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To undermine NATO retrenchment, the left must fight to win the peace.

Ali Khan offers a provocation for supporting Ukraine’s military effort


21/08/2022

Today’s radical left has long recognised only one foe, that which Ayatollah Khomeini aptly titled “The Great Satan” – namely the USA. Little attention was paid lately to about “The Lesser Satan” – or Russia. For over 30 years after the fall of the USSR, we only imagined a single imperialist actor on the world stage. But 179 days ago we were reminded of the presence of another imperialist contender with full force. For too many, memories of the World War I collaboration of Social Democratic parties and the labour movement linger. The depressing jingoism of Western Europe and the USA prevents us from assessing a moral and rational response to the situation. As useful as historical parallels are, when we face a situation with almost no convenient parallel, at least none that are readily accessible and understandable to a population at large, we face a most difficult intellectual challenge. Let us not be fazed.

Grudgingly, we must admit that the US and NATO allies were correct on several points, in a way their past record made impossible for a sceptical left to accept. Even the Ukrainian government struggled to accept US intelligence of an impending attack. Furthermore, NATO support to Ukraine in the form of training, intelligence, munitions and modern weaponry was decisive in helping overcome Russian numerical superiority. For context, the US has supplied one third of its stockpile of the iconic Javelin missiles that have been so effective in stopping Russian armour. NATO is training brigades of soldiers to use the latest military equipment that the US has to offer; in addition to training up an officer corps to lead the influx of new recruits being mobilised. Initially, we feared NATO intervention escalating in a spiral that would see a battle of the nations take place on Ukrainian soil, culminating in a nuclear device being deployed by a desperate Russia. Instead, NATO has shown restraint in comparison to the Russian army.

Some fear Ukraine will become the next Afghanistan as a hawkish Hilary Clinton suggested, cannon fodder for imperialist competition that will be abandoned immediately after. I find this to be revealing when leftists accept the words of a failed politician like her at face value. Afghanistan is a Muslim country, far outside the orbit of the West. It was left to rot precisely because it was, for all intents and purposes, a backwater whose instability posed no immediate trouble to Europe or the US. Leftists who think that Ukraine will be left to a group of far-right extremists in the Azov Battalion mould as her citizens are left to descend into a civil war on the doorstep of Europe, forget the material mechanics of racism.

That is not to say that an impoverished and traumatised Ukrainian population will be exempt from exploitation. But comparisons with Afghanistan are terribly counter-productive on multiple levels. Even if the risk of Ukraine becoming another Afghanistan after the war is invoked, it does not in any way delegitimise the validity of arming Ukrainians to defend themselves. If anything, this historical awareness gives the left the best point of entry into the debate.

The blueprint of a post-war Ukraine has already been laid out. As Peter Korotaev has argued in Jacobin, Ukraine’s economy is being suffocated by neoliberal dogmas in the midst of a war to defend its existence. International institutions are sowing the seeds for economic subjugation that will worsen the conditions that Putin sought to exploit in the first instance. Impoverished Ukrainians will be split into a reserve pool of labour into three tiers – highly educated labourers who work in Northern European economies, skilled manual workers supplementing central European economies like Poland and Hungary, and then those left in Ukraine who will supply the ultra-cheap labour to repay Ukraine’s post-war debts.

Ukrainian refugees are being let down by the UK government, face risks of human trafficking and sexual exploitation because of inconsistent provisions by governments happy to share arms but not give aid. In a sickening twist, Ukrainian refugees are treated as “perfect victims” and receive preferential treatment over refugees from countries like Syria. It is on these issues that the left can expose and resist the hypocrisy of the West. By defending the internationally enshrined rights of refugees, by fighting against any bifurcation of refugee status, and by launching a pre-emptive war to win the peace can the left can reclaim its position of moral leadership. But that project can never get in stride if we do not support the Ukrainian war effort militarily.

We fell into a moral trap at the start of this war where we let the presence of the far-right within Ukrainian politics hesitate from recognising Russian imperialism. We were focused on blaming NATO’s expansionary ambitions while failing to recognise the legitimacy the invasion has conferred on NATO in addition to the material misery the invasion has caused hundreds of millions of people in the Global South due to energy and subsequently food shortages. Javelin missiles and HIMARS rockets did not cause a food shortage, a naval blockade of Odessa did. This blindness is perhaps exemplified by the venerable Jeremy Corbyn, who wants peace but does not seem to have a plan for achieving it outside an idealistic framework of pacifism. Nothing in the Russian attack gives a hint of rationality or pragmatism, nothing in Putin’s statements nor in Medvedev’s suggests a desire for peace. Furthermore, Antifascist Europe has covered the influence of neo-Nazism within the Russian state extensively. It would follow therefore, that leftists should support an aggressive approach to rooting out the power of fascism within the Russian state.

