Overwhelming Public Support for NHS Strike Pickets but Starmer & Streeting Refuse to Support the Nurses

 The Failure of Starmer & Streeting to Give Any Support to the Nurses Proves the Irrelevance of the Labour Party - We Need a New Working Class Socialist Party

NHS Strike Picket Today at Brighton's Sussex County Hospital

As you can see from the video the NHS strikers have overwhelming public support.  But public support doesn’t translate into victory against a government which is committed to transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.

We have had neo-liberal governments for the past 40 years and in that time the rich have grown richer. Since 2020 the richest 1% have, according to a new Oxfam report, grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population. During the past decade, the richest 1% have captured around half of all new wealth. 

The table below shows how, beginning with Ronald Reagan in the United States, wealth flowed from the poor to the rich. In 1967 the richest 20% had 43.6% of wealth. By 2014 this had increased to 51.2%, whereas the share of the poorest 20% declined from 4% to 3.1%. This continued under the Democrats and under Trump, with his tax cuts for the rich and Biden, the trend has continued.

According to Statista and the Sunday Times Rich List the UK’s top 10 richest people are wealthier than ever. The cumulative wealth of the top 10 billionaires in the UK has grown from £47.77 billion in 2009 to £182 billion in 2022 - an increase of 281%.

Following the 2008 crash, UK’s billionaires have seen a steady and steep incline in their wealth. The upward trend continued despite the pandemic, which saw the UK’s economy shrink by 20.4% in the second quarter of 2020. 30.5m people in Europe were pushed into poverty. By way of contrast the UK’s 250 ultra wealthy saw their collective wealth surge to a record high of £653 billion in 2022.

George Dibbs, the head of the Center for Economic Justice at the Institute for Public Policy Research, explained how we are seeing a widening wealth gap

As we enter a once-in-a-generation cost of living crisis, the Sunday Times rich list shows us again that vast wealth often begets more wealth. That has proved particularly true during the pandemic, when the wealthiest accumulated more wealth than poorer people, who saved nothing.

As most people faced a cost of living crisis Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murty joined the UK rich list with a combined £730m fortune. Dominic Raab, now Deputy Prime Minister, said it was “fantastic” news that Sunak had joined the rich list.

“He’s a fantastic example of someone who’s been successful in business, who’s coming to make a big impact in public service. I think we want more of those people. I think it’s fantastic that you’ve got someone of British-Indian origin, showing all people in our country that you can get to the top of politics.

The UK now has a record 177 billionaires, up six on 2021. Their combined wealth is up 9.4% to a record £653bn.

Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital

This is the background to the current strike wave. It also explains the new anti-strike laws and the further attack on public protests with the new Public Order Bill. These bills have nothing to do with preventing ‘disruption’ to the public despite government’s lies. They have everything to do with defending the right of the rich to get richer.

The refusal of Starmer and Streeting, both of whom support further privatisation of the NHS, is contemptible. If they had a shred of honesty they would change the name of the Labour Party to ‘The New Tory Party’ but Honesty and Starmer is an oxymoron.

At the same time we have seen massive corruption arising from giving COVID contracts to friends and cronies of the Tories. Just 10 Conservative MPs and peers referred companies to a “VIP lane” that won £1.6bn of PPE contracts. The “VIP lane” was recently declared unlawful by the High Court but no one has been prosecuted by the Police because their sole focus is on benefit claimants. Government corruption is not their concern.

One Fifth of Covid contracts ‘raised red flags for possible corruption’. We have a corrupt government and a corrupt capitalist system where wealth flows upwards, away from workers to the parasites who preside over this system.

When Sunak and Starmer tell workers that we ‘cannot afford’ 19% pay increases for nurses we should bear in mind that the average pay packet of Chief Executives in the FTSE 100 companies jumped by 39% to £3.4 million. The average UK CEO now collects 109 times that paid to the average British worker, up from 79 times in 2020.

About this Starmer, Reeves and the rest of the traitorous Labour MPs have nothing to say. After all Labour is now ‘business friendly’.

What we need to create is a genuine working class socialist party that defends the poor against the spivs, speculators and parasites who have plundered the economy whilst telling us that we ‘cannot afford’ to pay decent wages and benefits. Neo-liberal capitalism means privatising the public sector and allowing the capitalist pigs to hide their ill gotten gains in tax havens whilst avoiding paying taxes.

