Steve Score, Leicester Socialist Party and Leicester West TUSC candidate
After at least 37,000 deaths in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of injuries, starvation, the lack of basics such as medicines and clean water, and the repeated displacement of millions of people, the US government has proposed a ‘peace plan’.
Yet governments such as the US and the Tories here in Britain have throughout continued to back the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Gaza, including supplying them with the weapons that cause such devastation. That says it all about whether they care for the lives of innocent people.
The United Nations Security Council-backed proposal for a “full and complete ceasefire” is very far from being agreed by all sides, especially given the instability and splits in the Israeli government. But the motivation of the US government and other big powers is not so much humanitarian, but fear that wider instability in the Middle East could threaten their imperialist interests.
It hasn’t just been Rishi Sunak and the Tories that have backed the Israeli government’s actions. Labour leader Keir Starmer has followed the Tories’ lead on Gaza. Early on he opposed a ceasefire and even supported cutting off water and energy supplies to Gaza.
No wonder many people have turned away from Labour as a result. Starmer has desperately tried to cover his tracks. Labour could now recognise a Palestinian state.
Of course the Palestinian people should have their own right to a state, one that is not militarily and economically dominated, and can provide the basics of life that everyone needs. However, capitalist governments have been unable to do that before, and have no programme that could now.
It requires a mass movement of working-class people across the Middle East and internationally, and a socialist programme that can use the wealth and resources of the region to allow a genuine solution.
This is why I am standing in this general election, alongside the other Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidates – to provide an anti-war, socialist alternative to the main parties.
The Socialist Party fights for:
- End the siege – for the permanent withdrawal of the Israeli military from the occupied territories
- For a mass struggle of the Palestinians, under their own democratic control, to fight for liberation
- For the building of independent workers’ parties in Palestine and Israel and links between them
- For an independent, socialist Palestinian state, alongside a socialist Israel, with guaranteed rights for all minorities, as part of the struggle for a socialist Middle East
- No trust in the capitalist politicians, internationally or in Britain. Fight to build a workers’ party in Britain that fights for socialism and internationalism
