Last Friday, the Cardiff Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) organised and led a rally of students and workers against Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was invited to speak at Cardiff University Conservative Society.
For three hours, a crowd of protestors peacefully surrounded the building where Rees-Mogg was speaking.
Our comrades led chants of revolutionary slogans, and gave speeches attacking Rees-Mogg as a vile representative of British imperialism and an active supporter of the genocide being carried out against the Palestinian people.
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When Rees-Mogg finally exited, surrounded by six heavy-set security guards, there was a spontaneous rush on Rees-Mogg’s getaway car. A number of protestors were manhandled and dragged away.
Members of the Revolutionary Communist Party (@revcommunists) proudly helped evict right-wing Tory warmonger, Jacob Rees-Mogg (@Jacob_Rees_Mogg) from Cardiff University campus.
Students & workers say: genocide endorsing reactionaries aren’t welcome! 🧵
— Revolutionary Communist International (@marxistcom) April 27, 2024
A video of this incident went viral, propelling the protest to national headlines, and resulting in an interview on LBC with Fiona Lali, campaigns organiser for the RCP.
Media frenzy
The media frenzy that ensued has been nothing short of hysterical, not to mention extremely hypocritical.
‘Pro-Gaza students harass Jacob Rees-Mogg hurling vicious foul-mouthed abuse’ read one headline from the right-wing Daily Mail. And from our friends at The ‘Torygraph’: ‘Jacob Rees-Mogg chased off campus by crowd of hard-Left demonstrators’.
Where is the uproar from these same bosses’ rags over Israel’s massacre in Gaza? Where is the outrage over the establishment’s clampdown against our right to free speech and assembly?
There’s not a peep from these ladies and gentlemen when our comrades are arrested and harassed by the police for standing with the Palestinian people, nor when protestors in the United States are brutalised on campuses.
But when members of Parliament are inconvenienced by the rightful disgust at their actions; when ordinary people get organised to express their rage – suddenly our precious ‘democracy’ is under attack from a far-left mob!
They accuse us of hounding, intimidating, and curtailing Rees-Mogg’s right to speech. Give us a break!
Rees-Mogg can easily access the BBC and the mainstream papers to spew his right-wing rubbish. He also has a regular spot on GB News.
The idea that his right to express his views is under threat as a result of any protest is laughable. It is our democratic rights – the rights of ordinary workers and young people – that are being trampled upon.
This episode has once again revealed the role of the gutter mainstream press: to loyally act as a mouthpiece of the ruling class.
Establishment closes rank
The establishment parties have also closed rank to denounce our actions.
Richard Holden, the chairman of the Conservative Party, complained that “no elected politician should have to put up with this shrill intimidatory idiocy”.
Labour shadow minister Jo Stevens also chimed in to express her ‘concerns’: “We cannot accept a culture of intimidation in our politics… The right to lawful protest is sacrosanct, but harassment and intimidation is unacceptable.”
We expect criticism from the chairman of the Tory Party, who are openly complicit in Israel’s war crimes.
But how disgusting is this haughty scolding from the so-called ‘Labour’ leadership, who run to defend Rees-Mogg, and to attack ordinary workers and students.
A ‘Labour’ party worth its salt would stand on the side of the oppressed, and against the oppressor. But Labour didn’t lift a finger to oppose this visit. In fact, the Cardiff University Labour Society also condemned the protest!
The reason for this is plain and simple: Starmer’s Labour also has blood on its hands. Hiding behind empty ‘humanitarian’ phrases, these Red Tories have supported Netanyahu’s war every step of the way. They are no different from their colleagues across the aisle.
Step up the struggle!
We will not be cowed by this circus of condemnation. To be attacked by our class enemies shows that we are doing something right! We wear this as a badge of honour.
We are proud to have led a demonstration against this Tory warmonger. We have every right to protest in this way over the bloody onslaught in Gaza.
We will continue our protests. And we will step up our struggle against our ruling class.
This weekend, we are holding the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party, where we will discuss our plans to organise a force that can bring down British imperialism and the Zionist occupation.
We will take a leaf out of the mass protests in the United States (see below). And we will mobilise for such a movement here, putting forward a communist programme.
While Starmer’s Labour sides with the Tories, we – the revolutionary communists – stand with the working class and the Palestinian people.
If you too stand on the side of the oppressed and exploited, and agree that we need to overthrow this barbaric capitalist system once and for all: join the RCP today!