This is not to offer a blank cheque as the German government has offered to the Bundeswehr. It does not mean advocating for troops to be sent to fight against Russia. But given the military imbalance, it should not be uncontroversial to say that Ukraine ought to be supported until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukraine and this includes Crimea. People may balk at this suggestion but it is no different to demanding, rightly, that Israeli settlers give up their stolen Palestinian lands. As unrealistic as it sounds, and acknowledging the total lack of solidarity shown by Ukraine towards Palestine, the principles of national sovereignty obliges us to support these ambitions. Just as Palestinians need not be perfect victims for us to defend them against imperialism, as for Ukrainians.

Irrespective of military support in the present, we do not need to concede a permanent rearmament in Europe for the next decade at the expense of social spending and refugee rights. The left’s political support for a Ukrainian military victory should be tied to a commitment to upholding international conventions on refugee rights and adequate social spending, on an equal priority basis to any jingoistic ambitions concocted by the establishment.

If a ravaged Ukraine, a poorer Europe, and a hungrier Global South is allowed to be the outcome of Ukrainian military success, then victory against the Russian Army will be Pyrrhic. If the left organises solely against NATO and US militarism, it will leave its most important flank unguarded. A permanent stalemate with a Russian occupied Donbas will entrench the militarism of NATO for decades and make it politically impossible to prioritise the primary concerns of the left. It is on this basis of winning the peace and supporting the fundamental right of a people to defend themselves, that I have shifted towards strictly enabling military support that facilitates the Ukrainian army’s effort to liberate the Donbas and Crimea.

This article is intended to provoke a debate and does not necessarily reflect the views of theleftberlin editorial board. If you would like to respond to the article, please contact us on team@theleftberlin.com

Israel gave up on Raoul Wallenberg: In return Sergei Lavrov voices anti-Semitic views and closes the Jewish Agency

Guest Article from one of Israel’s foremost human rights lawyers


20/08/2022

The Ministry of Justice of Russia appealed on July 21 to a Moscow court requesting to dissolve the Jewish Agency (JA), which operates as an independent Russian organization. Putin’s shocking move to close the JA, may harm the Jewish community in Russia and intensify the deep anti-Semitic sentiments in Russia.

An anonymous Israeli state senior official was quoted as saying “No one really understands what Putin wants from us”. Israeli commentators interpret this as Putin’s revenge for not unequivocally supporting Russia in the war in Ukraine.

This explanation sounds weak given that the State of Israel decided not to join the international sanctions on Russia, does not meaningfully help Ukraine, and makes it very difficult for the Ukrainian refugees to arrive and stay in Israeli territory.

Previous rounds of hand-wringing on the Jewish and historical issues, where Israel usually surrendered to Putin – provide better explanations.

On May 2, 2022, the Israeli government was stunned by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov statement, accusing Jews of Nazi crimes because Hitler “had Jewish blood”. President Isaac Herzog was so shocked that he read the statement several times. Despite strong condemnation by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Herzog made it clear to Haaretz journalist Jonathan Lis that the condemnation and shock had no meaning. Because, he said, that this would not harm bilateral relations, stressing the Reds Army’s decisive contribution to victory over the Nazis.

Russia did not take official Israeli condemnations seriously. The Russian foreign ministry stated that in history, unfortunately, there were tragic examples of collaboration between Jews and Nazis.

Why should the Kremlin worry, since over 20 years, the State of Israel was complicit in Putin government’s narrative on World War II? There is a reason that President Herzog noted the Red Army’s deeds. Putin’s government highlights what in Russia is called the ‘Great Patriotic War’. This refers to the Soviet Union’s defeat of the Nazis, while erasing any trace of collusion between Stalin and Hitler between 1939 and 1941. As well as crimes committed by Soviet forces against Polish residents, minorities and others in the territories annexed by the Soviet Union following agreements with Hitler. This narrative also obscures the repression and crimes committed by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe following the war, as well as the memory of the crimes and internal repression perpetrated by Stalin, whose distinct symbol was the gulag. This narrative existed prior to Putin’s ascension. But Putin has personalized and exploited it for domestic and international purposes, by portraying the Soviet Union and its descendant, the Russian Federation under his aegis, as a benevolent superpower. Putin also portrays himself as a national patriotic leader who unites and protects the Russian people from the West that tries to steal their achievements.

Israel helped the Putin government establish the false historical narrative in two main ways – relinquishing any enquiry into the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, the Israeli State adopted the narrative of the “Great Patriotic War”, while agreeing that its denial was equivalent in severity to denying the Jewish Holocaust.

