We are very pleased to republish the following article by Robert Griffiths, which originally appeared in the Morning Star, and is a summary of the report he delivered to a recent meeting of the Political Committee of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB).
Noting that the G7 summit of leading imperialist powers, recently held in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, represented a drive to war that must be urgently stopped in its tracks, the General Secretary of the CPB observed that whilst these seven powers – the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada – account for more than half the world’s wealth, they constitute no more than one tenth of the world’s population. The leaders of this global minority met in the city where the US – still the only power to have used nuclear weapons in conflict – murdered some 140,000 people, half the civilian population, on August 6 1945. As Comrade Griffiths states:
“Ever since, it [Hiroshima] has symbolised the struggle for peace and nuclear disarmament against the barbarism of weapons of mass destruction.” However: “All but one of the seven leading capitalist states represented in Hiroshima either possess nuclear weapons (the US, Britain and France) or play host to them (Germany, Italy and Japan).”
Calling out the hypocrisy of western charges against China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – North Korea), Griffiths observes that, “the US-funded military build-up continues in Taiwan, although the G7 countries still claim to respect the ‘One China’ policy which recognises that Taiwan is as Chinese as the Isle of Wight is English. The US Seventh Fleet and its nuclear-armed submarines with around 900 nuclear warheads patrol the Pacific and Indian oceans and adjoining seas off the coasts of China and North Korea.” The G7 countries all refuse to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which the United Nations voted to adopt in 2017, and which has been signed or ratified by countries, including Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guyana, Bolivia, Palestine, South Africa, Brazil, Ireland, Austria and Malta.
All in all, the CPB General Secretary argues, the decision to hold the G7 meeting in Hiroshima was a “disgusting display of breathtaking hypocrisy, double-speak and dishonesty; a gross insult to the atrocity’s survivors and the bereaved.” Furthermore, the claim that these powers have no intention to “thwart China’s economic progress and development”, he explains, flies in the face of weekly announcements by the US, British and other Western governments blocking or expelling Chinese companies from whole sectors of their economies.
The G7 summit made clear that the main political, economic and military target of the world’s leading capitalist powers is China, Griffiths explains, going on to state that: “The left, working-class and peace movements ignore these dire danger signals at their – and the planet’s – peril…
“The Doomsday Clock operated by the admirable Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now stands at 90 seconds to midnight — the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.
“Can the Green Party in England and Wales and the SNP [Scottish National Party] still tell the time? Have all the Labour left MPs lost their watches, leaving the time-telling to Jeremy Corbyn?
“How much longer will trade unions fail to make the connection between low wages, poor services, precarious employment and the massive expansion of Britain’s nuclear weapons arsenal?”
Calling for intensified efforts to build the peace movement, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Stop the War Coalition, the CPB General Secretary concludes by calling on his party to “support the invaluable work of the Friends of Socialist China.”
We also take this opportunity to thank the Communist Party of Britain and Comrade Robert Griffiths for their valuable and much appreciated cooperation and support for our work.
THIS year’s G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, was a far cry from its origins in the informal gathering of four finance ministers convened by the US 50 years ago.
Last weekend’s three-day high-profile event produced a detailed communique and four supplementary statements from the leaders of the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada.
Together, these states account for more than half (at least 53 per cent) of the world’s wealth, between one-third and a half of global production, but no more than one-tenth of the world’s population.
China is excluded from this club because it does not subscribe to the sovereignty of capitalist market forces. Following the destruction of its socialist system, Russia was a member of what became the G8 from 1997 until — in the wake of the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president Viktor Yanukovich — it reincorporated Crimea in 2014.
The EU has played a full part in G7 proceedings since 1977, but is classed as a “non-enumerated member.” Whoever thought up that classification deserves a medal.
Why was Hiroshima chosen to host this year’s G7 summit?
Continue reading G7 drive to war must be stopped in its tracks