Warwick students occupy campus in solidarity with Gaza
Last Friday, inspired by the ongoing movement in the USA, students at the University of Warwick occupied the campus piazza, in protest against the university’s complicity in the western-imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza.
The university has direct connections with Rolls-Royce, Moog, BAE systems, and many other defence contractors that facilitate Israel’s massacre against the Palestinian people. Warwick activists are demanding that all such affiliations and partnerships be immediately terminated.
Warwick University, UK now.
Students have a solidarity encampment.
Resistance is growing . pic.twitter.com/J1WMM3pndW— Charlie Pooter (@pooter_cha49041) April 26, 2024
On day one, following a call by the camp’s organisers for a solidarity rally, around 300 people mobilised in support for Palestine. This was not just students. People travelled from across the Midlands to express their solidarity, and to fight against the university’s imperialist ties.
Warwick communists have helped to advertise and publicise the protests, through social media and campus stalls. We have spoken to attendees and handed out leaflets, putting forward our demands: for worker boycotts and blockades of the arms industry; for staff and student control over universities, including opening up the books to the unions; and for mass struggle against the enemy at home – the warmongers in Westminster.
Our programme has been received positively. The mood has been radical. The vast majority of students we have spoken to don’t just want to support the demonstrations on campus, but want to directly get involved – and go further.
For the Palestine solidarity movement to succeed, it must harness the energy expressed by students, involve university staff, and spread beyond campus.
USA: Organise the mass struggle! A communist programme to escalate the encampments
The Communist (USA)
Student activists have escalated the Palestine solidarity movement significantly over the past week, establishing encampments at campuses across the country.
The goal of the students is to divest – that is, cut all financial ties – from companies that are aiding Israel’s war.
This kind of escalation is exactly what the movement needed. Israel’s savage war on Gaza continues and may soon reach a new crescendo with an assault on Rafah, despite months of pro-Palestine protests across the United States and around the world.
In fact, Genocide Joe just signed a new “aid” package that includes $15 billion in military funding for Israel to help facilitate the Zionist state’s crimes against humanity.
It is clear to all that Biden and Netanyahu will press on with their genocidal war at all costs and that we need to take matters into our own hands.
The Revolutionary Communists of America wholeheartedly support this movement and seek to help escalate it however possible. We encourage all communists, pro-Palestinian workers, and young people to help build this movement nationwide.
Below, we offer our proposals for how we can collectively escalate the movement further.
Divest and disclose
In addition to Gaza, the general crisis of capitalism and the hypocrisy of the ruling class weigh heavily on the minds of millions. Wide layers of students are correctly looking for a concrete way to make a material dent in Israel’s war effort.
In this context, the call to divest and disclose is filled with progressive content and provides a concrete focal point for the movement. Students naturally understand that they alone don’t have the power to shut down the war, but they’re doing everything they can to play their part in the broader Palestine solidarity movement.
The financial assets, investments, and ties of the private universities cracking down on the movement should be immediately disclosed and divested. But who is going to make that happen?
Clearly, the school administrators cannot be trusted to do this. They’re only concerned with expanding their endowments, tuition fees, real estate, and other assets. Even if they temporarily offload their current holdings under pressure from the movement, this amounts to selling those assets to other capitalists, and they may well reinvest in these companies later on.
That’s why students, teachers, and campus workers need control and management over these institutions. The unelected administrations are using tuition fees and other income to invest in companies that profit from the Zionists’ war in Gaza. These people should not be in charge. They have forfeited their right to govern these centres of learning, research, and cultural enrichment.
The majority should dictate how society is run – what and how things are produced and distributed – and this includes all institutions of higher education.
Link up with workers
Achieving divestment through mass collective action would be a step forward for the movement, educating students and pro-Palestine workers on the efficacy of mass struggle.
But this alone would not be sufficient to stop the war. The university investments are a drop in the bucket of the billions that are sent and invested in Israel by governments and capitalists worldwide.
Students must therefore urgently link up with the broader working class if we are to achieve a serious escalation of the movement. Otherwise, our impact will be limited.
A great way to start this process would be to appeal to teaching staff and campus workers to join the movement. The universities can only run due to the labour of professors and adjuncts, janitors, groundskeepers, maintenance, cafeteria, and other workers. We should appeal to these workers on a class basis to strike in solidarity with this movement.
