Can't keep a good nation down.

US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte on a tour of the death squad scarred battlefield.

The Iraqi elections have finally formally ended, 20 or more days after they began (click title for link). The result, with a US imposed dictator becoming an 'elected' Prime Minister, displays the utter cynicism which now defines colonial 'democracy' under the Obama stewardship of US Imperialism. Iyal Allawi won a two seat majority in the national Parliament, ahead of former PM Nouri al-Maliki, with both claiming mass electoral fraud and intimidation against the other side. Massive fraud is the bread and butter of elections in US dependencies, witnessed recently in Afghanistan and Honduras, but the crux issue has been who is allowed to stand and who is not. This election took place at a time when the US media and state were ramping up attacks against the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions for alleged undemocratic forms, yes, Obama and company have literally no shame, as it takes quite a leap of hagiography to ignore the 7 years of occupation in Iraq as the backdrop to this coronation. The justice and accountability commission – the organisation charged with pursuing the de-Ba'athification process set in train by the Americans in 2003 – has issued edicts seeking to ban 511 individual candidates and 14 party lists from the elections. On the eve of the vote the commission banned a further 50 candidates. Meanwhile, Ali Faisal al-Lami, the head of the justice and accountability commission, also ran as a parliamentary candidate, in a blatant conflict of interest indicative of a system where governmental institutions have been colonised by political parties and run as private fiefdoms. This follows mass banning of all opponents of the occupation in 2005 and 2007. It also follows the banning of anti-occupation trade unions, especially in the crucial oil sector which has been parcelled out to US and UK oil transnationals. Most chillingly of all it follows the work of John Negroponte as Ambassador to Iraq and his well worn policy of death squad warfare to silence anti Imperialist and pro-democracy opposition, a method he honed in Latin America under the Reaganite counter revolution of the 1980s. On April 20, 2004, Bush nominated Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq, stating that, "he has done a really good job of speaking for the United States to the world about our intentions to spread freedom and peace." Calling him "a man of enormous experience and skill"-in organising the rape and murder of men and women across the globe! (see this article for a review of this fascists work-http://www.ww4report.com/negropontedeathsquad). Negroponte oversaw the build up of Kurdish and Shiite Militias which were then used to murder Sunni resistance fighters, as well as other resistance forces. This strategy proved succesful, with former anti occupation forces around Moqtada al-Sadr joining the fray and taking a place within the US security fold, all in return for legitimacy and offices of state of course. As Major General Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani SAID IN 2005 "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation." Threatening everyone in a village with torture and death, if the village is deemed a potential base insurgent operations can be a very effective technique, whether the perpetrators are the Nazi SS in occupied Czechoslovakia, the death squads in El Salvador, or the new forces created under Negropontes watch in Iraq, such as the "Saraya Iraqna," which began offering big wads of American cash for insurgent scalps--up to $50,000, the Iraqi paper Al Ittihad reported. "Our activity will not be selective," the group promised. This strategy of tactical terror aimed to sever an insurgency from it's potential base of support. In the case of 40% refusing to vote in the Iraqi elections this approach would seem to have paid off.

Here we have it, Imperialist democracy, death squads and ballot boxes fiddled and stolen. Yet despite this fraud and repression, and despite the 100k plus US Troops still occupying Iraq, the resistance still fights and with no sign of capitulation. Al Sadr and other satraps trade offices for resistance, as many national liberation forces have done before, but the root cause of the resistance-US Imperialist occupation-means that new forces, new methods, and new fighters constantly emerge and renew the ranks, just as they have always done in the war against Imperialism.

Defend the right to protest! Defend the Gaza Demonstrators!

Below is an article from the Revolutionary Communist Group. Click title for link to original.

The British state has moved to marginalise those who want to resist imperialism in this country, and especially to criminalise those who take a militant stance against Zionism. In the course of 2009, 119 mostly young and predominantly Muslim people were arrested in connection with the demonstrations outside the London Israeli embassy in December 2008- January 2009 against Israel's murderous attack on the people of Gaza. 78 of them were charged; so far around 30 have received prison sentences and court cases continue. FRFI is participating in the campaign to defend and support all those facing the racist vengeance of the British state and joined the demonstration outside Isleworth Crown Court on 26 March, when the latest sentences were passed.
At least 1,400 Palestinians died in Israel’s Operation 'Cast Lead'; 5,500 were injured and tens of thousands left homeless. There was worldwide outrage and thousands took to the streets to voice their opposition and disgust. London was the scene of daily militant demonstrations around the Israeli Embassy.

