Letters

Sentenced

The trial in Austria against the pro-Palestine activist, Michael Pröbsting, ended with a guilty verdict and a conditional prison sentence of six months. Michael was prosecuted for a video statement expressing solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and opposition to the Israeli apartheid state. The public prosecutor’s office claimed that this would constitute an “incitement to commit terrorist offences and approval of terrorist offences”.

Michael, who is also international secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), strongly rejected the prosecutor’s allegations in a statement published two weeks ago. During the proceedings, which lasted almost two and a half hours, Michael emphasised the deeply political nature of the process. His only crime was to have expressed his support for the legitimate armed resistance of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation forces and his rejection of the Zionist state. In reality, the indictment shows how far the support for the Israeli terrorist state extends in leading circles of politics and prosecutors.

He ended his closing remarks with the following: “We are currently experiencing a historical moment of great importance. As one of the worst genocides in recent history takes place, a huge movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people, reminiscent of 1968, is emerging worldwide. I and many others who consider the Palestinian resistance as legitimate - we are on the right side of history. You, Mr Judge and Ms Prosecutor, are here today to judge me. But you also decide how history will judge you.”

In his verdict, the judge said that “both sides are right” and that he is issuing of a “Solomonian verdict”. The public prosecutor’s office had demanded a “rigorous” or “draconian” punishment (the maximum penalty in this case is two years in prison). A conditional prison sentence means that, if Michael commits such an offence again, he can be sentenced to six months in prison.

Before the trial began, a rally with more than 40 solidarity activists took place in front of the State Criminal Court in Vienna. Palestinian, Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi and Basque activists were present. The International Communist League has also organised solidarity rallies in New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Berlin, London and Milan.

Unfortunately, almost none of the activists were allowed to take part in the trial as observers, as it was moved to a very small hall at short notice in order to keep public participation as low as possible. Not even all of the journalists present or Michael’s wife were allowed to attend the hearing! Nevertheless, many activists waited outside the courtroom to find out the outcome of the trial. At this point we would like to thank all brothers and sisters and all comrades for their great support!

Regardless of the outcome of the process, our solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle will not diminish! We continue!

RCIT International Bureau
email

No substance

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that the Weekly Worker’s resident Stalinist (aka Andrew Northall) didn’t like my criticism of Sharon Graham, Unite’s general secretary. But did he have to take up over 750 words in order to say absolutely nothing (Letters, May 9)?

Graham stood on the basis that she was apolitical and no longer would Unite give support, as Len McCluskey had done, to the left in the Labour Party. She even contemplated abandoning Labour altogether and disaffiliating. But by last year’s rule conference she was all in favour of the affiliation remaining and she even invited Sir Keir to be her dance partner. Unfortunately her love was not requited.

Graham has, throughout the seven months of genocide in Gaza, not only done nothing to support the Palestinians: she has actively tried to prevent anyone else doing anything. Not only has she refused to implement Unite policy on Palestine, including BDS, but she has gone out of her way to attack direct-action and anti-arms trade activists who have tried to shut down arms factories. She has refused to attend even one of the 13 national demonstrations and forbade the national banner being taken.

According to Graham, there is only one issue - the right of workers in the arms trade to manufacture weapons that help murder Palestinian men, women and children. This is where the bankrupt politics of Northall ends up. It is the politics that believed the rights of workers manufacturing Zyklon B outweighed those who died in the gas chambers.

Graham represents non-political trade unionism, which has long been the curse of the British union movement. That is why it is so weak today - it has confined itself to operating within the norms of the British legal system and has opposed anything that is seen to challenge the state. From one of the strongest labour movements in Europe it has become a shadow of what it was, and this is what Northall is cheering.

What his letter lacked in substance he more than made up for with an eclectic variety of adjectives and phrases expressing his incoherent rage - “poisonous creature”, “foul, bitter, personal and vicious”, “disgusting and repulsive”, “garbage and filth”, “vicious and active enemy”, “poisonous individual”, “twisted, bitter and hostile”. Uncle Joe must be looking on with envy.

