Imperialism

From the Malayan Communist Party to Lee Kuan Yew

This is the first article in a series. In The Open United Front: The Communist Struggle in Singapore 1954-1966, Lee Ting Hui attempts to analyse communist activities in Singapore “within the framework of the united front.” While the book fails to understand the ideological context of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), it tells of how the Communist Party led the labour and student movements into struggle against British domination in Singapore (then a colony alongside Malaya). Well-known anti-colonial figures from the time such as Lim Chin Siong are said to have been secret members of the MCP...

The origins of Bangladesh and Pakistan's 1968

East Pakistan, 1969 Part two, telling the story of the war itself, is here . Fifty years ago one of history’s biggest anti-colonial struggles triumphed. On 16 December 1971, the Pakistani armed forces that had waged a nine-month campaign of genocidal mass murder to subjugate Pakistan’s eastern half surrendered in the face of Indian military intervention. East Pakistan – East Bengal – became the independent state of Bangladesh. The Bengali people of East Pakistan were among the largest of the many nations to throw off colonial rule in the 20th century. In 1971 Bangladesh’s population, 66...

From 1997: "Hong Kong on the auction block"

Editorial in Workers' Liberty magazine 39 , April 1997. At the time of republishing (December 2021), the Chinese government has just spent two years radically demolishing Hong Kong's freedoms. A century and half a go Britain was the great world power, the pioneer and bearer of a new type of production by steam-driven machinery; her navy ruled the world's seas. By contrast, China was an ancient civilisation, grown decrepit and spiralling into decay and disintegration. Britain fought a series of wars to force China to open its borders to opium from British-ruled India - the "opium wars". Britain...

Barbados ditches the monarchy. So should we!

On 30 November-1 December, the Caribbean nation of Barbados became a republic, removing the UK monarch as its head of state. The English monarchy took control of Barbados from 1625, wiping out the island’s indigenous population and creating a society based on slavery. The forced labour of black Barbadians played a crucial role in the rise of the first capitalist empire: by 1660 Barbados generated more trade than all other English colonies combined. Enslaved Barbadians resisted fiercely, including through a major uprising in 1816, an important precursor to the abolition of slavery in the...

One of the memories we must unearth

On 23 Jan 1925, Wong So Ying, a young Chinese woman anarchist, bombed the Office of the Protector of Chinese in Kuala Lumpur (in Malaya, then under British rule). Newspapers at the time noted that she was dressed in a modern style, had a bob haircut, and spoke fluent English and Malay. The Straits Times reported that she was “self-educated against the will of her parents.” She was found to be acquainted with the names of anarchists in China and Chinese anarchist publications. Wong’s bombing was celebrated in several Chinese anarchist newspapers, one of them calling her “China’s Sophia...

Kino Eye: Eisenstein's unmade films about Haiti

A first for Kino Eye — films you can’t see because they were never made! The Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein had always been fascinated with the slaves’ revolt on Haiti. It was one of his lifetime ambitions to make a film about this subject but, unfortunately, none ever materialised. The nearest he came was on an extended trip to the USA and Mexico in 1930. Arriving in Hollywood in May he read Black Majesty: The life of Christophe, King of Haiti , written by John W. Vandercook. Eisenstein wanted the black singer and actor Paul Robeson to play the leading role. However, Paramount Studios, who...

Haitian revolution vs British empire

The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, and the basis of bourgeois wealth was the slave trade and slave plantations in the colonies. Though the bourgeoisie traded in other things than slaves, upon the success or failure of the traffic everything else depended. Therefore when the bourgeoisie proclaimed the Rights of Man in general, with necessary reservations, one of these was that these rights should not extend to the French colonies. There was the abolitionist society to which Brissot, Robespierre, Mirabeau, Lafayette, Condorcet, and many such famous men belonged even before 1789...

Britain's Caribbean troops

The West Indian Soldier exhibition at the National Army Museum in Chelsea tells (part of) the story of Caribbean soldiers and the British Empire. It tries to stress the positive aspects of soldiers’ relationship to the army, but reveals how they faced racist attitudes and treatment from higher-ups. During the First World War Caribbean troops were sent to fight the Ottomans in Egypt, as the British government did not want them fighting white people. Until 1807 the government was reluctant to even concede that enslaved men recruited into the army were automatically freed. The most interesting...

A global fight for justice and freedom

This is the speech socialist activist Maxine Mallon (pictured above protesting at the Home Office against the Nationality and Borders Bill) gave recently about the democracy struggle in Hong Kong and its wider implications and connections.

Afghanistan and the left, 2021

The disaster in Afghanistan makes it even more urgent for the left to recognise that in conflicts between big powers like the USA, and reactionary forces which conflict with those big powers without to any degree fighting for national-liberation or democracy, it is possible and indeed mandatory for socialists to support neither side. We instead fight for the "third camp" of the working class and the oppressed, against both the big powers and forces like the Taliban, even if that "third camp" is at present weak and undeveloped. When I wrote an earlier comment , I thought that most people on the...

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