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Round-Up Feb-March 2007
On 21 February supporters of the RCG's Victory to the Intifada campaign held a public meeting to discuss recent developments in Palestine and Lebanon, in particular the imperialists’ continuing attempts to divide opposition and bolster their client regimes. In the recent period RCG activists have continued their work with Tyneside Stop the War Coalition (TSTWC), enagaging in joint activities whilst putting forward their principled demand of a break from the Labour Party. On 24 February a Troops Out demonstration took place in the centre of Newcastle, called by the RCG and supported by TSWTC. Powerful street theatre was used to draw attention to the Labour governments bloody onslaught on the Iraqi people, and the open mic platform attracted involvement from several people who had not spoken in public before. On 17 March RCG activists staged a protest outside a Shell petrol station in the East End of Newcastle to highlight British multinationals’ ambitions in the plunder of Iraq, which was joined by some members of TSTWC. Later in the day comrades participated in a public meeting organised by TSTWC on the topic of ‘Islamophobia, Racism and the ‘War on Terror’’. A TCAR speaker at the meeting spoke about the material roots of the Labour government’s racism in its imperialist interests abroad, from a platform dominated by Labour Party, Green Party and Liberal Democrat politicians. A local Conservative MP was reported to have been invited, but said they couldn’t see why they would attend when they fully supported the occupation. The Labour and Liberal Democrat speakers showed more opportunist versatility than this, with the Labour speaker having the audacity to speak out against imperialism and at the same time to call for maintaining links with the Labour Party under the cover of ‘broad unity’. It was left to FRFI supporters to point out from the floor the absurdity of opposing the occupation in ‘unity’ with the same forces which are leading it.
As the scale of attacks by the Labour government on asylum seekers has increased, so has the resistance. In Newcastle the RCG has been at the centre of this with its work in TCAR (Tyneside Community Action for Refugees.
Fundraising towards the 2007 brigade to Cuba has continued energetically in Newcastle. On 31 February a well-attended Rebel Music night combined the funk rock of O.P.E.N. with the political hip of the Undesirables collective, and on 25 March a sponsored walk raised the banners of Cuba and Che on the hills around Hadrian’s wall. RCG activists have continued to build support on the streets of Newcastle for the Cuban Revolution, with several events organised as part of the international period of action to free the Cuban 5 locked up in US jails.