UNLEASH THE ARCHERS - Abyss New Release | Napalm Records

The heavy metal band Unleash The Archers hail from Canada and have just released their fifth studio album Abyss from Napalm Records. Their music is always entertaining  and their latest album is no exception.

Two singles have previously been issued from Abyss before it's official release including the title track of the same name.The featured track Faster Than Light is the third and latest.

The band consist of  Brittney Hayes (a.k.a. Brittney Slayes) - Vocals, Scott Buchanan - drums, Grant Truesdell - guitar & vocals, and Andrew Kingsley - guitar & vocals.

Official website: unleashthearchers.com

Act Now! Cambodia: Free jailed union leaders!

 

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is seeking your support to free Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions (CCU), and Sor Saknika, president of the Cambodian Informal Labourers’ Association (CILA). Rong Chhun was arrested on 31 July for incitement to commit felony by making comments on farmland losses and border irregularities between Cambodia and Vietnam. Recently he was leading pickets in garment factory closures and urging the government to make human rights improvements. Sor Saknika joined protests demanding his release, and she was arrested for incitement on 7 August. Ouk Chayavy, former president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association, was assaulted by unknown thugs on the way home after visiting Rong Chhun in prison on 10 August.

The Cambodian government is clamping down on freedom of association and expression in order to silence trade unionists and labour protests in response to workers’ resistance to the economic downturn and repression.

Send a message: www.labourstartcampaigns

Eric Lee

Hard left on Harwich & North Essex Constituency Labour Party Executive Committee resign

The battle for the heart of and soul of the Labour Party continues. Social media is full of stories of left-wing activists tearing up their membership cards in light of Corbyn's departure. The cult has had it's day even if there is a body of activists openly resisting Kier Starmer and fighting a rear guard action. 

Even Momentum has seemingly collapsed with a massive decline in membership as keyboard warriors and disciples grew bored of the top down diktats of Lansman. Many attacked Lansman (himself a Jew) for pointing out that antisemitism was a problem inside Labour enraging the anti-imperialists to whom this was all a lie despite the almost daily evidence being produced to prove the opposite.

The left is prone to splits and gesture politics as it never has had to take actual responsibility for anything. Get behind the leader they shouted until the one they worshipped finally threw in the towel. Now one group of his acolytes has followed suit it would seem... for now but will wait in the wings until opportunity presents itself. 

Another reason why the party needs to permanently break with the hard left. 

Statement from members of the Executive Committee of Harwich and North Essex Constituency Labour Party.

21st August 2020

As of today 21st August 2020 the following officers of the Harwich & North Essex CLP resign their positions. All wish to remain members of the Labour Party:

Maison Urwin (Chair)

Solma Ahmed (Vice Chair, Campaigns)

Tobby Glenny (Secretary)

Phil Dunnett (Treasure and Manningtree Branch Secretary)

Will Davis (Assistant Secretary)

Thomas Randall (Political Education)

Frank Belgrove (Diversity)

David Gynn (Digital Officer)

Mike Bailey (TULO)

Matt Cooke (Brightlingsea Branch Chair)

Statement of the above members

It is always a sad moment when it becomes necessary for a Labour member to step aside from a role in the party but the time has come for us all to do just that. As Executive Committee members we have experienced a great feeling of comradeship and unity of purpose as we endeavoured to promote and organise the party in our locality.

Our firm objective has been to promote socialist ideals and to argue unregulated capitalism is incompatible with the values of freedom, equality and solidarity and that these ideals can only be realised through the realisation of a socialist society. We did our best to support and run the CLP through good times and bad. The General Election result of 2019 was indeed a very bad time for us as our candidate selection process was shrouded in controversy but nevertheless, we were able to field a very able candidate and contribute a great deal of time to the campaign.

The growth of membership in our CLP was extraordinary from 2015 to 2019 and the quality and organisation of meetings was of note. We embraced the broad church and represented a wide range of views. It is said all good things must come to and end and now we feel the direction being taken by the leadership towards a neo-liberal stance it is right that the CLP executive baton should be handed over to those who share the direction of the leadership. We will remain supportive members of the Labour Party but it would be doing an injustice to the wonderful membership if we continued our roles halfheartedly. We have very positive intentions for the future and will be pursuing our vision for a socialist world in other ways, so that we can contribute to policy development.

We thank members....etc

---------------

In other words this group will be shouting from the back benches without taking responsibility for anything something the hard/far left has always been good at.

Labour's entryist groups: Socialist Appeal

 

Image: By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use

One of the tactics used by left groups, in particular those of the Trotskyist kind is known as entryism whereby the organisation buries itself inside a larger party to gain influence and members as a prelude to establishing a new "revolutionary party. This ruse was advised by Trotsky himself to the French Section of the Fourth International back in 1936 and has been practised in various forms by most of those who stand in the Trotskyist tradition.

