Last weekend’s Communist Party Executive Committee discussed plans to mount one of its biggest electoral campaigns since the early 1980s. It was reported to the EC that organising meetings have been held across Britain, campaign plans sketched out, artworkers are working on designs and finishing touches are being made to Manifestos for elections in Wales, Scotland and later, for England.
“State support for the capitalist monopolies and their profits is at the root of society’s major problems, including the Tory government’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 crisis”, Bill Greenshields told a meeting of the Communist Party’s Executive Committee over the weekend. “This approach characterises the whole range of government policies from austerity and privatisation to state subsidies and the woefully inadequate test-and-trace system”, he charged. Mr Greenshields said that Britain’s successful vaccination programme owed most to the role played by public sector investment, the NHS and other public health and education institutions.
Navalny is not the ‘saviour fighting for democracy’ that the Western media has portrayed him as. He has consistently proven himself to be an ultranationalist and has mixed with far-right figures from across Russia.
Protestors in London are reported to have dug a 100ft long tunnel near Euston Station in protest against the continuing work on the £106bn High Speed Rail 2 (HS2) Project that seeks to connect London with cities further north. Bailiffs are attempting to remove the protestors arguing there is a danger of the tunnel collapsing as work on the railway continues. The activists have locked themselves inside the tunnels but there has already been reported collapses and water ingress although no one has been harmed yet.
Germany’s largest party, the CDU, has appointed a new leader after a year of deliberation in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Armin Laschet won 53% of the vote and will now hope to steer the party forward as it looks to progress past Merkel’s 18-year rule. With a leading role in the EU, Europe’s largest economy plays an important role as the relative ‘middle ground’ to increasingly polarised governments to its East and West.
The UK has now administered the first COVID-19 vaccinations to over 5.4 million members of the population according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s latest update on Friday 22 January. The rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and, more recently, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been lauded by Conservative MPs as large success of an otherwise shambolic and devastating response to the coronavirus crisis.
The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) celebrated the International Day of Education by highlighting the analysis and demands for education made during WFDY’s 20th General Assembly held in Cyprus at the end of 2019. You can read the full resolution below.
“Decades of underinvestment and privatisation in our health, elderly care and emergency services have produced Britain’s disastrous COVID-19 death rate – the sixth worst in the world”, according to the Communist Party. Speaking to the party’s Political Committee on Wednesday evening (20 January 2021), general secretary Robert Griffiths said the Tory government’s late and inadequate response to the coronavirus had added a “deadly twist” to the figures.
The Communist Party has issued the January edition of its news sheet Unity! focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rolls Royce workers win, Brexit, student occupations, the upcoming CP trade union aggregate and plans for the YCL centenary.
On December 30th 2020, members of the An Gardaí Síochána fatally shot Nigerian-born George Nkencho, a 27 year old man in mental health crisis.
The Young Communist League has issued an updated statement on the ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic in response to the massive increase in deaths and new infections and the government’s total failure to battle the crisis.
The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) has condemned the cynical move by the outgoing Trump administration to add Cuba to their targeted ‘list of state sponsors of terrorism’ as a pretext for further attacks on the socialist island.
Museveni’s popularity has fallen since he first took power in following a guerrilla struggle in 1986 and recent months have relied on extreme repression to prevent Bobi Wine’s opposition from wresting power.
Since the new year, Istanbul’s University campuses have become a battleground of violent clashes between students and police. The protests were sparked by President Tayyip Erdogan’s appointment of Melih Bulu, an active member of Turkey’s ruling AKP party, as new rector of the prestigious Boğaziçi University by presidential decree.
Scottish Labour Leader, Richard Leonard, has today (14 January 2021) announced his resignation with immediate effect, making him the tenth leader to try, and fail, to overturn the Party’s seemingly terminal decline. Nearly 14 years since the SNP first went into Government, Labour appear devoid of answers as the next election looms.
To kick start activities in 2021, the Communist Party is holding an aggregate of members who are also active or intending to become active trade unionists. The event is open to members of the Communist Party and the Young Communist League. The Party’s Industrial Organiser Andy Bain is calling for a big turnout by CP trade unionists early in the year, to plan campaigns and struggle, as a real boost to the labour and anti austerity movements.
A Boeing 737 flying with Sriwijaya Air downed in the Java Sea carrying over 60 people, just four minutes after takeoff from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta on Saturday (9 January 2021). The plane lost 10,000 feet of altitude in less than a minute, flight tracking data shows. The Indonesian Navy initially mobilised for a large scale search for the plane, but locals were already pulling wreckage from the sea where the plane downed.
Indonesian radical cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir has been released from prison 8 years into his initially 15-year-long sentence. The 82-year-old was imprisoned for supporting terrorism in the country following the discovery of a terrorist military training camp in Aceh Province.
Last night, after nearly six months off, the so-called ‘Clap for Carers’ returned. A mainstay of the Thursday nights during the original lockdown back in Spring 2020, its return is as tragic as it is insulting. The original ‘Clap for Carers’ lasted 10 weeks and millions of people took part across the country.
Senators were unable to confirm Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States yesterday after a large “Stop the Steal” demonstration stormed Capitol Hill, marking the first time in history that the seat of US power has been broken into by protestors.
