Britain

The Portrayal of Enemy States With Whom We Are Already in a State of Proto-War by Craig Murray Editor's note: Amongst many new features, the upgrade to Black Dwarf's website will include regular guest authors. Given its relevance to current events, I have decided to include it as part of my regular blog. In fascist lockstep, the entire British media, broadcast and print , corporate and state , is leading with a Ministry of Defence press release about a “Russian spy ship”

Angela Raynor, deputy Prime Minister to Keir Starmer and one time luminary of the Labour left under Jeremy Corbyn, has been caught fiddling  her tax returns and forced to resign. Although false declarations such as this are considered as tax fraud, she faces no prosecution. Once again, and with  increasing frequency, the seal has broken on the  Westminster cesspit, adding to the  foul stench that already hangs heavily over this showpiece of Western democracy. Raynor’s  failur

The sweeping electoral victories of Donald Trump and the British Labour Party, have registered a shift to the right in bourgeois politics. On each side of the Atlantic, both parties have cloaked themselvess in a banner of unqualified patriotism and racism. Albeit to different degrees, they each aspire to restore the declining fortunes of their respective empires. Make America Great Again  is the brashest expression of this and is echoed by Labour’s equally tawdry embrace of a

Like a rotting corpse exhumed from its grave, the horror of war - with its seemingly insoluble ethical conundrums - has once again risen into full view on European soil. In response, the British ruling class and its various media mouthpieces have orchestrated a chorus of moral outrage at the undeniable barbarities committed by their former friend in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin. For good measure, they have even questioned Washington’s decision to supply Ukraine with cluster bo

December 2022 through to January 2023 will go down in history as an unprecedented winter of discontent in the UK. Following closely on the heels of December actions which saw strikes by train drivers, bus drivers, ambulance paramedics, school teachers, university lecturers, post office workers and others, nurses at hospitals across England and Wales have come out on strike for the first time in their history. As with most public sector workers, they are striking for higher

How British imperialism crushed democracy in Greece Who let the dogs out: a Greek tragedy If anyone had cause to celebrate the Allied victory in World War II, it should have been the people of Greece. Having been occupied from 1941 to 1944 by German-led Axis forces Greek workers and farmers suffered as much if not more than any other occupied country. Indeed, following the German retreat the people of Athens poured into the streets in a joyful demonstration of victory. Amon

As Boris Johnson announced his schedule for relaxation of the lockdown accompanied by a promise to fully reopen the economy by early summer, the maintream parties and media establishment hailed it as a triumph. With Johnson himself describing it as “a one way journey to freedom” and others proclaiming a final return to “normality”, there was a sense of euphoria somewhat akin to a post-war celebration but without the street parties. Finally, children can return to school, peo

For length of years my fruitless force employ Against the thin remains of ruined Troy. What nations now to Juno's power will pray, Or offerings on my slighted altars lay? - Arms and the man I sing. Virgil’s Aenid Boris Johnson’s recent announcement of a £24.1 billion increase in war spending, signals a serious attempt to halt and put into reverse British imperialism’s historic decline as a global offensive power. The increase adds to an existing budget of £41.5bn, bringing t

In announcing the lockdown during the first wave of the Covid pandemic, the UK Government and public health bodies forecast a possible death toll of 20,000. At the time, even that number felt brutally shocking. Then ,as we witnessed the spiralling fatalities in Spain and Italy coupled with the grim scenes of improvised mortuaries, there was a slight sigh of relief, albeit tempered still with a sense of dread. Less than one year later with deaths growing well over the 100,000

When Adolf Hitler’s right hand man, Rudolf Hess, ran out of fuel and parachuted onto a field in Scotland, on 10 May, 1941, there was considerable speculation over his purpose and motives. Some said he had mental health problems and that his solo mission was pure fantasy. Following both the Battle of Britain and Dunkirk others viewed the landing as a behind-the-scenes attempt to reach a peace deal with Westminster via sections of the Scottish aristocracy. To this day, there

Imperialist democracy “World War II had nothing to do with fighting fascism. Quite the contrary, the whole course of British foreign policy in the inter-war years and during the war itself, demonstrated just how far Westminster would go to crush democracy in order to protect its imperialist interests” [ This is an edited version of an article I wrote in Spanish for the website Unidad y Lucha published by the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain. Whislt the article is in r

Haud yer weesht – in English it means shut your mouth or be quiet– is what Scots speakers have been told to do for centuries. Effectively, in the country of our birth, our language has been in almost permanent exile for more than four centuries. It has never been outlawed as such but it has been ridiculed, marginalised, dismissed and discounted as an uncouth and unsavoury expression of an uneducated populace: a relic of the past forming an antiquated barrier to the historic