The British police retaliated brutally, ‘kettling’ and batonning demonstrators. Since then dozens of protestors have been arrested. Most of the arrests took place six months after the demonstrations, following dawn raids during which the police handcuffed entire families and confiscated electronic material.

Most of those arrested were aged 16-20 years old, but some were just 15, and the youngest 12. The vast majority have been charged with violent disorder, which can carry a prison sentence of up to five years. At court almost all the defendants were required to surrender their passports and, despite the fact that they are overwhelmingly British citizens, all were served with immigration notices which stated that they could be deported depending on the outcome of criminal proceedings.


Judge Denniss, who is presiding over the vast majority of the cases, has made it clear that he is deliberately using harsh sentences as a deterrent to others in the future. These are political sentences; they are intended to criminalise protest and they are specifically aimed at the Muslim community in an attempt to frighten people away from public protests.

Two women, aged 18 and 19 were sentenced to 15 months imprisonment. One was subsequently released following an appeal against the length of her sentence. A Palestinian man, who days before had seen images in the press of the dead bodies of two of his cousins in Gaza, has been gaoled for two years for violent disorder. A humanities student, who is the father of a five-month old baby also received two years. A dental student who threw a plastic bottle in the direction of the Israeli embassy has received a 12-month sentence. So far all those imprisoned have accepted legal advice to plead guilty. The trials of those maintaining not guilty pleas have recently begun. On 24 March the case against Jake Smith was dropped, when it became apparent that the police had selectively edited video footage.

For more details of the campaign to support the Gaza protesters, go to http://gazademosupport.org.uk

The Latin American disease is Imperialist capitalism.

"ITS economies may have improved recently, but much of Latin America has performed poorly over the past two generations. The gap in income per head between the region and developed countries has widened since 1960, while many east Asian countries that were poorer have leapfrogged ahead. The root cause has been Latin America’s slow—or even negative—growth in productivity."(1)

And so begins a new report attempting to place the mal-development of Latin America within the discourse of productivity growth. The report fails on this 'productivity growth is the holy grail of development' foundation, it is not. But what does productivity growth mean? Well, simply put it means—gains in the efficiency with which capital, labour and technology are used in an economy. During the apparent heyday of productivity growth in the nations of advanced(Imperialist)capitalism, say from 1950-1975, productivity growth was averaging 4% per annum, due to high rates of investment in capital goods; infrastructure projects et al. The report makes much play of this comparison with Latin America, where:

"the short answer is that the typical Latin American firm is a small, inefficient service business and may well be operating in the informal economy. Productivity growth tends to be higher in manufacturing and agriculture than in services (see chart 2). It also tends to be higher in large firms which benefit from economies of scale. And it is much higher in formal businesses, which can invest in innovation.

However, Latin American manufacturers are also much less productive than they might be. This is partly because clogged, inefficiently run ports, airports and other transport systems make freight costs unduly high—for example, it shockingly costs more to get goods to the United States from most Latin American countries than it does from distant China or Europe.

But 60% of Latin Americans work in service firms. Many of these businesses are held back by lack of credit and by public policies that give them little or no incentive to become bigger or to operate legally. Latin American tax codes are inordinately complicated: it takes an average of 320 hours per year for a firm in the region to file its tax paperwork, compared with 177 hours in rich countries. The IDB found that a disproportionate share of tax is paid by big companies. Simplified tax regimes for small companies have been set up in 13 of the 17 countries the bank studied. Perversely, that encourages them to remain small."

For those not dominated intellectually and politically by pro-capitalist development ideology, such sweeping statements and half formed data sets provide little more than an example of the capacity of social scientists to pawn themselves to Imperialist capitalism. It is impossible to speak of Latin America in general. Mexico is massively different than Honduras, and Cuba is massively different to every other Latin American state. It is this comparative method-not comparing like with like-which allows a technically correct conclusion of low productivity growth. If we in fact break the region down into its constituent parts then we can come to find states with very impressive growth in productivity. For example, Cuba has managed to become a leading bio-tech state and make enormous strides in development the productivity of agriculture and industry, despite the US imposed blockade and constant subversion. It has managed all of this due to an internalisation of the concept developed by Che Guevara that capitalism had become impossible in the dependent countries by the 1950s. Similar recognition has been accepted in Venezuela and Bolivia, where socialist Presidents and mass movements have taken huge steps towards breaking the shackles of landlord-ism and capitalism, although the failure as yet to fully de-link from the Imperialist world system has meant the revolutionary processes are very much still in danger.(2)