And then, thinking ‘more broadly’, Northall can’t resist having a pop at veteran Israeli anti-Zionist Moshé Machover, who comes off rather lightly with his alleged “specific and sectarian political history [which] provides a far too narrow and exclusionary take”. Northall, of course, comes from the very non-sectarian political tradition of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Stalin’s 1947 about-turn at the UN supporting the partition of Palestine (to say nothing of Stalin’s purges of the old Bolsheviks).

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

State power

The Tony Greenstein article about Sharon Graham and Unite the Union has caused quite a stir (‘My Zionist general secretary’, April 25).

My feeling is that trade unions of its size cannot help but take on the colourings of the state power, but this isn’t the whole story. The state power is itself composed of myriad antagonisms and, compared to before the war, it is a much weakened entity. The hope comes from its weakness and our strength, which is the natural strength of the people who compose the nation.

The rise of China and Russia is threatening its interests abroad, as it is threatening the interests of the wider so-called west. Europe and the US are both beset by tremendous social pressures at home and this complements and reinforces the external challenges to their illiterate and insane rule. They will be crushed between the two.

Elijah Traven
Hull

Shut Elbit

Former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, John Woodcock (aka ‘Baron’ Walney), plans to issue a report recommending the government implement new measures to deter Palestine Action’s direct action campaign against Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems. Whilst acknowledging the “enormous damage“ our campaign has had on the arms industry, he suggests a “proscription-light” label for us which aims to restrict our ability to meet and fundraise. He also wants “buffer zones” around weapons manufacturers like Elbit to protect the company from protests against them.

Despite posing as an ‘independent’ government advisor, Woodcock is deeply affiliated with the Israel lobby and the arms industry. He is chairman of the Defence Purpose Coalition, which brings together senior figures within the deadly arms industry, to promote it. Since 2011, he’s travelled to Israel numerous times on all-paid-for trips by the Israeli government and other pro-Israel lobby groups.

During our nearly four-year direct action campaign, we’ve faced arrests, raids, imprisonment, beatings, convictions and more, by a state desperate to protect the Zionist war machine over the freedom of their own citizens. Despite this, our movement’s determination and resilience has resulted in Elbit permanently closing two weapons factories, being dropped by several partners and losing hundreds of millions of pounds in contracts with the ministry of defence.

We are seven months into the Gaza genocide, so does Walney think this scare tactic is going to make us surrender? He couldn’t be more wrong.

When Palestine Action began, we were under no illusion that the route to victory would be an easy ride. As a movement, we understand that every obstacle we face and overcome is a step closer to ending Israel’s weapons trade in Britain. For years the political class repressed us behind closed doors, but refused to show publicly their frustration at our growing campaign. Now, they’re showing their hand, which means we are winning.

Rather than deter us, Walney’s rampage to the press three days after we dissed him on Twitter exposes his own motivation: to save face. He’s more concerned with protecting the military interests of a foreign genocidal entity over the will of the British people, who overwhelmingly support imposing an arms embargo on Israel.

His alliance is with Elbit Systems, who use Gaza as a laboratory to develop its “battle-tested” weaponry and is crucial to arming the ongoing genocide. Our alliance will always be with the Palestinian people.

Collectively we must refuse to surrender. No matter what, we will shut Elbit down!

Palestine Action
email

Min or max?

Mike Macnair, in his analysis of the results of the elections to the Greater London Assembly, notes that they “show Tusc polling in the same range as the SPGB” (‘Local election barometer’, May 9).

In other words, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, appealing to trade union-conscious workers with a programme of attractive-sounding reforms (what used to be called ‘the minimum programme’), polled more or less the same as the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which was standing on a straight platform of socialism - the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, with production directly to meet people’s needs, not profit - and nothing but (what used to be called ‘the maximum programme’).

