The following resolution was passed unanimously by the tenth party congress of the CPGB-ML.
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Congress understands that the British political system of parliamentary democracy, like “the modern representative state [in general,] is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labour by capital”. In Britain’s constitutional monarchy, just as in the democratic republic, “wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely”, first, by means of the “direct corruption of officials”; secondly, by means of an “alliance of the government and the stock exchange”. (F Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1884, Chapter 9)
“The omnipotence of ‘wealth’ is more certain in a democratic republic [as] it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell … it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.” (VI Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917, Chapter 1)
The City of London, Britain’s land and business owning capitalist class, has cemented its domination over the ‘democratic’ parliamentary system, police force and all the wider institutions of the British political state and society – as demonstrated in Ella Rule’s pamphlet on A Class Analysis of Britain in the 21st Century. This was amply demonstrated during the bailout of the failing banks in 2008, ensuing austerity, Brexit, Corbyn’s ouster from Labour party leadership, and the ‘Covid’ stock market bailout, among other things.
Labour is a party of imperialism
Congress believes that the Labour party is integral to the running of the British capitalist state, indistinguishable in its economic and social programme from the Conservative or any other capitalist party. It works tirelessly for the maintenance of British capitalism and still puts forward the notion that what serves the imperialist bourgeoisie serves the “whole people”, the “national interest” and, by implication, the working class also. Labour, like all bourgeois politicians and parties, never acknowledges the fact that Britain is split into two great hostile camps – the workers and the capitalists.
The workers (those who live by selling their labour-power, along with their dependents, the unemployed, pensioners and working-class students) constitute more than 90 percent of Britain’s population. The true capitalists, meanwhile, are far less than one percent of the population.
Significantly landed families constitute around 36,000 (0.05 percent, or one twentieth of one percent of Britain’s 68 million population), and they own more than half of Britain’s land, with much of the rest being under corporate control. The largest ten land holders have between them more than a million acres. (K Cahill, Who Owns Britain and Ireland?, 2001)
Two-thirds of land in the UK as a whole – 40 million acres – is owned by 0.36 percent of the population; 24 million families, meanwhile, share the ‘urban plot’ of 3 million acres (less than 5 percent of Britain’s land area). The notion of the country being ‘full’ is a political fantasy. (Review of Who Owns England by G Shrubsole, The Guardian, 28 April 2019)
In terms of capital, the concentration is even more stark. There are 5,000 people in Britain who have more than £50m (0.007 percent, or seven-thousandths of one percent), of whom the richest 350 hold assets of £800bn, with 57 (known) individual multibillionaires. (Sunday Times Rich List 2024)
Congress realises that all manifestations of class struggle, derivative of this extreme inequality in property and capital are collectively characterised – by Labour, Tory and media alike – as simply ‘bad’, ranging from the low-level ‘antisocial’ (largely relating to mass economic and cultural impoverishment of the working class) through criminal (where property and person is threatened) to terrorist (where there is any threat to the capitalist state monopoly on political governance and violence). All responsibility for the social and behavioural consequences of this inequality are systematically laid at the door of the workers themselves.
Congress affirms that Labour is a bourgeois party, embedded within the bourgeois state apparatus, which in no way seeks to challenge either the economic wage-slavery of workers or existing property relations, and which does not reverse but instead routinely utilises and extends all the repressive legislative and state means of suppression of the British working class.
Lenin noted 105 years ago that: “Of course, most of the Labour party’s members are workingmen. However, whether or not a party is really a political party of the workers does not depend solely upon a membership of workers but also upon the men that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tactics …
“The British bourgeoisie, which has had far more experience – democratic experience – than that of any other country, has been able to buy workers over and to create among them a sizable stratum, greater than in any other country, but one that is not so great compared with the masses of the workers. This stratum is thoroughly imbued with bourgeois prejudices and pursues a definitely bourgeois reformist policy. Progress [for the revolutionary proletariat] is slow because the British bourgeoisie are in a position to create better conditions for the labour aristocracy and thereby to retard the revolutionary movement in Britain.” (Affiliation to the British Labour party, speech by VI Lenin to the second congress of the Communist International, 19 July-7 August 1920)
Congress recognises that the Starmer administration has already demonstrated that it is fully committed to using and extending all the means at its disposal to repress the working class – and in particular the anti-imperialist, pro-Palestine, progressive and communist workers.
With the deepening crisis of capitalism and impoverishment of the masses, there is an increasing drive to war, and an accelerating deterioration in the living standards of workers in Britain and across the globe. Anglo-American imperialism’s drive to war against Russia and China, in the middle east to maintain its grip on the global oil supply, and in Africa for control of her vital human and mineral resources, manifesting in the combination of Nato’s war in Ukraine, US-UK-EU-Israeli genocide in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the ongoing war in the Congo, have resulted in an upsurge in the anti-imperialist and objectively anti-capitalist action of the British working class.
