It seems that Labour home secretary Yvette Cooper is not content with simply continuing her Tory predecessor Suella Braverman’s work: sending police officers to arrest and intimidate people who speak up about genocide; making charges of ‘racism’ (Public Order Act) and ‘terrorism’ (Terrorism Act 2000) against our party comrades and thousands more British workers who oppose the US-UK-EU-Israeli axis of genocide in Gaza.
On Wednesday 2 July 2025, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and the entire party of Labour criminals (from the ‘right’ to the so-called ‘left’) voted to proscribe Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ group. We note that PalAction joins the organisations of the real Palestinian resistance, which were proscribed (against international law) in 2022 by Tory home secretary Priti Patel.
On the very same day, female Labour and Tory MPs had the gall to line up and pose in ‘suffragette’ sashes, celebrating the group led by Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst that fought by means of direct action (!) for the vote for women.
Sylvia Pankhurst was also a key leader of the ‘Hands off Russia!’ campaign, which stopped the British army and its imperialist leaders (notably including that rabid anticommunist Winston Churchill) from intervening to strangle the young Soviet republic that had emerged like a phoenix out of the ashes of the WW1 imperialist slaughter.
Labour MPs have apparently lost all sense of shame, blind to their own hypocrisy and servitude to imperialism. The leaders of the official trade union movement have shown, through their ongoing support for Labour, that the party’s MPs are not alone in abject servility to the system.
Kneecap and Bob Vylan
At Glastonbury this June, Irish republican rap group Kneecap were banned from live coverage by our ‘national’ broadcaster, the BBC, because a member of the band, Mo Chara (meaning comrade, or friend) had once celebrated the resistance and displayed a Hezbollah flag. For this small act of defiance, he is being taken to court on charges of ‘terrorism’!
Punk band Bob Vylan, meanwhile, led the entire crowd in chants of “Free, free Palestine!” and “Death, death to the IDF!” Clearly similar repression is heading their way – but the cat is already out of the bag.
These cultural workers, these artists and performers are light years ahead of the entire corporate press and bourgeois political pigsty (including the so-called Labour parliamentarians and their Trotskyite and revisionist disciples, all of whom carry the hod for British imperialism).
Bob Vylan’s performance, broadcast by the BBC, was peppered with comments from the duo about the need to watch what they said for fear of state repression. The recording was removed from BBC iPlayer hours later owing to the furore over popular support for their ‘offensive’ chants.
Kneecap’s performance, which followed Bob Vylan’s set, was not broadcast live, although a state-approved version was later released on iPlayer, edited to “fall within the limits of artistic expression”. An unedited bootleg livestream of the band’s set received two million views.
Kneecap and Bob Vylan upset the corporate media and political class by revealing the widespread popular support for Palestine and the mass revulsion with the Gaza genocide, which no media silence, no law and no state repression can extinguish.
Labour’s shared values with Israel and imperialism
Meanwhile, Labour foreign secretary David Lammy repeatedly proclaims that it is the “honour of his life” to serve the genocide and the British imperialist war machine.
Even while trying to distance himself from the most blatant excesses of the criminal regime of Benjamin Netanyahu, which is using mass starvation and firing squads to implement a “final solution” – a holocaust of the population of Gaza – Lammy revealed himself with the following statement to the House of Commons:
“I want a strong friendship with Israel based on shared values, with flourishing ties between our peoples and societies. We are unwavering in our commitment to your security and your future; to countering the very real threat from Iran; the scourge of terrorism; and the evils of antisemitism.” (20 May 2025, our emphasis)
Corbyn’s failure to fight the zionist IHRA definition of ‘antisemitism’
The entire campaign to outlaw opposition to the criminal policy of our own imperialist government has been hidden under the mask of ‘opposing antisemitism’ and ‘fighting terrorism’. This is a weapon that was finely honed during the period of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party.
Tory PM Theresa May adopted the zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) lobby group’s ‘definition’ of antisemitism, and was promptly followed by a host of political parties and state organisations – including Corbyn’s Labour.
The IHRA definition of ‘antisemitism’ seeks to make criticism of Israel a crime. And by extension it works to criminalise any opposition to Britain’s criminal wars abroad. In this way, the ruling class – with Labour at the helm – has been robbing us of all ‘civil’ right to oppose and resist its exploitation, war and genocide.
The corporate press, the ruling class and his own Labour party hit Corbyn relentlessly with the same accusations of ‘antisemitism’ that are being hurled at all who oppose the Gaza genocide today. What did he do when they called him a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ and a ‘racist’, as they are now labelling thousands of Palestine supporters?
He was the test case: and he failed us miserably. He apologised and slunk off with his tail between his legs, retreating and even attacking his most loyal supporters, putting them into flight and disarray. The success of this campaign of slander and vilification has allowed the same abuse and repression to be unleashed on tens of thousands of British workers.
Through this and his many other policy and principle U-turns, including over Brexit, we saw Corbyn’s character clearly revealed. His half-baked relaunch of wet-Labour with Zara Sultana will so obviously end in abject failure that it barely deserves comment. Its only role is to keep hopeful but frustrated voters engaged in the failing electoral process for just a little longer – as austerity, racism, war and repression continue to accelerate.
More recently, in December 2024, health minister Wes Streeting met with zionist lobby groups and pledged to use the IHRA definition, conflating opposition to Israel with antisemitism, to attack pro-Palestine health workers across the NHS – and he has been true to his word.
We applaud the British Medical Association (BMA, the doctors’ union), for its adoption of resolutions affirming that “anti-zionism is not antisemitism” and promising to “defend the right of health workers to oppose the Israeli genocide in Palestine”, “oppose the infiltration of zionist firms such as Palantir to data-mine the NHS”, “suspend relations with the Israeli Medical Association” and “oppose the destruction of health facilities in Gaza”.
The BMA also condemned Israeli war crimes and promised to “pressure the government to uphold the ICJ decision [on Israel’s genocide] and suspend all arms trade and support to Israel”.
While struggling to meet our wider goal of bringing socialism to Britain, we must kick the IHRA definition out of every institution and insist on Britain’s disaffiliation from the IHRA. We must cut all economic, scientific and academic ties with Israel, enforce sanctions on all Israeli entities and companies, and close down all political, media, intelligence and military cooperation with the zionist entity.
The Israeli ambassador must be expelled, and the Israeli embassy must be closed. The entire zionist lobby must be exposed and brought to trial for its complicity in genocide. All those jailed or sacked for supporting Palestine and opposing the Gaza genocide must be reinstated, freed and compensated. They are the heroes of our time; the ones who refused to stay silent.
Clearly none of this will happen while the British state is headed up by pro-zionist leaders such as Keir Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper and Wes Streeting, all of whom are servants of imperialism to their fingertips.
