imperialism

Pantomimes usually start in December and end early in the New Year. The Brexit version at the Westminster Palais looks set for an extended run.

The struggle can hardly prosper if it becomes isolated in Iran. The Iranian workers’ need for a useful political organization, to develop consciousness and guide struggles, is what we all need. Not in the future but now.

Today the slogan of Bread, Jobs, Freedom, Soviet Organisation is to everyone's surprise, if not disbelief, resonating everywhere. The support of other workers, teachers, office workers has ignited hope in the hearts of millions of workers and toilers. Against the regime’s drumbeat for imperialist war, our slogan is “no war but class war”. As the class struggle intensifies, the balance of power in Iran is being questioned for the first time since 1979.

The 100th anniversary of the Armistice, which we are told put a stop to the first world war, happens to coincide with remembrance Sunday, or Poppy Day. So we’re in for a treat. On top of poppy-wearing – now almost de rigueur – and two minute silences in the most improbable places, there are some smashing events in store. While local volunteers polish up war memorials, craft red poppy memorabilia, there are all sorts of state-sponsored celebrations, to mark the 11th hour of the eleventh day, in November 1918 when “the guns fell silent”.