Britain has a long history of colonial repression, in which Labour has been fully complicit, including in directing Britain’s wars (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Syria, Libya, Korea, Malaya, Kenya, South Africa, India …) and in running its military and military intelligence. Congress notes as an egregious example, the repressive Five Eyes collaboration between the Anglo-Saxon states (Britain, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) to spy upon the communications of the whole world’s population – including on the domestic population of Britain, in violation of British domestic law.
Congress notes such specific repressive measures as the advent of legislation that suspends habeus corpus (the state having to produce and disclose evidence against citizens that it tries and imprisons), the advent of judge-only closed trials (eg, the Diplock courts used to suppress the Irish republican movement in particular, but extended since Covid), and regular shootings of British workers on the streets (from Harry Stanley, Diarmuid O’Neill, Jean Charles de Menezes and Mark Duggan to the recent police assassination of Chris Kaba, among others).
Many police murders formerly were related to anti-Irish racism and the repression of the Irish liberation struggle. Now we find most often that young black and ‘muslim-looking’ men are the victims – all subsequently tarnished, most without any evidence, as ‘criminals’, though almost all have been extrajudicially murdered without cause.
Congress understands that the ruling class is once again ramping up its racist rhetoric in the face of its crisis. Elon Musk’s campaign to reignite anti-Islam, anti-Pakistani, anti-immigrant sentiment among British workers is entirely aimed at distracting ‘white’ British workers from the economic troubles caused by the capitalist class themselves, and to misdirect workers’ anger at “Pakistani grooming gangs”. While leading this campaign, designed to divide workers against one another and to separate the ‘white British’ working class from the cause of Palestine, Labour and Tory have both taken steps to label all anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-genocide, pro-Palestine campaigners as “antisemitic” and as “terrorists”.
Labour installed to disarm working-class resistance and destroy the pro-Palestine movement
Congress understands that the last general election on 4 July 2024 was called by the capitalist class, in circumstances designed to oust the ailing Tory administration of Rishi Sunak and falsely inflate support for the Labour party. Sir Keir Starmer “swept to victory” on one of the worst electoral votes since WW1, gaining far fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn received in 2019, and claiming a resounding victory in seats although just 18 percent of the voting-age population cast a ballot in his favour.
Labour was the chosen government of capitalism, and the election was called early precisely to install Keir Starmer, who has pushed ahead with the genocidal wars in the middle east and Ukraine and increased austerity measures in Britain in the face of growing discontent among workers and growing opposition to the imperialist policy abroad – in particular, from the militant and persistent Palestine solidarity movement.
Congress notes that Labour’s victory was followed swiftly by pogroms and race riots across the country, which had been deliberately stoked (with the zionists, far right, Labour government and state forces all coordinating the campaign), and which were given disproportionate press attention. They were followed by talk of increasing repression “to clamp down on street violence” and “extremism”, yet since that time, and entirely predictably, the majority of state repression has actually fallen on the Pro-Palestine, anti-imperialist solidarity movement. Labour has intensified a three-pronged attack on the working class:
- Political repression is now increasing, specifically with the attempt to falsely label the anti-imperialist and pro-Palestine movement as “racist”, “antisemitic” and “terrorist”, and to use existing ‘antiracist’, ‘public order’ and ‘anti-terror’ legislation to criminalise progressive workers.
- Workplace repression is increasing via the weaponisation of the regulatory and disciplinary framework, which is being used to economically sanction workers who speak out against the ruling class’s policy of militarism, its war in Ukraine, and especially its genocide in the middle east.
Policing of social media
Congress notes that Labour is keen to utilise existing repressive British legislation including the Public Order Act, the Criminal Justice Act and the Terrorism Act 2000, themselves built upon hundreds of years of laws designed to ensure that the privileges of the propertied classes are sacrosanct.
Congress notes the recent adoption of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023, which further attack workers’ rights to freedom of speech and political action. This legislation leaves British workers facing up to ten years in prison for taking part in ‘annoying’ peaceful protest. In the first weeks of Labour’s administration, these provisions were used to hand environmental campaigners from Just Stop Oil four and five-year sentences for taking part in a Zoom call about a planned climate protest! It would be funny, if it were not so deeply sinister.
Defendants can be banned from mentioning the political or environmental factors that led to action in their defence, and those who might dare to stand outside the court with signs reminding the jurors that they have the right to acquit you according to their consciences – a basic principle – may also be prosecuted for contempt. (Labour’s war on protest by F Newton, Tribune, 18 November 2024)
Congress notes high-profile individual cases of repression including those of Sarah Wilkinson, pro-Palestine independent journalist, Asa Winstanley and Ali Abunimah, online journalists from the pro-Palestine Electronic Intifada, Richard Medhurst, independent progressive and anti-imperialist journalist, Kit Klarenberg, independent journalist at the Grayzone, former ambassador and antiwar campaigner Craig Murray, the world-renowned British Palestinian doctor and plastic surgeon Gassan Abu Sittah (who was operating at the Al-Ahli Arab methodist hospital in Gaza when the zionist Israeli airforce dropped a JDam bomb upon its compound, killing hundreds of civilians), activists returning from the funeral of the assassinated leaders of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, and many others, including seven comrades of the CPGB-ML.
