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Saturday 21 September / 2:00-5:30pm
Southall seminar: Labour in government means racism, repression, austerity and war

Recent riots were met by the new government with ‘tough’ rhetoric, with prime minister Keir Starmer asserting that rampaging racists had highlighted the need to “totally overhaul the British legal system”. Yet not only were the riots far smaller than was portrayed by the media, they were actually led by state-connected ringleaders such as ‘Tommy Robinson’ (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon). Social and establishment media willingly and routinely facilitate the spread of false information about the ‘dangers’ associated with immigration, despite a plethora of existing legislation banning ‘hate speech’ and mandating ‘equality’. There are more than enough existing laws to deal with the more vicious side of the criminality that was on display over the sumner too, if that were the government’s genuine concern. It is, after all, to destroy public property, to commit arson or to attempt murder. The truth is that anti-immigrant sentiment is relentlessly stoked by the entire capitalist establishment, not least by Britain’s corporate media and mainstream political parties – Conservative, LibDem and Labour alike. Ignoring this, the government is proposing to ‘fix’ the by ensuring maximum repression of dissenting speech and of organised political resistance by the working class. It is clear that the real target of this planned assault on , the right to a fair trial and the right to protest is not the “swastika-tattooed racists” (with whom the vast majority of Britons have no sympathy at all) but the growing ranks of the , anti-racist and anti-imperialist activists of the Palestine solidarity movement (with whom increasing numbers of British workers are in full sympathy and accord). It is this phenomenon that led to Tory PM Rishi Sunak’s frenzied denunciation of George Galloway’s sensational , and indeed to the precipitous calling of the general election in July, during which the Tories fell on their sword in order to assure a smooth handover of British capitalist ‘democracy’ – that very best shell in which to clothe the dictatorship of British capital. We can expect Labour to continue to attempt to ‘fix capitalism’ by drumming up pogroms that set workers against one another, and to use the ensuing outrage to move to ‘fix’ (suppress) the genuine and growing opposition of the working class. In this context, now more than ever it is our duty to grasp the true significance of the question of immigration: what drives it, what it really signifies and how it is used by the monopoly financier elite to keep workers divided and fighting one another instead of unified and fighting them. Come and hear more about these issues, join the discussion, meet our comrades and get involved in our work. Presentation by Ranjeet Brar. ------------------------------ For more on immigration see by Harpal Brar.

Saturday 19 October / 2:00-6:00pm
Book launch: Trotsky(ism) – Tool of the Ruling Class

Trotskyism – the ideas of Leon Trotsky and his followers, who claim to be the ‘true inheritors’ of VI Lenin and his revolutionary Bolshevik party – continues to play the same role of agent provocateur in the working-class movement as Trotsky himself did throughout his lifetime. By denigrating and opposing the forces that actually fight imperialism, whether at home or abroad, today’s Trotskyites work to mislead potential revolutionaries and prevent them from making any meaningful contribution to the struggle for socialism. More than that: they actively impede that struggle, since their ‘analyses’, while wrapped in Marxist-sounding jargon, always serve to reinforce rather than expose imperialist propaganda. By wrapping bourgeois prejudices and lies in revolutionary phraseology, the Trotskyists of today continue in their founder’s footsteps: promoting slogans that create confusion rather than clarity, and engaging in activities which only serve to bring the true revolutionary movement into disrepute. As Josef Stalin observed a century ago, Trotskyism can no longer be considered merely a mistaken trend in the workers’ movement; it long ago became an outright asset of the intelligence services of the imperialist powers. This was proved beyond a doubt during the second world war and has remained so ever since. Indeed, some evidence now indicates that Trotsky may have been a British intelligence asset as far back as 1918. Today, Trotskyist organisations are funded by the British state and promoted by British corporate media: one plank in the raft of measures adopted by the capitalist class to sabotage the historic mission of the working class to rise to the position of rulers of the land, and to build a bright socialist future. Come and hear more about the origins and development of this pernicious trend, a wolf in sheep’s clothing hiding in plain sight within the working-class movement. New party pamphlet by Harpal Brar with contributions from Ranjeet Brar, Joti Brar and Alexander Mckay. Presentation by Joti Brar and Alexander Mckay. ------------------------------ For more on the origins and development of Trotskyism and its history in the British working-class movement see by Harpal Brar (1993).