The Holloway RCP branch does midweek paper sales outside a North London tube station, near Arsenal Football Club (AFC).
The other week we had an interesting conversation with a worker at the club, who bought The Communist off us. He lamented that AFC fired their kit man, Mark Bonnick – who’s worked for the club almost 25 years – for pro-Palestine posts on social media.
This sacking has caused outrage amongst some workers at the club. The man we spoke to was so incensed, not just because Mark is a nice guy, but because of the sheer hypocrisy of the move.
He pointed out how, shamefully, it’s apparently not okay for Mark to oppose genocide online. But when it comes to the war in Ukraine, it’s okay for AFC to splash the Ukrainian flag everywhere, including printing numerous articles in their match-day programme about this.
The worker correctly pointed out that the only opinions that are acceptable are the ones that toe the line of western imperialism.
Workers at AFC are angry! Football under capitalism is controlled by a tiny handful of billionaires, who demand complete subservience of their workers to a system that produces absurd personal wealth side by side with mass poverty and imperialist war.
Ultimately, all the billionaires need to be kicked out of football. And for that, they need to be kicked out of society as a whole!
For a revolution against the billionaires! Justice for Mark!
Keep the flag flying high!
I recently got a missed call – followed by a text – from my housing officer. Apparently there had been some complaints about a Palestine flag hanging on part of the communal balcony.
Perhaps if I’d chosen an England flag it’d be a different story. Who knows?
Somehow, the housing association always seems to have trouble fixing the front door, the lift, the fire alarms, or the hot water. But displaying a Palestine flag? They’re on it!
It’s true – I did it! Guilty as charged. And it’s a flag that is extremely popular with everyone in the building, who are all anti-genocide.
In fact, the whole building is adorned with Palestine flags, ever since a Zionist complained and tried to have a Palestine placard in the ground floor community centre removed.
After ignoring the text, I ran into the cleaner who informed me that the same housing officer had instructed him to take down the flag.
It just so happens the cleaner is also pro-Palestine – and so the flag stays flying!
It’s like the Marxist Ted Grant would have said: “Not a wheel turns, not a lightbulb shines, and not a flag gets taken down, without the kind permission of the working class.”
Nico Baldion, Barking
