Palestine solidarity is now breaking the political consensus and isolating Labour LABOUR’S Gaza shame deepens by the day. While Keir Starmer calls Israel’s continuing assault on the Palestinian people “intolerable” he nevertheless continues to not just tolerate, but to actively enable the genocidal aggression. Even one of the few half-steps Labour has taken since coming into office, the suspension of some arms licences for export to Israel, is now called into question. It appears that munitions for Israel’s war have been supplied regardless. Week after week, hapless Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer is sent to the Commons to cover for Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy, himself a study in venal complicity.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/palestine-solidarity-now-breaking-political-consensus-and-isolating-labour Ireland: class struggle not broad fronts will beat the far right On Saturday 26 April, a large demonstration led by the far right marched through Dublin’s North Inner City. The turnout was significant: estimates range from 5,000 to as many as 10,000. In fact, this was four or five times larger than the previous biggest far-right led mobilisation. On the other side of the Gardaí fence, the counter-protest organised by United Against Racism (UAR) also gathered more than counter-protests in the past. But still, we were outnumbered. Every honest socialist, communist and trade unionist – anyone indeed understanding the dangers the far right poses to the workers’ movement – will have undoubtedly asked themselves: how is it possible that these reactionaries can outnumber us in the streets of Dublin? This article is intended as a comradely contribution to what we believe is a necessary and urgent discussion in the wake of last weekend’s events. A discussion about our tactics in the fight against the far right.
https://marxist.com/ireland-class-struggle-not-broad-fronts-will-beat-the-far-right.htmEurope’s Liberation 80 Years On: FranceFirsthand accounts of the wartime Nazi occupation of France stress the messy, haphazard nature of the resistance. The groups that emerged in the chaotic circumstances following the French defeat of 1940 were fragmented and divided. They were made up of hundreds of individuals, eventually numbering tens of thousands, brought together by a deep-seated refusal of their unbearable situation. In the words of Claude Bourdet, a member of the Combat group, these were the people who said no, “with all our being.” Multiple small groups, shot through with various political standpoints, stepped into the breach left by the collapse of the nation’s institutions and parties, in defiance of Nazi occupation and the collaboration of the Vichy regime led by Marshal Philippe Pétain. Resistance involved refugees, political exiles, Jews, and veterans of struggles like the Spanish Civil War. It took many forms: gathering intelligence, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, or sheltering refugees and Allied service personnel and helping them across borders. Bourdet wrote of his experience of resistance within France as something far removed from elitist or idealist readings of history. It was a movement that developed independently of Charles de Gaulle and the Free French forces based in London: "No doubt it was difficult, from London, to understand the unexpected nature of the problems faced by the Resistance. We ourselves discovered the nature and scale of the task bit by bit, empirically. To have imagined it, without living it every day, would have required a wide-ranging political culture, to have studied the history of revolutions, to more or less understand the meaning of revolutionary action. This was not the case with De Gaulle, nor the men who surrounded him."
https://jacobin.com/2025/05/europe-liberation-80-france-vichy