Despite the difficult times, we are delighted to hold our 36th Culture and Arts Festival with an ingrained spirit of solidarity and resistance.

We are living in times when the world’s riches and beauty are being taken away from us by capitalists. The same forces that flood the globe with blood and tears to further enrich themselves are now, as in the UK, shamelessly attacking the hard-won gains of workers. Through waves of privatisation, public services, health, education, housing, communication, transport, and energy are turned into profit-making bodies. Capitalists and governments now extract £35 million in daily profit from people’s most basic needs, while shifting the blame for the breakdown of public services onto migrants, casting them as scapegoats.

Although the far right Reform UK outpaced the Labour and Conservative parties in its anti-immigration rhetoric, the Labour Party has continued to insist on similar policies. Despite having a large number of migrant mayors and winning the overwhelming support of migrant voters, as in the case of the Greater London Authority, the Labour Party divides local and migrant workers, undermining their shared struggle.