The forces exist which—if mobilised around the demands of the alternative economic and political strategy can put Britain on a new course, to tackle the crisis in the interests of the people, expand democracy and open the way to socialist revolution.
The urgent need now is to link these forces and their struggles closer together. The policies of the alternative strategy aim to promote the economic, social and political interests of all working people in a combined and mutually reinforcing way.
This process must also involve—at the organisational level and in the course of mobilising for struggle—growing unity between the forces for change, drawing together the widest possible alliance directed against state-monopoly capitalism.
Building and strengthening such a democratic anti-monopoly alliance must be the top priority.
To achieve it, however, requires an understanding of the class forces in capitalist society in Britain today.
The capitalist class comprises the owners and controllers of the means of production, distribution and exchange (the factories, banks, shops, land, etc.) and their agents.
People in higher managerial positions and in the upper echelons of the state apparatus, although they sell their labour power, are part of the ruling class because they act directly or indirectly on behalf of the capitalists, identify with them and often own substantial amounts of capital.
Even as a whole, the capitalist class is only a small fraction of the population. But within it, there is a still smaller minority exercising the dominant power—those who control the very big firms and banks, which not only exploit their own workers but operate at the expense of many smaller businesses, small shopkeepers and farmers.
Small enterprises are among the first victims in periods of acute crisis, many of them going bankrupt, being forced to close down, or being swallowed up by the big firms. When working class living standards are cut, small producers, shopkeepers and traders are also adversely affected.
There is, therefore, an objective basis for an alliance between the working class and many in these sections of the capitalist class. They confront a common enemy—the big British and foreign monopolies, including the banks.
There will be problems building such an alliance, because the smaller employers are in a contradictory position to both the monopolists and the working class.
Small businesses face the prospect of being squeezed out by the big companies, but are also often linked to them as suppliers, or as distributors of their products. They usually see it as in their interests to keep wages down for the sake of their profits, and working conditions are often worse in small workplaces.
However, the organised working class needs to show small firms that there is no solution to their problems in lining up with big business against the workers. It must seek to win them to the side of the labour movement, and prevent them becoming prey to right-wing and fascist propaganda.
This means campaigning for specific measures to assist them, such as cheap credit, restrictions on monopoly price manipulation, controls on rent, relief from high rates, the abolition of VAT, etc., as well as winning them for the wider democratic demands of the working class, including the struggle for peace, disarmament and environmental protection.
While in modern society the great majority of people are members of either the working class or the capitalist class, there are also those whose relation to the means of production places them in an intermediate position.
Middle-grade management and the middle ranks of the state apparatus act to a considerable extent as agents of the capitalist class, but the degree to which they exercise control over the means of production is often limited.
Furthermore, their income is derived mainly from selling their labour power for a salary. They may, therefore, be considered part of the intermediate strata between the capitalist class and the working class.
Members of family businesses, small shopkeepers, working farmers and small firms which employ little or no labour are another such group. So are those among professional sections like architects, lawyers, doctors, writers and artists who are self-employed.
They are all affected by the social and economic crisis of capitalism, and by the ways in which it holds back progress in spheres in which they may be particularly concerned, such as housing, health, interest rates, disarmament, culture and the environment.
Policies need to be advanced by the working class and progressive forces which will win as many as possible among these sections for a broad alliance against the capitalist monopolies.
The leading force in the democratic anti-monopoly alliance will be the working class. Its interests are most directly and consistently opposed to those of the capitalist ruling class.
Its strength and capacity for organisation enables it to give leadership to all the forces for advance in society. As a class it can only achieve emancipation through socialism.
But the working class is important not just because of its numbers, but because of the special place it occupies in capitalist society. Although the working class has no need of capitalism, capitalism could not function without the working class.
This is as true of administrative staff in the state sector and ancillary workers in public services as it is of manual workers in manufacturing. Though some workers regard themselves as “middle class”, and may work in institutions which help to perpetuate capitalism and its ideas, they too are objectively part of the working class.
Their real interests broadly coincide with those of workers in manual occupations. All workers provide essential labour power for state-monopoly capitalism, all are constantly under pressure to produce more, and all are subject to the insecurity and crisis generated by that system. They share a united common interest, therefore, to challenge and abolish capitalist exploitation.
