Communist Party of Britain and Morning Star

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Morning Star lurches further "Red-Brown"

Over at the Communist Party of Britain and their mouthpiece, the Morning Star , there have been some celebrations. At last, things seem to be going their way both domestically and internationally. Ukraine seems to be in difficulty and Russia has been making some small but significant gains. The CPB and the Morning Star in theory condemn the Russian invasion, but many of the paper’s writers have made little secret of their hope that it will succeed. Leading CPBer and regular contributor Nick Wright, for instance, has always cheered on the invaders and, early on, gloated that anyone joining the...

Playing parliamentary games on Gaza

On 21 February, Parliament passed a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and condemning the proposed ground offensive in Rafah. All of which is good. Beyond that, however, the rest of what happened in the Commons that night was a disgrace with the cause of peace in Gaza overshadowed by cynicism, opportunism and hypocrisy on all sides. The SNP was clearly motivated at least as much by a desire to embarrass Labour as it was by concern for the people of Gaza. The Labour leadership was mainly concerned to avoid another rebellion and see if they could put a wedge into the Tories. The...

Murray gets his way on Galloway

Andrew Murray has finally got his way — the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and its mouthpiece the Morning Star have thrown in their lot with George Galloway. When Galloway and his (then) friends the SWP announced the formation of Respect in December 2003, Murray was one of those in the CPB who pushed (unsuccessfully, then) for the Party to sign up with not-so-gorgeous George. Murray was chair of the Stop the War coalition (then controlled by the SWP). He was regarded by his opponents within the CPB as having “gone native” and succumbed to the overtures of leading SWPers (at the time) Lindsey...

Morning Star confused on Labour

Robert Griffiths, general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, has a profound insight — no doubt informed by his mastery of Marxist theory and practice — into what a good result for the working class at the next general election would be: “A Labour victory at the next general election would be a better outcome than a Conservative victory, raising working-class morale and demands” he wrote in the Morning Star of 12 September 2023. That’s clear enough, isn’t it? It’s Griffiths’ next comments that might cause more confusion: “But this cannot mean voting for those Labour candidates who...

Wagenknecht’s link with far-right organiser

On 10 January, the investigative outlet Correctiv revealed details of a “private encounter” last November, at which politicians of Germany’s far-right AfD, neo-Nazi activists, and some supposedly “respectable” Christian Democrats and business people, discussed a “masterplan” for mass deportations of foreign nationals and foreign-born German citizens. According to Correctiv’s report, a leading AfD parliamentarian spoke about the need to change the “streetscape” of towns and cities by putting foreign-owned restaurants “under pressure”. The reaction to this report has been dramatic: over a...

John Pilger: once an inspiring truth-teller

John Pilger, who died on 30 December 2023, was once a brave and principled journalist who spoke truth to power. Many of us of a Certain Age can remember being moved and inspired in the 1970s by his exposures of war crimes, racism, injustice and human rights abuses. He was a war correspondent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Biafra and probably (in Britain at least) did more than any other journalist to bring the horrors of those conflicts to public attention. He twice won the UK Journalist of the Year Award: in 1967 and 1979. His eponymous TV series on ITV was required viewing as far as I...

Using Gaza to undermine Ukraine

The Morning Star carries claims, some veiled, some shameless, that support for Ukraine is somehow incompatible with support for the Palestinian cause

Kissinger: war criminal but wise?

Senior Colonel Wu Qian, top spokesman of China’s defence ministry warned the United States to stop interfering in Taiwan and the South China Sea, saying (according to the Morning Star of 1 December): “We request that the US side acts in accordance with its words and takes concrete steps to honour its commitment not to support Taiwan independence”. What was remarkable about Col Wu’s statement was not what he said but what (if the Morning Star ’s report on 1st December is complete and accurate) he didn’t say. As he was speaking on the day after Henry Kissinger’s death was announced, Col Wu must...

At last! Morning Star takes antisemitism seriously

In an editorial on 3 November, the Morning Star has warned of a “horrifying increase in anti-semitic incidents across Britain since the start of the present Gaza crisis” and stated that socialists “cannot ignore this” even “as we fight for peace in Gaza”. This is a significant development. The sharp rise in antisemitic incidents that began immediately following Hamas’s pogrom on 7 October (i.e. well before Israel’s attack on Gaza) had previously scarcely been mentioned in the Morning Star. In fact, between 7 October and 3 November, while the paper frequently, prominently and correctly...

Enthusiasm for red-brown Wagenknecht

The German politician Sahra Wagenknecht has surprised no-one by announcing a new party. For the time being she has modestly given it the name “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht — for Reason and Justice”. Wagenknecht has tried this before: in 2018 she formed Stand Up, an outfit based upon vague anti-globalism, denunciations of finance capital and nostalgia for both East German Stalinism and West Germany’s 1950s social market economy, with support for small and medium businesses. Wagenknecht and her partner the former SPD leader Oskar Lafontaine were by then well known for their hostility to...

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