British Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaks at the NATO Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on July 10, 2024 (Photo: Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images)
“While the U.K. is giving aid with one hand, it continues to send weapons used in the ongoing killing of civilians with the other,” said one advocate.
Days after independent United Nations experts said the blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza over the past nine months has led to famine throughout the enclave, rights groups on Friday applauded the British government’s announcement that it will restore funding to the U.N.’s relief agency in Palestine—but said the Labour Party will remain complicit in the suffering of Gazans as long as it continues arming Israel.
Tim Bierley, a campaigner at Global Justice Now, said the decision to restore U.K. funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) six months after it was suspended was “welcome and long overdue,” following mounting reports of dozens of Palestinian children and adults dying of starvation in the intervening months.
The U.K. was one of several wealthy countries that suspended funding for UNRWA, which operates mainly on international donations, after Israel in January claimed without evidence that 12 out of 13,000 UNRWA staff members in Gaza had been involved in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The loss of hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S., Germany, the U.K., and other countries severely reduced UNRWA’s ability to provide food aid, healthcare, sanitation services, and employment to Palestinians, nearly all of whom have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment.
Following sustained advocacy by rights groups and Labour Party lawmakers who support Palestinian rights, Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Friday announced that the new Labour government, which took control after this month’s elections, has committed to providing £21 million ($27 million) to UNRWA following former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to suspend funding.
Lammy noted in his speech to Parliament that restoring UNRWA funding is “absolutely central” to ensuring humanitarian aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza.
“No other agency can deliver aid at the scale needed,” he said.
The government’s decision leaves the U.S.—UNRWA’s largest funder—as the only country that has not restored its financial support for the agency. In March, the U.S. passed a military spending package that prohibits UNRWA funding through at least March 2025.
Bierley was among those who noted that while the U.K. is committing to provide more humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza, the Labour government is still providing Israel with military aid.
“While the U.K. is giving aid with one hand, it continues to send weapons used in the ongoing killing of civilians with the other. Labour has had more than enough time to review the evidence: The U.K. must ban all arms sales to Israel with immediate effect,” said Bierley.
Journalist Owen Jones added that considering all countries except the U.S. have already restored funding—with many citing the U.N.’s finding that Israel’s accusations were unsubstantiated—the Labour government’s decision is “the bare minimum.”
“Now end arms sales and stop trying to wreck the [International Criminal Court] arrest warrants,” said Jones, referring to the U.K.’s bid to intervene in the ICC’s case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Member of Parliament Andy McDonald of the Labour Party called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to “clarify that it supports the processes that will prosecute war crimes and that the U.K. accepts the ICC jurisdiction over Israel, and has no truck with the nonsense legal argument of Israel being exempt from international law.”
I very much welcome the Foreign Secretary's decision to overturn the suspension of funding to UNRWA.
But on arms sales and compliance with international humanitarian law, we urgently need the government's legal assessment – and action.
— Andy McDonald MP for Middlesbrough & Thornaby East (@AndyMcDonaldMP) July 19, 2024
The humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians said the Labour Party’s decision will restore “an irreplaceable lifeline” to a population of 2.3 million Gaza residents who “face an existential threat from Israel’s military bombardment and siege.”
“We hope that David Lammy and the U.K. government will now commit to increasing multi-year support to the agency,” said the group, “to bolster its vital humanitarian work across the region and ensure the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees are upheld.”
Donald Trump enters the stage on the last day of the Republican National Convention (Screenshot via CBS News)
Former president Trump’s first speech following the attempted assassination against him was an appeal to workers from a pro-boss candidate
Former President Donald Trump, now officially the nominee from the Republican Party for the 2024 Presidential elections, gave an address to the Republican National Convention on its last night, on July 18.
His address was riddled with appeals to workers in the US, who are experiencing deep economic despair under the Biden administration (as they were during previous administrations). According to the US Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, the vast majority (67%) of the over 220 million survey respondents claim to have difficulty paying for usual household expenses within the last seven days—no surprise, as grocery prices have risen nearly 27% since 2020.
Eugene Puryear, journalist with BreakThrough News and political analyst, said that the Republican appeal to workers is telling of the overall political climate in the country. “We see Biden and the Democratic Party talking about ‘working class, working class, working class,’ Trump, JD Vance, and the Republicans also talking about ‘working class, working class, working class,’ when clearly neither of these parties cares at all about the working class,” he stated. “If these two capitalist parties, who have access to the most extensive polling data, think that they have to appeal to the working class, as a class, in their campaign, even if it’s a fraudulent appeal, it confirms class consciousness is growing in the United States. As can be seen from the growing popularity of trade unions and socialism.”
