Bulletin – Red Storm

Ins Herz der Bestie Voran!

Posted on May 18, 2026 - May 18, 2026 by RedStorm

Image showing the small turnout to the 2026 Newcastle May day event

British May Day has proved, yet again, to be a disappointment for the workers and students of the North East. Not only was the same thing attempted as every year, a march from Exhibition Park to Monument followed by a rally, but this year a current Labour Party MP was invited to speak – seemingly specifically because of her record on LGBT issues, whatever is meant by that. Comrades from the Revolutionary Communist Group led an intervention which was met with predictable hostility from the alleged trade unionists gathered, including rather funnily from a person wearing a Green Party badge – new liberal-democratic bloc led by the labour aristocracy, anyone?

All in all, it was a sad and sorry sight for the workers’ movement in Britain. What isn’t these days, when the established, bureaucrat unions are involved? It was a day of embarrassment, after embarrassment, after poorly planned embarrassment. Every Saturday in the centre of Newcastle, there has been a demonstration held by the bloodthirsty Iranian monarchist-fascists at midday at Monument. When the Tyne and Wear May Day committee announced they would be having their rally at Monument, as they had last year, there seemed a bit of hope that the workers’ movement might take on these ghouls calling for the further slaughter of Iranian schoolgirls. This did not take place and on the day of, the announcement went out that the May Day rally would be held in Old Eldon Square on the grass instead.

We all know who is to blame for this, of course. It is the fault of the institutional, compatible left: you’ve seen them disgracing the hammer-and-sickle wherever they go and they all have their own newspapers for the low, low solidarity price of upwards of £5. It is the RCP, CPB, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers’ Party, and the ‘mass’ organisations (like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign or Stand up to Racism) who represent an ossified, labour aristocratic left who are at fault. Further, there were some notable absences from Tyne and Wear May Day: any form of insurrectionary left (apologies to the RCG) or, for that matter, any of the unions doing the work of actually going to the people – the IWW or IWGB, for instance. Tyne and Wear May Day proved a simpering, masturbatory acquiescence to capitalism-imperialism.

There exists another model for May Day however. We didn’t even have to look to the continent this year. The Anti-Imperialist Front and Young Struggle led the parts of the insurrectionary left in clashes with the Metropolitan Police in London, seeing three arrests and thusly besieging the Charring Cross Police Station. If we wanted to look further afield, we could look to what I consider the ur-example of the spirit of May Day: Berlin. Entire neighbourhoods take to the streets to clash with the forces of the bourgeois state, often
winning and, more importantly, getting away with it year after year. May Day in Kreuzberg, a neighbour in former East Berlin, is famous the world over and I would recommend anyone look into May Day 2026 in Berlin. From Kreuzberg is where I get the title of this bulletin: ‘Ins Herz der Bestie Voran!’ or ‘Onwards into the heart of the beast!’. Berlin puts their fellow workers and students in the west to shame. May Day is a celebration that the fight is not yet done, not a day for us to sit on the grass in the warm, warm sun and listen to a playwright speak – that is our future after the fight. There is a ways to go yet, and we won’t get anywhere sat down.

In 2005, the invisible committee penned ‘The Coming Insurrection’ and I would like to share a quote to keep in mind: ‘Let’s stop denouncing repression and rise to meet it’. We are facing down the barrel of fascism in Britain today and we are failing to meet it as it comes to us. May Day 2026 is a symptom of the sickness of opportunism and the lack of revolutionary, insurrectionary consciousness in the workers’ movement in Britain. There is no willingness to engage in what amounts to political street fights because the possibility is not there in most people’s minds. Law and order is the ideology of the bourgeoise and ofthe labour aristocracy, and all the business unions are ill and feverish with it. This means that until we can smash the business union bureaucrats, we will never see a May Day like Berlin or Paris or Manila or Havana.

Bulletin: Rafael Week of Action Recount

Posted on April 8, 2026 - April 8, 2026 by RedStorm

Comrades on their march towards Rafael-owned Factory

Monday the 23rd of March was the beginning of a week of action against Rafael in Newcastle. The Armstrong Works, a factory complex owned by Israeli-state owned weapons company Rafael Defence Systems, has been the target of local action since May of 2023. The week of action has been much the same as previous periods targeting the factory. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the factory was blockaded in the early morning, a tactic that has been in use since 2023 as well. The week was finished with a march from The Beacon on Westgate Road to the factory.

The blockades were perhaps the most effective of the two actions that took place that week. This is because they are part of a longer campaign of disruption targeted at the factory. They have a definite effect in that they directly affect the financial viability of the factory. The longer the factory’s workers have to wait outside, the longer they are paid for no work. This also prevents goods from coming and going from the factory which delays sale and has a negative impact on the financial viability of the factory and, moreover, of the companies who do work with the factory. The blockades only get more effective the more often they are done and the more people join them as the capacity for the factory to make profit and weapons for the Zionist Entity is diminished. See the Instagram page Geordies Block Genocide for more on this.

The march was a different story however. The mood on the ground was primed to engage with less liberal chants than previous marches. Though this was offset in some respects by a large contingent from the Green Party which has just recently voted not to condemn Zionism as a form of racism at their spring conference. This represents a wider issue for the militant left, the Greens pose as a grassroots alternative to ‘normal’ politics but are just more of the same except with a capacity to absorb support from the left as well as the centre. Remember that a socialist in government is not a socialist minister but rather a bourgeois minister coloured red, or green in this case. An instance that can sum up the Greens participation in the march, and certainly the wider movement,is that they took pictures with their banner at the start and then by the end were nowhere to be seen.

Something of particular note ought to be the willingness to engage with the chant: ‘One struggle! One fight! Workers of the world unite!’. This does not mean anything just yet but it is worth paying attention to.

Furthermore, this was one of the least well-attended marches to Rafael since the escalation of the Zionist Entity’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Only 18 months ago nearly twice as many local people turned out from across the north east, including from Durham. This may, as the RCG believe, be the result of a lack of democratic planning, though this does not seem to wholly to be the case as we have seen large turn out under deeply undemocratic practices, see the Shutdown Rafael Campaign (SDR). So, what did happen? It seems to have been a lack of very old-fashioned tactics. Leaflets were given out, yes. But door knocking and postering were lacking. The final problem was that local arch-transphobe Laura Pidcock was a scheduled speaker. It was bad, she was heckled and finished her speech by soliciting donations for Declassified UK.

In short, there is always more to be done. A march must be treated like the big event it is meant to be. We need to be making use of every tactic to ensure large turnout, not just social media and leafletting. Further, action against Rafael ought to break from the dead-in-the-water People Against Rafael campaign as it seems mostly to be a distraction from the actual tangible work of Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialism in the north east. That being said, cross-organisational planning for an event like this is paramount – no one group locally has the resources or time to conduct the campaign of awareness necessary for a march to be successful. Lastly, we should not be coordinating with the police at all, who tried to make us walk on the pavement at the beginning of the march; we should just march regardless next time.

Bulletin: Nique la Police: state violence protects fascists

Posted on October 1, 2025 - October 1, 2025 by RedStorm

The following is a bulletin by a Red Storm Collective member on a recent anti-fascist demo which took place in Newcastle Upon Tyne:

The 27^th of September saw three demonstrations in Newcastle city centre. On Quayside, the fascists mobilised from 13:00 and just up the road from 11:45 a coalition of local anti-fascists led by the North East Anarchist Group (NEAG), comrades from Red Storm and the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) gathered to block their route. At Monument gathered the representatives of the middle-class, petty bourgeoise, and labour aristocracy: the established unions, SUTR’s creaking bureaucracy and Newcastle Unites.

Comrades at quayside were quickly kettled as police cut through the less militant sections of the crowd, while the fascists were on a less ideal route. There were brief skirmishes at the kettle but as the fascists approached the New Bridge Hotel around 13:30, the kettle dissolved. NEAG and Red Storm comrades led a procession up to the hotel to meet the fascists. All the while Newcastle Unites remained at monument, singing songs and having photo shoots with the mayor while the fascists marched only a street away, protected by an honour guard of riot police.

Four comrades were arrested that day. Many more brutalised. This was as a result of reduced numbers at Quayside and on our march from Quayside. Numbers are always safety; you can dissolve into a crowd easily but Newcastle Unites and their leader Shumel staged a distraction at Monument. The actions of comrades at Quayside meant that the fascists had to reroute their march on a less well-populated route. The actions of the misleader at monument meant a thousand or so counter-demonstrators sat useless. I am sure that Monument made people feel good, the struggle is not supposed to be a feel-good experience. The struggle is a fight for the future. Had the mass of people in Newcastle that day been rallied to Quayside, the kettle may have been broken, or not happened at all, and we may have been able to advance along Quayside to properly block the fascists. Of a similar ilk to the crowd at Monument was the strange, small ‘communist bloc’ called by the RCP which, as usual, sat holding their newspapers while comrades tried to break the kettle.

Saturday was a mixed experience. We saw success in even our disorganised tactics against a well-equipped and organised police force, breaking the kettle just for a moment. However, the lack of prior mass agitation was a hinderance for us. The crowds behind NEAG, RCG and Red Storm comrades didn’t know quite what to do to help and attempts to inform the crowd were resistant to our efforts. Furthermore, the crowds were generally drawn to monument, meaning that the people were split between the navel-gazing speeches of monument and the active attempts to block the fascists of coalition comrades at Quayside.

The way forward is clear to me: form a united front with a provisional committee, a commitment to extra-state, dual power construction, a commitment to agitational propaganda efforts and a minimum political programme to unite anti-imperialist forces across the north east to pose a challenge to state repression primarily and street fascism when and where it arises. One thing is certain too that we, anti-fascists of various stripes, outnumbered the fascists nearly 10 to 1. If not for the actions of the state, they would not have passed.

Bulletin: Victory but Exhaustion: UCU win strike

Posted on October 1, 2025 - October 1, 2025 by RedStorm

The following is a short bulletin from a Red Storm Collective member who was involved in the Newcastle University Student-Staff Solidarity Campaign during the 2025 UCU strike:

The UCU recently accepted a deal from the Executive Board (UEB) of the University of Newcastle. This ended the four-month long strike and accompanying student solidarity campaign. The strike saw a national demonstration, open meetings and the biggest picket lines Newcastle University had ever seen.

The strike began in February with the UEB having announced a round of cuts targeting 300 jobs this year and 150 next year. This first day of the strike saw the biggest picket ever on Newcastle’s campus, as well as a march to monument led by Red Storm comrades. From here the union took escalating strike action and the student solidarity campaign kicked off with an open meeting of over one hundred students who met to discuss the strike.

From here, the campaign became a marathon, with management attempting to wait out the union over the months of the strike. In the meantime, many unions came to the picket in solidarity with academic staff and students were a constant presence at the picket. The union made a great effort to present a united front and this paid off. The union accepted a deal to end the strike in May, winning no more redundancies this year or next. The committee also faced the possibility of rebellion over the deal, which allowed management lots of ways to break the agreement.

The strike was a long and hard effort on the part of the union and the student campaign. The committee believe the student campaign was vital to their victory, in showing the university united against the executives. The students faced a lack of division of labour on their side however, causing the length of the campaign to lead to exhaustion of the organisers. This is evidenced by the lack of engagement from the wider student body. There was not time enough to make an effort to connect students and staff and therefore the campaign suffered.

Issues with opportunist elements of the left also presented problems. The allegedly Revolutionary allegedly Communist Party (RCP) were frequently in attendance with their papers, seeking recruits among students despite their insistence that they were not. The legacy of the SWP was also palpable in the campaign with many members of the union, lacking the imagination to strike out from the bounds of what would be a ‘normal’ round of industrial action. The staff campaign was vigorous but dry and stodgy, which contributed to a lack of support for the students outside of the committee and the unusually engaged School of English. In short, the strike was won and won well, however, there was not the space or innovation within the established unions as they currently exist and nobody really knew how to handle the extra-union organising of the students, probably the students most of all.