At the heart of the working class is its most advanced section—those workers concentrated in large-scale enterprises. The very scale of the means of production used in these enterprises means that their workers can never own and control them except collectively, under socialism.
A large proportion of such workers have traditionally been in the manufacturing, engineering, energy, metalworking, transport and shipbuilding industries, where the anarchy of production and profit-seeking causes the most severe industrial crises.
They have also tended to work where technical innovation raises the rate of exploitation and economic insecurity the fastest. Of all sections of the working class, these workers can see the already-planned character of the enterprises in which they work.
This improves the prospect of winning them to appreciate the potential of planned socialist production. Today, many such workers work for transnational corporations and have the biggest need for—and impulse towards—building international solidarity.
Because the ruling class knows that defeat in such big enterprises has the most dangerous implications, it has always brought to bear its sharpest coercive and ideological weapons against workers there.
On their part, therefore, these workers have been forced to mobilise the solidarity of the whole working class. Thus they have unparalleled experience in the struggle for unity.
In the past, many non-manual workers held aloof from the industrial working class and from trades union organisation. But the distinction between manual and non-manual work is being more and more eroded as a consequence of technological advance and modern processes of production.
The impact of capitalist crisis has also contributed to a substantial increase in trades unionism among non-manual and service workers, who have shown greater readiness to take action to defend their interests.
Strikes by health workers, bank employees and teachers in the recent period are significant evidence of this. Such action itself contributes to the development of working class consciousness.
Moreover, many service workers—particularly in the public sector—are today among the most unionised contingents of the working class, and are often concentrated in large departments and offices.
Whether in industry or services, in the private or the public sector, large enterprises embrace the greatest diversity of workers. They reflect in miniature the diversity of the whole working class.
To build here a concentration of organised forces, capable of confronting the organised power of their state or monopolist employers, inevitably gives these workers the deepest and longest experience in overcoming sectionalism.
They learn why it is essential to put the long-term interests of the class as a whole before the immediate interests of any one section.
Trades union organisation and ideas of class solidarity have spread among workers in the state apparatus, in the mass media and other key areas of society. Nor should their importance in smaller enterprises, including in the most technologically advanced sectors, be underestimated.
Such developments represent an important extension of the potential power of the working class to engage in mass struggle outside parliament, utilising an ever wider range of tactics and techniques.
Another significant development has been the growing number of women joining the workforce, often in part-time jobs. Increasingly they are joining trades unions and—as the TUC Women’s conference shows—they are making a major and progressive contribution to the labour movement.
The scandal of low pay among women must become a central issue for the unions, who have a responsibility to step up the fight for equal pay for work of equal value, for childcare facilities, against sexual harassment and for other measures that can ensure the equality of women.
It is unthinkable that real progress in developing the unity of the working class is possible without a continuous challenge to all discrimination and a commitment to end it.
Campaigning along these lines will help to build the confidence of women so that they participate on a basis of equality with men in the joint struggle to abolish capitalist exploitation.
The labour movement must therefore be won to the fullest understanding that the demands for genuine equality for women, black people and for other oppressed sections are central areas for struggle.
Moreover, the struggle against the subordination of women, against racism and other forms of oppression, while each exhibiting their own distinctive features, nonetheless form essential aspects of the class struggle.
The fight for women’s liberation and for black liberation is not a priority only for women and black people—it is a priority for the whole working class.
The main influence of the working class on society is expressed through the labour movement, though this does not yet comprise the whole of the working class. It includes the trades unions, pensioners’ organisations, the Labour Party, the Co-operative movement and the Communist Party.
The trades unions are the biggest and most powerful organisations of the working class. They play a vital role in enabling workers to combine and exercise their collective strength, in defence of wages and working conditions against the capitalist drive for profit.
As such, they are important training schools for workers involved in class struggle. Trades unions today also take up a wide range of issues which are highly political.
But they cannot be a substitute for political parties of the working class, although many of them are affiliated through its federal structure to the Labour Party. By their very nature, unions tend to concentrate on class struggle in the economic sphere ie. on the direct relation between workers and employers.
But if the working class is to put an end to exploitation and oppression, then this struggle must go beyond this specific economic relation to embrace the political relation between workers and the state.
Therefore, industrial militancy is not enough, and there is a need to combat the economistic outlook which sees the trade union struggle on economic issues as sufficient in itself.
In fact, this struggle needs to be linked with a political perspective if it is to produce lasting gains for the working class.