However, the appeal to working people by the Republicans, is one that recognizes their hardship but does not present solutions that would in any way threaten their class interests. As showcased by Donald Trump at the convention, their approach is to misinform, misrepresent, look for scapegoats, and beat the drums of nationalist chauvinism.
Made in the USA
“We will not let countries come in, take our jobs, and plunder our nation. They come and do that. They plunder our nation,” Trump said. “The way they will sell their product in America is to build it in America, very simple. Build it in America and only in America… If you go back 20, 25 years they’ve stolen, going to China and Mexico, about 68% of our auto industry. Manufacturing jobs. We’re going to get them all back. We’re going to get them all back, every single one of them.”
Trump promises to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US through tariffs and reversing government regulations.
In swearing his commitment to “bringing manufacturing back to the US”, Trump targeted prominent union leader Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers. Trump essentially blames Fain for having “allowing” auto manufacturing jobs to move to Mexico.
“And right now as we speak, large factories, just started, are being built across the border in Mexico,” said Trump. “So, with all the other things happening at our border, and they’re being built by China to make cars and to sell them into our country, no tax, no anything. The United Auto Workers ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen and the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately and every single autoworker, union and nonunion, should be voting for Donald Trump because we’re going to bring back car manufacturing and we’re going to bring it back fast.”
This attack on Fain may be based on his left-leaning political position rather than a supposed “defense of workers”.
The reason why manufacturing plants have largely moved to the Global South is clearly not because of strong union leaders, but because of corporate greed, and the increase in surplus value that capitalists can extract from cheaper labor in the Global South, ie globalization, a process which has been the driving force in the global economy for the last several decades. A central demand of the successful UAW strike last year in the “Big Three” auto manufacturers, Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors, was in fact to reopen factories that had been closed down due to offshoring and globalization.
Wealth transfers to the rich
During his speech, Trump proudly touted his legacy of tax cuts for the wealthy and slashing pro-worker regulations. “The biggest tax cuts ever. The biggest regulation cuts ever… We did so much. We do so much,” he said.
Trump has already been president once, and as he proudly articulated, his record proves that his true loyalty lies with the ultra-rich, not with the working class. In 2017, Trump launched tax cuts for the rich that initiated one of the largest transfers of wealth from workers to the wealthy in US history—effectively a wealth transfer of USD 2 trillion. How did he manage this? Trump slashed the corporate tax rate from 36% to 21%, and lowered the income tax rate from those in the highest bracket from 39.6% to 37%, and exempted people with up to USD 12 million from paying any taxes on the inheritance left to loved ones.
He indicated that he would go even further during his second term. “We’ll start paying off debt and start lowering taxes even further. We gave you the largest tax cut. We’ll do it more,” he promised.
Sacrificing workers and the planet, for profit
During his speech, Trump declared that he would address the cost of living crisis and soaring cost of energy by encouraging exploitation of the natural resources in the United States. “We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said to the convention hall.
“By slashing energy costs, we will in turn reduce the cost of transportation, manufacturing and all household goods. So much starts with energy. And remember, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country by far. We are a nation that has the opportunity to make an absolute fortune with its energy. We have it and China doesn’t.”
It is not new for Republican candidates to promise jobs and benefits for workers in exchange for striking down environmental regulations and violating Indigenous land rights, over uninhibited extraction of gas and oil in the United States. Trump in his 2016 campaign had triumphantly declared, “We’re preparing bold action to lift the restrictions on American energy…and we’re going to put our miners back to work.”
The Republican Party platform for 2024 states: “Under President Trump, the US became the Number One Producer of Oil and Natural Gas in the World — and we will soon be again by lifting restrictions on American Energy Production and terminating the Socialist Green New Deal.”
But is the drive to extract the earth’s resources necessarily compatible with protecting workers and jobs?
Already Congressional Republicans moved to block the enforcement of life-saving health regulations for coal miners.
If Trump and the Republican Party implement their drastic program, not only will the planet suffer—so will workers, who conservatives have historically left with the least protections possible. Trump implemented a variety of policies that undermined federal safety regulations, including slashing the amount of Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) inspectors.
Trump enables tip stealing
Trump also made a big deal about the Republican Party’s proposal of eliminating taxes on tips, telling a confusing anecdote about a waitress he spoke to about the need for this policy. Trump seemed in disbelief that he had a meaningful political conversation with his waitress. “You know, most people who go out, they hire consultants. They pay them [millions] of dollars… I got my information from a very smart waitress. That’s better than spending millions of dollars.”
The Republican Party’s platform states regarding “no tax on tips”, “we will eliminate Taxes on Tips for millions of Restaurant and Hospitality Workers, and pursue additional Tax Cuts.”
