Socialists must not solidarize with Britain’s professional army
but with the anti-imperialist resistance!
1.
In protest against the imperialist notorious “war on terror”, a serving
British soldier was attacked and
killed by two Islamist black men near an army barrack in Woolwich
(South London) on 22.5.2013. The professional soldier served between
2009 and 2011 as part of the British occupation forces in
Afghanistan which leaves thousands and thousands of people dead.
Since 2011 he was stationed in Britain. After the attack the two men
spoke with passerby, and when the police came they were shot.
Britain's ITV news channel broadcasted a video footage filmed by an
onlooker, in which one of the two assailants, Michael Adebolajo,
explained – with local accent – the political motive of this
attack against the British soldier: “We swear by almighty Allah
we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. Your people
will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is
because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day. We must
fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I
apologise that women had to witness this today but in
our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be
safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you. Do you think
David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we
start busting our guns? Do you think your politicians are going to
die? No, it’s going to be the average guy like you, and your children.
So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so
we, so you can all live in peace.”
2. Unsurprisingly the right wing government, the Labour Party and the bourgeois media are weeping some
crocodile tears about the “tragedy” which poses such a danger for “soldiers risking their lives in the name of freedom” (London Mayor Boris Johnson). The fascist English
Defence League mobilizes for racist rally against Muslims and two mosques were already attacked.
3.
Most of the reformist and centrist left – i.e. those who claim to be
Marxist but adapt to the corrupt and
privileged bureaucracy in the labor movement – fails to take an
internationalist and anti-imperialist stand in this important situation.
While criticizing the government policy of waging wars
abroad, they cowardly adapt to the bourgeois media chorus and deeply
regret the killing of a British soldier. To give a few examples: The
pacifist Kate Hudson – a leading figure of the newly
founded “Left Unity” project – writes: “We deplore the brutal
murder of an unarmed British soldier in Woolwich yesterday. Our thoughts
and prayers are with his family. Acts of violent
retribution against individuals can never be justified as a response
to the crimes of states and governments.” (1) Similarly the right-wing centrist Socialist Party (CWI): “The
unprovoked, barbaric and vicious murder of an unarmed soldier in
Woolwich yesterday is a horrific event which must have been profoundly
traumatic for the people who witnessed it, and, of course,
an appalling tragedy for the victim, and the victim's family and
friends. (…) The Socialist Party completely condemns this attack just as
we condemned 7/7, 9/11, and all similar attacks aimed at
indiscriminate slaughter.” (2) The ex-revolutionary Workers Power leadership expresses too its sympathy for the British soldier’s family: “This
is undoubtedly a horrific act,
committed in front of ordinary civilians, women and children. We
sympathise with the family of the victim and those traumatised by
witnessing such appalling scenes.” (3) And Counterfire
leader Lindsey German states: “There can be no justification for a murderous attack on an individual soldier in the streets of London.” (4)
4.
The first task of Marxist, of revolutionaries, is to speak out the
truth. The truth is that the Woolwich
attack is the inevitable result of a barbarous imperialist war-drive
led by the United States in which Britain’s ruling class is the most
important ally. As a result the US, British and other
imperialists have occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and wage countless
terror acts with their drones in other countries in the Middle East and
Africa. Just recently the British government sent hundreds
of soldiers to help French imperialism occupying Mali and killing
those they consider an obstacle to control the vast resources in Western
Africa. As a result hundreds of thousands have been
slaughtered by the hands of British soldiers and their US and other
European allies on the behest of the imperialist ruling class. This
imperialist war-drive is the result of the monopolies and
Great Power’s drive to rule and exploit the semi-colonial countries –
i.e. the vast majority of the world’s population. Another aspect of
this imperialist domination is the national oppression
and economic super-exploitation of a growing number of migrants and
black minorities in the imperialist metropolises.
5.
In response to this, the oppressed people in these countries are waging
an anti-colonial, national
liberation war against the imperialist occupiers since years. In
addition there have been many anti-war mass mobilizations by sectors of
the working class, migrants and youth in the imperialist
metropolises themselves.
6. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT)
states that it is the primary duty of
every anti-imperialist and internationalist to support the
resistance – including in its armed forms – in order to drive the
occupiers out. We welcome the heroic struggle of the resistance forces
in Afghanistan, Palestine, Mali and other countries against the
imperialist occupiers and their local allies. We look forward that they
will succeed to drive them out as they did already
successfully defeat the US and British troops in Iraq. At the same
time we oppose the bourgeois ideologies and leaderships which
pre-dominate in the resistance movement. The RCIT calls the
working class to organize independently, to strive for leadership in
the anti-imperialist movement and to connect the struggle against the
imperialist monopolies and Great Powers with the
international struggle to overthrow capitalism world-wide.
7. It is of course a blatant lie if arch-reactionary whips like Johnson claim that “"is wrong to draw a
link between this (the Woolwich attack) and British foreign policy and soldiers risking their lives in the name of freedom.” It is exactly the British foreign policy that kills so
many people, which makes British professional soldiers abhorrent in most parts of the world.
8.
Authentic British socialists must condemn all the hypercritical outrage
of the ruling class’s
politicians, media and the agents in the workers movement about the
“barbarian act” against the British profession soldier in Woolwich.
True, the British and US soldiers usually don’t use knives
and machetes when they slaughter hundreds of thousands of people but
rather modern machine guns, bombs and drones. But since “terrorists”
from oppressed people are usually poor, they are forced
to use rather primitive, “barbaric” methods for their attacks.
Surely, they would prefer to use the modern British means of killing.
