Tomás Ó Flatharta

Looking at Things from the Left

Archive for the ‘John McDonnell MP’ Category

Britain’s tankies react to Prigozhin’s mutiny

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Here is another article in a series concerning Britain’s political tankies (left wing activists who identify positively with Stalinist tanks sent into countries neighbouring Russia to crush popular working class and democratic uprisings – for example Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). A leading spokesperson of Britain’s “Stop the War” Campaign is Andrew Murray, who operates within a narrow political spectrum opposing active solidarity with the Ukrainian masses. Regrettably Murray shares practical common ground with activists from a different non-Stalinist background, the British Socialist Workers’s Party. This political poison – supporting any camp that is opposed by United States imperialism – is demolished below by the social democratic author Paul Mason. Mason might do his readers a favour by pointing to the fact that many currents with political origins on the left of Stalinism and Social Democracy – for example the Fourth International, solidarity movements such as the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, many anarchist organisations and activists – advocate policies on Ukraine in accord with his own thinking. The main Irish radical left organisation – People Before Profit – is strangled by political campism. It needs rapid lessons offered by Scandinavian comrades :

Nordic Green Left Parties Declare Solidarity With Ukraine “we demand a complete and immediate withdrawal of the Russian armed forces from all Ukrainian territory”

https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article61764


Stop The War movement finds yet another reason to tell Ukraine to stop resisting…

Putin’s regime is in danger of collapse therefore Ukraine should stop fighting…That’s the message from Stop The War. Having been struck dumb by the events of Saturday 24 June, the campaign has finally come out with a line, penned by self-styled Ukraine expert Andrew Murray.

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The Ukrainian Question for Socialists – John McDonnell MP

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Left-Wing British Labour politician, John McDonnell MP was Labour’s Shadow Chancellor from 2015 to 2020, when Jeremy Corbyn was the party leader.

His policy is very clear :

So, with such a consistent track record of opposing illegal wars launched by imperial powers, it is completely understandable why I have opposed and condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and why I have supported arming Ukrainians fighting the invasion of their country.

Source : https://labourhub.org.uk/2023/02/21/the-ukrainian-question-for-socialists/

On the question of Ukraine, we all come to it with a bit of history.

For me, I have a history of opposing, speaking against and voting against illegal invasions of countries from Iraq to the sending of troops into Afghanistan and the bombing of Libya and Syria.

So, with such a consistent track record of opposing illegal wars launched by imperial powers, it is completely understandable why I have opposed and condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and why I have supported arming Ukrainians fighting the invasion of their country.

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