On November 26, 1963, Yad Vashem recognized Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg as a ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, following his actions to save the Jews of Hungary from extermination. Among other actions, Wallenberg issued Jews fake Swedish passports, organized the provision of food, clothing and medicine, and established “Swedish homes” in which tens of thousands of Jews were granted asylum until the end of the war. The Yad Vashem website states:

“On January 17, 1945, Wallenberg returned to Budapest accompanied by Soviet soldiers, and noted that he did not know if he was a guest of the Soviets or a prisoner. From that moment, he and his chauffeur Vilmos Langfelder disappeared without a trace. The other Swedish diplomats were also held by the Soviets but returned after a few months via Bucharest and Moscow to Stockholm. Wallenberg’s fate is unclear to this day. There were reports that he was seen in a Russian prison, and only after many years did the Russians admit that the man had died in prison. Despite a joint Russian-Swedish commission of inquiry, little is known”.

Sweden and the Israeli government made little effort to find out the fate of Wallenberg, even though there was hope he was still alive. The Russian Federation was established in 1991, which allowed the opening of the archives of the security authorities and the KGB. Then efforts by Wallenberg’s relatives, public activists, organizations and the Swedish government, were intensified.

On December 31, 1999, Putin was appointed acting president. In June 2000, the Israeli government sent retired ambassador Johanan Bein to Moscow to “monitor the progress of the investigation into the fate of the Swedish diplomat”. Israeli officials noted that “The Russian interlocutors’ conclusion is that the documents related to the issue were destroyed by the secret services of the then USSR”, and that “the Deputy Foreign Minister and other Russian representatives reiterated that their efforts were ‘intertwined with their wish to demonstrate the changes in the policy and foreign relations of the new Russia’”.

Between 1999 to 2000, Russian forces were razing Grozny, and the separatist Chechen Republic, to the ground. Making it difficult to be convinced of the Russian claims regarding a “new Russia”. The Israeli government understood that the Wallenberg issue was as sensitive to the Putin government as it was to the Soviet government, and allowed the Swedish government to deal with the Wallenberg case. A statement followed a meeting of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, on March 15, 2005, giving responsibility for the Wallenberg case to Sweden. On July 17, 2006, MK Natan Sharansky, who himself spent nine years in Soviet prisons, put forward a bill to oblige Israel to investigate Raoul Wallenberg’s disappearance and his whereabouts. The bill was never put to a vote.

On August 18, 2009, Israeli President Shimon Peres met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. A joint statement noted that Medvedev and Peres “express their outrage at attempts to deny the enormous contribution of the Soviet Union in the victory over Nazi Germany and question the crime of the Holocaust”. In other words, the denial of Putin’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ narrative is equivalent in severity to Holocaust denial. The announcement, marking the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, obviously ignored the fact that while the war began on September 1, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, the Soviet Union invaded the eastern part of Poland on September 17, in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

In February 2010, during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow, he promised Putin a monument to the Red Army’s victory over the Nazis. A statement (May, 2010), noted that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced today… a national memorial site commemorating the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany, 65 years ago today.”

Putin attended the inauguration ceremony in Netanya on June 25, 2012, and expressed his satisfaction: “As we unveil this monument today, we grieve together for those who fell on the battlefields, died from wounds and hunger, or suffered the death camps’ tortures. The Holocaust was one of the blackest, most shameful and tragic pages in all of human history. Even today, our hearts still refuse to accept this monstrous cruelty that the Nazis committed. It was the Soviet Army that put an end to this madness”. On May 9, 2018, Prime Minister Netanyahu participated with Putin in the victory march commemorating 73 years to the defeat of Nazi Germany, in Moscow’s Red Square. After the march, they laid wreaths for the unknown soldiers at the monument in memory of Red Army soldiers who fell in World War II.

It is puzzling then that some were surprised when at on January 23, 2020, the ‘International Holocaust Forum’, at an event led by Moshe Kantor (a billionaire close to Putin), in collaboration with Yad Vashem and President Reuven Rivlin, video footage endorsing the Putin government’s narrative of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ was screened. It contained no references to the collaboration between Hitler and Stalin; the maps presented showed wrong borders of Poland and its neighbors; and the Soviet Union was portrayed as liberating Europe almost single-handedly. Putin spoke, but the organizers of the ceremony rejected the Polish president’s request to speak. Yad Vashem later apologised for the ‘inaccuracies’ via Haaretz.