Of course this should not come as any surprise to long term Labour Party members who will recall the battle with the Militant Tendency back in the eighties. The group which arose around Ted Grant one of the major figures of the British Trotskyist left (and one of the more boring) suddenly found itself gaining ground in the seventies taking control of the Labour Party Young Socialists, several Constituency Labour Parties and eventually found itself with three members in Parliament.

The group were an old fashioned group disdaining such things as gay rights considering them "bourgeois deviations" (a view quite common amongst the far-left at one time) and even got called out for "gay bashing" yet this was a very working class grouping which suddenly found itself at war with the Party leadership.

Militant controlled Liverpool Council sent out redundancy notices to all it's workers by taxi which led to Neil Kinnock's famous speech and the eventual breakup and demise of Militant.  Despite organising a rally of over 8000 supporters in the Royal Albert hall the organisation was proscribed and it's leaders including Ted Grant expelled. The rump of the organist ion turned to establishing the Socialist Party however not everyone left Labour.

Despite being expelled Grant opted to call on his faction to stay and regroup within Labour. Today we know this organisation through the name of it's newspaper Socialist Appeal.

With between three and four hundred "supporters" (really members) Socialist Appeal remains active inside the Labour Party despite being in breach of the constitution as it has a separate organisation, membership, finances, programme and outside affiliations. 

Socialist Appeal is part of the International Marxist tendency their version of the "Fourth International" and one of whole myriad of similar bodies of varying sizes.

"The International Marxist Tendency is a Marxist cadre organisation based on a revolutionary and internationalist programme. Founded in the working class and youth, the IMT unites all who wish to dedicate themselves to the struggle for international socialist revolution."

It has an active and growing wing in Universities known as the Student Marxists" and is currently turning it's attention to the PCS trade union where it's old rivals in the Socialist Party have split and been purged by the Serwotka leadership.

Socialist Appeal supporters remain active inside the Labour Party and operate on a smaller scale to the old Militant Tendency but as a parasitical organisation seeking to use the Labour Party for it's own quite undemocratic aims.

Socialist Appeal is an organisation that should be removed from Labour's ranks just like the Militant Tendency it sprang from. There is actually no excuse for the party not to act against this group. However as we shall see in future posts there are other groups buried inside the Labour Party operating in the same way usually causing unecessary friction for their own ends.

Time to act. 

Can Labour be reclaimed and reformed: An introduction to a debate

The Labour Party is at a crossroads. It has emerged from a period of what can only be described as darkness under Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that both grew around him and those that used this phenomenon to further their own agendas. Many thousands of activists previously hostile to the Labour Party and what it traditionally has always stood for flocked to back one of the most illiberal and disingenuous politicians of our age.

Labour has always been a coalition of interests originating out of the desire of trade unions and their members to be represented in Parliament to further the interests of working people in British society. Over time Labour supplanted the Liberals as the main opposition party incorporating many people who may in different times have chosen other directions. This is the nature of two-party politics which results from our first past the post electoral system.

For the most part this has worked and Labour has been home to thinkers from a variety of traditions allowing for the development of an ideologically broad based party. Add to this the affiliated trade unions and other organisations Labour has always been a coalition of interests and ideas that existed in a (mostly) open and healthy political environment.

Of course as politics is the art of managing conflicts of interest in society the broad based model has faced more than one crisis over the decades. The rise of "Bennism" as it as know and the fight against the parasitical Militant entry group saw a major rifts occur and eventually a split leading to the creation of the Social Democratic Party. 

The SDP of course was ultimately a failure and what survived was mostly absorbed by merger with the Liberal Party both of which created it's own recalcitrant splitters who continue to this day as The Liberal Party and the SDP. Neither of which have any standing in politics today whilst the merged "parent party" maintains a presence of sorts with a handful of MPs and a substantial pkace in local politics.

All this is history of course.

However the situation that grew under the Corbyn regime created a an environment that undermined the whole concept of a "broad based party. Despite the pronouncement of a "new, kinder, gentler politics " the exact opposite happened. The influx of thousands of hard left activists who had been involved in a myriad of minor political organisations and campaigns or simply attended demonstrations shouting slogans with no detail proved to be the beginning of what can only be described as an inquisition.

The leader was to be revered and a hard line socialism being the order of the day (literally it would seem) meant that many traditional Labour folk were suddenly targeted as "Blue Labour" or "Red Tories" and implored to fuck off and join the conservative party. Dissent was jumped on and shouted down in whatever medium was to hand. Twitter, Facebook and of course at meetings where many activists no longer felt welcome or in some cases safe in the party they had belonged to in years.

Those MPs that dared speak out were threatened not just with deselection but actual abuse and threats driving thousands of members and eventually a small group of MP's away. Of course this is all well known. as is the rise of antisemitism as a direct result of Corbynism.

Then disaster. Labour had it's worst ever election result. Corbyn finally went. Many thousands of his supporters likewise abandoned ship and returned to the sidelines sniping but many of them remain waiting in the wings plotting and planning revenge for the betrayal of their cause by those that opposed them. 

Plus those pesky Jews, Zionists. Israel was to blame along with the (Jewish Zionist controlled media). Then there was the Northern "Red Wall" which fell to the Tories. The middle class left betrayed by the working class. How dare they.

