Back to main news2010 - United we stand
Mon 04 Jan 2010
Author: Robert GriffithsThe British labour movement is heading for the rocks in 2010. The biggest rock on the horizon is the general election.
If as still seems likely the Tories win in May or early June, then the ruling-class offensive against public services, trade union and employment rights and civil liberties will intensify.
The poor and the elderly, single parents, the homeless and others who need the welfare state safety net will be hit by at least two massive waves of public spending cuts.
The trouble is that this ruling-class offensive will continue even if new Labour is re-elected.
Because the Labour Party offers no clear alternative to this prospectus, millions of electors who could otherwise be persuaded on the basis of mass campaigning to vote Labour will refuse to do so. Some will vote Lib Dem, Green, SNP or Plaid Cymru instead.
The most confused and gullible may vote for the BNP fascists. But many more working-class electors are unlikely to vote at all.
This situation throws down a challenge to the left at a time when all of its contingents are as weak as at almost any time in their history.
Social democrats now find themselves having to argue for public services, wealth redistribution, the NHS, comprehensive state education, trade union rights, civil liberties and international law against new Labour policies of privatisation, state diktat and illegal war. Gone for the time being are the days when old Labour social democrats defined themselves primarily against those to the left of them.
Labour Party socialists continue to uphold principled positions in favour of public ownership, economic planning and nuclear disarmament, and against monopoly power and imperialist war.
But the Labour left is weaker than it has ever been. The affiliated trade unions bear a heavy responsibility for this.
Despite plenty of talk and even a little action, they have mostly collaborated with new Labour's political and organisational demobilisation of the party.
Greater unity on the left requires co-operation between socialists and social democrats, but not capitulation to them.
The non-Labour left is fragmented, much of it incapable of proposing any line of march for the left as a whole, preferring narrow, unrealistic and usually self-seeking perspectives instead.
In 2010, the Communist Party in Britain is celebrating its 90th anniversary. We will recall with pride our history of fighting for working-class advance, left unity, socialism and anti-imperialist solidarity in the struggle for national liberation, peace and working-class state power.
We will also continue to discuss our weaknesses, mistakes and failings past and present in order to learn lessons that could strengthen the Communist Party and the wider left and labour movement.
Britain's communists have long understood that the main enemy is at home.
The British monopoly capitalist class still has more directly invested capital outside its own borders than any country except the US. British imperialism is still a substantial power economically, militarily and politically.
It remains the internationalist duty of socialists, communists and trade unionists to challenge the interests of British monopoly capitalism and its state power. This includes its role in institutions such as NATO, the European Union, the IMF and the World Bank.
The class struggle never stops, not least because the capitalist class is wholly committed to fighting it. Inaction on the part of the working class, its trade unions and other campaigning organisations guarantees retreat and defeat.
Only resistance and struggle carry the potential of victory and advance.
The Communist Party did not accept that the sun could never set on the British empire, extending every kind of solidarity to the anti-colonial movements. Nor did we accept that the rise of fascism in Britain was inevitable in the 1930s, or that racism could not be successfully challenged in the trade union movement in the 1950s and '60s, or that anti-trade union laws could not be rendered inoperable in the '70s.
Mass activity was the key to success in each case.
Except in some brief periods of voluntary or enforced isolation, the Communist Party has always been clear about the need for building unity and the basis for broad alliances.
Applying an ideological test for entry into what is intended to be a broad alliance is nonsense. That is why communists argued against proposals that CND and the Cuba Solidarity Campaign demand a commitment to socialism from their members. But that does not mean that socialists could not raise deeper questions in such movements.
Organisations such as CND, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the Anti-Nazi League and the Stop the War Coalition only developed a mass character because they were "popular fronts."
Not the popular fronts of ultra-left anti-communist mythology. They have been popular fronts as understood by communists - united alliances in action against the policies and strategies of the most reactionary circles of monopoly capital. Popular fronts based as much as possible on a united front of working-class trade union and political organisations.
It is this united front which gives broader alliances their stability, their discipline, their realism, their roots in the working class and their biggest potential for mass mobilisation. Displaying sufficient breadth, tact and self-discipline, socialists and communists can help develop people's political consciousness.
In 2010, we urgently need a people's front approach to defending our public services based on trade unions and trades councils but drawing in as many local community and voluntary bodies as possible.
Similarly, the campaign to stop the BNP fascists has to be genuinely broad and inclusive. The TUC could help launch a People's United-type initiative in the run-up to the general election, drawing together a wide front of anti-fascist, black and ethnic minority and trade union organisations.
A Workers United-type drive by regional TUCs, trades councils and unions could take the battle of ideas and information into large workplaces, especially those infested by the BNP.
The time may also become ripe for a Young People's March for Jobs to highlight the need to invest in public services and productive industry using progressive taxation, public ownership and capital controls.
This would show how defensive battles can be turned into an offensive initiative. The left and the labour movement need to project an alternative vision and policies to those of the new Labour, Tory and fascist right.
It may not go far enough for some super-revolutionaries, but the People's Charter for Change is the best such proposition on the table. Its demands for public ownership and economic controls represent a fundamental challenge to the prerogatives of monopoly capital in the interests of workers, their families and the environment.
Formal trade union support needs to be made concrete, with broad-based local committees also springing up to take the charter into shopping centres, working-class estates and workplaces.
The People's Charter can challenge general election candidates with the kind of manifesto we need. If Labour wins, the charter sets out a real prospectus for progress. If the Tories win, it could raise the standard of resistance in every sense.
A Labour government can be made more susceptible to popular pressure than a Tory one if the affiliated trade unions use their industrial and financial power. That is why most of the non-sectarian left will call for a Labour victory as the prelude to an upsurge in industrial and political struggle.
But it will also be vital that a range of left candidates, including Communist Party, Green, Respect and socialist coalition ones in carefully selected seats, ensure that progressive, working-class and anti-imperialist policies are put before millions of electors.
Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain.
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