The Marxism festival was once again barred from using the capital’s major educational institutions due to the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP) stance on Palestine. So, thousands from around the world met at studios in Shoreditch at the beginning of July to listen to and share ideas at over 100 sessions. Below is a flavour of just a few of them.
“A riot of democracy”: the Iranian revolution of 1979 from triumph to tragedy
Philip Marfleet walked us through the post-war history of Iran to correct the widely held view that the revolution of 1979 was driven by radical Islam. The United States, he suggested, continues to seek revenge for the defeat of the Shah and the loss of a key ally who at that time was more important than Israel in the region.
The Shah had been installed by a coup orchestrated by the CIA/MI6 and the White Revolution that followed in 1963 brought in land reforms replacing subsistence farming with commercial, mechanised agriculture, destroying the soil and displacing many to join the urban poor. Oil profits flowed to the West and industry grew. The Shah accumulated vast wealth while creating a repressive police state.
Student protests erupted in 1967 supported by young merchants and young clerics; many were killed. In September 1968, mass strikes in the oil fields spread across industry and continued until the Shah was forced to flee in 1979.
How the revolution expanded into a “riot of democracy” is largely ignored in Western accounts. Workers were elected to take control of factories and civil infrastructure declaring that:
“… we, the workers, did this to challenge the power of capital”.
Ayatollah Khomeini returned to head the religious hierarchy that had long been close to the ruling class. The people believed his radical rhetoric that had been widely shared before his return. At first, the workers were unable to see through Khomeini as he shaped an Islamic Republic that denied women basic rights. Consequently, Khomeini established an oppressive state that would kill or imprison the thousands of activists who had forced the Shah from power.
Capitalism, slavery, and the roots of racism
Zak Cochran set out his case that racism has its origins in the colonisation of North America and the Caribbean in the 16th & 17th centuries. Initially, the aristocrats involved would take their own indentured peasants to work the plantations. By the mid-17th century, a sugar plantation of 1,000 acres would need 130 labourers. As the trade in sugar and tobacco expanded, new sources of labour were sought.
The economics of slavery made plantations a very attractive investment. One estate manager calculated that each slave generated a profit of $257. The wheels of capitalism and greed turned, and the trade in human slavery grew. Today our children learn about how slavery ended but little about its capitalist origins.
“Slaves revolted everywhere except in Western history books.”
When whites and blacks combined to revolt, as they did at the Virginia Bacon Revolt, fear spread through slave owners. Owners created enmity between whites and blacks and pressed for new laws against mixing between the races, laying the foundations of racism.
The speaker didn’t mention that others, such as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, draw a direct link between the brutal colonisation of Northern Ireland and the colonisers of North America a century later, and later again, in South Africa; for some white supremacy is justified by Calvinist ideology.
Uncovering the undercover cops: SpyCops and the left
Matt Foot acknowledged the bravery of the five women who came forward to expose the existence and practices of the Specialist Demonstration Squad (SDS). At first, senior police officers denied knowledge but once a manual was found suggesting that officers should “try to have fleeting dating relationships”, it became clear the strategy had been approved.
The unit should have been disbanded in 1976, but it continued to function, filing 200,000 reports. One such report of an SWP meeting noted support for Gay Pride and the Stoke Newington Festival! This was not about stopping violent attacks on the state but sweeping up information for Special Branch.
Guy Taylor, a former SWP Branch Secretary and a core participant in the inquiry, was targeted as an activist against capitalism. Subsequent disclosure revealed 275 documents about him. He described to us how he met Simon Wellings, a shy but willing activist who would become a committee member and take part in visits abroad representing the SWP.
In January 2004, Taylor was asked to listen to a phone message – a muffled conversation about photographs at a demonstration, with a voice naming and describing people Taylor knew. The voice was Simon Wellings. Taylor assumed Wellings was either a journalist or an informant but, when challenged, Wellings pleaded innocence. As the scandal developed, Taylor offered the recording with a photograph of Wellings to the BBC. As the BBC were preparing to air the story, authorities told them not to broadcast it, effectively confirming that Wellings was in fact an undercover police officer.
50 Years on from Soweto: South Africa and the long struggle for freedom
The speakers paid tribute to the children of Soweto, who resisted being forced to learn Afrikaans and formed the South Africa Student Organisation (SASO). SASO was a fresh expression of black consciousness and established the movement that broke apartheid. But it was current events in South Africa that dominated the discussion.