While cowardly Western leftists like the Socialist Party title “No to
terrorism!”, even a left-liberal American columnist like Glenn Greenwald can recognize a simple truth in the British paper “Guardian”: “The
US, the UK and its allies have repeatedly
killed Muslim civilians over the past decade (and before that), but
defenders of those governments insist that this cannot be "terrorism"
because it is combatants, not civilians, who are the
targets. Can it really be the case that when western nations
continuously kill Muslim civilians, that's not "terrorism", but when
Muslims kill western soldiers, that is
terrorism?” (5)
9. Shamefully most of the British left fail to resist the pressure of the imperialist public opinion. They
condemn the “horrific event” and promise to “pray” and to “sympathise with the family of the victim”. They – consciously or subconsciously – consider professional
British soldiers who kill thousands of people in Afghanistan as “our boys”,
with whom (respectively their families in case they are killed) they
fully sympathize. In opposite to this
reformist and centrist left, authentic British socialists do not
consider Britain’s professional soldiers as “our boys” but as part of
the imperialist killing machine. They would call British
soldiers to refuse carrying out their duty as part of this
oppression apparatus. They would call British soldiers to fraternize
with the Afghan resistance and to aid brining down the British
military machine. For authentic British internationalists, it is not
the professional British army who are “our boys”, but rather those men and women who resist
the imperialist
occupation and fight to defeat the forces of the modern British
Empire. However, the majority of the British left is not capable of such
an internationalist, anti-imperialist stand. They adapt to
the imperialist camp and act as social-imperialists or
social-pacifists.
10.
The RCIT stands in the tradition of authentic communism associated
with classic Marxist leaders like Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. We
condemn the capitulationist “left” which fail to support the
resistance struggle when a member of “their” professional army is
killed. The following statement of the Communist International’s
Manifesto – written by Trotsky in 1920 – has not lost its
relevance: “The Socialist who aids directly or indirectly in
perpetuating the privileged position of one nation at the expense of
another, who accommodates himself to colonial slavery, who
draws a line of distinction between races and colors in the matter
of human rights, who helps the bourgeoisie of the metropolis to maintain
its rule over the colonies instead of aiding the armed
uprising of the colonies; the British Socialist who fails to support
by all possible means the uprisings in Ireland, Egypt and India against
the London plutocracy – such a Socialist deserves to
be branded with infamy, if not with a bullet, but in no case merits
either a mandate or the confidence of the proletariat.” (6) If we replace the words “Ireland, Egypt and India”
with let us say “Afghanistan and Mali” this is a pretty
contemporary statement to denounce most of the British left-reformist
and centrist groups. Based on such an anti-imperialist
program, British revolutionaries in the 1970s and 1980s defended
military actions of the IRA on British soil as a legitimate part of the
Irish national liberation struggle. (7)
11.
As working class anti-imperialists, we differentiate between various
tactics in the struggle against imperialist occupation. While the RCIT
opposes terrorist actions which cause the death of
ordinary working class people (like 9/11 in New York in 2001 or the
7/7 attacks in London in 2005), we consider armed actions directed
against military targets of the imperialist occupation
forces as legitimate. This does not mean that we promote actions
like the Woolwich attack since they are used by the ruling class as a
pretext to whip up racism and militarism. As Marxists we
oppose petty-bourgeois strategies which don’t orientate on mass
mobilizations but rather individual armed attacks. In countries like
Britain where the level of anti-imperialist struggle is so
low, it is tactically absolutely wrong to undertake armed actions
against the imperialist state apparatus. Needless to say that socialists
have nothing in common with jihadist ideologies. But we
recognize that the imperialists have waged a global war “against
terror”. In such a war, the oppressed have the legitimate right to
attack the repression machine which is killing them. This is
even recognized by a left liberal like the US filmmaker Michael
Moore who commented the Woolwich attack sarcastically on Tweeter: “I am outraged that we can't kill people in other countries
without them trying to kill us!” (8)
12.
The task of authentic British internationalists is to call now for a
broad united front in defense of the migrant and black community
against the racist backlash. Defend the Mosques against
the EDL thugs! Renew the anti-war movement in order to help driving
out the British and other occupation forces from Afghanistan, Mali and
other places and to stop the barbarous drone
attacks! Such united front actions must be combined with an internationalist, anti-imperialist stand which supports the resistance struggle against the British occupation forces and
calls for the military defeat of Britain. Such a perspective
has to be combined with the program for socialist revolution in Britain.
However, only a program which includes such a consistent
anti-imperialist position, only an organization which succeeds in
maintaining anti-imperialism against the massive pressure of the
imperialist public opinion and their allies in the labor
movement, only such an organization can be considered as truly
internationalist and socialist.
13.
Revolutionaries in Britain should break with the reformist and
centrist swamp which capitulates to the imperialist public opinion. They
should join forces to build an organization based on an
authentic revolutionary program. Let us move forward to build a multi-national revolutionary party o white, black and Asian workers and youth as part of a new World Party of
Socialist Revolution – the Fifth Workers International! The RCIT looks forward to work together with all those who are striving for such a goal.
Footnotes
(3) Workers Power: Statement on the killing of a British soldier in Woolwich, 23.5.2013, http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2013/05/british-soldier-killed-woolwich-london.
Today the centrist leadership of
Workers Power regrets the killing of an imperialist killer. When
Workers Power was still a revolutionary organization, it took a very
different and anti-imperialist position. When the IRA killed
British paratroopers, it called this action “double defensible”. When it killed retired Commander Lord Mountbatten in 1979, it titled simply “Don’t mourn Mountbatten”. (see
Workers Power No. 8, September 1979)
(7) See Workers Power: The British Left and the Irish War (1983)
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