British imperialism’s dirty tricks brigade was thoroughly routed in Iraq, when two undercover operatives dressed as Arabs were arrested by the Iraqi police when driving a civilian car packed with explosives. The British army then saw fit to smash open an Iraqi prison in the hope of freeing the men concerned, thereby making sure that the incident gained the widest possible publicity. The net effect was to bring out into glaring daylight the fact that British spies are trying to provoke civil war in Iraq between Sunnis and Shias by committing atrocities against one community in the name of the other. Such a war would make it far easier for US and British imperialism to gain control of the situation in Iraq by use of the tactic of divide and rule. This plan has now met its Waterloo!
Meanwhile, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea agreed in the six-party talks to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. As far as the CPGB-ML is concerned, the DPRK has every right to develop nuclear weapons for its self defence if it wants them, but energy shortage has been a problem for the DPRK ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is why, in 1994, the DPRK signed the Framework Agreement with the United States undertaking to abandon its (civilian) nuclear reactors, provided the US made good the lost energy and ultimately supplied light water reactors to generate what had been lost. The US, however, consistently reneged in order to bring about ‘regime change’, causing severe hardship to the north Korean people at a time when they had already been affected by natural disasters four years in a row.
At the six-party talks, it was again agreed that in return for the DPRK giving up its nuclear programme, light water reactors would be supplied. This time, however, the DPRK has made it a condition that the light water reactors must be supplied before it gives up its existing facilities. So the imperialists began hysterically denouncing the DPRK’s ‘bad faith’ – but why should they be so outraged if they intend to build the light water reactors anyway? Obviously, they have no intention of building them and their anguished cries are caused by the fact that they have not after all been able to outwit the people of the DPRK.
At home, it seems that the Gate Gourmet dispute is to finish with a deal to re-admit 400 of the sacked workers. 300 will not be sacked but made redundant, 146 compulsorily. The deal is being recommended by the union – dominated as it is by the Labour Party’s class collaborationist henchmen. Instead of fighting for jobs, they will try to get the Labour Party voluntarily to repeal laws prohibiting secondary action. What a diversion! Such laws can only be defeated by militant trade union action and refusal to comply.
Finally, we congratulate all those 50,000 or so people who demonstrated in London against the occupation of Iraq war on Saturday 24 September. Increasingly supportive of the slogan ‘Victory to the Iraqi resistance’, they upheld the honour of the British working class by distancing it from the predatory activities of British imperialism and its political representatives in the British imperialist Labour government.
