Britain: Statement on the Public Controversy about the STOP THE WAR Coalition
Against Imperialist Hypocrisy as well as Against Stalinist Support for the Assad Dictatorship!
Statement by Supporters of the RCIT Britain, 15 December 2015, https://rcitbritain.wordpress.com/ and www.thecommunists.net
1. In recent days, the Cameron government, the Blairites as well as the bourgeois media have launched a hysterical campaign against the STOP THE WAR Coalition (StW). The background for this is that the StW has organized a number of protests against the government’s decision to launch war in Syria.
2. The RCIT Britain condemns this witch-hunting campaign. StW has been absolutely correct to launch protest actions against Britain’s war drive. Cameron and the Blairites want to justify their imperialist wars in the Middle East. Given the fact that at least 450,000 Iraqis have died as a consequence of the US/UK war and its subsequent occupation of that country, given the numerous deaths in Afghanistan and in other places, it is obvious that the British government – together with its imperialist allies – is the biggest terrorist! Their accusations against StW are like Al Capone attacking a little thief as “immoral”!
3. At the same time, the RCIT Britain equally condemns the StW leadership for its implicit reactionary support for the Assad regime and the military intervention of imperialist Russia in Syria. It is a telling fact that the StW leadership – dominated by the Stalinist CPB, left reformist trade union bureaucrats and the centrist Counterfire group (Lindsey German and John Rees) – do not allow Syrians to speak at their rallies and meetings. We fully share the disgust and condemnation of the StW-leadership by the Syrian solidarity groups as well as the Muslim migrant community in general. It is no accident that the Muslim mass organizations are withdrawing their support from the StW coalition.
4. The RCIT Britain restates that all socialists and democrats must oppose any military intervention by the Great Powers – be it Britain, the US, France or Russia. The mass organizations of the working class and the oppressed must denounce the imperialist powers which are colluding – with the help of Assad’s state apparatus – to liquidate the Syrian Revolution. At the same time we call on all organizations claiming to represent the workers and oppressed to engage in an energetic solidarity campaign with the ongoing Syrian Revolution. While we politically oppose the petty-bourgeois Islamist and secular leaderships of the Syrian rebels, we recognize that they represent the popular revolutionary uprising against the Assad clan and his barbarous Baathist state apparatus which has oppressed the Syrian people for many decades. In short, while the imperialists attack StW leadership from the right, we defend them against the imperialists and attack them from the left and from the viewpoint of consistent anti-imperialism and revolutionary democratism.
5. Socialists and democrats should pressurize the StW coalition to call an emergency congress in order to openly debate:
a) How to respond to the imperialist witch-hunt campaign and to plan the next steps of the anti-war movement;
b) The StW policy towards the Assad regime and Russian imperialism. Socialists and democrats must do everything in power in order to break the coalition from their reactionary pro-Russian and pro-Assad position.