These comrades were abducted by the state from London streets, from their homes, from airports and at international borders on spurious charges of “racism” and “terrorism”, demonstrating the aggressive attitude not only of the last administration, but of the present one. It is clear that the Labour party is fully committed to extending the repression of British workers, including those who simply seek to educate, provide information and do journalism that undermines the capitalist ruling class’s lies in support of its genocidal wars. Congress notes that Tony Greenstein remains on bail for the charge of terrorism for daring to question the prohibition of Hamas by the British government, and will remain under harsh bail conditions for an entire year until his delayed trial finally takes place in January 2026.
Congress notes that on 18 January 2025, Labour ordered the Metropolitan police to make mass arrests of marchers and organisers of the Palestine demonstrations at the BBC TV Centre in Portland Place. They were protesting against BBC complicity in the genocide in Palestine. The Labour regime and police justified this repression on the grounds that they were “protecting the right of jews to worship at Central Synagogue” – over half a mile from the protest. (Over 70 arrests as thousands join pro-Palestine rally in Westminster by W Mata and A France, The Standard, 18 January 2025)
Whatever the nefarious role of the ‘Stop the War’ organisation (itself part of the ‘left Labour’ milieu), its complicity with and subservience to the Labour party, and its complicity in disorganising and limiting the antiwar and Palestine solidarity campaigns in Britain, Labour’s repression is as clear as day. It seems likely that this precedent will be utilised by Labour in attempted suppression of the entire Palestine solidarity movement, with wide-ranging removal of British workers’ rights to protest.
Following the arrests, home secretary Yvette Cooper wrote on X: “Everyone should be able to worship in peace. The Met police have my support in ensuring that synagogues were not disrupted today.” She also shared a Community Security Trust (CST, a zionist organisation that receives hundreds of millions of pounds in state funding) post saying: “Thank you to the Met police for ensuring the community could attend Shabbat services peacefully today. A special thanks to all of our volunteers who played a vital role in today’s security operation.” (Cleverly overrules top civil servant on funding security for jewish communities, Jewish News, 29 February 2024)
The latter reference was to the small but pernicious group of zionist activists from such organisations as ‘Harry’s Place’, ‘Gnasher Jew’, ‘Lawyers For Israel’, ‘Jewish Medical Association’ and the CST, who play the role of zionist foot soldiers and political police in Britain, actively singling out workers on demonstrations and on social media, in direct communication both with Israeli politicians and state forces (IDF, Mossad), British politicians (Labour, Tory, Tommy Robinson-Yaxley-Lennon, etc) and British police.
These people trawl our streets, our demonstrations and our social media profiles together with the owners of Facebook, Twitter, Cambridge Analytica, Palantir, 77th Brigade etc, and single out the opponents of British imperialism and zionism, Palestine solidarity campaigners and anti-genocide campaigners, then work with the British police to politically target and criminalise them. What’s more, this action is now being extended to the workplace, and Labour ministers are keen to go further than their Conservative counterparts to prove their loyalty to their capitalist masters.
Workplace based repression in the NHS
In December 2024, Labour health minister Wes Streeting met with prominent zionist campaigning organisations including the Jewish (Israeli) Medical Association, Community Security Trust, and the Board of Deputies. Streeting then called on regulators to strike off doctors who bring extremist views about Gaza into the workplace.
In a statement to the Telegraph, he said: “I expect regulators to investigate any concerns suggesting patient safety is at risk due to discrimination or misconduct by a healthcare professional. Any worker espousing racist or extremist views should know they could end up in front of a disciplinary panel.” Victoria Atkins, Streeting’s Tory predecessor, had previously warned that tough action against “extremism, discrimination or hate speech” was “vital for public confidence” in the health system. (Doctors are facing antisemitism from their colleagues – will the NHS protect them? by M Levy, The Telegraph, 19 December 2024)
The health secretary told the Telegraph he would enforce a “zero tolerance approach” to “anyone who uses the conflict in the middle east as a pretext to attack communities”, and promised to urge regulators to discipline doctors and nurses who express “racist or extremist views” about the Gaza conflict, with measures up to and including being struck off the medical register. (Streeting vows to root out NHS antisemitism by E Croft, The Telegraph, 14 December 2024)
By ‘racist or extremist’, it should be understood that Labour and Streeting are weaponising the regulatory framework of the (medical, nursing, legal, business …) professions to take punitive economic and criminal measures against those who protest the Israeli genocide in which Streeting, Reeves, Cooper, Lammy Starmer and the whole Labour party are actively involved, fully complicit and legally responsible.
