Scottish Communists

Political Statement, Resolutions and Report of Work 21 November 2004, Glasgow

POLITICAL STATEMENT

The past two years in Britain have seen a massive widening of the struggle against imperialism and war. This has been accompanied by a clear shift to the Left in the leadership of the trade union movement. The illegal US and British invasion of Iraq resulted in the biggest movement of resistance seen for a generation. At the same time the New Labour leadership clique has decisively lost its ability to maintain its authority over the trade union movement and among many Labour activists.

Communists in Scotland have played a not insignificant part in these struggles. They have been active in the peace movement, in a number of key trade unions and in organisations seeking to offer solidarity with countries in the front line of imperialist attack. Despite many difficulties in terms of distribution, the Morning Star has continued to play a critical role as daily voice of the Left and as a focus for unity and action.

In the battle of ideas, our party has sought to develop a wider understanding of what is needed to deepen the unity of the Left in Scotland and the changes required to remove the Blair clique at British level. The Scottish party's pamphlet Breaking the British State considered the calls from some of the Left in Scotland that priority be given to a movement to win political independence. The pamphlet argued instead that the key opportunity of the coming period was that of winning at British level a Labour Movement that was united behind Left policies and which used its combined strength politically either to transform the Labour Party or, if it became necessary in the course of this struggle, to re-establish it. In this movement Scotland has a key part to play.

Carrying forward these objectives is a task posing big challenges for our party. The move to the Left in the trade union movement has yet to be fully consolidated at British level. More important still, it still has to be given force and direction politically in local communities and at Scottish level and a new generation of activists mobilised. There are dangers of fragmentation and demoralisation. There are also dangers from the Right.

2005 will bring a general election and a referendum on the new EU constitution. Both will see the Conservative Party and those further to the Right seeking to redevelop a mass base for chauvinist and xenophobic attitudes. This makes it important that maximum pressure be brought to bear on the Labour Party over coming months for the adoption less anti-working class policies. Even a limited shift will make it easier to mobilise the labour movement to prevent the return of a Conservative government or the creation of a fully Blairite Lib-Lab Coalition government. Both would represent long-term set-backs for the Left.

It will also be vital that the trade union movement be won to take the lead in the movement for a NO vote on the EU constitution. If the trade union movement does not take the lead, the Conservative Party and the Right will use the opportunity to decisively widen the political base for chauvinist policies. If, on the other hand, the trade union movement does take the lead in developing a Left-wing campaign, it will provide the platform for a key political advance: re-winning an understanding of the progressive potential of our democracy. This will mean putting the arguments against the constitution in class terms. We have to show that what is at stake is the ability of the Labour movement to fight for policies that would ensure collective democratic control over big business, capital movements and employment levels and enable a rebuilding of the welfare state and the public sector. Given the balance of political forces in Scotland, an opportunity exists for making early start in assembling such an alliance and providing a lead across Britain. At each stage in the development of the campaign it will be important to demonstrate the international character of the resistance to the EU constitution by working class people across Europe.

In Scotland there is a particularly urgent need to fight for the implementation of Left policies. Economically, Scotland faces a grim future unless political steps are taken to redevelop its productive base. Mergers, closures and the drastic fall in electronics production have reduced manufacturing employment to 250,000 - of whom only 134,000 now work in firms with more than 250 employees. Since 1998 employment in textiles fell from 31,000 to 18,000, in shipbuilding from 10,000 to 7,000, in aerospace from 6,300 to 5,000 and electronics from 45,000 to 30,000. Scottish exports in 2003 were 68 per cent of those in 2000 - and in engineering and IT only 50 per cent. Currently the true dimensions of this crisis are hidden by the unsustainable boom in property development and the growth in the financial services sector. The long-term consequences will inevitably be severe. In financial services off-shoring of jobs is already posing a major threat. Only the type of policies outlined in our party's Left Wing Programme can reverse this situation.

The need for this is seen in working class communities across Scotland. Poverty, squalor and dereliction are worsening. The housing and benefit policies of Conservative and New Labour administrations over the past two decades have created ghettos of poverty and hopelessness not experienced for generations. Real unemployment in some areas is running at between 30 and 50 per cent. Despite its rhetoric on social justice, the Scottish Executive has continued Conservative policies of privatisation and housing stock transfer on all fronts. In these circumstances Social Inclusion Partnerships have had no more success than their Tory predecessors. Worse still, their implementation has done much to further weaken independent working class organisation in the tenants movement and community councils.

This makes the re-involvement of the trade union movement at Scottish and even more at local and constituency level a key priority.

Industrial work

The priorities for our party in the trade union movement must be to reflect the shift to the Left in the unions at British level in Scotland and to work to ensure the trade unions take the lead in a No Vote on the EU Constitution.

Our programme and the resolutions passed at the 2004 Congress require us to work with the labour left and the trade unions to win the Labour Party for core trade union and labour values. Elsewhere this document states that as Marxists we do not drift with the tide. Our task is to lead. Projecting the Left Wing Programme can help us in this task. It should be central to our debates with our allies in the movement, finding ways in which it can be built on. An assessment of the TUC and Labour Party Conferences could be a starting point. The political situation demands a bigger hearing for our politics to counter the drift of frustrated activists into the false shortcut independence route to socialism.

Peace

The peace movement in Scotland rose to its biggest challenge in a generation in mobilising the mass resistance to the Iraq war. This brought together the trade union movement, large sections of the Labour Party, all four city councils and the churches as well as the political parties of the left. The leadership role of members of our party was very important in ensuring the breadth of this campaign. The challenge of the coming period will be ensure that the organisation base of the CND is strengthened both in communities and throughout the organised labour movement and that the issue of Star Wars, nuclear weapons and especially Trident and its renewal must be taken to the centre of the political debate. This will be critical in the forthcoming general election, the last before parliament takes the decision to renew and upgrade the Trident system for a further twenty years.

