Stop the anti-immigrant rot
There is growing pong around the Labour Party. I am talking about the reek of foreigner-bashing. For some time now Labour’s main plank of housing policy has consisted of banging the anti-foreigner drum. In July last year the party’s housing spokesperson Phil Twyford notoriously came out with a deliberate, racist, anti-Chinese outburst when he claimed, […]
The Cruel Irony of Pride
I sat down to talk with a couple of No Pride In Prison (NPIP) members as they tried to get a respite from their scrum with the police. One of them tells me “pride has historically been a protest and to deny protest for the rights of queer and trans people where it began in […]
Making the Zika threat worse
Images of Black and Brown people suffering an epidemic viral disease are flooding television screens yet again. This time, however, it isn’t Ebola but the Zika virus that is the culprit. The current outbreak of the Zika virus evokes similar racist fears to those surrounding the 2014 Ebola epidemic–but more than that, the explosion in […]
When Black Workers Organized Against Jim Crow
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression by Robin Kelley. A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this wonderful classic work of workers’ history was published last year. Robin Kelley has magnificently brought to light the little known struggles of communist party-supporting workers and sharecroppers, the majority of whom were black, under ferocious conditions of […]
Challenging war and racism after Paris
A statement by our sister group in the US, International Socialist Organization. The criminal slaughter of innocent people in Paris by gunmen and suicide bombers acting for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is being seized upon by the forces of militarism, empire and the anti-immigrant right. They want to exploit the outpouring […]
Nationalist poison no medicine against the TPPA
There are plenty of good reasons to oppose the TPPA. It’s part of U.S. imperialism’s strategy against China in the Asia-Pacific, working in the economic sphere as the ‘tilt to Asia’ does in the military. It gives greater powers to capitalists, and will be used to water down labour rights and environmental protections. It threatens […]
Why we support the Palestinian rebellion
Young Palestinians across the Occupied Territories have continued to clash with the Israeli military, while inside Israel more than 20,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel have taken to the streets to call for an end to the country’s apartheid and occupation polices. Thirty-three Palestinians are now dead, including 7 children. Thousands more are injured. As each day passes, more […]
The Poison of Nationalism
“What we need is an outright ban on foreigners owning land or houses in New Zealand.” “This 3rd great [Chinese] colonisation could finally be a bridge building event between Pakeha and Maori.” You’d be forgiven if you thought these quotes are from a National Front website. Building a bridge for a coming race war? Foreigners […]
Chinese are not to blame – a New Zealand Housing Crisis
Auckland and Christchurch are in severe housing crises due to a lack of supply among other things. In Auckland, according to Fiona Rotheram in The Listener, the average house price is now $776,729 as of February and is at its highest since before the global financial crisis. An Auckland house now worth $1,000,000, earned $2200 […]
Māori and Communism in the 1930s
The miseries of the Great Depression hit Māori workers particularly hard. Mass unemployment, poverty, slave-labour like conditions in relief works, poor housing and slumlords profiteering from renting out hovels – this was the fate of many hundreds of thousands of workers across the country. Māori workers, still concentrated in rural areas and in some of […]
