Ministry of African Propaganda interview the Malcolm X Movement

Trade union strike wave, Part II: The Historic TU Sellout and Chris Kaba Campaign Collapse

 Trade union strike wave, Part II 

- Another wave of strikes after the historic sellout

- Chris Kaba campaign collapse demoralises potential of Black resistance

After the unilateral undemocratic decision of the RMT, ASLEF, CWU leadership to call off strikes in respect to the monarchy and its handover, the trade union strikes have started-up again. The sellout of the strikes for the British monarchy is one of the most glaring sellouts of the left ever in history up there with the support of the 1stWW by Brit 'socialists' and the sellout of the nine-day 1926 General Strike and the year-long 1984 Miners Strike by the Labour Party and TUC (there's a hint as to which forces hold back the workers in collaboration with the ruling classes).

Knowing what happened with the sellout to the monarchy and then the strikes re-starting by the same sellout leadership leaves us in a strange position, we have no actual left in this country who has the capacity or ideological ability to take stock of what happened, popularise it and then act on it to improve the class struggle. Nevertheless, despite all these massive limitations it's a good thing not a bad thing that workers in trade unions are back mobilised in the streets and on picket lines. The problem is that people should clearly now know that they have a very corrupt sellout leadership who don't want a real fight against the tory state but want to protect their big salaries. The RMT sold-out the P&O dispute in front of everyone's faces and hardly anyone has said a thing. 

Why do Brit workers accept and cover-up the sellout culture of the TU leadership? Partially it's because they share the racism and brit nationalism and careerist grift of the TU leaders and union structures. Mick Lynch openly argued in favour of prioritising former brit soldiers as RMT members above anyone else in a recent interview (see here). Another reason so many are so accepting is because people are increasingly desperate for hope that something will work for them. So they suspend critical faculties and become a little religiously delusional to some extent. We had the same dynamic played-out so graphically and tragically in the Corbyn years. 

Due to the deep internalisation of Brit state racism and colonialism on the left the strike wave brings out the entire white left onto the protests and picket lines. Black and brown people are generally squeezed out of left culture, trade unions and organisations so you have a massive disproportionate presence of white people and an equally disproportionate absence of black and brown people in the strike wave movement. 

The black radical grassroots were and still are to a lesser extent ready to mobilise around the police shoot-to-kill of Chris Kaba. However, the state and counter-revolutionary forces mobilised and the campaign for Chris Kaba has basically ground to a halt with no process and strategy of street protests and mobilising the community. To add to that the Chris Kaba spokesperson Jefferson Bosela stated on a 'twitch' session hosted by Michael Morgan on Weds 28 Sept that he had a meeting with London Met Police chief Mark Rowley and that Rowley had asked Bosela to keep that meeting secret, Bosela said on the twitch event that he would respect Rowley's request for secrecy. To meet the chief of racist and misogynistic torturers, rapists and killers which is the London Met Police chief and have the meeting in secret and keep the details from the community is indicative of the current low-point in the campaign. 

Black and brown communities have no leadership, organisations and very little voices that can build towards the kind of movements we need to develop the entire working class struggle as only the most oppressed and militant workers can lead and fight and they are the Black and brown working classes. We have the most radical class struggle traditions in this country from William Cuffay and his leadership of the Chartists, through to oppressed Irish people radicalising the working class movement in Britain through to Black and Brown working class youth leading the resistance against the state especially in the uprisings from 1979 to 1981 and of course the Aug 2011 uprising across the country. 

Then there is the sorry and pathetic sight of small number of farright forces who use and abuse Hinduism and their mirror-opposites using and abusing Islam mobilised a few youths respectively against each other in Tommy Robinson and the Brit state's dream in Leicester with a similar stupid incident in Birmingham. South Asian communities are largely hostile to this nonsense and a small group of idiots supported by a few leftists especially the reactionary role of Amrit Wilson backing the far-right using and abusing Islam should not be seen to represent anyone but their own sectarian and opportunistic agendas. 

The collapse of the Chris Kaba campaign and the sectarian antics which play neatly into the agenda of Tommy Robinson /Brit state in Leicester and the inability of Black and Brown communities to mobilise against and way beyond this into a struggle for Black Power socialist struggle remains a challenge that we cannot yet fulfil. For our part we in the MXM are mobilising public in-person events after a hiatus of two years to discuss exactly these issues on Fri 28th Oct 630pm at the London Irish Centre in Camden with leading grassroots trade unionists and anti-colonial socialist fighters and organisers on the platform. 

UK State Terrified Chris Kaba-related Black-led Uprising will Destroy its Hyper-Monarchist Narrative

 

UK State Terrified Chris Kaba-related Black-led Uprising will Destroy its Hyper-Monarchist Narrative

- State attempting to keep Chris Kaba campaign quiet and ineffective

- Importance of employing quick effective strategic grassroots direct-actions around #ChrisKaba justice campaign

- Grassroots Fenians led the way in political resistance to the Monarchy

- British left terrified of street-protest against Monarchy, instead hiding on (anti-)social media

The Queen died and immediately the Brit colonial-capitalist ruling classes sighed in profound relief that their labour lieutenants in the trade union leadership - CWU/Ward, RMT/Lynch/Gordon/Dempsey etc - actually turned out to be more loyal to the Monarchy than even the bourgeoisie! A historic sell-out in the working class trade union movement that exposed the Monarchist loyalty and leanings of those in the case of Lynch and Dempsey like to bandy around their apparent political affiliations with leading Irish republican socialist James Connolly. 