But what’s the point of standing on a minimum programme when you are not going to get more votes than if you stood on the maximum programme? Workers who just want reforms understandably prefer to vote for reformist parties they consider have a chance of being able to implement some.

Seeking support on the basis of reforms to capitalism confuses the issue, by encouraging workers to continue to think in terms of getting a better deal under capitalism rather than to get rid of it. The time and energy spent on this could be more fruitfully spent in campaigning directly for socialism. After all, what is needed is more socialists.

Adam Buick
SPGB

Local communists

Communists in Manchester will be standing in the general election, whenever it is called. We will be standing in Manchester Central on a communist manifesto that argues that not only is an alternative to the capitalist present needed. but there is an alternative: communism.

We need to have confidence that our ideas can in time become popular and common sense in society. Therefore, we must make the case for a communist alternative in public, in a manner open to scrutiny and debate, and seek to win people to our vision of humanity overcoming capitalism.

It is long overdue that communists, revolutionaries and militant workers should organise together in a party. Our contention is that, through common work, common organisation will be shown as necessary and desirable.

We say that the power to supersede capitalism rests in the hands of the majority in society, the working class. Our manifesto states: “Change - real change - must look beyond this system. This means breaking the domination of the minority and instead putting the control of society and its resources into the hands of the majority, the working class.”

When it comes to the here and now, we are against the war drive and oppose all spending on arms. Further, any step that improves the lot of the majority in society - either materially, culturally or in terms of political power - should be supported. However, small gains and wins are only temporary. We are for a complete break. As we write in our manifesto, “It is not the project of communists to manage this system.”

Manchester is a city that displays all the contradictions of capitalism today. Enormous wealth alongside crushing poverty, fake official anti-racism alongside thuggish attacks on migrants by the council - and, of course, a city where landlords and property barons call the shots and pocket ever greater cuts from Mancunians’ wages. We say: “Brand Manchester makes the claim, ‘This is Manchester - we do things differently here’; but in reality this empty slogan is a cheap facade barely covering up an all too familiar scene of widespread poverty, brought about by profiteering and control of our city by a tiny minority. We say let’s actually do things differently.”

In order for us to do this we need money. To those who want to see a bold communist intervention at the elections, we ask that you donate to our campaign. Even better - get in touch with us and get involved. We have many doors to knock, conversations to be had and connections to be made. Go to our website: www.communistfuture.com.

Communist Future
Manchester

Landlordism

The current housing crisis started in 1979 with the election as prime minister of Margaret Thatcher, who introduced the so-called ‘right to buy’ council houses, sold to tenants at a discount. The money from the sale was supposed to go to local councils, so they could build new houses, but this never happened, the money going to the treasury instead.

Then in the early 1990s, under John Major, the Tories introduced assured shorthold, six-month tenancies in the private sector, together with the abolition of rent controls. This led to an explosion in so-called ‘buy-to-let’ petty landlordism to such an extent that in 2024 one in 21 adults are now buy-to-let landlords.

Tony Blair’s New Labour governments could have stopped this by making buy-to-let interest-only mortgage payments non-deductible for tax purposes. But New Labour didn’t, preferring to let such landlordism grow as an alternative to allowing local councils to be able to borrow the money needed to build new houses. The result has been that we have a whole generation of young couples stuck paying exorbitant rents to blood-sucking landlords.

So what should be done? Buy-to-let petty landlordism needs to be destroyed. This can best be done by reintroducing rent controls and rent control officers. This would lead to landlords selling up. Local councils should then be allowed to buy up these properties, as happened in London and other areas of Britain in the 1970s.

We need to nationalise the privately owned, large building companies, land banks and estates. This would allow local councils to build desperately needed council houses. A target nationally should be set at building one million new council houses a year - equivalent to 1,500 new council houses per parliamentary constituency.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire