We stand in full solidarity with the Filton24 activists, held on remand without trial for over a year. Eight of these political prisoners are currently on hunger strike in protest against Britain’s role in producing weapons used in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
The hunger strike follows sustained repression by the prison system, including arbitrary restrictions on visits and correspondence, the use of solitary confinement, and physical abuse. These measures have only intensified resistance from inside the prisons. Several strikers are now in their seventh week, facing extreme weakness, fainting, chronic pain, hospitalisation, and in some cases denial of medical care. One imprisoned activist is in critical condition, underscoring the urgent danger created by continued state inaction.
The prisoners have advanced clear demands: immediate release on bail; an end to censorship of communications; access to a fair trial; the deproscription of Palestine Action; and the closure of Elbit Systems. Their repression reflects a wider attempt to silence opposition to Zionism: from the mass incarceration of Palestinians, many without trial, to the criminalisation of Palestine solidarity internationally.
This hunger strike has reignited resistance within the Palestine movement. As Communist Vanguard, we stand in solidarity with all those who oppose Zionism and resist imperialist violence, in Britain, Palestine, and across the world. Yet the determination shown by these prisoners, however courageous, cannot by itself secure victory. Our task is not only to support the prisoners, the Palestinian people, and all the oppressed, but to help transform isolated acts of resistance into a mass movement – one that raises the level of struggle by confronting not fragments of the system, but the system as a whole.
Lasting victories will only be won by organising the only force capable of defeating imperialism: the working class. Through organised class struggle, we must build unified power against capital, confronting the real enemy in Britain – the capitalist and imperialist system that sustains Zionism.