Why would an inquiry into Wallenberg’s fate challenge Putin’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ narrative? This became clear at a conference of the ‘International Memorial’ on the Wallenberg case, in Moscow in October, 2016. This organization – established at the twilight of the Soviet Union – dealt with the Soviet government’s crimes, and later addressed the crimes and internal repression in contemporary Russia and the Chechen war. Facing demonstrations against his electoral fraud in the 2011 Duma elections in 2011, Putin advanced new legislation. This constricted remnants of democracy in Russia. In November 2012, legislative amendments forced ‘foreign agents’ or organizations to register political activity or foreign funding. Failure to comply to bureaucratic reviews risked sanctions or bans. In 2013, the Putin government declared organizations affiliated with ‘International Memorial’ as foreign agents to halt their activities.

Two weeks before the 2016 conference on Wallenberg, ‘International Memorial’ was declared a ‘foreign agent’. Dissident and historian Arseny Roginsky, a founder and then head explained how Memorial researchers developed their archival research methods and discovered details about other prisoners. “We saw amazing things in these personal files: transfer orders from one cell to another or from one prison to another. We saw documentation of investigations and numerous other documents that could seal the fate of a prisoner”. Roginsky explained the enormous importance of this:

“The internal ‘kitchen’ of terrorism began to open up before us. We were looking for Wallenberg. That is the most important thing for me. But in fact, what was done is absolutely important for the entire history of Soviet terror. One discovers new types of sources. One blazes trails on which people, in search of unknown Soviet prisoners who have disappeared in the camps, tread. They ask for documents of this kind, they compare things. This connection between the fate of a very famous, very important man, a legendary man, a man who disappeared along with the fate of our missing Soviet brethren – for us, in Memorial, this is immensely important“.

Not only does the clarification of Wallenberg’s fate threaten the Putin government narrative, but the Wallenberg affair may also arouse interest and reveal details about the entire Soviet terror regime and its victims. On December 18, 2017, Roginsky passed away in Tel Aviv.

On November 11 ,2021, the Putin government filed a request for closure of ’International Memorial’ for “violating” the Foreign Agents Act. On December 28, 2021, the Supreme Court of Russia granted the request. It is no coincidence that ‘International Memorial’ was outlawed shortly after organizations of Alexei Navalny were outlawed. For Putin, the activities of Memorial were no less dangerous than the huge demonstrations which Navalny organized all over Russia.

Three days before the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, on February 21, 2022 Putin delivered a speech in which he explained why Ukraine and the Ukrainian people were a fiction. For Putin the fight for the narrative is no less important than the fight through missiles, planes and tanks.

On April 6, the UK government announced that following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it would impose sanctions on Moshe Kantor. This announcement proven that not only Kantor helped Putin fight for his narrative, but also aided industries Putin used to support his war targeting Ukraine.

Even before the anti-Semitic remarks of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Putin reiterated that the purpose of the ‘special operation’ was to ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine. The Bennett-Lapid government has been careful not to condemn harshly Putin for this. According to a statement from Prime Minister Bennett’s office, on May 5, 2022, Putin apologized in a conversation for Sergei Lavrov’s remarks, but Bennett has endorsed Putin’s narrative. According to the statement “Putin and Bennett stressed the special importance of May 9, the day of victory over Nazi Germany, to Russians and Israelis, and the memory of the victims of the war – including the victims of the Holocaust. Bennett noted the Red Army’s contribution to World War II victory.”

Now, Yair Lapid as the new Israeli Prime Minister will need to tackle the issue of the Jewish Agency closer. Lapid’s Minister of Finance, Avigdor Lieberman, already tried to minimize the problem. On July 25, Lieberman  said “I think the somewhat obsessive and hysterical preoccupation is completely unnecessary”.

The State of Israel gave up on Raoul Wallenberg and got in return Sergei Lavrov’s anti-Semitic remarks and the dissolving of the Jewish Agency.

The current Israeli government can ditch the faux outcry and reap the mendacious and anti-Semitic crop whose seeds it, along with its predecessors, they have helped to sowed. Putin can rest assured that Russian-Israeli relations will continue as usual.

(Translated from Hebrew by Ofer Neiman; published originally in ‘The Times of Israel)

“Your class and education decide whether you can vote in Germany”

Read Phil Butland’s interview with Voting Rights Activist Sanaz Azimipour from Nicht Ohne Uns -14%


16/08/2022

Hello Sanaz. Could you start by letting us know who you are, and let us know a little about Nicht ohne Uns 14%

My name is Sanaz Azimipour. I am an activist and writer based in Berlin, Germany. I studied Economical Mathematics and Gender Studies. I co-founded the campaign Nicht Ohne Uns 14% – Not Without Us in English – with other activists. It’s a campaign for voting right for people who don’t have German citizenship.

We started a year ago in June 2021, a couple of months before the national election in Germany. Our original demand was voting rights in the national parliamentary election, as well as local and communal elections for everyone who’s been living here for five years.