The report reads less like an attempt to understand the true causes of development decay, and more like a snap shot, a literal stitch in time, of a region which has a rich and varied history, born of collosal struggles for the very development the reports authors make clear are the basis for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. No mention is made of the 5%growth of the Argentinian and Brazilian economies in the period from the late 1930s to the 1960s; no mention is made of the growth under nationalist regimes throughout the entire hemisphere, including Mexico. Such uncomfortable truths are omitted so as not to spoil the discourse flowing like swine effluent from the heartland of Imperialism-Washington and Wall Street. The conclusion, at odds with history, must always be: the state should get out of development, should reduce taxes, privatise and export raw materials and finished goods. This is how Brazil can be taken as a model. The report states: "Productivity growth in Brazil has surged recently: after being negative in the late 1990s, it rose to over 2% in 2007 and 2008 according to the Central Bank." This in a country the size of the USA, and yet with an economy smaller than Italy's, and in which the income gap is the highest of anywhere in the world, and where the status of women, children and the rural poor is akin to the time of the rampaging Slavocracy.(3) Brazil's government, whether under the conservative Cardosa, or the 'socialist' Lula, has consistently championed the rural latifundia ranchers and their genocidal model of development based upon cattle, biofuels and soya export, a model implicated in both the extreme hunger of the increasingly landless workers in the enormous Brazilian hinterlands, but also the direct murder of landless workers who resist heroically the logical outcome of 'increasing capitalist productivity'.(4)

The 800 pound gorilla in the room, as with all of the guff produced by 'elite' institutions in the West and North, is the refusal to place human development at the heart of an approach to development. It would be quite possible for Latin America to grow by 10% per year for 30 yrs and see very little in the way of social and human index progress. The experience of the restoration of capitalism in China, with its attendant destruction of the welfare state, family agriculture, the rights of workers etc should be a warning to anybody who is taken in by the narrow focus on productivity growth.(5) Human development placed front and centre has allowed the Venezuelan revolution to reduce poverty from 70% to less than 20%, whilst all but eliminating extreme poverty. All this whilst facing the threat of constant counter-revolution and external invasion. These poverty rates measure only cash income; they do not include non-cash benefits to the poor such as access to health care or education. If Venezuela were almost any other country, such a large reduction
of poverty in a relatively short time would be noticed as a significant achievement. However, since the Venezuelan government, and especially its president, Hugo Chávez Frías, are consistently disparaged in major media, government, and most policy and intellectual circles, this has not happened. Instead, the reduction in poverty
was for quite some time denied, although it acts as a beacon for the masses in the dominated countries of the global South and East.(6)

The problem of growth and development is political, not primarily economic, and social, not cultural. Latin America is a region richer in raw materials and productive workers and small farmers than any reasonable level of social development could require. The basis is there for a rich continental economy united and integrated on a firm anti Imperialist and socialist basis, using the pioneering example of Cuba as both guide and goal. The obstacle is the vampire of the North, sucking the lifeblood and the wealth from the South via policies based on the report reviewed here; demanding and securing access to cash crop exports and dollar earnings for debt; demanding access to national firms for purchase and incorporation; demanding that capitalist classes toe the line with the US Empire, and of course receiving such fealty. Resistance was met in the 50s, 60s and 70s by fascist coups and military dictatorships, which goes a long way to explain why the develop-mentalist strategies which proved so successful in the past broke down and became discredited. This is where Guevara's legacy is so important. Not for him was capitalism in the dependent countries simply obsolete in the abstract, no, for Guevara it had become obsolete because the small window of opportunity for a national capitalism had closed with the end of WW2 and the emergence of the US as the global counter revolutionary force. Faced with a revolutionary struggle against Imperialism, mobilising the workers and farmers for land reforms and pro worker economic and social policies, the capitalist classes of the dependent countries baulked and capitulated. In that sense only is capitalism obsolete in Latin America. The fact that moderately reformist governments such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have become radicalised and anti-capitalist merely proves that point, as the Cuban revolution did before it. The ALBA alliance of the Americas, incorporating Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and several smaller nations-based on non capitalist, non market exchanges-points towards the sort of social and economic exchange required to liberate Latin America and the Caribbean from the nightmare of Imperialist capitalism. The movements of the last decade must settle accounts with domestic and regional capitalist classes. The US will not be bogged down in West Asia forever. The Columbian option of renewed counter revolutionary warfare and subversion will move back centre stage, assisted by domestic capitalists.(7)