This point has been consistently stressed by the Communist Party, which urges its members to work to strengthen the trades unions, workplace organisation and the shop stewards movement, the British TUC, trades union councils, the Scottish, Welsh and regional TUCs and the Co-operative movement—for political and social as well as economic struggles.
A vigorous fight for the interests of their members on all fronts could help the trades unions to draw back into their ranks those who have been lost through the decimation of heavy and manufacturing industry.
It could win millions who have never been organised, and breathe new life into branches and workplace organisations. The adoption of the “organising” model of trades unionism in place of the old “servicing” model could greatly assist in such developments.
In particular, unions need to do far more to attract, organise and activate young workers on whom the future of the movement depends.
At the same time, a more conscious and determined effort has to be made not only to attract more women and black workers into the trades unions, but also to ensure that they enjoy equal opportunity of promotion and representation at every level of the trade union movement.
Here the TUC’s structures for women, black, lesbian and gay and disabled workers have an important role to play.
The fight against unemployment must unite the employed and the unemployed around the key demands of a shorter working week, reduced retirement age, higher unemployment benefits and pensions, apprenticeship and proper training for workers of all ages at trade union rates.
To this end, the role of TUC unemployed centres as labour movement campaigning organisations must be strengthened, and trades unions must actively seek to recruit unemployed workers, taking up issues on their behalf.
In recent years, the pensioners movement has taken on a new militancy. But the fight for a ‘living pension’ is not the responsibility of pensioners alone. The trades unions have to understand that this is a fight for their members’ future, as the provision of a decent basic state pension is the only way to guarantee a financially secure retirement.
Every union should have a retired members section. Although the pensioners movement has received increased backing from trades unions and Labour Party organisations in the battle for adequate pensions, and for greater social provision for the retired and disabled, the labour movement needs to help turn this into a truly mass, broad-based and militant campaign.
Local trades union councils can be a major force in generating mass struggle and influencing political ideas within the labour movement. They take up issues of wide concern across the movement, such as unemployment, pensions, racism and defence of local services, and can help develop solidarity with workers in struggle.
A fight needs to be waged to ensure that trades unions affiliate fully to trades union councils and participate in their work.
In addition, a stronger and more united left wing is needed in the trades unions to end the dominant position of the right. This political fight must be conducted at workplace level, among the mass of workers, and not just at the level of union leadership.
To win workers to a socialist—and not only a militant class—outlook, increased political activity in the workplaces by the left and the Communist Party is essential.
Despite people’s experiences of the Blair government, the Labour Party is the mass party of the organised working class which continues to enjoy the electoral support of large sections of workers.
But its politics and ideology have been those of social democracy and imperialism, seeking to manage and reform capitalism in the immediate temporary interests of the labour movement—but not to abolish it in the fundamental interests of the working class and humanity as a whole.
Labour has never fundamentally challenged ruling class ideas. At best, it has only reflected and represented the “trade union consciousness” of the working class in political life.
The reformist outlook which dominates Labour confines the party to an exclusively parliamentary role within the capitalist system. Its campaigning work is seen almost entirely in terms of participation in elections, and it carries out little or no socialist education.
Yet the Labour Party is different from other social democratic parties in one crucial respect. It is a federal party with mass trade union affiliations.
Certainly, the capacity of the unions to influence the Labour Party has been much diminished in recent years by the attacks of the Blair leadership on internal party democracy.
Even so, the organised collective voice of working people can—through their unions—still exercise a major influence within the Labour Party. This is why it is important that workers and their unions continue to pay the political levy and their Labour Party affiliation fees.
The unique structure and composition of the Labour Party has also ensured the existence of a significant socialist trend within it. These socialists have at times won major advances in the battle of ideas inside and beyond the party, producing policies that have challenged big business in the interests of working people.
But without underestimating the importance of the Labour Party left, it is not a cohesive and united force.
While some of its members are influenced by Marxist ideas and hold firm to basic working class principles, others are too ready to abandon the need for mass struggle in workplaces and localities, to embrace a reformist outlook on this and other questions such as incomes policies, imperialist intervention, and the nature of the state under capitalism and socialism.
Because the Labour left lacks a revolutionary political perspective, is not centrally organised and is not sufficiently related to the many extra-parliamentary struggles, it cannot by itself bring about the necessary transformation in outlook and activity of the labour movement.
