Defend the right to protest

Editorial of the Socialist 1339

A horrific attack on a synagogue in Manchester on 2 October left two dead, and more injured. The attacker, who was wearing an apparent bomb vest, was shot dead by police, with one of the two victims also caught in police crossfire. The Socialist Party opposes all forms of terror against innocent people, whether carried out by individuals or states. Deliberately carried out on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, the attack has significantly raised fear and concern amongst Jewish people in the UK for their safety.

The attack does nothing to build the working-class unity across ethnic and religious lines necessary to build the most effective movement possible against the genocidal slaughter taking place in Gaza.

Pro-capitalist establishment politicians and parties were quick to respond to the attack by attempting to level responsibility on anti-war protesters, amongst them many Jewish people, who have protested over the last two years against the murderous conduct of the Israeli state in the Palestinian territories. Following the attack, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage alike branded marches against the slaughter in Gaza as ‘hate marches’.

Capitalist system at root of racist division

The root of racist division in society, including antisemitic division, is not anti-war demonstrations but the system of capitalism which Badenoch, Farage and Starmer all defend. Capitalism is a system which has overseen the creation of huge wealth, owned and controlled by an increasingly small minority in society, the capitalist class, while the vast majority struggle to get by. War globally, as well as racist division, is baked into that system.

Attempts by capitalist politicians to play the game of ‘divide and rule’, including by scapegoating migrants for the consequences of capitalist-driven austerity measures, run like a thread through the history of the system. The day before the attack in Manchester, a hotel in North London housing migrants was subject to an arson attack, followed days later when a mosque in Sussex was set alight with worshippers inside.

The London Metropolitan Police issued a statement ahead of a protest on Saturday in London on 4 October, organised by ‘Defend Our Juries’ against the proscription of Palestine Action, which resulted in 492 arrests. “By deliberately choosing to encourage mass law breaking on this scale, Defend Our Juries are drawing valuable resources away from the communities of London at a time when they are needed most”, Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said.

But who made decisions to direct police resources to peaceful protest against the genocidal slaughter in Gaza? The Met Police and, behind them, capitalist establishment parties, which defend British capitalism’s interests – and therefore the status quo in the Middle East.

Feeling the pressure of the anti-war movement globally, Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar has attempted to intervene into the situation in Britain, urging Starmer on to clamp down further on the right to protest.

Likewise, it hasn’t been protesters who have decided to cut funding to ‘policing in the community’– that was the Tory and Labour politicians. Home Office statistics say that in 2019 there were 20,000 fewer police officers employed in Britain compared to 2010 – meaning increased workload on remaining police employees. The Police Federation estimates that real-terms pay for police has fallen by 21% since 2010, meaning that the number of officers taking second jobs has doubled since 2019.

Those decisions, alongside the broader brutal cuts to public services and collapsing wages while the billionaires in Britain continue to rake in super-profits, show up the blatant lie that capitalist politicians take genuine interest in the living standards and day-to-day safety of working-class people.

Socialists call for democratic working-class control of the police, with local forces controlled by democratically elected committees including representatives from trade union and local communities, with oversight and decision-making powers over policing policy and priorities.

Following the attack, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the government’s intention to pass legislation through Parliament to give the senior police officers further powers to put conditions on repeated protest actions. This shows yet again that rather than advancing the struggle for Palestine, acts of individual terror do the opposite and can be exploited by the capitalist state as a convenient pretext to attempt to attack the right to protest.

The question facing the anti-war and workers’ movement now is how can these and previous attacks on the right to protest be defeated? While the war in Gaza continues, the sharp crisis of British capitalism is preparing another showdown around the Labour Budget on 26 November.

Chronic low economic growth, high borrowing costs and crippled public services mean that any party defending the interests of the profit-before-all-else system of capitalism will fight to address the crisis of the system by making working-class, middle-class and young people pay for it.

But that objective crisis of British capitalism is preparing huge struggles of the working class against the system of capitalism, including potential industrial action which could dwarf the 2022-24 strike wave under the Tories. It’s these movements of the working class which Labour, and the ruling capitalist class behind them, chiefly fear.

National mass demonstration

At the TUC (Trades Union Congress)’s annual Congress in Brighton in September, a motion was passed calling on its General Council to organise a weekend demonstration against Labour austerity. Such a mass demonstration under the banner of a united working class, linked to defending the right to protest, as well as the demand on Labour to repeal the most draconian anti-trade union laws in Europe, could serve as a launchpad for the industrial action needed to stop further planned attacks on workers’ living standards whilst also opposing racist division.

And with Labour already in disarray just over a year into government, such action could leave their planned further attacks on the right to protest on the rocks.

In Italy, over two million workers took strike action over the Israeli military’s interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla carrying aid to Gaza, bringing transportation services and schools to a halt.

It’s this force of the organised working class which is capable of generating the maximum pressure on capitalist governments around the world complicit in the slaughter against Palestinians – as well as replacing capitalism with a socialist society based on democratic planning of society’s resources and international cooperation. Join the Socialist Party to help build such a struggle here in Britain, and with it a political voice for the working class fighting for socialist change.