(1) The Age of Productivity: Transforming Economies from the Bottom Up, edited by Carmen Pagés, Inter-American Development Bank and Palgrave Macmillan.
(2)Helen Yaffe, Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution, MacMillan, 2009
(3)James Petras, Empire with Imperialism: The Globalizing Dynamics of Neoliberal Capitalism, Luciano Vasapollo, Zed Books, 2006
(4)Wright and Wolford. To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil, Food First Books, 2003.
(5)see, http://monthlyreview.org/100201hart-landsberg.php
(6)Mark Weisbrot, Poverty Reduction in Venezuela: A Reality-Based View, ReVista, Harvard Review of Latin America, Fall 2008
(7)http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/mar/18/venezuela-election

Yet more pseudo lefts are calling on people to vote Labour.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/24/budget-public-intervention-british-economy

The above article, by Seamus Milne, alleges that the budget heralds a return to Old Labour'-how very convenient that this can then justify a vote for Labour. I wonder which Old Labour? Is it the one which presided over the dispossession of the colonial masses; the poorest sections of the working class here; the 1970s Monetarism; the post WW2 unprecedented theft of colonial resources and ramped up colonial genocide under Major Clement Attlee. Which Old Labour does he mean? And no surprise that the bloated journalists who herald a return to Old Labour based upon a few crumbs of reforms for the poorest in Britain ignore the increased funding for the military, that is, for increased murder and theft of wealth from poor people in West Asia, occupied Ireland et al. Imperialist socialism may be revived a wee bit under darling and Brown; it is still Imperialism. The economism of the left, an economism which excludes migrant workers, refugees, those locked up in the increasingly privatised jail system, those who are not trade union members etc is alive and kicking with this election and the sort of journalism we see above. The likes of Woolas/Blunkett/Hodge/Frank Filed et al are omitted because it does tarnish the view somewhat, it being hard to call for a vote to a government and party in which out and out racists and in the case of Woolas and Blunkett-fascists- play leading and state sanctioned roles.

The rise of British fascism? nowt to do with Labour, guv'

http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=47,2325,0,0,1,0

Above is a link to a report of the recent fascist and anti fascist demos in Bolton. The report, by Trotskyist group Workers Power, makes much of the size of the contending forces, and shrieks a great deal about the fight against fascism being the key struggle of today. The reality is sadly different. The same day that a small gang of racists demonstrated against the tabloid and state created 'Islamic extremism' (anti Imperialist resistance) also witnessed the Labour Party in government deporting refugees to terror regimes; locking kids up in prisons; sexually assaulting male and female migrants and refugees detained by the 'worker in uniform' immigration cops. What do the Trots have to say about this? nowt, they actively collaborate with the state racists and social fascists of the Labour Party to cover it up! The Nazi bogeyman discourse was an invention of the Labour Party and the Socialist Workers Party in the 1970s as a way of derailing opposition to the racist and Imperialist Labour Party and trade union movement. The shadow Trots of Workers Power and their ilk merely talk this script left, whilst being careful not to mention the unmentionable reality of a labour movement so compromised by its actions and history as to be completely unsupportable. Fascism IS a growing threat in working class communities, especially the multi ethnic communities of the North and Midlands, not to mention London. Communists and anti Imperialists should be to the fore in that fight-focused as it must be against the true perpetrators of racist scapegoating of Muslims and those resisting Imperialism-the state and the main bosses parties, including the party which has been in the vanguard of this one sided war for 13 years-the Labour Party! This is rejected by the self styled vanguard of Workers Power/SWP etc who have come out once again in a 'Vote Labour and fight for socialism' frenzy. If Trotsky had not been cremated then this blogger is sure he would be turning in his grave.

Vote Labour-Vote to have your schools given away to parasites.

The Labour Party, not content with the trillion pound bail out of the bankers, now plans to extend its 'flagship' academy schools program to allow universities and bosses to run the worst performing schools. Academies were originally developed as a way to allow business types to take over a school in the state sector by putting up two million quid, and having the complete control over subsequent budgets, curriculum, and also hiring and firing. Around 200 academies have opened so far and the anti working class Labour Party has consistently promised to speed up the programme in coming years. This has proved very profitable to the social parasites who have leached hundreds of millions from state education over the past decade, but a complete disaster for working class pupils and teachers.