How much good can “no tax on tips” do in an administration (Trump’s) which implemented a “tip stealing rule,” which made it easier for employers to pocket up to USD 5.8 billion worth of workers’ tips? Or which opposed any increase to the federal minimum wage?
So-called border “invasion” rhetoric divides working class
Trump spent most of his speech harping on policies that divide workers from one another, including a very fine line between recent immigrants, specifically from Venezuela and El Salvador, versus the rest of the working class. Trump and the Republicans have promised to carry out the largest mass deportation the country has ever seen. “We also have an illegal immigration crisis, and it’s taking place right now, as we sit here in this beautiful arena. It’s a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction to communities all across our land. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”
In an economy ruled by the corporate elite, are migrant workers the true enemies of US-born workers? Economists cite migrant workers as a key reason for job growth despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive raising of interest rates.
“There’s been something of a mystery—how are we continuing to get such extraordinary strong job growth with inflation still continuing to come down?’’ Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department, told PBS. “The immigration numbers being higher than what we had thought—that really does pretty much solve that puzzle.’’
The policies that are set to come from a second Trump term can only hurt working people. As labor journalist Alexandra Bradbury writes in Labor Notes, “In case there’s any doubt: billionaire Trump, who as an employer has fought unions and stiffed workers, and as a TV personality made ‘You’re fired’ his catchphrase, is not for the little guy.”
While workers in the US are increasingly feeling discouraged by what both the Republican and Democratic parties have to offer, many people are instead turning to alternative options. Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Garcia, are running on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation on an explicitly socialist platform, and Dr. Jill Stein, running with the Green Party and Dr. Cornel West, running as an independent, are running on progressive platforms. Either way, most working class formations are gearing up for a strong fight back to the next presidential administration and their plans to shred the rights of the people.
The spokesperson of the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree giving a press conference.
The Yemeni Support Front is escalating its attacks on Israeli “primary targets” in solidarity with the Palestinian people, until the aggression on Gaza is halted and the siege is lifted
A drone struck the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Friday, July 19, killing at least one person and injuring 10 others. The drone exploded hundreds of meters away from the United States Embassy, at the intersection of Shalom Aleichem and Ben Yehuda Streets.
A few hours after the attack, Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces claimed responsibility for the attack, in a televised speech delivered by its spokesperson, Brigadier-General Yahya Sare’e. During his speech, Sare’e clarified that Ansar Allah fired a “new drone called Yafa, which is capable of bypassing the enemy’s interception systems”. He also declared Tel Aviv an “unsafe area” and a “primary target” for Ansar Allah’s weapons. Saree asserted that the attack was launched in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people and in retaliation of the massacres committed by the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The drone that hit an apartment building in Tel Aviv was an Iranian manufactured craft called Samad-3, which was modified to extend its range, the spokesperson of the Israeli Occupation Forces, Daniel Hagari, said in a televised statement on Friday. He also mentioned that the IOF was investigating what went wrong, as the drone was detected by the Israeli air defenses, but an “error” occurred and “there was no interception.“
Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot quoted an unnamed Israeli officials saying “Israel will respond to the Houthi drone strike. The option of an attack on Yemeni soil is on the table and we cannot rule out a response in Yemen.” Moreover, the newspaper said it was told by the officials that the attack on Tel Aviv is assessed to be targeting the Embassy of the United States there. It is the first time for Tel Aviv, which is considered the commercial hub for the Israeli entity, to be struck by a drone according to media reports.
A second explosion was heard in Tel Aviv later on Friday, reportedly leaving two casualties. Israeli media said that the incident occurred because an oxygen cylinder exploded inside an apartment in Yosef Zinman Street in east Tel Aviv.
Additionally, the Yemeni Armed Forces struck Singapore-flagged container ship, Lobivia, with ballistic missiles in the gulf of Aden on Friday, for violating entry ban to Israeli ports. Claiming the responsibility for striking the ship, Brigadier-General Yahya Saree reiterated, in another televised speech on Friday, that Ansar Allah’s operations will continue until the war on Gaza stops and the siege imposed on it is lifted.
UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.
Silencing defendants is the courtroom parallel to the wider attack on protest rights by the last government, including the “public nuisance” offence the Just Stop Oil five have been found guilty of and other measures that allow the police to shut down demonstrations before they have even begun, or haul peaceful citizens off marches for carrying placards or wearing imagery they object to.
Both reveal the collapse of ruling-class confidence in the people they rule. Grasping, after the shocks of Brexit and the Corbyn movement, that people are deeply dissatisfied with the system, their only answer is to ban protest and silence dissidents.