Corbyn still does not understand that the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations were designed to remove him and nothing more

People should sign up to the Socialist Labour Network’s appeal for a new mass working class party. The time is for socialists to get together and organise after the debacle of Corbyn who has proven that he couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag with his appalling interview with Liz Kendall when, despite everything, he still accepted that there was a genuine ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis in the Labour Party.

Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital

It is time for the trade unions to fight back. Individual strikes are not enough. Only a general strike that challenges the privileges of the idle rich and their supporters in parliament will challenge the Tories. It is clear that although welcome, the current strike wave, uncoordinated as it is, is not enough.

Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital

Meanwhile everyone who can should join the strike picket lines and reject the divide and rule tactics of the ruling class. The trade union bureaucrats want a quiet life and would prefer to accept minimal concessions rather than lead a fight back. They need to have their feet held to the fire. We need a strategy of outright defiance of the trade union laws. Anti-strike laws are a negation of the most basic principles of a democratic society. It was Hitler who outlawed strikes and unions on May 2 1933. The anti-strike laws are nothing but a continuation of Hitlerism by other means.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli Troops Wreck the Al-Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin and Attack the Children with Tear Gas

Ask Boris Johnson and Sir Starmer how Destroying a Children’s Center has anything to do with Israel 'protecting itself' against rockets 

With all attention on Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza and the pogroms against Palestinian citizens in Israel, the situation in the West Bank itself is being ignored. There is currently a reign of terror there to add to the problems with COVID.

Jenin Refugee Camp is being constantly attacked by Israeli troops.

For the past few years the Brighton Trust has been raising funds for the Al Tafawk Centre in Jenin, which is in the north of the West Bank. On Sunday I learnt from an eye witness, who for safety reasons will have to remain nameless, that Israeli soldiers raided the Centre last Saturday night destroying the equipment.

This is Zionism’s idea of peaceful coexistence. It should prove, even to the eternally blind, that Israel is a vicious and murderous settler colonial state that even needs to attack a Palestinian children’s centre to emphasise who is in control.

The Israeli occupation authorities wishes to see the Palestinians of the West Bank ethnically cleansed. It therefore hates any civil society organisations because they help keep the population together. Hence why the Al Tafawk Centre was targeted.

Below is the statement that I received. It speaks for itself and below that is a statement on Facebook from its manager.

What You Can Do

Please circulate the information in this blog to your MP and ask them to put down/sign what is called an Early Day Motion protesting at the damages by the Israeli Defence Forces to the Centre and in it call for the IDF to pay compensation for the restoration of the Centre.

Ask your MP to raise these abominable acts with Dominic Raab and the Foreign Office.

Please contribute whatever you can afford to the Al Tafawk Appeal which we have been running these past years or donate directly to:

Account Name:          The Brighton Trust

Account Number:       91420311

Sort Code:                   09-01-28

Reference:                   Al Tafawk Appeal (this is important)

By publicising this as much as possible you will be helping to protect the staff and children at the Centre. The Israeli Army and those who command it have to be made aware that there is a price to pay for their actions.

Thank you

Tony Greenstein

Hi,

I just received some horrible news.

Last night they've raided the center. First they started to shoot from outside the center. Then they blew up the front door and entered the center. They threw everything around. Damaging everything of value. Like the printer.

I have been sent some pictures. I have attached them to this email.

Mona [the Manager] is very scared and in shock. She doesn't know what to do. 9 children are also still in shock

The situation in Jenin.

Persona Doll Training enjoys working with Al Tafawk Centre in Jenin. Our programme for working with older children detailed in our publication “Empowering Voices” was developed thanks to this relationship. The centre’s founder, Mona Jalamnh has recently sent us heartbreaking messages, describing what is taking place there. This is what she wrote on May 11th.

“I will try to write what is going on here in the camp from the time the soldiers attacked Jerusalem.. our nights change to nightmare in the camp and also our days

Every night hundred of solders' jeeps come to the camp and start shooting everywhere throw gas at homes from windows as the children are sleeping and if anyone need to save or move his child to hospital or even to safer place he put himself in danger.

Two days ago, the soldiers were hid around the centre as we thought they went away in the early morning so I decided to go as everyday to open the center at 7 am.. but when I reach the center with some children the soldiers start to throw gas at us,

the children start running in street and I couldn't control them

The situation in Jenin now is very hard I go to the center in secret .At day time they don’t shoot as at night

But for 2 days they keep throwing Gas at the children in the center so i had to close it till I feel a little safer.

