Britain should be a voice for peace, sanity and social justice in the world – not a junior megaphone for US expansionism and EU neo-liberalism, Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths said this week.
In a report to the party’ Political Committee he said that bloodshed and tragedy in different parts of the world ‘cried out for an independent foreign and defence policy from Britain’.
‘Who in the West is speaking out against Israel’s brutal bombardment by air and sea of the Palestinian people of Gaza?’, Robert Griffiths asked.
He ‘unequivocally’ condemned the ‘kidnapping and murder of children anywhere and by any party’, but also attacked the motives of the Israeli government and Hamas for escalating the conflict which has so far claimed the lives of scores of Palestinians and three Israelis.
‘The Israeli regime uses state terror to maintain and reinforce its illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, divide the Palestinian liberation movement and sabotage any prospect for a just peace, while Hamas seeks to restore its declining prestige’, the Communist Party leader accused.
Robert Griffiths insisted that an independent British foreign policy ‘free from US domination’ would demand an end to Israeli aggresssion and occupation, the release of Marwan Barghouti and thousands of other Palestinian political prisoners and ‘full and immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood’.
In Syria, he argued, ‘US-British strategy to replace President al-Assad’s regime with Western puppets has crumbled along with numerous Syrian towns and cities’ and now threatens to engulf Iraq in sectarian warfare. In particular, Mr Griffiths condemned the ‘cynical’ role played by NATO member Turkey and Western-backed dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf which had armed and financed the Islamic jihadist forces now occupying swathes of Syria and Iraq.
Britain’s communists also condemned the military offensive launched by the Poroshenko regime in Kiev against eastern Ukraine.
‘Yet again, we see the bloody results of US-NATO-EU policy to draw yet more more countries into their orbit of imperialist exploitation and control’, Mr Griffiths charged. The CP political committee welcomed the formation and growth of the Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in the Ukraine movement.
Britain’s communists also urged delegates to the forthcoming Labour Party policy forum to stand up for an independent foreign and defence policy for Britain by:
Opposing the costly renewal of Britain’s US-controlled nuclear weapons system.
Supporting comprehensive sanctions against Israel and full UN recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Condemning the proposed EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with its provisions to extend big business power into every sector of national economies.
