In Jacobin

There is every reason to think that the home secretary wanted far-right thugs to attack the Palestine solidarity march. If some of the marchers defended themselves against attack, she could blame them for the violence and seek to ban future demonstrations. Unfortunately for Braverman, the people she was relying upon couldn’t be trusted to execute the plan.

A small group of ultranationalist thugs gathered at a war memorial in central London, well away from the demonstration’s planned route. Denied the opportunity to attack the marchers, they attacked the police instead.

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The clearest proof of what Braverman had been planning came in her own statement, which simply pretended that events had unfolded in the way she had been expecting: “Our brave police officers deserve the thanks of every decent citizen for their professionalism in the face of violence and aggression from protesters and counterprotesters in London today.” That was the only mention of the “counterprotesters” from Braverman, who went on to denounce the pro-cease-fire march as a celebration of terrorism:

"This can’t go on. Week by week, the streets of London are being polluted by hate, violence, and antisemitism. Members of the public are being mobbed and intimidated. Jewish people in particular feel threatened. Further action is necessary."

The final line of Braverman’s statement was a clear exhortation to the same thugs who had assaulted police officers and left them with broken bones to mobilize their forces again.

For the traveling public, the cost of rail is now almost 8 percent higher in real terms than it was in 1995, before privatization. This figure has dropped in the last two years only as inflation as risen. Until the cost-of-living crisis, when fare increases were decoupled from retail price index inflation, fares were consistently 15-20 percent higher in real terms than when the rail was publicly owned. There’s no decoupling this fact from rail privatization: the annual outflow of funds during the years of privatization could have enabled an average cut of 14 percent in fares — and if the railways were nationalized now, and the flow of funds into the private sector cut off, the money saved would fund a cut of 18 percent in fares.

Under privatization, the rail system has become a cash cow for the cloud of parasitic private interests that swarm around it — and all passengers have gained is an increasingly expensive, fractured railway, run by people fixated with cutting staff costs. It’s no surprise, then, that public opinion polls consistently show overwhelming public support for the renationalization of railways.

It’s very hard to see a strategy that leads to political change, if you accept a settler-colonial paradigm, in the metropole or in the colony — and more importantly in the metropole. If you look at the wars of independence in Ireland, Algeria, and Vietnam, or the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, what was happening on the battlefield was part of a larger political strategy that also included the metropole.

For example, it meant convincing popular opinion in Britain and the US that Irish independence was a worthy and achievable aim — or at least in the case of England, that it was a war not worth fighting. The Irish Republican Army won, I think, in Manchester, Birmingham, London, New York, and Boston as much as it won in Cork. They were on the back foot in military terms by the middle of 1921. But the British decided that they couldn’t sustain the war any longer.

It was the same with Algeria, Vietnam, and South Africa. Without the battle of Algiers or the Tet Offensive or the struggle in the townships, those liberation movements would not have won. But without the demonstrations in the US, you wouldn’t have had the US government deciding that it couldn’t win the war in Vietnam.

Five years ago, the Labour Party’s conference was a sea of Palestinian flags. Delegates voted overwhelmingly to support suspending the sale of arms to Israel, in solidarity with the people of Palestine. As this year’s Labour conference convenes in Liverpool, those very weapons manufacturers will be welcomed with open arms. Boeing — who earlier this year agreed to supply the Israeli Air Force with twenty-five fighter jets — will sponsor the New Statesman’s fringe events. They will be joined by an array of fossil fuel companies, banks, and industry lobbyists determined to woo the “government in waiting.” The days when an antiwar activist led the party will feel like a long time ago.