We are really hopeless like what happen when I was child in 2000..

I do not know how to explain the pain and fair we face I wish I could make pictures but I am sure it would be so dangerous

The children feel bad from the gas and the noise of shooting they spent the time under the tables crying.”

Just when B’Tselem declares Israel to be an Apartheid State up springs another liberal Zionist group

 Na'amod decides that anti-Zionism, i.e. challenging Jewish supremacy is a step too far

Last Sunday I attended a webinar held by the latest kid on the block Na'amod, which styles itself as ‘British Jews against occupation’. Na'amod is not the first such group to confine itself to Israel’s ‘occupation’ i.e. Israel’s rule over the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

What declaring oneself against ‘the occupation’ means is making a distinction between the West Bank/ East Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. As B’Tselem’s statement made clear there is but one regime over the whole territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

There are different rules and systems of administration for Palestinians, depending on where they live, but everywhere Jews have superior rights. Palestinians in pre-1967 Israel have an inferior version of Israeli citizenship but it is superior to the military regime governing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. That is why Israel has repeatedly tried to transfer Israeli Palestinians into the West Bank something that they fear is part of the Trump Plan.

Every part of Greater Israel is under one regime whose guiding principle is Jewish supremacy.  Another word for Jewish supremacy is Zionism.

I say this because there were some in the audience last Sunday who were clearly Zionists. One of them proclaimed in the chat that ‘this is biased’ to which I took objection. I explained the workings of the West Bank Mediterranean to the Jordan River Gaza Trump Plan Greater Israel 1950 Absentee Property Law, introduced by the Israeli Labor Party government, which enabled Palestinians to be dispossessed by treating them as the Orwellian ‘Present Absentees’. In other words even if they were present in the Israeli state and had not been expelled they were to be treated as absent even if they had only fled a mile or so from their village because of the fighting.

I explained that this law, which is being used to dispossess Palestinians in East Jerusalem has never been used against Jews. In other words it is a nakedly racist law. It would appear that this was too much for Naomi and her well meaning liberal Zionist friends.

Although no Zionist was removed after a short time. I found myself ‘bumped’. Thinking that maybe it was my computer I rejoined only to be thrown out again. The third time there was a notice that ‘the host has removed you’. Although Zionists of any stripe were welcome at the meeting, anti-Zionists who made their views known were not welcome.

To add insult to injury, ‘Naomi’ then wrote me a letter thanking me for my attendance at the webinar! It is clear from the letter, which mentions Yachad and Peace Now by name that Na’mod represents an affirmation of Zionism, not a break with this Jewish supremacy, by seeking to put create an artificial distinction between Israel pre-1967 and Israel post-1967.

As B’Tselem makes clear, there is no Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, neither physically nor on Israeli maps. It only exists in the minds of Zionists in the West who use the fiction of ‘two states’ in order to justify the present Occupation. If Na’amod are genuinely sincere about opposing the Occupation then they also need to abandon support for 2 states and Zionism.

2 states is supported by groups such as the Israeli Embassy front Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement, both of which refuse to condemn any aspect of military rule in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 2 states  exists solely in the minds of those who wish to perpetuate military rule over 5 million Palestinians.

As Palestinians reject the 2 states paradigm liberal Zionists cling to it ever more firmly. 2 States provides a smokescreen for continued military rule over the West Bank and the expansion of settlements.

It is of course welcome that a new group has sprung up amongst British Jews but it is not unique. Jews for Justice for Palestinians are the original 2 state group and they have made little impression as their politics have become rapidly outdated and irrelevant. JfJP have long sought, for reasons I’ve never understood, affiliation to the Board of Deputies.

Yachad actually did manage to achieve affiliation to the Board as it is an explicitly Zionist group unlike JfJP. Na’mod will have to decide where it stands on the Jewish supremacist nature of Israel, i.e. its Zionist nature.  The omens don’t seem good

Tony Greenstein

See Israel Democracy Institute uncovers shocking racism in 'apartheid state'

Letter to Na’omod

Dear Naomi,

You don't need to thank me for joining you at Sunday's webinar on Settlement Activity and Dispossession in East Jerusalem, just as I don't need to thank you for the fact that I was 'bumped' from the webinar for asking difficult questions and making certain observations about the causes of the repression that your speakers were explaining to us.

