Executive Committee Draft New Edition of the Communist Party's Programme

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Breaking the British State	The Way forward to a Socialist Scotland	292 Kb

In Scotland today the link to the British State is being questioned as never before. People see manufacturing plants closing on a weekly basis and their sons and daughters once more having to seek employment hundreds of miles away in the south of England. They witness Scottish soldiers being killed overseas defending the interests of British oil companies. Simultaneously they see these very same oil companies dis-investing themselves of assets off Scotland’s coast. This is why the question is being asked: why Scotland cannot be free – free to fulfil the socialist aspirations of the founders of the Labour Movement in Scotland, of Keir Hardie, John Maclean and Willie Gallacher.

This pamphlet considers how this freedom can be achieved: whether it must be preceded by achieving a politically independent Scottish state – or whether such freedom depends on first breaking the political grip of the rich and powerful at British level.

At work:

Campaign to reduce the gender pay gap and highlight its causes:

• End job segregation by improving training and opportunities for women.
• Ensure that unions fight more equal value claims.
• Campaign to change equal pay law to permit 'class action' (group claims) and remove employer 'get out' clauses.
• Campaign to raise the level of the national minimum wage to at least half, and rising to at least two thirds of male median earnings.
• Demand statutory pay audits.

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Peace Broadsheet (colour)	stop war, end the occupations, bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan	886 Kb

the ‘war on terror’ breeds terror

Occupied Iraq a catastrophe.

War threatened against Iran.
Sabre- rattling against Syria, North Korea and Venezuela.
People detained without trial indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, and flown around the world to be tortured in secret.

The ‘war on terror’ casts a shadow over every continent and almost every aspect of life. US and British ‘state terrorism’ has lead to the deaths of tens of thousands and an attack on the rights of millions. It has strengthened ‘ fundamentalist’ terrorism rather than weakened it. It has trampled on international law and the authority of the United Nations.

And it is far from over........

Introduction

The peoples of the world are confronted today with problems of enormous magnitude. These include the ever-growing poverty and widespread malnutrition and disease which afflict billions of the world's six billion population; war and the threat of nuclear catastrophe; and the environmental and ecological time-bomb which adds a new threat to human survival.

This need not be so. Never before in history have the rapid advances in science and technology provided such opportunities for the all-round development of every human being. But in Britain, as in other capitalist countries, a deep-seated crisis of the whole economic, social and political system adversely affects every aspect of life.

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Left Wing Programme	Britain needs a left wing programme	1132 Kb

NEW LABOUR argue that the only alternative to its policies are those of the Tories. Yet there is no fundamental difference of approach between Blair, Brown and Cameron.

They all support policies of privatisation and war. They attack civil liberties and asylum seekers. If they differ at all on these issues, it is a matter of degree not principle. They do not want to fund investment in public services through progressive taxation. Instead they prefer to let the privateers and profiteers run riot.

Rather than challenge ‘globalisation’ and intervene in the monopoly-dominated ‘free market’, they allow the rundown of British manufacturing industry to continue unhindered.

They want the Tory anti-union laws to continue. They do not defend the vital role of the state pension.

Under New Labour, the rich have got richer and the poor poorer.