THE failed terror attacks on Park Lane and Glasgow Airport far from being a huge blow against British imperialism will in fact be welcomed by it.
This is because they will allow its government, led by Gordon Brown, to bring in draconian anti-working class security legislation that will virtually abolish basic rights and liberties in this country.
Principally, such attacks will be used by the government to bring in its long sought measure for the police to be able to hold ‘terror suspects’ for 90 days, without having to charge or free them, and to strengthen its right-wing anti-working class stance on all of the major issues.
From a military point of view the ruling class in Britain has got nothing to complain about as far as these attacks are concerned.
Compared to the massive slaughter that it is carrying out in Iraq and Afghanistan against civilian populations, the three failed terror attempts do not even qualify as pin pricks.
In Iraq, up to 700,000 people have been killed since the end of the conventional war, and in Afghanistan hundreds of civilians are now being slaughtered every week.
Imperialism is in fact state-organised terrorism against the working masses of the world. Ruthless terrorism of civilian populations is part and parcel of the make up of the British ruling class – witness the firebombing and killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Dresden during the Second World War, and before that every campaign carried out throughout British colonial history.
Faced with these attacks the oppressed nations have the right to fight back in the way that they consider best.
However, as is well known all the world over, millions of British workers, and the vast majority of the British people, including the Scottish nationalist government, are opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, workers played a huge part in the bringing down of the Blair government and creating a situation where Britain is beginning its withdrawal from Iraq.
Terrorist attacks on British workers in this situation only strengthen the Brown government and therefore serve to weaken the struggle of the Iraqi, Afghan, and British workers.
Individual terrorism always plays this role and always will. This is why the Marxist movement has always opposed individual terrorism.
It is in fact a vote of no confidence in the ability of the working class to overthrow the British and other imperialist ruling classes, and constitutes an attempt by the self-sacrificing individual to replace the working class and the socialist revolution with his or her individual action.
The way to put an end to terrorism is to smash imperialism and overthrow the capitalist system with socialist revolutions. The capitalists in fact pay little notice to terrorist attacks. There is too much at stake as they seek to reorder the world.
Sunday’s bourgeois newspapers, in their financial sections refer to what they call the ‘Gold Rush’. They are talking about Iraq, and the fact that their puppet regime is set to legislate the privatisation of all of Iraq’s extensive non-oil producing industries, as well as allowing a significant penetration of private capital into the Iraqi oil industry.
This will mean an intensification of the war in Iraq. This means that tens of thousands more Iraqis will die, so that this ‘Gold Rush’ can take place.
The WRP and the News Line calls on the working class and the trade unions in Britain to ally themselves with the oppressed Iraqi and Afghan nations in deeds as well as with words.
This means the trade unions taking strike action to bring down the Brown government to go forward to a workers’ government that will end all terrorism by withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and establishing fraternal relations in place of the current relationship of imperialist robber and victim.