As there were also local election in different German cities and States, we then also made demands on a local level.

Let’s start with the basics. Who can vote in Germany and who can’t?

Voting rights in Germany, like many other countries, are directly connected to the passport privilege. If you want to take part in the national elections, you have to have German citizenship. There are 10 million people in Germany without citizenship. Most of them have been living here for more than 10 years. A lot of people who were born here are excluded from voting because they don’t have citizenship.

One of the reasons that people don’t have German citizenship is because getting naturalization is based on very different privileges, in particular income. This means that your class and education decide whether you can vote. For example, single parents who are migrants and work part time can never be naturalized, although they are the first people who are actually affected by government policies, especially during the pandemic.

14% of the German population cannot vote in the national elections. Many people can also not vote in referenda and for local politicians, although EU citizens can vote in local elections.

This is interesting for two reasons. First, local voting rights for EU citizens was added to the Constitution. And yet one of the main arguments used against voting rights for everyone is that it would need a change to the German Constitution. But this has already happened.

The second interesting thing is that EU voting rights shows the hierarchy of power. First come the German citizens, who have the right to participate. On the second level are European citizens. Below them are people from other countries – in German it’s called “Drittstaatsangehöriger”.

At the bottom, there are undocumented people, for whom getting naturalisation is a very complicated or impossible process. Because if you don’t have documents you don’t have access to anything that the State is providing.

Can I pick up something you said earlier? You mentioned people who were born in Germany but don’t have voting rights. How can that happen?

Naturalization is a very complicated process. In Germany, you’re normally not allowed to have citizenship of more than one country. There are some exceptions, like the US, Iran and the EU.

This affects the Gastarbeiter who came to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. In order to gain German citizenship, they have to lose their other citizenship, which is usually Turkish. For many people, that wasn’t what they wanted, because losing Turkish citizenship means also losing touch with everything that you have in the other country. So for many people this is not even an option.

It also affects the second generation of workers. People who were born before 2000 without German parents couldn’t get German citizenship. There are many people here whose parents were born in this country, but they still cannot get citizenship. If you are stateless, for example if you are Palestinian, it’s even more complicated.

There is a person from our campaign who was born in Germany. His parents moved to Germany more than fifty years ago and even his children were born here. After 50 years, he still doesn’t have German citizenship, because in order to get German citizenship, he has to first get Macedonian citizenship. But he’s never been to Macedonia in his life. And the Macedonian embassy won’t give him a passport because he’s from the Roma community.

For many people, it was never an option to get naturalization, and this is always a question of class. If you don’t have enough income, then you cannot have German citizenship. And then your children will not directly get German citizenship, even though they were born here.

Besides that, there are many people who even don’t want citizenship, as they don’t like being asked to prove that they are loyal to a certain state or nation, yet their right of political participation will be taken away.

I could say from my experience, that to get German citizenship, even a white European must first pay €250, and about as much again in administrative fees. If you’re unemployed, they’ll just reject you. And that’s for people at the top of the privilege ladder. For those at the bottom it must be much worse.

Yeah. You have to imagine what it’s like for the people who have been born and raised in Germany, and went to school and university here. And then you have to do an integration test, even though you’ve never lived in any other country.

This is a good example of who is being excluded. Although our campaign is about voting rights, it’s also about way more than that. Voting rights is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s also about how we understand democratic rights. Hannah Arendt talks about “the right to have rights”, which I think resonates. If you don’t have citizenship, then you don’t have the right to have rights, in the sense of political participation.

At the same time, it’s expected from migrants and racialized people that they engage in the society, even while they’re being excluded.

We’ve talked about the problems. What are you and Nicht Ohne Uns doing to try to solve them?

We are a self-organized campaign. That means that we’re all people who don’t have voting rights. This is very empowering, and shows that movements have been started by migrants themselves.

We also have allies and German citizens who support us. I think it’s very necessary to build this alliance, because it’s important that shouldn’t be the problem of the people who are directly affected by it. It’s a problem for all citizens.

We started with an online petition, because that was the only way to raise awareness. Through this, we got a lot of media attention. We were then able to develop the campaign on two different levels.

One level was to build the connections and intersectionalities between different movements. It was important to reach out to other campaigns and organizations. These included ABA (Aktionsbündnis Antira – action alliance anti-racism) and other anti-racist organisations. There was also Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen who fight for housing rights in Germany, and many others.

There are people who are also fighting for workers rights for people who don’t have German citizenship. The situation for them is ten times worse because they risk losing their jobs and residency permit.

We organized different demonstrations, like the one together in April before the elections. We also went to different German States, like NRW – before the regional elections we demonstrated in different cities to raise awareness.

