Zionism could be confined within pre-1948
borders and could live alongside a Palestinian state. Unfortunately the
Palestinian leadership never understood the nature of Zionism and how it is an
inherently expansionist and colonisatory project. Or if they did understand it
rhetorically they never incorporated it in their theory and practice. Today it
is very clear that the Israeli state cannot be reformed and Zionism cannot
change its spots.
An artist's view of Tel Aviv
The other mistake of the PLO was, in exchange for subsidies to
finance their operations, to establish uncritical relationships with the very Arab
regimes which oppressed their own people. These regimes paid lip service to the
Palestinian cause whilst in practice abandoning them. Today we can see this
clearly with the Abraham
Accords, which follow on from the 1978 Camp David Accords
whereby Egypt recognised Israel. Following Oslo, Jordan also established diplomatic
relations with Israel.
The Arab regimes fear, despise and oppress their own peoples.
They are the junior allies of imperialism. Regimes such as that in Saudi Arabia
and Egypt are some of the most brutal on the planet. They are jealously guarded
by the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv yet the Palestinian movement has largely been
uncritical of these regimes. The role of Israel is to ensure that radical Arab
nationalism never triumphs in the region.
Where I disagree with Moshe is that I don’t accept that it is
necessary for a socialist revolution to take hold in the Arab world before
Zionism can be overthrown. If only because the establishment of socialism has
proved rather more difficult than Marx and the early socialists envisaged. I
think it is possible for nationalist revolutions to overthrow the ancien
regimes in the Arab world and in that way to threaten the very imperialist
interests that Israel is paid to watch over.
The original advert in Ha'aretz
Moshe has lived through the entire period of the Israeli state.
He recalls how, in September 1967, Matzpen was the first group to place an
advert in Ha’aretz decrying the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank which an
Israeli Labor not Likud Government, presided over. Moshe also recalls the
hostility and calls of ‘traitor’ that greeted this advert. The advert met with
unbridled hostility and threats to the individual signatories.
Moshe tells how, at the age of 3, his first definite memory
was the day that World War 2 broke out. He describes the bombing of Tel Aviv by
the Italian airforce and says that by 1944 it was clear that something
horrendous had taken place in Europe in respect of the Jews.
This is in itself instructive because the Zionist leadership
in Palestine were well aware that the Holocaust was taking place from at least mid-1942
if not earlier but they did their best to play such reports down. The Hebrew
press even whilst it reported on what was happening in Europe also cast doubt
on its own reports. Zionism, which has fashioned the Holocaust into an
ideological weapon, was at that time more concerned with state building than
rescuing Jewish refugees.
Moshe emigrated to Britain in 1968. Many others in Matzpen also
emigrated to the West because life was made very difficult for those who were seen
as traitors to Zionism. Moshe became a Professor of Mathematical Logic and
Philosophy at King’s College in London. Far from being a democratic society
Israel has always been extremely intolerant of Jews who dissent from the
Zionist narrative.
Moshe describes in some detail how, in the wake of the Nakba between
1947 and 1949, he and other children would hike into the Galilee and see the
ruins of the Arab villages. They saw the artifacts and belongings left after the
Zionist militias had looted much of what remained when the original owners had
been forced to flee from Palestine. The Zionist myth that people like Israeli Ambassador
Tzipi Hotoveli still propagate is that the Palestinians voluntarily left.
It was the Israeli Labor Party that presided over the 6 Day
War and the conquest of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights. I
remember very well how Israeli propaganda portrayed the situation as a possible
new holocaust. We really believed that Israel might well suffer defeat and that
the Jews would be driven into the sea. Of course this was a lie meant to fool
not only Israeli Jews but the wider Jewish communities world-wide. We now know
that this was, as Moshe says, ‘poppycock’.
The ILP was also responsible for the establishment of the
first settlements. It was an Israeli Labor Government which launched a pre-emptive
war on Syria, Jordan and Egypt with the intention of completing what was they
considered unfinished business in 1947-9, namely the conquest of the whole of what
was Palestine under the British Mandate. In 1956 Israel had launched the Suez
War, in conjunction with Britain and France, against Egypt following Nasser’s
nationalisation of the Suez Canal. At that time Israel had been forced to
withdraw after the US Administration of Eisenhower had made its displeasure
clear.
The remains of the Arab villages after they had been looted and their inhabitants expelled or massacred
Moshe explains how one of the cardinal beliefs of the Zionists
is that Jews don’t merely constitute a religious community but a nation in its
own right. That is integral to the Zionist claim on what they call Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel). The
basis of this claim is that God gave the land to the Jews. Given that the early
Zionists were atheists, we have the absurdity that Zionism based its claim to Palestine
on the promise of a god who doesn’t exist!
I hope you find this interview as illuminating and
interesting as I did.
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