Fast forward to today and the left has lost control of the party. There is a new leader, Sir Keir Starmer who has done much to rebuild ties with the Jewish community and admitted liability for the persecution of the whistle-blowers at Party HQ.  More statesman like than Corbyn could ever be and a lawyer by trade he has quietly established himself as an alternative to Boris Johnston but despite the closing of the gaps in the opinion polls the Labour Party itself has more than some way to go.

The left are constantly sniping at Starmer and even Corbyn won't return to his vegetables preferring to tend to the ones around Momentum and the various left groups that stand in the same political patch the failed Messiah tended.

Momentum has shrunk but still retains a membership of 8,000 a figure that the old Militant tendency could rally at a pinch (and did in the Royal Albert Hall on one occasion before it's collapse). There are others some small entrist groups others around campaigns and front groups. Many with a reach they do not deserve.

How Labour is to deal with it's political credibility and avoid either continuing a civil war or the threat of a left-wing take over again in the future is the central question that members must ask themselves. Corbynism made maximalist demands on the party. Ideologically motivated and unachievable. 

The party needs to change. It needs to modernise. Labour requires not just new leadership but new ideas or at least practical ones  to deal with the economic and social mess that has been created by a mixture of the pandemic and poor governance.

In order to achieve this Labour must first get it's house in order. Can the party afford to allow cuckoos in the nest and there are many) of which Momentum is but part of the problem. there's a lot of groups and campaigns that are wheedling away undermine the rise of reason within Labour's ranks. Time to simply implement the party's own rules effectively.

It should seek to go further. Over the next decade Labour needs to undergo fundamental change. there should be no shibboleths on how the party modernises itself. It's time to ditch the extremists and remove them and their organisations along with a reform of ideological thinking.  Ditching the ball & chain of old fashioned socialist dogma and imagery in favour of modern social democracy for reform and a new relationship with the people of this country.

Over the coming weeks there will be a series of posts looking at various aspects of Labour's internal strife and the examining the groups and campaigns along with a look at some of the issues that need to be dealt with. I have no illusions of how far this will effect events but as someone who until Corbyn traditionally supported Labour I want to do so again and am far from alone in being in this position.

Belarus: Stop the violence - defend democracy and human rights

Presidential elections were held in Belarus on August 9. They were once again blatantly falsified in favour of the long-serving ruler Lukashenko. This caused a storm of popular protest.

The security forces responded with an unprecedented terror: mass arrests, beatings and torture of protesters.

A wave of spontaneous work stoppages swept across the country. Workers started to form strike committees to prepare for a nationwide general strike in support of democratic change. The strikers demands include: recognise the results of the presidential elections as invalid, release all political prisoners and demonstrators, prevent the persecution of the strike participants and cancel the system of short term contracts.

The administration and security services are putting tremendous pressure on the strikers, members of the strike committee and their families. Many are threatened with dismissal. Activists are being detained by security services.

We must help stop the wave of violence.

Please support the online campaign supported by independent trade unions in Belarus and global unions, here:

https://www.labourstart.org/go/stoptheviolence

And please - share this message with your friends, family and fellow union members.

Thank you!




Eric Lee

FIRST INTERNATIONAL APOSTASY DAY!

 

22 August 2020 is being established as the first Apostasy Day by an international coalition of ex-Muslim organisations.

  


Apostasy (ردة‎ or ارتداد) is the abandonment or renunciation of religion. 

It is punishable by death in Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, UAE, and Yemen and a criminal offence in many more Muslim-majority countries. In Pakistan, a disbelief in God is punishable with the death penalty under a blasphemy law. In Saudi Arabia, atheism is equated with terrorism. In some countries with

out the death penalty, Islamists kill those deemed apostates, including in Bangladesh and Muslim-minority India. In many countries, such as in Europe and North America, apostates can face threats, shunning and honour-based violence, including from their families. Individuals from Orthodox Jewish, Christian, Hindu and other backgrounds can also face shunning and violence for apostasy.

22 August is being chosen as Apostasy Day because it is the UN Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. 

Moreover, late August marks the start of a second wave of mass executions of apostates in Iran in 1988 after brief “trials”. Thousands who responded negatively to questions such as ‘Are you a Muslim?’, ‘Do you believe in Allah?’, ‘Is the Holy Qur’an the Word of Allah?’, ‘Do you accept the Holy Muhammad to be the Seal of the Prophets?’, ‘Do you fast during Ramadan?’, ‘Do you pray and read the Holy Qur’an?’ were summarily executed.

• On the newly established Apostasy Day, we renew calls for the:commemoration of the victims of apostasy laws
• an end to the criminalisation and the death penalty for apostasy in countries under Islamic laws
• an end to shunning, threats and honour-related violence from families of apostates
• affirmation of freedom of thought, conscience and belief as well as opinion and expression in compliance with the United Nation Declaration of Human Rights (Articles 18 & 19).

 

Further info: www.ex-muslim.org.uk