Mobilisations of 'the people'

Apologists for Israel's attack on the civilian population of Southern Lebanon, and for the so-called "resistance movements" of Hizbullah and Hamas, are equally enemies of the working class, which has no country to defend and whose only hope for itself and for humanity as a whole is unity across all national frontiers.

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Who were the first victims of the terrorist attacks in the centre of London on July 7 2005? Like the ones in New York in 2001 and Madrid in 2004, the bombs were deliberately aimed at workers, people crowding the tubes and buses on their way to work. Al Qaida, which has claimed responsibility for this mass murder, says that it has acted in revenge for “British military massacres in Iraq”. But the endless slaughter of the population in Iraq is not the fault of working people in Britain; it’s the responsibility of the ruling classes of Britain, America – not to mention the terrorists of the so-called ‘Resistance’, who play their own daily part in the killing of innocent workers and civilians in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The architects of the war on Iraq, the Bushes and the Blairs, are meanwhile left safe and secure; what’s more, the atrocities committed by the terrorists provide them with the perfect excuse to launch their next military adventure, just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of September 11.

Live8 and its leading spokesmen have received plenty of criticism. From the Right there are charges that there’s no point in development aid as it all gets diverted by corrupt African governments. From the Left the complaint is that Geldof and Bono give legitimacy to Bush and Blair...

At the end of the 19th century Frederick Engels called anti-semitism "the socialism of fools".

You're poor, you're exploited, your life is miserable - so blame it on another group, the vast majority of whom are also poor, miserable and exploited, in the case Engels was talking about, the Jews. Who can benefit from this except the exploiters? It's exactly the same in Britain today with all the hatred being stirred up against 'asylum seekers', or Asians, or blacks - a hatred that has burst out into 'race riots' in a number of northern towns.

In Britain, during the recent protests over taxes on petrol it was interesting to see how papers such as the Sun and Daily Mail became quite keen on the ‘direct action’ undertaken by hauliers, farmers, and cab drivers. When a man appeared on TV saying, "I’ve never been on a picket line before, mind you, I’ve driven through plenty", there was a hint as to why the right-wing press liked such ‘militancy’, and why Tory leader, William Hague saluted them as "fine, upstanding citizens."