Solidarity

Our Solidarity work, particularly with Cuba, has increased since the last Congress, and comrades have contributed well to the development of the campaign. The Communist Party of Britain remains the only political party affiliated to the Scottish Cuba Solidarity Campaign. In the face of increasing US hostility and interference in Cuba and particularly Venezuela and Columbia we must seek to build even greater solidarity in order to expose the imperialist ambitions behind this.

We need to maintain and develop our own Communist solidarity activities in this sphere and at the same time continue to identify ways of increasing broad solidarity work. This needs to consider practical ways of linking the diverse movements who share common elements of the struggle, eg the Peace Movement, Trade Union Solidarity and other organisations to widen and increase effectiveness.

The Morning Star

In linking these different struggles the Morning Star remains our crucial daily weapon.

The April 2004 STUC conference in Glasgow saw excellent sales and collections and a politically and financially successful Star social. However, the dominating issue for the paper at the STUC was the emergency motion that launched the campaign to restore same day delivery to the Morning Star in Scotland following the Royal Mail's cancellation of the contract to carry the minor title newspapers on the night plane to Edinburgh.

Discussions took place during the STUC conference with representatives of the Daily Jang and the Scottish Newsagents Federation that resulted in representations being made to the parliaments in Holyrood and Westminster. A motion was tabled at the Scottish parliaments signed by 30 MSPs condemning the Royal Mail's actions as a threat to the freedom of the press and cultural diversity.

Representation has also been made to the Department of Trade and Industry and the Chief Executive of the Royal Mail to press for the urgent restoration of access to the night flights to Scotland. Support for the campaign from the STUC and Star supporters in the wider labour Movement has been invaluable.

This situation presents us with both a challenge and an opportunity. The paper's supporters can no longer take the Star's availability, or its very existence, for granted. They must realise that the Morning Star is a key weapon for advance and should actively use and support the only daily paper that informs and supports the movement. The engagement of MSPs in the campaign may well result in getting the Star supplied to the New Holyrood Library, where it should be.

The welcome introduction of the on-line Morning Star is to be applauded. However, the paper still needs to be seen publicly as a campaigning and political necessity. The recent absence of the Saturday edition has resulted in postponment of runs and public sales. Donations to the Fighting Fund also suffer. A return to same day delivery must be accompanied by a renewed circulation drive and collections for the Fighting Fund.

Since last Congress we have organised five Morning Star Scottish conferences. Attendance has varied from forty up to over eighty and the themes and contributions have been of a very high standard. The coming year will see the 75th anniversary of the Morning Star. Our Party will need to ensure this is marked appropriately in Scotland both in terms of a major event and ensuring that local work around Readers and Supporters groups is stepped up.

The Party

In achieving these objectives, the size, vigour and effectiveness of our party will be critical. It has to be faced that over the past two years the collective work of our party has weakened. Despite some advances and some substantial objective achievements, Communists have tended to work as individuals. Few branches have operated as such. At Scottish level the attempt to develop a collective leadership has only secured limited success and the issue of leadership responsibilities remains largely unresolved. Scottish Congress instructs the incoming Scottish Committee to take urgent steps of find a solution and to work consistently to rebuild collectives at Scottish level and locally.

Marxist Leninist education and cadre development

Never has there been a greater need for Marxist Leninist education within the Party and the wider labour and progressive movements. The fact that class collaboration, epitomised by New Labour, has gone further than the worst that right-wing social democracy has had to offer in the past has sparked ideological turmoil in socialist and progressive circles.

The debate is well known: to ditch or not to ditch the Labour party; whether the trade unions should break their historic links with the Labour party; the viability of new, left political formations to openly challenge the Labour party electorially and to woo the trade unions to shift their affiliations. And of course in Scotland the debate is raging around the short cut independence route to socialism. Even among those of a more cautious disposition, who are warning against hasty political realignments, some are only prepared to place the Labour Party on probation. Time is running out, and if the Labour Party cannot be moved to the Left in the foreseeable future, then new political formations need to be considered.

These are the issues which Marxist Leninist education must urgently address. We do not drift with the tide. Our task is to lead. And we can only do this if all aspects of our work is informed by Marxist Leninist analysis.

In the two years since our last Congress considerable efforts have been made to increase the level in our party. We have sought to expose and draw lessons from the historic role of opportunism and right-wing social democracy in the British labour movement. We have highlighted the pitfalls of sectarianism. The core teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin have been included, albeit as yet inadequately. And the indispensable need for a British Marxist Leninist Party has been central to our educational message. The key debates on Europe and on Scottish independence have received our vigorous attention and must continue to do so.

Given our limited resources we have done much but we need to do much more. Marxist education must receive a higher priority. Above all, comrades must find time to take part in our education work. Many of our leading comrades who doing outstanding work in the wider movement do not do so. Both they and we are the losers as a consequence.

The future of our party rests on our cadre development. This applies to new and more experienced comrades alike. Especially for new and younger comrades we need to ensure that there is guidance and support. Every new comrade should be supplied with a list of introductory reading and be encouraged to study for themselves the key texts of Marx and Lenin. In this work Unity Books has played an exemplary role in the party and the wider movement. It is principally through literature that comrades are introduced to an alternative world view that challenges individualism and projects the values of collective working class achievement.

Lenin described Marxism as the summing up of the experience of the working class in its struggle for socialism. Our most important duty as a party in Scotland is to see that this experience is placed at the service of the movement today in the struggles it faces to defeat the ideas of New Labour and the big business forces it represents.