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.