However, just as the sell-out was announced on the morning after Elizabeth Windsor's death the police shoot-to-kill of 24yr old Chris Kaba in Lambeth, South London set off again the pattern of state killing of a working class black youth and the resultant outpouring of grief, anger and determination of black and allied working class people seething with a sense of injustice and seeking to get that justice, many would like to in the words of Malcolm X to 'declare their/our right on this earth to for Chris Kaba and the Black community to be treated as a human being, to be respected as a human being, which we/they intend to bring into existence by any means necessary'. As soon as the colonial capitalist state removed one irritation: the strike wave, another wave of humanity asserted itself around the martyrdom of Chris Kaba.

The preparations for the death of Liz Windsor have been years in the making, a weaponisation of her death for the state to deepen its control over the great unwashed domestically and globally. In this context the possible uprising of the Black and poor youth at this time around Chris Kaba is something the state wants to avoid at all costs. The spectre of the 5-day national uprising after the shoot-to-kill of Mark Duggan on Aug 04 2011 haunts the ruling classes. 

The August 2011 Uprising haunts the state and lives-on as a glorious folk tale on the council estates across the country. Mark Duggan's 21yr old son Bandokay , a well-known rapper from the Broadwater Farm-based 'Original Farm Boys' crew/music group, often speaks about the uprisings on the many interviews on social media. These interviews and the music of OFB / Bandokay keeps the Uprising alive in the minds and imaginations of our youths beyond that which they hear in conversations amongst their older peers and family. Of course Broadwater Farm council estate itself is a militant symbol of Black working class-led resistance and victories against the British state especially due to the Uprising there on Oct 6 1984.

The state quickly announced a homicide investigation into the police officer who shot dead Chris Kaba. And then quickly announced that the officer was suspended (on full-pay, no doubt), angering his colleagues who threatened to hand in their weapons. Please do, thank you. Now it seems the family are imminently going to receive the body-cam footage. Labour Party MPs were quick to make statements pretending to be in synpathy with the Chris Kaba family while they daily collaborate with the state to deliver torture and death to our people on the council estates. Labour Party MP's were at the Chris Kaba protest in Whitehall where Diane Abbott was booed by Black youths for demanding everyone keeps everything peaceful. 

It is globally known that if your loved one is killed you go out with all your peoples and you make as much noise and destruction to show that the injustice will not go without resistance, hence the meaning of the slogan: no justice, no peace. The two-week Black-led uprising following the martyrdom of George Floyd is a case in point. There are alternatively many peaceful means by which the same aims can be met. 

The point of tactics is to achieve strategies of rallying further sections of the grassroots, building a broad united front, and to show the powers that be that we can apply direct pressure to ensure that they cannot oppress us without consequences to them. Such peaceful direction actions could be occupations and sit-ins of strategic institutions of the police, council etc; non-violent direct actions could be a on-going rolling hunger strike-tents at Brixton police station or New Scotland Yard; to peacefully block the transport system of the capital which is easily done with quite few people. With the imaginations of the grassroots many other things can be done. Ideally all tactics should be deployed all at once. 

The Chris Kaba justice campaign has grassroots backing to do so. The grassroots are ready for action but lack the leadership , determination themselves and organisations necessary for what we need to do for Chris Kaba and for everyone in defending them against further death and injury by the state, Realistically, it is probably unlikely that the grassroots will rise-up but we cannot but point to what decades, generations and centuries of our resistance informs us to do. We stand with our martyrs and ancestors whose sacrifices meant that we live today, there is no alternative to our advocacy.

The Sinn Fein leadership continue the political rationale of the British colonial 'good friday agreement' which means SF members have been strictly instructed to the nutty colonial monarchist sentiments of the unionist community in the occupied 6 counties. So heartbreaking and embarrassing to see SF leaders Alex Maskey and Michell O'Neil schmooze with king charles the turd and try to spin it as something positive for Irish people. 

This should not take away from the fact that the real opposition to the uk monarchy at the grassroots has been led by Irish Fenians / Irish Republicans. Be it the slogan against the king on Black Mountain by Belfast, the 'fuck your crown' banner drop by the Green Brigade in the stadium and the only street protest called against the monarchy in Belfast too. This current Brit monarchist hype is being used to further push away any chance of Scottish independence or Irish reunification. The monarchy doesn't just handover the break-up of its union and rule, it only does so when there is an escalating mass pressure from the colonised masses, of which currently there is an absence. 

While one might criticise the SF leadership, what SF have done in the past and still today are head and shoulders above the pathetic state of the British (colonial) left who have firmly stayed in their bedrooms looking nervously out of their windows into the real world while writing some posturing nonsense on social media. We say: fight by any means necessary for justice for Chris Kaba, against the racist anti-working class brutality of the brit state. As we go forward the global system of colonial-capitalism is going to deepen even further to terror which it is inflicting on workers and peasants the world over, this increasingly pressure on us including in Britain and Ireland will push all the oppressed to react. How and when, we don't know, but the science of repression and resistance is a universal and permanent one. 

Further watching:

What to do when the state kills one of us: 'Ultraviolence': https://vimeo.com/570908985