Nor is the answer to be found in the various ultra-left groups, which have in common a narrow interpretation of Marxism and a strategy which in practice adopts a dismissive, sectarian attitude towards the labour movement.
The appeal of Trotskyism, anarchism and other forms of ultra-leftism springs primarily from the failure of reformism. Such groups and parties are usually based on anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism, which they call ‘anti-Stalinism’ and which is reflected in a lack of understanding of the nature of imperialism.
This has led some ultra-left organisations to take an objectively pro-imperialist stance on key international questions, whether by welcoming counter-revolution in the former socialist countries, rejecting solidarity with Cuba or backing the so-called “Kosovan Liberation Army” during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Such sectarian groups frequently play a disruptive and divisive role in the labour and progressive movements in Britain.
When not conducting “entryist” activities inside the Labour Party, they are proclaiming various alternatives to it regardless of realities in the working class movement. Their tactics and slogans are often unrealistic, irresponsible or premature because they do not flow from a concrete analysis of the concrete situation. Confusion and disillusionment invariably follow.
Similarly, their demagogic attacks on trade union leadership often take little or no account of the real balance of forces. Trade union “bureaucrats” are invariably accused of betraying workers in struggle, regardless of objective difficulties, sowing divisions instead of seeking to win the labour movement from top to bottom for left policies.
Their dogmatic interpretations of Marxism also generate incessant splits within their own parties and sects.
Nonetheless, many members of these groups are motivated by socialist and communist ideals. Their organisations can sometimes act with boldness and imagination, taking up issues which the right wing has ignored.
Therefore, the negative influence of ultra-leftism and sectarianism is best countered by political debate and discussion, and by co-operation on the left where agreement can be reached on campaigning objectives.
The main task in the current situation is to defeat the pro-big business, anti-labour movement trend in the leadership of the Labour Party and its influence in the trade unions.
The affiliated unions have a central role to play in this effort. But this will require a battle within the unions to reject the ideology of “social partnership”, and a struggle to defend and extend Labour Party democracy—and to preserve the working class character of the party itself.
The trades unions must intervene more actively in candidate selection processes, and campaign at every level to demand that Labour candidates commit themselves to pro-working class policies before and after elections.
Affiliated unions should also ensure that their representatives on leading committees, including the Labour Party NEC, are accountable to—and play an active role in fighting for—the policies and interests of their members.
The union links with the Labour Party will also have a vital role to play in helping to secure a left government based on a Labour, socialist and communist parliamentary majority. The unions can influence the policies, leadership and parliamentary representation of the Labour Party to make such a government possible.
But for Britain to take this road to socialism, the trade union movement has to be won to fight for the policies of the alternative strategy.
To argue that this is not possible is not only defeatist—it is in effect to write off the organised working class as the leading force for socialist revolution.
This is a sectarian position that inevitably results in sectarian politics, isolated from the labour movement.
It reveals itself in the perennial efforts to create a new party to the left of Labour, even though in current conditions no such party would attract the support of significant sections of the trade union movement.
These attempts invariably weaken the Labour left and undermine efforts to unite the left around a common alternative economic and political strategy.
The Communist Party calls and works for the strengthening of the links between the trades unions and the Labour Party and for maintaining Labour as the mass party of the working class and the labour movement.
Communists are not neutral in the left-right struggle within the Labour Party and the labour movement and, as an integral part of that movement, we work to unite and strengthen the left against the right.
We therefore seek the removal of all discriminatory bans and proscriptions directed mainly against Communists—but also affecting others on the left—which only help the right wing by keeping the movement divided.
In particular, trades unions should have the democratic right to nominate and elect, from those who pay the political levy, candidates and delegates of their own choice to the Labour Party, as was once the case.
The necessity of winning the trades unions and the wider labour movement for the policies of the AEPS, and on the basis of mass struggle which makes this possible, underlines the vital need for a distinct and much stronger Communist Party.
As a party guided by the principles of scientific socialism and active among the organised working class and other progressive forces, it is uniquely capable of providing leadership not on the basis of elitism or sectarianism—but on the basis of co-operation with the left in the Labour Party and in the wider labour and progressive movement.
A decisive left-ward shift in the balance of forces within the labour movement and in Britain generally depends upon the growth in size, influence and effectiveness of the Communist Party.