This is very important because there are so many people who don’t know about the voting deficit. Every time we say 14% of the population don’t have voting rights, everybody like What? Wait? 14%? Nobody knows that it is 10 million people.

We also got in contact with politicians and ask them about their plan and position. In Berlin, for example, we could put our demands for voting rights for everyone who has been living here for 5 years into the coalition contract. Since then, we’ve had a very good exchange with the politicians, who have held a commission for voting rights.

We’re now looking at the next steps. We’re part of a bigger Volksinitiative called Demokratie für Alle. We succeeded in the first round where we had to collect 20,000 signatures. This meant further work with other initiatives.

You’ve talked about how you have raised awareness through demonstrations and media work. But there are specific problems in gaining attention of the 14% of people who are directly affected. They don’t all speak German, they don’t necessarily follow German media. They’re not all involved in other campaigns as many campaigns exclude non-Germans. How are you able to reach to reach the people who you’re fighting for?

Most of the people in my bubble are immigrants like me. They have to struggle about more basic things than voting rights. For them voting rights can be seen as a luxury or a privilege problem. If you have to work 12 hours a day, you don’t necessarily really care about fucking voting rights. This is a very understandable problem.

But it doesn’t matter how many people come to demonstrations, even if you’re three people in the streets. People get empowered and mobilized. There’s this guy who’s been campaigning for voting rights with his bike for 30 years, mainly in Kreuzberg. Maybe you’ve seen him on the street. Seeing him too is very empowering.

How important are voting rights of themselves? We had a referendum in Berlin to expropriate the big landlords. We won, although one million people were excluded from voting. The landlords haven’t been expropriated. We voted in a Red-Green government and we’ve got war, inflation, and attacks on the environment. Do voting rights actually matter?

Not necessarily.

Of course, voting is important, because you’re acting to change the construct of what’s right. But I don’t think that voting rights themselves will necessarily change anything. These 10 million people are not a homogeneous group. They have different political views and if voting was supposed to change something on that big scale it would have.

Of course, it has some effects. And one of the effects could be that maybe right wing parties would have to change their policies in order to gain some votes from the migrant community. But on a bigger structural kind of level, I’m not sure if it will make that huge a difference. It’s not a revolution.

But at least the next step, is that people get involved in social movements, right? And one of the social movements is for voting rights. How can people get involved, especially if they don’t speak German and are not involved in existing organizations.

We have a lot of people who speak very different languages. We always think about how to include other people. That’s why for example for our demonstration we wrote and read out our joint Declaration in different languages. I think that was very powerful.

For me, having different languages on a demonstration is a way of occupying the street. It’s a really powerful sign, especially in Germany, to see people speaking in microphones, in German, with accents, or in Turkish, or in Arabic to people who are being directly excluded from society.

We also have different platforms on social media. We have a Twitter account, an Instagram account, a website. Everybody can write us, and say that they want to be involved. We have a mailing list. Everybody can join the next meetings.

I really want to invite people to join not necessarily in the campaign, but also in our struggle, because it’s about something more basic and way bigger than just voting rights. Whether you want to vote or not, I think it’s very important to get engaged in that.

You can support us by translating or organising demonstrations or just joining a demonstration. It’s really important to go towards that goal of democratic rights for everyone, and build the networks we need to make that possible.

What are you doing next?

We’ll be organising an Event on 15th September, the Day of Democracy. We’ll be posting more about it on our Instagram page.

NOTE: After we published this  interview, one of our readers sent the following feedback:

According to Germany-Visa.org, in principle, Germany does not allow dual citizenship. However, the German nationality law was recently changed to allow more people to qualify for dual citizenship. Now, children born to at least one German citizen may qualify for multiple nationalities, while others— who meet the qualifying criteria— can apply to hold German dual citizenship.

Who is Mick Lynch?

The rail workers’ leader offers the most visible opposition to Britain’s Tory government


15/08/2022

Michael (Mick) Lynch is a British trade unionist and has served as the General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) since May 2021. Lynch was born in West London in January 1962, one of five children to Irish parents. He grew up in poor circumstances and left school at the age of 16. Qualifying as an electrician, he then worked in construction before being illegally blacklisted for joining a union.

In 1993, unable to find any more work in construction, he began working for Eurostar, and became active in the RMT. The RMT is a union with more than 83,000 members from almost every sector of the transport industry including mainline and underground railways, shipping, buses and road freight. Lynch served two terms as Assistant General Secretary and two terms on its executive. In 2020, after General Secretary Mick Cash took time off due to ill health, Lynch was appointed as the acting General Secretary before winning an election for the permanent role.