What the two speakers, Mohammed El-Kurd and Sami Ershied, were saying was very moving as was their description of their experiences which is why it is a pity that you moved to prevent any discussion of the causes of the demolitions, evictions and settler terrorism that they spoke about.

However without seeking to tackle the causes of their plight you will certainly not remedy the effects. I realise that you are too young to remember Apartheid in South Africa but it is as if you were to have condemned the brutal policies of the South Africa government in Soweto without calling into question Apartheid itself.

I should add that nothing in the history of South Africa Apartheid compares to the use by Israel of planes and missiles in bombing refugee camps and ordinary peoples’ housing in Gaza, Jenin and elsewhere. Nor is there any counterpart to the thousands of Palestinian homes which have been demolished.

However horrific South Africa Apartheid was it does not compare to the bloodshed and brutality of Zionism in Israel.

The dispossession and terror that the speakers experienced at the hands of the settlers and the Israeli state did not come out of nowhere. They are not an accident of god. They are the result of the Zionist Project which, from its very inception, sought to remove the Palestinians from first the land and then the country.

Zionism, unlike settler colonial movements in Southern Africa, dressed this up in the language of 'mutual recognition', 'self determination' and other euphemisms. Zionism was a Janus faced movement which spoke with two tongues. Out of one face it preached mutual respect, brotherhood of man and tolerance. Out of the other face it breathed transfer, expulsion, massacre and dispossession.

This tactic of Zionism, which deliberately said one thing and did another, was best summed up in the 1930 Hope-Simpson Report which the British Government commissioned as a result of the 1929 riots in Palestine.

The effect of the Zionist colonisation policy on the Arab.— Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extraterritorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. The land is in mortmain and inalienable. It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation deliberately adopted.

I understand that Na’amod is connected to If Not Now as opposed to Jewish Voice for Peace which is an explicitly anti-Zionist group. From what I understand Na'amod harbours illusions that it can persuade synagogues to break away from the Board of Deputies.

The Board represents the most reactionary section of British Jewry.  British Jews themselves have moved significantly to the right from the days, 80 years ago, when Jews formed the backbone of the left.  Ever since the 1960’s, with the temporary exception of the Blair years, British Jewry has voted overwhelmingly for the Conservatives in the past half a century.

We saw the results of this with the fake anti-Semitism attacks on Labour’s most left-wing leader ever, Jeremy Corbyn.

The question is whether you are going to following the path of Yachad and try to reconcile Zionism with Justice and Peace or whether you are going to follow B’Tselem which has concluded that the Israeli state is an Apartheid State.

It is a stark and binary choice but any other decision and you will be fooling yourself and others.  Zionism has always been a Jewish Supremacist movement and Labour Zionism, its ‘left-wing’ has been the most racist of all.

The choice is yours.

Tony Greenstein

Letter from Na’mod

Thank you for joining us at Sunday's webinar on Settlement Activity and Dispossession in East Jerusalem, co-hosted with Free Jerusalem.

Free Jerusalem have contributed to this document, which provides more detailed information about the dispossession of Palestinians and settlement activity ongoing in East Jerusalem.

If you were unable to attend the event live, would like to watch it back or wish to send it on, you can find the recording here.

We were extremely grateful for the chance to hear from Mohammed El-Kurd and Sami Ershied, J.D, and for the excellent questions asked by many of the attendees. One of the questions which came up several times was, 'How can I help?'

If you are in the UK, please write to your MP and ask them to raise this issue with UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, and to attend the APPG Palestine parliamentary briefing on this issue. This is being held on Wednesday 3rd February 2-3pm, with Mohammed joined by Hagit Ofran from Peace Now's Settlement Watch. Yachad have prepared a template which you can use for this.

We have seen that international pressure can and does work: in 2011, an international campaign forced the Jewish National Fund (KKL) to delay the eviction of the Sumarin family from their home in Silwan. Under the latest evictions orders, the family are once again facing displacement from their own home and their community at the hands of the JNF.

If you are Jewish, please consider joining our movement. We are British Jews making our voices heard: the occupation must be opposed by our community with Actions not Words.

We are a grassroots movement and depend on donations from our supporters to cover our costs and continue our work. If you can support us with a donation we would be incredibly grateful.

Please look out for our next webinar, which will be held next month!

Na'amod