The Communist Party was founded in Britain in 1920. From its inception it drew great inspiration from the young Soviet republic and was a constituent part of the international communist movement.
Despite its small size, it has played an outstanding role in many industrial battles, led the unemployed, tenants and anti-fascist movements in the 1930s, organised solidarity with the peoples of Ireland, India and republican Spain, campaigned against nuclear weapons, and actively opposed apartheid in South Africa and US genocide in Korea and Vietnam.
The very success of the Communist Party made it a particular target of the capitalist class.
Having failed to isolate the Party from its working class roots, the ruling class worked to undermine it ideologically from within during the 1980s. Those who saw the danger re-established the Communist Party of Britain in 1988, since when it has been rebuilding its position as the Marxist party of the labour movement.
The aims and principles of the Communist Party make it distinct from all other parties, and equip it to play a leading role in the struggle for socialism. The most important characteristics of the Party are:
Firstly, the Communist Party is based upon the class and internationalist principles of Marxism-Leninism, which enable it both to analyse the nature of capitalist society and to develop a strategy that will lead to socialism.
Second, it is organised for socialist revolution, and therefore constantly seeks to strengthen its roots in the working class because of the latter’s leading role for revolutionary social change. On that basis, it seeks to weld together all progressive movements at a local and national level, initiating and assisting the people’s campaigns. In order to help develop political consciousness, it organises itself both in workplaces and localities.
Third, the Communist Party is a democratic party, drawing on the initiative and creativity of its membership in planning and carrying through its policy and activity, and in electing a leadership which is answerable to that membership. To this end, the Party develops and maintains close relationships within its own ranks, between different sections of workers, between women and men, black and white, young and old.
Fourth, the party is centralised, so it can intervene in the class struggle as a disciplined and united force once policy is decided. This combination of democracy with centralism to produce ‘democratic centralism’—the highest organisational principle of the Party—helps make the Party capable of acting in a uniquely effective way.
Fifth, the Communist Party has close relations with the communist movement in other countries, based on the independence, equality and mutual respect of each party in a world movement which seeks to lead the transition to socialism on a global scale. This unity, together with international solidarity with other movements fighting for peace, progress and national liberation, is vital for the achievement and building of socialism in Britain.
These essential characteristics of the Communist Party have enabled it to be an effective vanguard party of struggle over the years, generating class and socialist consciousness and showing the need to win state power and advance to socialism.
But the Communist Party is still too small, and its roots among many sections are still weak. It needs to grow both numerically and in terms of its political influence. To do this, the Party must help to develop activity and discussion not only in the labour movement, but in all progressive organisations and democratic movements.
It needs to show in action, as well as by explanation, that class collaboration must be replaced by class struggle, that the state is not “neutral” between the classes, that only if parliamentary struggle is combined with mass struggle outside parliament can the working class and its allies win significant victories, and that the problems we face can only be successfully tackled by a strategy for socialist revolution. Ready to listen and learn, as well as to provide strategic leadership, Communists will more and more become a trusted and respected popular force.
The Party also aims to encourage positive cultural movements, recognising the place of culture and the arts in the lives of working people.
The Communist Party needs to recruit, organise and educate a new generation of Communists to invigorate, staff and lead its own organisations in the workplaces and communities.
Central to the creation of this new generation is the Party’s work with the Young Communist League to address the needs and aspirations of young people. The Party also strives to increase its electoral activity, although Communist contests are undertaken on a selective basis, taking into account the overall political situation, the level of Communist work and influence in the locality concerned, and the nature of the candidates put forward by Labour.
In these ways, the Communist Party aims to become a party of mass influence not just a party with bigger membership, but with members ideologically equipped and drawn from every section and area of our society, a party through which more and more people can be brought into political action.
All of this enables the Communist Party to develop its distinctive role as a force which leads from where the people are, which fights for the unity of the working class, and for the cohesion of the democratic anti-monopoly alliance at every stage. Only in this way can the reformist influence among working people be overcome and replaced by socialist consciousness.
Nevertheless, however large the Communist Party we do not envisage achieving this by ourselves. Other parties and organisations will play an important role in this process. But the distinctive aspiration of Britain’s Communists is to offer this process coherence, vision and democratic leadership.
The Communist Party does not seek to replace the Labour Party as a federal party of the working class, but rather to strengthen its original federal character.