A key aspect of the dispute is the threat of thousands of compulsory redundancies…The RMT consider this in essence to be managed decline of the railways where cuts will worsen services for passengers and make the railway less safe and accessible.

Current Rail Disputes

Strike action on the railways took place in June 2022 and further days of action have been carried out since. The RMT has been seeking to work with government and employers for almost two years to address the challenges facing the rail industry, including jobs, pay and conditions of rail workers. After an overwhelming ballot for strike action (71% of those balloted took part in the vote with 89% voting in favour of strike action and only 11% voting against) the rail companies have made it clear to the union and also in private briefings to the media that the government is directly controlling the negotiations and hindering a settlement.

Government ministers have continued to refuse to meet to try and resolve the dispute or allow the companies the freedom to negotiate themselves. They have directly threatened rail workers with even more job losses, and said they will use taxpayers’ money to bail out private train companies during strikes. A key aspect of the dispute is the threat of thousands of compulsory redundancies. This will mean increased risks on safety critical infrastructure, less staff on stations and trains, including the removal of guards and catering staff, cuts to cleaning and the closure of nearly all ticket offices. The RMT consider this in essence to be managed decline of the railways where cuts will worsen services for passengers and make the railway less safe and accessible. It points out that if there is to be a full rail recovery post-Covid and with expanding services to meet climate commitments, retention of staff and their skills is essential.

All rail staff are identified as key workers. They work seven-day weeks with very unsocial hours in all types of adverse weather and conditions. Many regularly deal with being assaulted and other anti-social behaviour. Those balloted included cleaners, catering staff, controllers, guards, drivers, engineers, signal workers, station staff, track workers and train maintenance staff. Most rail workers have basic salary rates of between £25 -31,000, around the national median annual salary of £31,285. While rail workers were praised during the pandemic as ‘heroes’ by the UK Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, for keeping the country moving, all are now facing the cost of living crisis with most having endured two to three years of pay freezes. They are angry their livelihoods are under threat when during the pandemic, rail bosses have taken home £1m pay packets and rail companies have made in excess of £500 million a year in private profits since the start of the health emergency. An astonishing 70% of UK rail routes are now owned by foreign states.

In Wales, the devolved government has shown a contrasting approach to the workforce, with guaranteed no compulsory redundancies and protection of staffing levels and support for the role of ticket offices. The Westminster government in contrast is now threatening to change the law to remove workers’ democratic right to take strike action. The recent P&O scandal (the sacking of nearly 800 staff without notice and their replacement with cheaper agency workers) caused justified anger across the political spectrum and illustrates exactly how ruthless companies can be and how the law is stacked in their favour against working people. While the conservative government expressed horror over the actions taken by P&O management, and threatened possible legal proceedings, it then failed to hold the company to account.

At present, after having been paid their wages (and paid tax on them), workers are entitled to give a proportion of their salary to their union… Truss proposes that members of trade unions would have to pay tax on strike pay meaning that they would pay twice as much tax as everyone else.

Government and Media Dial Up the Pressure

The UK already has some of the most draconian anti-union laws placing huge obstacles in the path of workers wishing to defend their living standards. Not content with these, both Truss and Sunak (the two Tory party candidates vying with each other to be the next prime minister) have said they would ban strikes by essential workers and make strikes potentially unlawful. Employers are to be allowed to employ agency staff to do the work of striking essential workers. Truss’s proposals also include doubling the notice period which a union must give from announcing a strike vote to beginning industrial action, from two to four weeks, and placing a limit on the number of days on which workers could strike before having to re-ballot after six months.

At present, after having been paid their wages (and paid tax on them), workers are entitled to give a proportion of their salary to their union, which alongside meeting other costs holds it as a strike fund. Truss proposes that members of trade unions would have to pay tax on strike pay—meaning, because this is deferred wages, that they would pay twice as much tax as everyone else. Truss also advocates that that workers would not be permitted to go on strike unless their decision to strike had received not merely the support of 50% of those voting, but 50% of all those eligible to vote. Needless to say, Lynch has been a vocal critic of these plans. The current government has nothing to offer on tackling the cost of living crisis, crumbling public services or dealing with the climate emergency but is busy trying to turn people against each other in the hope that culture wars will distract from growing inequality. Denigrating trade unions and their leadership is par for the course, but many are fighting back with strikes – and not just in rail, but postal, construction, telecommunication workers and Amazon staff. Major public sector unions covering health care workers are soon to ballot on strike action as years of pay freezes are compounded by the massive cost of living increases.

…there is talk once again of joined up trade union action and a new general strike… it is not inconceivable that this might yet become a reality should the example of the RMT be the catalyst that inspires real unity of action and determined leadership.

