Letters: ‘We’ll keep fighting Hackney council’s genocide complicity’

Palestine demonstration at the Hackney town hall (Photo: Mike Simons)

Around 100 people protested outside Hackney town hall, east London, last Wednesday to hold the council accountable for its complicity in genocide.

Hackney’s Labour-run council has over £30 million of its pension fund invested in companies complicit in genocide. Islington and Waltham Forest councils in neighbouring boroughs have committed to divesting, but Hackney still refuses.

At the rally, speeches went through the past year of fighting the council’s support of the genocide.

Despite the encampment over the summer, all the rallies and the marches, the delegations at pension committees and council meetings, the council still supports Israel’s genocide.

Mike Simons, from Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop The War, spoke about how the council can no longer hide.

After over a year of genocide, there is no excuse for funding the annihilation of life in Gaza.

To keep investing in companies linked to Israel and arms’ sales is nothing but a conscious choice to support a state’s genocidal attempt towards an occupied people.

After the rally, a delegation went into the council meeting to witness its decisions to keep funding genocide. We will keep holding the council accountable. The next rally is 27 November outside Hackney town hall.

Agnese Chiesa, East London

Say no to fat-shaming assessors

I recently attended a Department for Work and Pensions work capability assessment.

When the assessor asked me about the “problems” I experienced from being “overweight”, I objected to the use of prejudicial language and assumptions.

What upset me was her tone of voice. It reminded me of bigots in the late 1970s using derogatory language against me. It was while I was hiding deep inside the closet as a scared, self-hating suicidal gay teenager.

Am I worried my weight might kill me? No. Something has to sometime. Recently, my asbestos scarred lungs have overtaken my lifelong heart irregularity in that race.

And if it wasn’t for my weight, I’d be dead already.

Quite a few people who have assaulted me because of my sexuality have found that a bulky short bloke with a low centre of gravity is really hard to get the better of. Even if they had brought a knife.

Bigots want to “body shame” me into their vision of ideal conformity and spend my remaining years in misery.

Hugh Parsons, Swansea

Wilberforce was sworn enemy of trade unions

John Newsinger’s article (Socialist Worker, 6 November) was a well-argued riposte to the revisionist version of British Empire being promoted by historians.

The institution of chattel slavery and its revenues played a vital role in providing the capital wealth for reinvestment in Britain’s overseas trade and its colonial expansion.

As the article suggests, the apparently humanitarian motives for abolition were genuine for some campaigners in Britain.

But they also disguised an economic motive—namely that wage labour was more efficient for the emerging industrial system.

They sought the abolition of slavery as an outdated institution.

Indeed, this may be the reason why “moral” advocates of abolition such as William Wilberforce were simultaneously sworn enemies of trade unions.

He promoted ­anti‑union acts in the early 19th century.

David Saunders, Edinburgh

Funding scandal

There are 83,630 children in the care of councils. The number of looked after children as of March 2024 was 4.5 percent higher than in 2020. That’s according to annual Department for Education figures published last week.

But research shows that children’s and adult’s social care faces “additional cost pressures” of £3.4 billion in 2025-26 compared to 2024-25.

Labour should stop sucking up to big business and fund our services.

Brenda Last, North Yorkshire