A much more influential Communist Party is crucial to the future of the Labour Party itself, and to the development of the labour movement and the democratic anti-monopoly alliance as a whole.
If right-wing ideas and leadership in the labour movement are defeated and replaced by people and policies committed to the struggle against monopoly capitalism, and if the Communist Party itself grows in strength and influence unhindered by bans and proscriptions, new opportunities will open up for more developed forms of Labour-Communist unity, including in the electoral field.
Under these circumstances, future affiliation to the Labour Party could become a realistic possibility.
Central to any unity for advance to socialism in Britain is unity of the left. Our programme is fundamentally based on achieving the widest possible unity on a principled socialist basis.
Respect for the differences which do exist is the condition for building mutual confidence and trust, for undertaking work together on specific issues and thereby creating the atmosphere where common understanding can grow.
In this way, too, divisions within the Communist movement in Britain can be overcome on the basis of Marxist-Leninist unity.
Apart from the main organisations of the working class, many other bodies and movements have grown up as different groups of people seek to promote their interests against those of monopoly capital. But if they are to be successful, they must be won to work with the labour movement—which must itself be won to fight on their behalf.
The women’s liberation movement in Britain is diverse, embracing the National Assembly of Women, women’s structures in the labour movement, as well as single-issue local and national campaigns.
These various organisations and campaigns have focused attention on a wide range of issues including the sexual division of labour, equal pay, reproductive rights and violence against women.
They have highlighted how sexism, the role of women in the family, their responsibility for childcare and their economic dependence limit educational and career opportunities and women’s participation in social and political life on equal terms with men.
The labour movement also needs to concern itself much more than it has in the past with questions such as the nature of personal relationships, human sexuality and the future of the family.
However, some sections of the women’s movement tend to divorce women’s liberation from a class context, placing theoretical and practical emphasis on the personal, subjective, individual experience of oppression by men. There is also the tendency by some men to support women’s liberation in theory, without undertaking necessary changes in their organisational, political and personal circumstances in practice.
These approaches can only weaken the mass basis of the fight for women’s liberation, reinforcing any tendencies to marginalise the issue.
In order to counteract this, therefore, a clear Marxist perspective on the question of women’s equality has to be projected, with greater efforts to win the organised working class to play a more effective, decisive role in the struggle for women’s liberation.
The subordination and oppression of women has been a fundamental feature of the exploitation of working people in all class societies, most notably under capitalism. Hence the fight for women’s equality is not for women alone and cannot be relegated to a secondary question—it is central to the class struggle.
These points apply with equal force to the fight against racism in all its forms.
In Britain with its long history of imperialism, racism is reflected in the dominant ideology, in discrimination and open violence—aspects of which have become institutionalised in the police force, the legal system, in employment, housing, education and the health service.
Black people and other ethnic minorities whose exploitation as members of the working class is combined with oppression on grounds of race, language and culture, are increasingly developing their own organisations and other important initiatives to combat racism.
This struggle will be all the more effective if there is the widest unity between black and white people, and between black and white workers in particular.
Thus the labour movement must play a decisive part in winning the whole working class to reject racist ideas and practices, and to assisting black people to combat discrimination wherever it appears.
Similarly, the struggle for equal rights for lesbians and gay men is an essential part of the struggle for socialism.
In Scotland and Wales powerful national movements have emerged. They reflect the severe economic, social and cultural problems that have arisen from the centralisation of power and control within the British state.
The development of the Welsh and Scottish nations has been impeded and distorted by the grip of monopoly capital on their economic and social life, and by big capital’s close links with the British state apparatus.
The nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales are based mostly upon sections of the intermediate strata, notably the professions, intelligentsia, small capitalists and farmers who have been politicised by the historical conditions in their respective countries. Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) has played a vigorous role in campaigns to secure the national and cultural rights of the Welsh people and to defend the continued existence of working class communities.
Both national movements therefore contain anti-monopoly capitalist, anti-militarist and radical democratic elements who have in turn attracted some working class support. There exist wide areas for co-operation with the left.
At the same time, these forces will not themselves develop a class understanding of the roots of national oppression or of the united class power needed to combat state-monopoly capitalism at the British level. The labour movements in Wales and Scotland have an essential role in the fight for national self-determination.