Lynch Leads the Way

Lynch has shown himself well able to stand up to the usual vacuous media pundits, garnering much praise in the process. It has been observed that Lynch is never verbose – he refuses to engage with political grandstanding and his defence of strike action is articulated in plain terms. Even some of the right wing media has been grudgingly admiring, describing him “making mincemeat out of politicians and broadcast interviewers alike. Hapless Tory MPs that attempted to recite pre-rehearsed cliches and dodgy statistics have been gunned down by the mature, considered and, yes, gruffly charming manner of Lynch”. Importantly, this example has also emboldened members of other unions and gained public support for the strike, with solidarity rallies held around the country. RMT union officials such as Eddie Dempsey (Senior Assistant General Secretary) have been sharing messages pledging support to health care workers.

Ministers and broadcasters have tried to portray Lynch as a ‘hard left’ union ‘baron’, ordering about his members and heaping misery on the travelling public. Being interviewed by media at the start of the strike, Lynch quickly turned the tables by scornfully charging journalists with talking ‘twaddle’, showing them what peaceful picketing looked like and asking why they did not want to talk about the important issues. He talks calmly and simply about the ruling class owning the means of production and mass media, and of the outrage that is predictably provoked when working class people show they can be articulate and have coherent and challenging ideas about how the economy and society should work for the benefit of the majority.

There may be a profusion of Mick Lynch merchandise, but the man himself insists that he does not want to become an icon: “Our job is to deliver the most effective action and articulate our case. Millions of people in this country face lower living standards and the stripping out of occupational pensions. We’re not going to accept that. We’ve got the most peculiar economic situation in this country with full employment and falling wages. Covid has been a smokescreen for the rich and powerful in this country to drive down wages as far as they can.”

The RMT is calling for talks with the government and the industry at a national level to reach a fair settlement including no compulsory redundancies, that working conditions and jobs are subject to negotiation and agreement with the RMT and a fair pay rise that takes into account the rising cost of living. 180 years after the first general strike in Britain, there is talk once again of joined up trade union action and a new general strike. This is something that Lynch would support in the unlikely event that the Trades Union Congress were to call. With growing pressure from inflation fuelled by massive rises in energy bills, and millions being plunged into poverty, it is not inconceivable that this might yet become a reality should the example of the RMT be the catalyst that inspires real unity of action and determined leadership.

Enough is Enough

New campaign against austerity launched in the UK


11/08/2022

A new campaign has been launched in the UK to fight for the rights of working people suffering due to the cost-of-living crisis. Enough is Enough is backed by leading Trade Unionists Mick Lynch (RMT) and Dave Ward (CWU), Left Labour MPs Zarah Sultana and Ian Byrne, and community groups.

The campaign has 5 main demands:

1 – A Real Pay Rise. This includes a ‘significant rise in the national living wage’, a public sector pay rise in line with inflation, and equivalent rises in pensions and benefits.

2 – Slash Energy Bills. This demand calls for the recent huge energy price rises to be halted and reversed, as well as longer term solutions such as the nationalisation of energy companies and investment in renewable energy.

3 – End Food Poverty. Demands include enshrining the right to food in law, universal free school meals and reinstating the £20-a-week Universal Credit uplift that was recently snatched away from the poorest by the Tories.

4 – Decent Homes for All. The campaign demands rent caps, 100,000+ new council houses per year and a charter for renters’ rights.

5 – Tax the Rich. Demands include a wealth tax, raising taxes on corporate profits and closing loopholes used to dodge taxes.

There is clearly an appetite for such a campaign. In the first two days since the campaign was launched, over 200,000 people have signed up. This is more than the entire membership of the Tory party who get to choose the next UK Prime Minister. With pay falling, energy bills skyrocketing, widespread use of foodbanks and the proliferation of substandard privately rented accommodation, people have had enough.

The official opposition seem paralysed in the face of this crisis. I believe that Sir Keir Starmer is currently enjoying a holiday, but who can tell? His shadow cabinet of dead-eyed Blairite drones have been careful to avoid any radical talk about scary things like nationalisation, pay rises in line with inflation or supporting workers in struggle. Given the Labour Party’s refusal to fight for working people, it is refreshing to see the beginnings of a big campaign against the rapacious Tory government.

It is no use waiting for Sir Keir to get back from his holiday, or whatever he’s doing. The crisis is happening now. People cannot afford food or energy. Corporations are raking in massive profits at our expense. There is a record number of billionaires in the UK, and a record number of foodbanks. Along with the union’s ‘hot strike summer’, new shoots of hope are growing. After the defeat of Corbynism and the retaking of the Labour Party by its Right, it’s time for the UK Left to stop licking its wounds and get back to the fight. Enough is Enough.