Britain: Propaganda Offensive Targets Russia

Cloak, Dagger and Poison Pen

The following article is reprinted from Workers Hammer No. 241 (Spring 2018), published by our comrades of the Spartacist League/Britain.

6 APRIL—Theresa May’s discredited Tory government seized on the alleged poisoning of ex-MI6 spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury on 4 March to launch a new anti-Russia propaganda offensive. While providing zero evidence of Russian involvement, Westminster has been demanding that its NATO and EU [European Union] cronies take action against Moscow, insisting that Russia is responsible for “an assault on British sovereignty” and an “unlawful use of force.” In fact, on 3 April the head of Britain’s chemical weapons research unit at Porton Down admitted that its technical analysis could not establish that the substance originated in Russia.

The British imperialists certainly know a thing or two about assaults on sovereignty and use of force, “lawful” or not! As the Chartist Ernest Jones noted of the British empire in 1851, “On its colonies the sun never sets, but the blood never dries.” And the loss of most of its colonies hasn’t stopped the imperialist slaughter. Britain maintains hundreds of troops in Afghanistan, and since 2014 British aircraft and drones have carried out over 1,600 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. London has also been fully backing the horrific Saudi war in Yemen, in which over 10,000 people have been killed. This past 6 March marked the 30th anniversary of the cold-blooded assassination by the SAS [Britain’s special forces] of Mairéad Farrell, Daniel McCann and Seán Savage, unarmed IRA militants, in Gibraltar.

The government has so far evinced more bark than bite towards Russia: the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats, increased inspections of Russian imports and flights and threats to freeze Russian state assets. (The announcement that no member of Britain’s Saxe-Coburg dynasty will be attending the World Cup [in Russia] means there will be at least one place on earth to escape the spectacle of inbred class privilege that is the royal wedding.)

In co-ordination with Britain, the U.S. expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle. The EU has stated that it “takes extremely seriously the UK Government’s assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation is responsible” for the Salisbury poisonings. This statement was less forceful than the May government wanted, reflecting differences within and between the European ruling classes over how forcefully to pursue the anti-Russia agenda. Nonetheless, the EU voted to extend economic sanctions against Russia until September of this year, and most EU countries expelled Russian diplomats.

The British imperialists, under the wing of their senior U.S. partners, have been stepping up provocations against Russia since February 2014, when a fascist-spearheaded coup in Ukraine was engineered by Washington with the assistance of the EU. While screaming bloody murder over Russian “aggression,” the imperialist NATO alliance has been expanding into Eastern Europe. NATO has established four “Enhanced Forward Presence” battle groups on Russia’s border, including the largest deployment of U.S. tanks since the fall of the Soviet Union. Britain is in command of the operation in Estonia, which comprises some 800 British and 300 French troops.

This belligerence towards Putin’s regime is rooted in the imperialist powers’ determination to keep Russia out of their club. Arising out of the capitalist counterrevolution which destroyed the Soviet Union in 1991-92, capitalist Russia inherited a large nuclear arsenal and significant (though less advanced) industrial base in a country with vast natural resources. Where imperialist countries are characterised by the export of capital, Russia mainly exports oil and other natural resources, as well as weapons. Russia is today essentially a regional capitalist power, albeit with imperialist ambitions.

The imperialists intervene throughout the world in their drive to control markets, raw materials and cheap labour. Russia does not play a role in the carve-up of the world on a global scale. Its main military campaigns, with the recent exception of Syria, have been within the borders of the former Soviet Union. These included two brutal wars to prevent the oppressed nation of Chechnya from exercising its right to self-determination by seceding.

In contrast, Russia’s reclaiming of Crimea, following the 2014 coup in Ukraine, was overwhelmingly welcomed by Crimea’s majority Russian population. The imperialists nonetheless branded Russia’s move an act of totalitarian military aggression. (See “Crimea Is Russian,” Workers Hammer No. 226, Spring 2014.) Likewise the vote in the ethnically mixed but predominantly Russian-speaking provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk to separate from Ukraine was an elementary expression of national self-determination that the international working class should defend.

Jeremy Corbyn got a lot of flak for the 14 March statement by his spokesman Seumas Milne that the government’s confidential briefings did not in fact contain convincing evidence of Russian involvement in poisoning the Skripals. Corbyn and Milne aptly compared the claims about Russian chemical weapons to the bogus “evidence” of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that the [Tony] Blair government used as a pretext for joining the U.S. in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Not that the lack of any evidence prevented “her majesty’s loyal opposition” supporting the Tories’ anti-Russia measures. In fact, Corbyn went even further, demanding that “Russian money be excluded from our political system.”

This was echoed by the Socialist Party, who grotesquely lined up behind the government’s anti-Russia offensive by calling for the working class to impose sanctions not just against “the Russian super-rich but also against the Chinese, Asian and other oligarchs who control great chunks of London and other European capitals” (socialistparty.org.uk, 16 March). The Socialist Party have really outdone themselves! While alibiing the British bourgeoisie, who control London and (along with remnants of the British aristocracy) are the main beneficiaries of rent-gouging and property speculation, the Socialist Party endorses not only the campaign against Russia but also the drive for capitalist counterrevolution in the Chinese deformed workers state.

The British government insists it is acting in the interests of humanity in denouncing Russia’s alleged use of a chemical weapon. The reality is that the imperialists are fully prepared to use any means, including poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction, in pursuit of their interests. When imperialist forces intervened in Soviet Russia in 1919 in a failed attempt to crush the October Revolution, British warplanes bombarded Red Army troops with a chemical agent. That same year, when Kurds in Mesopotamia rose in revolt against British occupation, Winston Churchill declared: “I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas.... I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.”

Porton Down, less than ten miles from Salisbury, was the site of 30,000 chemical weapons experiments on British soldiers between 1945 and 1989. It is possible the Skripals were poisoned by a chemical weapon produced in Russia or at a former Soviet chemical weapons lab in Uzbekistan or at Porton Down. But the fact remains that the imperialist powers are the most deadly danger facing humanity. Having cut social services like the National Health Service (NHS) to the bone, slashed wages and unleashed massive spying on the population, the British ruling class is now banging the war drums against Moscow. It is in the interests of the working people of Britain and the world to oppose this imperialist war-mongering, as part of the struggle to oust the imperialist butchers and to bring the working class to power across the globe.