Solidarity and Peace this Christmas

We wish all our readers and supporters, their families, friends and comrades peace, joy, relaxation, good food, warm homes, good health and healthcare if needed, and good company this holiday season. To our many friends, comrades, workmates and neighbours who don’t have all of these joys, we send solidarity and a pledge – and invitation – to renew the fight for housing, heat, healthcare, climate protection, decent jobs, and good food for all.

We send good wishes to everyone, across all borders.

Left Unity is fighting for a better world, one of peace and prosperity, one where climate issues are tackled with all the ingenuity the human race can muster, where children, and our elders, are valued, where women are genuinely equal and safe from predators, and where nuclear weapons enter the dustbin of history, along with the rule of the corporatiosn and imperialism, and where need not greed drives political decisions. Such a world is possible but it will take a huge movement of the working class internationally and nationally to achieve it. We say a bakery worker here has more in common with a security guard on a uranium mine in Namibia than she does with the owners of her factory. We must reawaken the long tradition of international solidarity in all our struggles.

Politics is profoundly unstable at the turn of 2024/25. Capitalism is creating ever more inequality, ever more ridiculously rich oligarchs, and it’s driving down the share of the wealth that workers produce that gets to working class communities. Already the world produces enough food for all but its distribution is profoundly unequal. The climate crisis is producing extreme weather events, yet this year’s COP conference was a washout, war rages around the world yet politicians talk more war, not peace.

The holiday season though, is not respected by those who wage war. We demand peace, justice and an immediate ceasefire for Palestine, and mourn every death. We demand a ceasefire too in Ukraine, in Sudan, Syria and Yemen. We send solidarity to the Rohingya people, both those recently attacked in renewed violence in Myanmar, and those in the huge refugee camps in Bangladesh. Myanmar must cease its persecution of the Rohingya, and they must have the right of peaceful return and reparations for all that has been taken from them.

We send greetings to trade unionists around the world, to all the climate warriors, young and old, and to women across the globe whose hard-won rights are under threat, or who live in repression.

Here in Britain we thank all those who work through this holiday period to keep us all safe and fed, be they in the NHS, in care homes, or in other essential services, in catering and hospitality, in retail, in transport, and in those factories that have to run 24/7. We send greetings to the parents who struggle to make Christmas as good as they would like because of poor wages, inadequate benefits, the cost of heating and the cost of food. A special shout out to those, like Ron Todd House, who are a port in the storm for desperate families and individuals this season.

We recognise the struggles of the homeless this winter, and everyone whose home is cold.

We send solidarity and congratulations to the Palestine campaigners internationally, and especially to the movement here in Britain. We send solidarity to all those who provide mutual aid for their communities in distress, organisations like the food pantries, and Fans supporting Food Banks in Liverpool and elsewhere, those who mobilise to support asylum seekers and migrants, those fighting for the NHS, those campaigning for our housing rights, those fighting to defend democracy and to every trade union member and activist.

In Britain, workers from the days of the Chartists campaigned to get the vote, women fought for years to get the vote. This was not just for general elections but for local elections and school boards. Now schools are removed from the democratic system by the introduction of academies, there is precious little democracy in the NHS, and devolution and the free ports will remove the powers of elected local authorities still more. We must fight to regain democracy. Citizens’ Assemblies on key issues can be one way to reinstate public involvement.

A better world is possible and we send special greetings to all who fight in whatever way for a better world.

In Europe and North America, the working-class movement, and socialists, face huge challenges with the rise of the far right who have made gains in elections. Hopefully, after these holidays, the movement can spread its message more clearly, and recruit many thousands to the ideas of socialism.

Africa too faces huge problems, but the torch of liberation still burns in many movements there.

Austerity still stalks this country, where the government has made more homes cold this winter, where the children after the second child are still not counted in welfare payments, where the WASPI women despite winning their case with the ombudsman, are still denied compensation, where climate issues are not given the investment and legal protection they need. We send greetings to the climate protestors and supporters of Palestine who are imprisoned, and all who are imprisoned under the harsh laws against protest introduced by the last government, and maintained by the current one.