The long term goal has been to allow academies to become selective schools, excluding poorer pupils with learning problems, whilst channelling the 'brighter' pupils (those from middle class and upper working class backgrounds who have stable home lives and the money for computers, learning support etc) into academic streams. Working class pupils are directed to a myriad of pseudo subjects related to media and communication studies, neither of which are recognised as genuine subjects by universities. This would allow better off parents to avoid having to bear the cost of sending their brats private-yet another case of the welfare state being used to support the labour aristocracy and the middle classes!

Even this revanchist goal has proven unachievable under the bosses system. The constant theft of money which should go on pupils, but is funnelled into the pockets of the sponsors, who, incidentally no longer even have to put up any front money, means that academies are failing. Sheffield Park Academy - opened last year by the Duke of York following a £30m redevelopment - will become the third of the academies in South Yorkshire schools to be placed in "special measures". The school replaced a conventional comprehensive which was said to be making "reasonable progress" before shutting. Sheffield Park's sister school, Sheffield Springs Academy, which is also run by the United Learning Trust, a front for the fundamentalists of the Anglican Church, received a critical judgement from Ofsted in June of 2009. Its teaching was said to be inadequate, although Ofsted stopped short of placing it in special measures due to political pressure. Earlier in 2009, the Richard Rose Central Academy in Carlisle was placed in special measures following a protest over poor behaviour and teaching by parents. Its chief executive, who was recruited from the NHS without any teaching experience, subsequently quit. Unity City Academy in Middlesbrough was also placed in special measures, linked to the influence of fundamentalist Christian Richard Vardy, who has sole control of curriculum in the school, one of more than ten schools he has stolen.

This attempt to out do the tories in the run up to an election shows just whose side the Brownites/Blairites and union leaders are on-the bosses and the middle class wannabees of the better off workers. Those who think Labour will somehow become pro working class after defeat are pissing into the wind. Even with 13 years of faithful knee cushion and lip balm service to the lords of humankind in the boss class, Labour feel such fealty to their mates and peers that they have to just keep giving and giving. Lord Harris, who founded Carpetright and already runs several London academies, is included in a list of sponsors who will be allowed to run multiple schools, all of them with state money-that's working class taxes-and outside of any local democratic control. Brown trotted out the usual blandishments regarding ambition, excellence etc in what will prove a failed attempt to stop the Tories from winning the general election in May, stating: "Local authorities will be able to draw on the world-class excellence in these new chains to drive up standards in weaker schools. And primary schools themselves will be able to opt to join a chain. The evidence is clear – schools often work best when they work together. When schools partner with other schools - operating under a common leadership brand, with a shared ethos, and a shared commitment to excellence – standards are raised for all; the stronger schools and the weaker schools." This is regardless of the proven failure of his project to raise standards, even on its own anti working class terms.

For those revolutionaries who think voting Labour, and that telling working and unemployed people to vote Labour is a smart tactic which will 'help organise the resistance', to coin the term of one particularly deluded old labourite in one of the myriad micro sects which despoil the political landscape, a reckoning will await them in the future when workers have to fight tooth and nail against the racist, Imperialist and viciously anti working class Labour Party, as they have had to do, like millions in West Asia and beyond for a decade or more. The question will be raised of those like the SWP who support the Labour Party: 'where were you when my school/hospital/job was being destroyed by the bosses and the Labour Party'? The job of genuine communists is to expose this socialist support for our class enemies whenever and wherever we get the chance. The SWP and their ilk have crossed the Rubicon, as they have many times before, in choosing to support our class enemies.

No support to Jerry Hicks for Unite leader

Jerry Hicks, long time shop steward in the skilled trades, and a member of Respect, plans to contest the election for the General Secretary of the Unite super union this summer. Hicks got almost 40,000 votes against Simpson entirely outside the bureaucratic structures of the union itself and the usual suspects of the SWP and Socialist party backed 'United Left'. The candidacy has mustered all manner of bluster and wondrous imaginings from the permanent labourites of what passes for a Trotskyist left. Gerry downing, of the two man Socialist Fight group has this to say about Hicks candidacy:

