CP - UNITY NEEDED TO DEFEND GAZA, RIGHTS, JOBS AND SERVICES

"George Galloway's victory in the Rochdale by-election was emphatic", Kevan Nelson told the Communist Party political committee earlier this week, noting that the Workers Party candidate had overturned a 10,000 Labour majority.

  Moreover, Mr Nelson pointed out, Mr Galloway's campaign "had combined internationalist support for the Palestinian people of Gaza with serious class politics", calling for the return of A&E and maternity services and town centre regeneration. 

  Contrary to the impression given by media reports, such a campaign had appealed not only to the constituency's Muslim minority - fewer than one-third of the population - but also to many of its non-Muslim majority.

  While time will tell whether the new MP's election represents what Mr Galloway claims is a "shifting of the tectonic plates", the CP international secretary remarked, the ruling class response to the result had been one of shock and outrage.

  "We are likely to witness a level of character assassination, ostracism and smears of an elected MP not seen since the well documented state harassment and surveillance of Communist MP Phil Piratin between 1945 and 1950", Mr Nelson added.

  But he also doubted whether George Galloway's victory would help overcome political disunity on the left, especially given the Rochdale MP's "reactionary views" on abortion rights and his opposition to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

  Even so, greater campaigning unity was needed more than ever, Mr Nelson concluded, in the face of Tory government attacks on the the right to protest and on local jobs and services as a financial crisis threatens to bankrupt Birmingham City Council and many other local authorities.

  On the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 miners strike, Britain's Communists paid tribute to the strikers and the National Union of Mineworkers in their heroic struggle to defend jobs and local communities against the Thatcher government and ruling-class state power.