Vol. 64/No.18 May 8, 2000
Communist candidate gains hearing in London race
BY PETE CLIFFORD
LONDON—"For more than 100 years it has been the colonial and imperialist power in London that denied peasants their land in Zimbabwe," declared Jonathan Silberman to a Communist League election meeting in London on April 22. Silberman, a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union at GlaxoWellcome, is standing as the League's candidate in the May 4 London Assembly elections for the Lambeth and Southwark constituency.
"London's complaints that the government in Zimbabwe is not distributing the land in the way it wants is the height of hypocrisy. It has cut off promised aid for land distribution and exudes imperial arrogance in its dealings with the government there," Silberman said.
"Whether the wealthy rulers of Britain are pursuing their interests in Zimbabwe or the United Kingdom, it's their profit system which drives them to attack working people," the Communist League candidate said. "Our challenge is to see working people in Zimbabwe as allies, and to build a movement of working people here that can overturn the imperialist government in London."
Silberman pointed out that Britain organized brutal colonial land seizures in the 1890s, where half the population of Zimbabwe was forcibly moved to barren communal areas. It backed a white minority regime until 1980, and in the end demanded the liberation fighters not touch the giant white-owned farms in exchange for a negotiated end to the racist government.
"No doubt, Prime Minister Anthony Blair hopes that by having well-known antiapartheid campaigner Peter Hain as his spokesperson on Zimbabwe he can imply British policy today is not rooted in this past and is aimed to aid the people of Zimbabwe. The reality is quite different," Silberman said. "The people of Zimbabwe have only ever achieved anything, including independence, and will only ever achieve anything, through their own struggle. As the Irish know too, Britain never grants anything without a fight."
"At the same time as London is whipping up a campaign to defend its imperialist interests in Africa, they are also seeking to divide working people here against immigrant workers," said Silberman. The Labour government recently floated the idea of requiring visitors from the Indian subcontinent to put up a bond of œ10,000 during their stay. The next day they said they would deport up to 3,000 Kosovan Albanians who came here during the last year. Not to be outdone, Conservative party leader William Hague proposed that in the future all asylum seekers should be housed in misnamed "reception centers." These are internment camps, such as one already established by the government at Oakington.
Silberman argued that the government's "racist policies are aimed at dividing and weakening this vast new layer of workers as they come into the labor force." Pointing to the recent janitors strikes in the United States, and the 18-month-long strike by airline catering workers at London's Heathrow airport, he said, "The reality is, the working class is getting stronger through immigration." Silberman spoke about the significance of the 80,000-strong march April 1 in Birmingham protesting job losses facing car workers there. "This was the biggest union protest in a decade," he said.
Paul Galloway, a member of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union and Communist League candidate for the Levenshulme ward of Manchester Council, reported at the meeting on his participation in blockades by dairy farmers protesting the low prices they receive from the supermarkets for milk.
Silberman explained that it is in the context of this kind of resistance by workers and farmers that Prime Minister Blair "is losing in his efforts to get his candidate elected mayor of London May 4." Blair organized the Labour Party selection process to ensure that his nominee, Frank Dobson, was selected, although only gaining a minority of votes. The Prime Minister has proved unable to gain support for Dobson in the campaign. Instead, Labour MP Ken Livingstone, despite being forced to run as an independent and stripped of his party membership, continues to be seen by working people as the legitimate Labour candidate and is on course to win the election.
Silberman pointed to how the Communist League election campaign had gained more press coverage than before. In the last week the two local papers in the area ran articles by all the candidates. Previously such articles were only open to the main capitalist parties.
Silberman said that he has been able to explain on the job, through campaign engagements, and in the media that his campaign aims to chart "a political course for working people to take power through a revolutionary struggle. This may seem utopian to some. But I ask: What is more utopian--the idea that the current wave of redundancies are going to be stopped by electing someone, or that working people can do what the Cuban people did and organize a mighty revolution to take power out of the hands of the exploiters? The latter, I believe, is the most practical and least utopian proposal for working people."
Pete Clifford is a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union.
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