The sunshine of the oppressed – a poem for Iris

When cancer pronounced its death sentence Iris faced it without fear. “I’ve had a good life”, she said to all She wasn’t concerned that her end was near. Iris’s pride was to be a work horse Toiling gladly in the revolutionary cause Day and night come rain or shine Hour after hour with never a … [Read more…]

Iris Cremer – her daughter’s tribute

I really did not want to be up here addressing funeral guests last time when my father’s service was here. And cannot believe we are all back here again so soon! Over the past two years my mum has shown us exactly what she was made of: determination, focus, love and those hugs. After losing … [Read more…]

Report of Iris’s funeral

Iris’s funeral took place on 17 April at Mortlake Crematorium in West London. The service was filled to capacity, not only with Iris’s family and friends and Party comrades, but also with the most diverse of community leaders, as well as leaders and supporters of progressive political parties and broad organisations. The embassies of both … [Read more…]

End note: A Few Words On Ram Chandra

We return now to the case of Ram Chandra. To repeat, after the departure of other prominent Ghadarites for India and the wider eastern front, Ram Chandra became editor of Ghadar Weekly. He was a dominant, not to say a domineering, figure in the Ghadar Party during that period and no one dared question his … [Read more…]

End note: The Contribution of Agnes Smedley

Agnes Smedley played a tremendous part in helping the Ghadarites in every way, especially in fighting against their deportation to India and certain death. When the Indians were accused by US intelligence officers of being German spies, she replied rightly: ” No – no more than Benjamin Franklin was a French spy”. She was arrested … [Read more…]

Syria: Imperialism prolongs a proxy war it cannot win

In the same week in April that Peter Clarke, former head of the Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism unit, was appointed as witchfinder-general tasked with sniffing out and uprooting alleged “islamic radicalisation” in Birmingham’s schools, news broke that an eighteen year old Muslim student from Brighton, Abdullah Deghayes, had just got himself killed fighting against the government … [Read more…]

Ukraine: imperialism opens Pandora’s box

If the West ever believed that cultivating a fascist provocation on the borders of the Russian Federation would somehow compensate for the failure of its proxy war against Syria, the events currently unfolding in the Ukraine are teaching a very different lesson. The wars of national oppression waged by the West against such countries as … [Read more…]

Bristol PLC wins Rockefeller franchise

Since being sworn in as the first elected Mayor of Bristol in November 2012, George Ferguson has had a difficult tightrope to walk. At a moment when running local capitalism means enforcing cuts on public services, he has shown himself adept at distracting public attention from the elephant in the room – the £90m budget … [Read more…]

Banking bonuses – a vultures’ feast

In capitalist countries today, many of the biggest exploiters parade as mere employees. However they are employees who have control of vast amounts of other people’s money, and theoretically their function is to use that money for the purpose of securing profitable investment of that money for the benefit of investors. Being in the position … [Read more…]