Communists condemn cancellation of WPB anti-Nato meeting by Conway Hall
The Conway Hall Ethical Society’s craven submission to ‘online intimidation’ gives the lie to its claim to uphold free speech.
The Workers Party of Britain is due to hold a public meeting on 25 February in central London against Nato’s war in Ukraine.
The original meeting venue was lost when St Pancras Church pulled the rug out from under the organisers on the lamest of excuses. Now it has happened again, with Conway Hall’s management arbitrarily cancelling the WPB’s booking on the excuse that they have been subjected to “an unprecedented onslaught of increasingly intimidating emails and social media posts regarding the hosting of this meeting”.
The organisers had hoped to express their opposition to Nato and to war. In Britain’s allegedly liberal and freedom-loving democracy, nobody is allowed to disagree with the official narrative of the warmongering ruling class – which only furnishes more proof that imperialism seeks domination, not freedom in both its external and internal policy.
While using the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder to wage a proxy war against Russia, the ruling classes of the imperialist countries and their media mouthpieces are attempting to silence all opposition, unable to bear any exposition of their lying propaganda – all the while shamelessly and hypocritically asserting that their involvement in the conflict in Ukraine is aimed at promoting ‘democratic values’!
The CPGB-ML resolutely condemns the cowardly decision of the South Place Ethical Society to surrender to such threats from various fascistic elements as it may have received. Whatever the inconvenience and annoyance to the Workers party of this turn of events, we are certain that the Conway Hall management’s decision will serve to highlight the hollowness of bourgeois democracy and its claim to stand for freedom of speech and assembly.
While condemning the Conway Hall authorities for their decision, we express our solidarity with the WPB and express the hope that it will find a suitable alternative venue run by a not-so-cowardly management and right-minded people who are prepared to stand firm in the face of fascistic threats.
In any case, those who are in the business of exposing imperialism and its warmongering will find a way to express their ideas.
