Hiroshima 80 years on
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hiroshima-80-years
JEREMY CORBYN reports from Hiroshima where he represented CND at the 80th anniversary of the bombing of the city by the US
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Hundreds of thousands died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the bombs and the cancers that followed. Probably two million lives have been lost by testing and the medical effects of radiation emitted.
Hiroshima’s bombing in 1945 did not serve any military purpose. Japan was already on the verge of surrender and was reaching out via the Soviet Union for an end to the conflict.
This was well known to the US and Britain at the time. In reality, it was the last bomb of WWII, and the first bomb of the cold war. The US had spent $2 billion on the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb, despite the opposition of many scientists including Albert Einstein who had initially supported it. They opposed it because they realised the indiscriminate killing of civilians was then, as it is now, an inevitable consequence of nuclear war.
The horrors of the atomic bombings still haunt the now aged survivors. Known as the Hibakusha, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in pleading with the world to abolish the nuclear weapons that had killed their friends and family.
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Eighty years on from the horrors of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki), and the weapons now available are many times more powerful. There are no winners in nuclear war; only burnt bodies, a destroyed environment and a nuclear winter for the whole planet.
After 80 years, we need to make the Global Ban Treaty a reality — and rid this world of nuclear weapons once and for all.
Britain is an ‘active participant’ in Gaza genocide, say leading British Jews
British Jews protest against the Gaza genocide and Britain’s role in it, Whitehall, London, August 5, 2025BRITAIN is “not just complicit, but an active participant” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, activists said today during a rally by British Jews against the crackdown on Palestine solidarity protests.
Dozens of activists, Holocaust descendants and campaigners gathered outside Downing Street to condemn the government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation and the restrictions on protests imposed under the guise of protecting the rights of Jewish people.
Speeches were delivered, songs sung and poems read out — including some written by Palestinian children.
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Speaking at the rally, former South African MP and anti-arms campaigner Andrew Feinstein called his constituent MP, the Prime Minister’s actions “shameful.”
“The reality is that Britain, under Keir Starmer’s government, is not just complicit in a genocide — it is an active participant in that genocide,” he said.
“The RAF now, through an American leasing company, is flying more spy flights over Gaza than the Israeli Air Force itself.
“That is not complicity, that is active participation, and this is being done in our names, using our tax pounds.”
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See the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britain-active-participant-gaza-genocide-say-leading-british-jews
Morning Star Editorial: Reeves’s Corbyn jibes show up a government in denial
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/reevess-corbyn-jibes-show-government-denial
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves during a visit to Rolls Royce at Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, July 25, 2025AN EARLY exchange at the Edinburgh Fringe exposes this government’s inability to read the public mood — underlining how real a threat to it a new Jeremy Corbyn-led movement is.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves denied being complacent about the Your Party initiative launched by Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, but her bland dismissal of its prospects oozed complacency.
Oddly. Since Reeves had just stated that Labour’s main rival was not the Conservative Party — which she derided as “irrelevant” — but a new party of the right, Reform UK. And she was replying specifically to her host asking whether Your Party could become a “Reform of the left.”
Opinion polls suggest it could, though it is unlikely to bask in the approval of the billionaire press or receive the season tickets to BBC Question Time Nigel Farage’s projects enjoy. Movements intended to “take on the rich and powerful,” as Corbyn says a new left party would, face Establishment and state obstruction of a different order. However, that was not among Reeves’s reasons for belittling it.
No, the Chancellor disputes the idea that a project with 700,000 sign-ups is popular at all. She casts doubt on the figures, saying her sister received an email telling her she’d signed up when she hadn’t.
Such errors might occur. And enthusiasts for a new party can read too much into the stats: they are expressions of interest only, many will be in existing parties, and saying you want to be added to an email list does not imply the commitment of paid-up membership. But Reeves, in insinuating the mass appeal of Your Party is an illusion, doth protest too much.
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Labour, still the largest party in Britain, is not finished; it is even, despite its leadership’s best efforts, still the party to which more socialists belong than any other.
But if anything is designed to entrench its dismal polling, encourage a member exodus to a new left party and unmoor it from what remains of its social base, it is the wilful blindness to the popular clamour for radical change exhibited by Reeves.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/reevess-corbyn-jibes-show-government-denial
700,000 sign up to ‘your party’ call: What next in the fight for a workers’ party?
Editorial of the Socialist issue 1332
In one week more than 700,000 people have signed up to the yourparty.uk website to support Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s initiative to build a new left party. The party doesn’t yet exist, and so there is not yet a membership fee. Nonetheless this figure shows huge enthusiasm for the party. It tops the highest membership in Labour’s history: achieved when Jeremy Corbyn led it. It has reached as many as the current membership of Labour, Tories, Liberals and Reform combined.
A year ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 general election, the Socialist Party pointed out the extremely shallow base of support for Starmer’s Labour, elected by just 9.7 million voters, 20.1% of the electorate, the lowest share for any incoming government since the first ever election fought under universal (male) suffrage in 1918. We drew a contrast with the votes Labour received when Corbyn was leader, pointing particularly to the 12.88 million his anti-austerity manifesto received in 2017.
Unsurprisingly, these basic facts were not being reported in the establishment media at the time because, as we explained, “the capitalist class wants to boost the authority of the incoming Labour government hoping that, despite its very shallow social base, it will still be able to implement a programme in the interests of the elites. They are also desperate to cement the lie that Corbyn’s policies were unpopular. Despite their best efforts, however, this government will be rocked by mass working-class struggles against it, which will also inexorably find a political expression.” (Socialism Today July 2024)
Just 12 months later and the potential power of that political expression has become palpable. Even just the promise of a new party has lifted the confidence of all those suffering pay restraint, cuts to public services and benefits, and watching with horror the unimaginable misery being suffered by Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli state. While our chins have been lifted, those of the capitalist class and their political representatives have dipped. Polls even before a party was announced showed that 18% of people would consider voting for a party led by Corbyn, and that it would come first among young people.
Labour loyalists are desperately beating the drum of ‘vote for us or get Reform’, but it is not working. Too many people can see that, if the workers’ movement supports this Labour government for the rich it will be a gift to Reform, who will be able to falsely pose as the representatives of the ‘little people’. If, on the other hand, a mass workers’ party is built with a fighting, anti-austerity programme, it would cut across Reform. One recent Merlin Strategy poll gave an indication of how – despite all of the slanders of the capitalist press – Reform voters still perceive Corbyn as representing something different to the establishment politicians. It found 67% of them think he is for working people, 64% believe he is honest and principled.
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Article continues at https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/141634/04-08-2025/700000-sign-up-to-your-party-call-what-next-in-the-fight-for-a-workers-party
