WRITING in the Times newspaper yesterday, Labour Prime Minister Starmer urged students not to attend the protests called at universities across the country to mark the second anniversary of Israel’s genocidal war against over two million Palestinians in Gaza.
Starmer’s urging to students didn’t bother to refer to the over 67,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, who have been slaughtered by the Zionist regime or the 460 who have died from the deliberate Israeli campaign of mass starvation.
Instead, Starmer proclaimed that demonstrating against genocide ‘is not who we are as a country’ before going on: ‘It’s un-British to have so little respect for others’.
Starmer’s message that it is un-British to protest against genocide was repeated by Labour education secretary Bridget Phillipson who told ITV’s ‘Good Morning Britain’ programme: ‘Even where these protests are lawful, I think our British values are to also show respect for one another’ before twittering on about ‘compassion’ and a ‘sense of empathy’ with the sufferings of Israelis.
There is to be no compassion or empathy for the sufferings that Palestinians are enduring every hour of the day in Gaza and across the occupied West Bank for the over 70 years of brutal occupation and forced removal from their land by the Zionist regime.
In fact, Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is busy drawing up plans to ban all marches and demonstrations and make them all ‘unlawful’.
In place of compassion and empathy for Palestinians, all Starmer and his politically corrupt and treacherous Labour administration is concerned with is attempting to hold back the massive wave of anger from workers and youth against the complicity of this Labour government with genocide.
Starmer refuses to admit that genocide is being carried out by the Zionist state despite the recent ruling by the UN International Commission of Inquiry which officially found the Israeli state guilty of the crime of genocide.
Instead of naming the Israeli state as guilty of war crimes, Starmer drapes the Labour government in the Union Jack flag and brands as un-British all those who oppose genocide and who call for the independent state of Palestine.
Starmer and his reactionary ministers demonstrate a wilful ignorance of the real history of the working class in Britain which, from its very origins, has shown its preparedness to fight and even endure pain in support of the oppressed people across the world fighting against capitalist brutality.
In a letter dated 19 January 1863, Abraham Lincoln, who led the North in the American Civil war against the slave-owning racist Confederacy in the South, wrote to the workers in Manchester praising the ‘sublime heroism’ of British workers for their support in the war.
The blockade of cotton produced by the slave-owning bosses in the South had closed down the huge cotton industry in Lancashire, throwing thousands of cotton workers out of a job and into starvation.
The cotton mill owners launched a campaign for the UK government to send in the Navy to break the blockade. The workers, despite the huge cost to their lives, responded with mass demonstrations and meetings in support of the war against slavery and for the emancipation of black workers in America.
In the face of this mass opposition, the British government did not dare to intervene on the side of the Confederacy thus helping to secure the economic isolation of the slave owners and making a huge contribution to their defeat – as Lincoln acknowledged.
This is the true history of the British working class that lives on today. Workers and youth have demonstrated their determination not to be deceived or intimidated by Starmer and will not back down under the threats of police attacks on the right to march and demonstrate.
The trade unions must end their silence by forcing the TUC to call a general strike to bring down Starmer’s government replacing it with a workers government. This will immediately give all support required for the victory of the Palestinian revolution and the establishment of the Independent State of Palestine. This is the way forward.