Rehard Desai described how today a construction mafia extorts money through labour broking, ethnic chauvinism forces tens of thousands to flee, and Zulu nationalism dominates the province of KwaZulu-Natal. He accused former Minister of Intelligence Services Ronnie Kasrils, who was also present, of bowing to ethnonationalism and splitting the left. Progress has stalled, the whites have more of the wealth than in 1994 and are now being influenced by Musk and Teal.
Ronnie Kasrils spoke with the microphone visibly shaking in his hand. He talked about nationalism, and the exploitation of colour and class, as a growing problem. He said he had joined the Communist Party to bring people together:
“Central to unity is the unity of the working class.”
Andrew Feinstien explained that those being expelled from South Africa had arrived from neighbouring countries to support the struggle against apartheid. South Africa is now the most unequal country on the planet; unknown millions are unemployed. Economic policy has failed since 1994. A “pointless” $10bn arms deal has exposed a web of corruption, but only a select few are being investigated. He applauded Ronnie Kasrils, a member of a small Jewish community in South Africa, for the role he played forging our democracy. Just as Jews around the world have done, Feinstein criticised Keir Starmer for expelling anti-racist Jews from Labour.
Is nuclear power the answer to the climate crises?
The answer was a resounding no. MV Ramana and Linda Pentz agreed that we are out of time and new nuclear plants take a minimum of 20 years to build at huge cost. Uranium is frequently mined on indigenous lands, with 80% of the radioactivity left behind as a low-level but persistent risk. Eighty years on we still cannot store nuclear waste safely. We must focus on rapidly reducing the most amount of carbon at lowest cost, by massively expanding wind and solar power and insulating housing.
The only reason to build new reactors is for weapons. According to the speakers, small modular plants are “welfare for the nuclear industry”, part factory produced and assembled on site, they are still prone to earthquake, weather, flood, and human error.
Palestine and repression: why the system can’t silence us
A packed hall heard from Lisa Lux, who spoke for the Filton 25. All were named and applauded. We heard how Palestine Action (PA) had forced the closure of three sites used by Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. Lux explained how ministers colluded with Elbit to proscribe PA, so the activists, who broke into the Elbit site in Filton and damaged 40 drones in just 20 minutes, could be tried as terrorists.
Deemed too dangerous to enter the UK, Hasan Piker spoke from the US, applauding those taking direct action. Piker asserted that oppression is being normalised by Western governments: “There is no democracy here”.
Jeremy Corbyn announced the publication of The Gaza Tribunal, containing the original testimony of those who participated. Palestine is the cause of this generation, Corbyn claimed, with the national marches generating 11.2 million simple acts of solidarity. Corbyn has investigated why the left did not support the Palestinian uprising in 1936 as it had the Spanish Civil War, and found records of Labour Party and Trade Union meetings showing pure racism towards the Palestinian people.
Ben Jamal, a former director of PA, talked of 1,000 days of genocide supported by the UK Government and the energy put in by Starmer’s Government to demonise PA. He urged that, “whilst we defend the right to march this must not detract from the cause of the Palestinians”.
The power in the people – not the people in power
Michael Mansfield KC started by sharing his concern about the failure of international law to restrict the freedom of those who commit genocide. He then moved on to attack the UK Government’s stance on jury trials, which “has nothing to do with the backlog of cases”, but the lack of investment in court buildings and the low number of days courts sit. He also condemned the restrictions on juries hearing about the motivation of defendants.
The main takeaway though was how long public inquiries take. There has to be a better way to quickly establish the facts so that vital lessons can be acted on and people brought to account. There are too many examples: Grenfell Tower highlighted dangerous building practices with people still at risk; there was no justice on Hillsborough until Burnham was heckled. After Covid, the medical profession needed to know what had gone wrong, and Mansfield set up a fast-track inquiry which took evidence and reported within 12 months while the official inquiry is still ongoing. Jeremy Corbyn did likewise for Gaza.
Mansfield concluded by warning that with a political class so adept at manipulating the electorate, “we are not living in a democracy”. He urged more people who care about these issues to stand for election.
Reflection
This was a few days well spent. Much was shared about the state of democracy, justice, economics, and climate change, with valuable contributions from leading academics, professionals, politicians, and activists. All pressed their case for the fairer, more just society we need to build.
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