We cannot be silenced. The stakes are too high: as the Just Stop Oil cause illustrates, climate change, in the form of erratic weather, increasingly severe droughts and floods and crop failure, is already upon us. British farms saw a 19 per cent income drop in the last year because of mass flooding. The disruption to our lives from upsets to food production and the water supply will outweigh that from halting traffic on a motorway. The five must be freed.
Labour in power has a chance to change course from the crazy authoritarianism of the Tories. It is committed to restoring workers’ strike rights — but it must be made to restore protest rights too. Like the Tolpuddle Martyrs, we must “raise the watchword, liberty,” defying a state that tramples on our freedoms.
An activist puts up a banner reading “Just Stop Oil” atop an electronic traffic sign along M25 on November 10, 2022 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images)
“Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest,” a U.N. official said.
In a decision that one United Nations official called “beyond comprehension,” a U.K. judge on Thursday sentenced five Just Stop Oil activists to a combined 21 years in prison over a Zoom call in which they discussed plans to disrupt London’s orbital M25 highway.
The sentences are believed to be the longest on record for nonviolent protest in U.K. history, The Guardian reported.
“The sentences handed to the five Just Stop Oil campaigners are utterly disproportionate,” environmentalist and author George Monbiot wrote on social media. “Four and five years in prison for peaceful protest? This is what you might expect in Russia or Egypt, not in a supposed democracy.”
“Why are we punishing the people trying to prevent disaster while allowing the oil company giants causing it to reap super profits?”
The five activists—Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, and Cressida Gethin—were found guilty last week of conspiring to cause a public nuisance due to a four-day direct action protest on the M25 that Just Stop Oil ultimately held in November 2022. All of the defendants participated in a Zoom call in which they planned to recruit volunteers for the protest, which was intended to pressure the U.K. government to end oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, a policy that the incoming Labour government has now adopted. The Zoom call had been infiltrated by a Sun journalist, who shared its contents with the Metropolitan Police.
On Thursday, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Hallam to five years in prison and Shaw, Lancaster, De Abreu, and Gethin to four each.
🧡 The #WholeTruthFive being cheered as they leave court and are taken to prison.
⛓️ They have received 4 and 5 year prison sentences after a zoom call about a nonviolent action being planned in 2022. This is not what a functioning democracy looks like. pic.twitter.com/JKKg2f8gtb
The sentences sparked outrage from humans rights advocates and environmental campaigners.
Michel Forst, U.N. special rapporteur on environmental defenders who also observed part of the trial, said the sentencing “marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders, and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom.”
Forst added: “Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day.”
Former Green Party leader and Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas called the sentences “obscene.”
“Why are we punishing the people trying to prevent disaster while allowing the oil company giants causing it to reap super profits?” she asked on social media.
Current Deputy Leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski said: “‘Conspiracy to commit a public nuisance’ is a deeply authoritarian description that should send shivers down the spine of all of us who want to live in a free society. Even worse when the real crime is consecutive governments who have played down the climate emergency.”
Campaigners and experts also criticized the trial itself, in which Hehir did not allow the defendants to present evidence about the climate crisis to explain their actions.
“Defendants should be allowed to explain why they have decided to use nonconventional but yet peaceful forms of action, like civil disobedience, when they engage in environmental protest,” Forst told The Guardian after attending part of the trial.
Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London—who Hehir did not allow the defendants to call as a witness—called the trial and verdict a “farce.”
“They mark a low point in British justice, and they were an assault on free speech,” McGuire in a statement said Thursday. “The judge’s characterization of climate breakdown as a matter of opinion and belief is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance. Similarly to suggest that the climate emergency is irrelevant in relation to whether the defendants had a reasonable case for action is crass stupidity.”
The verdict and sentencing also come amid an increasing crackdown on climate protest, both globally and in the U.K. The previous longest known civil disobedience sentences in the country were also for Just Stop Oil activists.
“The U.K. is a nightmare for climate activists from this point of view, in the sense that the sentences imposed in other countries are neither that harsh, nor that widespread,” Forst said July 12.
Greenpeace U.K.’s program director Amy Cameron said on Thursday: “These sentences are not a one-off anomaly but the culmination of years of repressive legislation, overblown government rhetoric, and a concerted assault on the right of juries to deliberate according to their conscience. It’s part of the mess the Labour government has inherited from its predecessor, and they must fix it by giving back to people the right to protest that’s been slowly being taken away from them.”
Forst also called on the new government to reverse course.
“Given the gravity of the situation, I urge the new United Kingdom government, with absolute urgency and without undo delay, to take all necessary steps to ensure that Mr. Shaw’s sentence is reduced in line with the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Aarhus Convention,” Forst wrote on Thursday.
