Back to main newsCommunist Party congress: Griffiths: 'Our flag stays red'
Tue 27 May 2008
Author: ANN DOUGLASCommunist Party congress: SUCCESSIVE Communist Party congresses have characterised the new Labour trend as "the open representatives of monopoly capital in the labour movement," general secretary Robert Griffiths declared in his opening address.
It marked a "break from traditional social democracy, with its concern to negotiate better terms for workers and their families within the confines of capitalism," said Mr Griffiths.
"New Labour represents something fundamentally different. It is the political expression, in the labour movement, of globalisation as a new phase of imperialism."
Mr Griffiths emphasised the need for extra-parliamentary struggle to check new Labour's enthusiastic drive to privatisation, war and a police state.
Unless this struggle was successful, it would "end up in the ditch of defeat at the general election."
The CPB leader pointed out that congress was being asked to restate the fundamental need for a mass party of labour in Britain.
He stressed that this did not mean "a front organisation manipulated by a small ultra-left sect or a new party backed by just one or two unions, but a mass party based on large sections of the trade union movement."
Such a party must be "capable of winning elections, forming a government and enacting policies in the interests of the working class and the clear majority of the population."
He noted that the CPB, "even now, does not write off the possibility that the Labour Party can be restored to such a role, provided that affiliated unions use their political and financial power to force a change in the policies and direction of the party."
But Mr Griffiths also pointed out the vital role of the Communist Party and the Young Communist League as part of "the world's biggest, most experienced and most influential revolutionary movement" - that of the international communist and workers' parties."
Communists remain convinced that humanity can liberate itself from capital and throw off "those reactionary ideas, prejudices and practices which Marx called the 'muck of ages'," he declared.
"And we are proud still to proclaim: 'Our flag stays red'," he concluded.
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