"His election would strike a real blow to the bureaucracy and would enable us to begin to develop the basis of a real rank-and-file movemnent in the Buses and in other industries if we go about it the right way. The Manchester Right To Work meeting called for a rank-and-file movement and those of us who know what that should look like - no bureaucrats or union employees voting, workers wage for officials, standing for all electable positions against the bureaucracy answarable to the R+F movement, direct and participatory democratic structures, etc - have an opportunity to start fighting for it in a wider context, The SWP has not yet committed to Hicks, but it is difficult to see them not doing so after Manchester, the SP seems committed to McCluskey (although Jerry says after a meeting with them that he is "hopeful"), the AWL and Workers Power will surely back him so a real fight is in the offing. Sectarians will use the Lindsey excuse to abandon the class yet again....Many of us had difference with Jerry over Lindsey and I am not saying that we put those aside in any way but it would be criminal to allow these differences to balck participation in this campaign rather than fighting them out whenever we think they are holding the campaign back."(mistakes in original)

The capitulation to lesser evilism is strong on the labourite Trot left, and this is only a particularly shameless example. The most obvious absurdity is to base support on the number of votes won in an election. 40k is a drop in the ocean when compared to the vote for Simpson or Woodley, both of whom would trounce Hicks in an election. Secondly, what was this vote based on? Hicks postured a a left supporter of the reactionary Lindsey strikes, giving four square support for the racist verbal attacks and job thefts against international workers, whilst advising that perhaps it was best not to use reactionary slogans in the next round of strikes, which he then supported! He received such a surprise vote because the chauvinist wave, understandable given the reactionary politics of the pro Labour union tops, created an anti leadership mood based on the misguided perception that the union leadership were not doing enough to defend British workers exclusive rights to jobs and bailouts-precisely at the time when their union leaders were signing up to state sponsored and bosses funded campaigns to 'defend British manufacturing'! The bluster from Gerry Downing regarding people using Hicks support for anti working class strikes as 'excuses' for allegedly 'abandoning the class' would carry more weight if they did not come at a time when Downing and his comrade were urging Marxists to call for a vote to the viciously and openly anti working class Labour Party, surely the definition of abandoning the class.

Oh, he may have a dodgy record of backing the labour aristocracy over the class, but he is gonna build a rank and file movement, he even promised to do so at the Right to Work Conference. If Gerry were able to think a point through to the end then he may see the contradiction in that point. A person with a reactionary record standing for the leadership of a union-the arch bureaucrats position-claims he is going to build a grouping which will undermine his own power? Come of it Ger, if Hicks were committed to a rank and file then he would use his position and stable employment as a very skilled worker at Rolls Royce to build such a rank and file.

The Socialist Party are most likely to support the United Left candidate as part of their fealty drive towards the Stalinists who control large swathes of the union structures in Britain, and who are crucial to win the support of in the battle to form a new-old Labour Party. Support for Hicks is a diversion from the struggle against such politics-the politics of class collaboration-which define workers organisations today. Gerry makes no mention of why Hicks would be suspect in this war against class collaboration, the small matter of his membership of George Galloway's Respect Party, a party established to unite the classes, laid out clearly at the founding conference: "The national politicisation of the anti-war movement is now a necessary next stage in our own bloodless war of national liberation. The reality of the movement means that what we create must operate at two levels.‘The first level requires steps towards a mass unifying movement of grassroots radicals to hobble the State, bring it under popular control and complete an unfinished radical democratic revolution. This level will unite Muslims, Christians and Jews, socialists, liberal and conservatives, men, women and the disadvantaged of all types in one movement of democratic liberation.
(http://english.aljazeera.net).

How any consistent Marxist can support such a reactionary and house broken class collaborator is beyond the comprehension of this blogger.

Downing could cling to the concept that this is all just smart tactics and the united front? 'We don't think he will do as he says, but the leading sections of the class do, and for this reason we must expose him'? Except this is not what Gerry and his ilk do. No, they instead take Hicks, paint him red, then pop a cherry on top and call it progress. Gerry actually thinks this popular frontist will do as he says, is progress, and will lead forward the class struggle! He supports Hicks not because he seeks to expose him, after all the layer who support him is small and proven reactionaries.No, Gerry supports Hicks because he views a man who supports reactionary strikes and wishes to continue using union monies to fund the racist and Imperialist Labour Party because he has stagist view of clas struggle. First we support anything/body who is less worse than an alternative; then, later we start the actual class struggle against such half way houses. For now it is best to keep stum and be polite.

This may well be Gerry Downing's approach. It certainly is not Trotskyist tactics. With this in mind it is perhaps advisable that Downing remove the Trotsky quote from his paper, lest he fool anybody with this epigone Marxism.