Faculty and staff and the University of Texas have shown the way forward in this regard, releasing a statement condemning the university president’s outrageous decision to call in state troopers to violently suppress the protests on Wednesday.
Faculty members at Columbia and NYU also joined the protests earlier this week. At Emory University in Atlanta, an economics professor and the chair of the Philosophy department were among those arrested amidst a brutal display of police violence.
We must also appeal to the unions to mobilise their membership in support of this fight. UAW Region 9A should be applauded in this regard.
Now it’s up to UAW President Shawn Fain, who has previously called for a ceasefire in Gaza and led his workers on a major strike, to mobilise the entire national membership in support of the movement.
The rest of the labour leaders should likewise mobilise their members in international solidarity.
Through the faculty and staff on campus, as well as other workers we can recruit to the movement, we can appeal to the broader working class to join in.
The decisive power lies with workers involved in shipping, arms manufacturing, media, and other key industries that are necessary for sustaining the war. These workers have an exceptional role to play in halting the US-Israeli war machine. As we noted in a previous article:
“The Biden administration recently approved the transfer of 25 F-35 fighter jets to Israel. Final assembly of the planes takes place at a Lockheed Martin facility in Fort Worth, employing over 18,000 workers. Beyond these 18,000 lies a vast network of workers producing and transporting materials and parts. In total, producing the planes requires the efforts of 240,000 workers across 47 states.”
Any disruption at any of these or other nodes of production or distribution would gum up the whole works. And an all-out, coordinated strike across the entire sprawling network could shut down huge swathes of the imperialist war machine altogether.
Organise the movement
Coordinating these efforts will not be a simple matter. It will require disciplined, orderly, democratic decision-making and thorough planning.
The experience of the Columbia encampment, which sparked the national and international movement and was carefully planned well in advance, shows the importance of this. As one article put it:
In hours of planning sessions, [student organisers] discussed communications strategies and their willingness to risk arrest, along with the more prosaic questions of bathroom access and trash removal. Then, after scouring online retailers and Craigslist for the most affordable options, they ordered the tents.
Daily mass assemblies at each encampment should be organised to debate and decide on concrete ways to sustain the movement and draw in ever-wider layers of workers and students.
A democratically-elected, accountable, and recallable executive leadership should be created to lead the encampment between mass assemblies.
After a reasonable time for debate, decisions should be taken on the basis of a simple majority-rules vote, not consensus, which offers individuals veto power over the collective whole.
These committees could then be linked up on a city-wide, state-wide, and national level to coordinate a unified national movement to crush Israel’s genocidal war effort for good.
Meanwhile, we should continue to hold political discussions and teach-ins at the encampments.
Committees for things such as security and resistance against police violence, cleanliness, media relations, and labour-movement outreach should be established to sustain and broaden the movement, with regular reports by these committees to the mass assemblies.
The heroism of students across the country has opened up a new chapter for the Palestine solidarity movement – and the ruling class is nervous it will spread further.
Disgraced UT President Jay Hartzell, who called in state troopers to brutalise student protestors on Wednesday, acknowledged this in leaked texts in which he worried about the “100 ways” the movement can reignite. He’s 100% right!
Properly coordinated and expanded, the movement has the potential to surpass the historic 2020 uprising that followed the police murder of George Floyd.
With the presidential elections just months away and the DNC in Chicago in August, there’s no reason for finals or the end of the semester to take the wind out of our sails.
Now is the time to spread it to campuses, cities, streets, and workplaces across the country, link it to the broader working class, and shut down the war machine altogether.
Striking such a blow here in the heart of imperialism would upend the political landscape and qualitatively transform the class struggle in this country and beyond.
- Divest and disclose! Not a single penny for Israel’s war machine! Cut all financial ties with Israel and open the books!
- Convene mass assemblies and form committees of struggle on a campus-wide, city-wide, and national level!
- For teachers’, campus workers’, students’, and trade union control and management of the universities!
- Nationalise the Ivy League and all other private universities! For free, fully-funded education and an end to student debt!
- For a workers’ boycott of any industry or company that enables Israel’s crimes! Dockworkers in India and Spain and tech workers at Google have shown the way forward!
- Down with US imperialism! For a workers’ government! Build a communist party!
- Free Gaza! Free Palestine! Worldwide intifada until victory!