Streeting himself was elected by the narrowest of margins in Ilford North over Leanne Mohammed, who campaigned as an independent and in particular on the issue of the Gaza genocide – which Streeting backs to the hilt, having taken prominent trips to Israel and accepted individual campaign contributions from zionist organisations.
Indeed, pro-Israel lobbyists have donated to 13 out of Labour’s 25 cabinet members since they were first elected to Parliament, including prime minister Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, chancellor Rachel Reeves, foreign secretary David Lammy, home secretary Yvette Cooper, trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds, technology secretary Peter Kyle and Pat McFadden, whose responsibilities now include national security. The total value of the donations amounts to over £300,000. Streeting meets regularly with Labour Friends of Israel inside Westminster and the European Leadership Network (Elnet) lobby group has paid for Streeting and Bridget Phillipson’s parliamentary staffers to visit Israel.
Labour politicians are not only devoid of morals and open to bribery to support genocide, they are cheap.
Labour criminalising workers for social media posts
Home secretary Yvette Cooper has been enthusiastically supporting her predecessor Suella Braverman’s vicious repression of the Palestine solidarity movement. She’s on record in Parliament as stating that “We [Labour] welcome and support the [Tory] government’s commitment of additional funding for the CST” (were we in doubt?) and the arrest of hundreds of peaceful protestors against genocide, facilitating the fiction that this repression was made against “antisemites” – so generating the narrative (coordinated and published by the CST, and given the blessing of Parliament) that allows for further repression. (Antisemitism debate, Hansard, 19 February 2024)
She went on to demand greater use of the ‘Prevent’ programme against workers expressing opinions that were not in accordance with the Labour-Tory capitalist government diktat, and for more repression based on ‘unsanctioned’ opinions being expressed on social media. (Violent disorder debate, Hansard, 2 September 2024)
This is not a new phenomenon. Lenin noted the social chauvinism of Labour in 1913, as more of its members were already aligning themselves with the British ruling class against the working class as the first world war approached:
“In the last issue of The Labour Leader, the organ of the Independent Labour party, we find the following edifying communication. Naval estimates are being discussed in the British parliament [ie, the military build-up to World War One – which Labour had pledged to oppose in the meetings of the Second Workers’ International]. The socialists introduce a motion to reduce them. The bourgeoisie, of course, quash it by voting for the government.
“And the Labour MPs?
“Fifteen vote for the reduction, ie, against the government; 21 are absent; four vote for the government, ie, against the reduction [FOR war]!
“Two of the four try to justify their action on the grounds that the workers in their constituencies earn their living in the armament industries. [Does it not sound like our Labour and TUC leadership in 2025?]
“There you have a striking example of how opportunism leads to the betrayal of socialism, the betrayal of the workers’ cause. As we have already indicated, condemnation of this treachery is spreading ever wider among British socialists.” (In Britain (the sad results of opportunism) by VI Lenin, 12 April 1913)
Congress therefore resolves to:
1. Fearlessly champion the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
2. Fearlessly campaign against zionism, and widely publicise Comrade Harpal Brar’s books on the subject and the party’s writing and analysis.
3. Continue its campaign against the IHRA definition of antisemitism and against the definition’s adoption by any UK institution.
4. Reaffirm and widely disseminate our correct analysis that Labour is an imperialist party – as amply demonstrated by the actions of the Starmer administration.
5. Campaign to expose the Labour party and all manifestations of ‘left Labourism’ in the working-class movement, working to remove its harmful influence over the working class and organised labour.
6. Campaign for the right to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of criticism, discarded by the bourgeoisie in its bid to silence and repress workers, and trampled underfoot by this Labour administration.
7. Champion the rights of independent and progressive journalists, wherever possible making common cause with them, to propagate the truth to the working class about the repressive policies of imperialism domestically and abroad.
8. Defend our party comrades from all attempts to criminalise them for their political work, and expose and counter ‘legalised’ state persecution of the working class at the hands of the police and state.
9. Support the struggle of all workers, particularly the journalists, academics, health workers and medical professionals being targeted by false accusations of ‘racism’, ‘antisemitism’ and ‘terrorism’ by the zionists and Labour imperialists.
10. Support the legal defence of all demonstrators and workers victimised by the repressive state legislation.
11. Campaign against the ‘Prevent’ programme as being a means not of preventing ‘radicalisation’ or ‘terrorism’, but of the political policing of British workers.
12. Campaign for the lifting of repressive legislation, and for the protection, restoration and expansion of the rights of the working class to engage in political action, for their freedom of speech, freedom of political conscience and opinion, and their right to protest.