Their close links with workers elsewhere in Britain give them the potential strength and political clarity to build an alliance of forces directed against those who hold state power in Britain. They can do this, however, only if they fully become champions of the democratic national rights of their peoples, while shaking off reformist and right-wing ideas which confuse and divide.
Within local communities a mass of problems exist, alongside growing central government dictation over local councils and local democracy. In response, movements and organisations have developed such as tenants and residents associations, environmental groups, community newspapers and theatre groups, transport campaigns and local committees against social spending cuts.
The ecological movement is assuming particular significance, mobilising people from a wide cross-section of society in a struggle to prevent the destruction of our environment and its eco-systems, to preserve the quality of living and even the basis of human existence itself.
These environmental and community issues—and the battle for local and popular participation in making decisions—are of concern not only to the groups most directly involved, but to the majority of the population in Britain.
Many of these issues derive from decisions made by or in the interests of the big monopolies, transnational corporations and financial institutions. Therefore it is particularly important that the organised working class takes up these questions and campaigns on them in a concerted way, establishing close links with the various movements involved.
The desire for peace and the removal of all nuclear weapons and foreign military bases from British soil and waters extends across wide sections of the population. Their aspirations need to be expressed by a powerful and broad-based peace movement as part of the democratic anti-monopoly alliance.
To this end, support for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and other peace organisations as broad, tolerant, non-sectarian campaigns needs to be stepped up to strengthen them organisationally and politically at all levels. Stronger links should also be built between peace organisations and the trades unions, drawing unions into a more active role in the peace movement. Clearly, Trade Union CND has an especially valuable role to play here.
Apart from the problems they face in common with other sections of the working population, young people face their own specific problems whether as students or young workers. Mass unemployment has left its mark on an entire generation, also aggravating the discrimination felt by young women and black youth.
Discontent among young people is too often met by harassment from the authorities. There is also the danger that continuing youth unemployment could strengthen the appeal of extreme right-wing trends, stemming from growing frustration and a lack of contact with the labour and progressive movements.
Therefore the labour movement needs to campaign more vigorously on their demands, providing organisational structures and social and cultural facilities for them, recruiting them into the unions, fighting for their right to study and their right to work.
Church, charity and voluntary sector groups have developed a higher profile in recent campaigns against urban decay, nuclear weapons and the arms trade, Third World debt and poverty, and the harsh treatment of asylum seekers.
Again, the labour movement should work more closely with such campaigning bodies, strengthening their initiatives and taking them into the organised working class.
The motive force for advance in our society is the class struggle between workers and capitalists. But capitalism not only exploits people at work, it also oppresses them in many different aspects of their lives.
Thus people react and struggle against capitalism and its effects not only in their workplaces, but in their communities and in their social, culture and leisure activities, as men and women, black and white, young and old, and of whatever nationality.
Movements and organisations develop which may embrace people not only from different sections within the working class, but from other classes and strata in society.
However, if these movements and their struggles proceed in isolation from each other, they can only challenge the position of the ruling class on single, isolated issues—never challenging the overall control and domination exercised by that class.
If these movements remain apart from the labour movement, not only will they suffer from the lack of its support, but the organised working class will be unable to fulfil its role as the leading force in society.
It is imperative, therefore, that the organised working class builds the widest possible alliance with all other movements fighting for progress, democracy and equality. The objective basis for uniting these forces is that they all face a common enemy, namely British state monopoly capitalism, which blocks advance on every front.
Thus the combined weight of the overwhelming majority of the population needs to be brought to bear on the power of the capitalist state and the monopoly corporations.
The construction and development of the democratic anti-monopoly alliance will also strengthen unity within the working class itself, as it promotes a deeper understanding of how capitalism creates the full range of problems facing all working people.
In seeking to implement the alternative economic and political strategy, the organised working class can become more conscious of—and confident in—its tasks of leading a popular challenge to state monopoly capitalism, taking state power and abolishing the system of exploitation.
The role of the Morning Star in helping the left to build the democratic anti-monopoly alliance is crucial. It remains the only national daily newspaper which is co-operatively owned and free of big business control.
The Morning Star consistently takes up the cause of working people in their struggle against all forms of monopoly capitalist exploitation and oppression. It forges links between the labour movement and other sections of the peoples of Britain.
All on the left should support the Morning Star and help to expand its circulation and influence within the labour and progressive movements.
Next: V. The Advance to Socialism