- THE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD TO COMMUNISM IN BRITAIN -
©Revolutionary Communist Group, 1983

PART FIVE

BRITISH IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN THE WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT

The growing economic crisis of British imperialism threatens the alliance that has tied the organised working class to the capitalist system in Britain. The attack on living standards, the growing unemployment and poverty is eroding the material conditions that have consolidated the political hold the labour aristocracy has over the whole working class. This process, while still in its early stages, has nevertheless led to a developing crisis within the Labour Party and trade union movement. This in turn has had its impact on the more radical elements of the new middle class and therefore among the British socialist organisations which draw their membership from such groups. Finally the more oppressed sections of the working class are increasingly demonstrating their independence from the traditional organisations ofthe working class. The split in the British working class is inevitably growing.

THE LABOUR PARTY

The Labour Party gives organised political expression to the interests of the labour aristocracy. The Labour Party, in common with that layer whose interests it expresses, is therefore dependent on the continued existence of British imperialist exploitation and oppression. For it is that exploitation and oppression which provides the material basis for the labour aristocracy and its party, the Labour Party.

This is why the Labour Party is and has always been a bourgeois racist pro-imperialist party. Its standpoint is bourgeois socialism.

The policies and practice of the post-war Labour government alone are adequate proof of this fact. In Britain it constructed the material and social basis for the renewed and strengthened hold of opportunism over the mass of the working class: the welfare state. Internationally it played a crucial role in restoring the conditions for imperialist expansion and the post-war boom by systematically crushing and disarming national liberation and resistance movements all over the world. It also gave full support to the anti-Soviet 'cold war'. The landslide victory of the Labour Party in 1945 was a landslide which buried the hopes of millions upon millions of oppressed peoples. This was 'socialist colonial policy' in action.

GREECE: 40,000 British troops were deployed to crush the revolutionary resistance movement before the Labour government persuaded US imperialism to take over its bloody task.

MALAYSIA: the depths of barbarism were plumbed in the use of 'protected villages', the SAS and even headhunters to defeat the Malayan liberation movement.

INDIA: using military force, the Labour government imposed partition and established pro-imperialist regimes - in the ensuing conflict hundreds of thousands died and millions became refugees.

VIETNAM: the Labour government used British troops under the direction of Major-General Gracey to restore French colonial rule, rearmed Japanese troops and condemned the Vietnamese people to 30 years of bloody anti-imperialist struggle.

PALESTINE: the Labour government created Zionist Israel and paved the way for genocide against the Palestinian people.

KENYA: the Labour government, in 1950, declared illegal a boycott of a Royal visit organised by the East African Trades Union Congress (EATUC) and jailed its organisers. It then deployed tanks, planes and armed police across Nairobi to crush an 18 day general strike. Hundreds of workers were arrested, the EATUC outlawed and strikes in 13 'essential services' forbidden.

JAMAICA: in 1946, the Labour government banned all public meetings and introduced internment.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: the Labour government supported South African annexation of Namibia.

IRELAND: the Labour government strengthened and guaranteed the loyalist Six County police state by passing the Government of Ireland Act 1949.

KOREA: in 1950, the Labour government joined with US imperialism in the Korean War to attack North Korea and prop up the reactionary South Korean regime.

GERMANY: the 1945 Labour government obstructed the prosecution of Nazi war criminals and supported the reinstatement of German industrialists, eg Krupp, who had a record of long support and collaboration with the Hitler regime.

USSR: in 1948 the Labour government created a secret Foreign Office department to supply and distribute anti-Soviet propaganda. During the 'Berlin crisis' it gave permission for US atomic bombers to be stationed in Britain for possible use against the Soviet Union. In 1949 it joined the anti-Soviet NATO war machine.

In 1949, to provide the forces for its military adventures, the Labour government extended the 1939 conscription act to provide for 'peacetime' conscription: the period of service was 12 months. In 1950 the Labour government National Service Act doubled this period of service to 2 years. This was the brutal reactionary reality ofthe 'progressive' post-war Labour government which is the object of nostalgic yearning by today's 'left'. It was not long before, in order to protect the conditions necessary for the post-war revival of capitalist profitability, the Labour government was turning on the working class in Britain: wage restraint was introduced in 1948; a ceiling was imposed on food subsidies in 1949; cuts in public expenditure began in 1949; charges were introduced on NHS teeth and spectacles in 1951. The real priorities of the Labour Party in power were demonstrated in 1951. Health and social expenditure was cut to help finance a colossal 30% increase in planned defence expenditure (1951-54) from £3.6bn to £4.7bn. The Labour Party went into the 1951 election with a manifesto which, for the first time since 1923, did not even use the words 'socialism' or 'socialist'. The policies and practices of the Labour Party ever since have fully confirmed the indisputable fact that the Labour Party is a racist pro-imperialist party through and through. The following examples are sufficient to prove this.

IRELAND

RACISM

Labour spokesmen are opportunistically mouthing anti-racist phrases in order to win the black vote. Not a word they say can be believed as their record shows.

SOUTH AFRICA

The Labour Party has frequently issued radical sounding statements on South Africa. When in power they have always failed to carry out any of their promises. The 1973 Labour Party programme differed very little from their manifesto for the 1983 General Election. Yet their record when in power from 1974-79 shows how they are able, without turning a hair, to betray the black people of South Africa and carry on all the dirty tricks you expect from a Tory government. These are just a few of the lies they told: The last Labour government was brought down in 1979 as a direct result of its war of terror against the Irish people (two Irish MPs refused to vote for it in a motion of confidence) and its attack on the lowest-paid workers in the public sector.

Today's collapse of the Labour Party is a reflection of the growing polarisation of class forces in Britain as the crisis of the imperialist system deepens. The impact of the imperialist crisis has meant that whilst conditions for the middle class and a section of well-paid skilled workers can still be maintained, and even improved, the security of employment and rising prosperity available to wider sections of the working class in the post-war boom can no longer be guaranteed. At the other end of the scale, millions are thrown into poverty. These developments mean that the social base of the labour aristocracy is shrinking and therefore its ability to control the whole working class movement is undermined. The polarisation between the labour aristocracy, desperate to hold onto what it has, and the growing numbers of poor and oppressed workers is widening daily.

The Labour Party and organised trade union movement have never concerned themselves with the poor and unemployed. Tory Party political broadcasts, in the run-up to the 1983 election, made a great deal of this fact by pointing out that the Labour Party had never reduced unemployment on coming into office. What has the organised trade union movement done to organise the unemployed? - precisely nothing. Little wonder then that there has been no revival of the political fortunes of the Labour Party. Those sections of well-paid workers which the Labour Party and organised trade union movement represent have shifted to the right as the crisis has deepened. Many of them have moved towards the SDP/Liberal Alliance. Terrified and threatened by any further polarisation of British society along class lines, they reject the Tory Party and for the same reasons they equally cannot tolerate any shift to the left in the Labour Party itself, however minimal. The by-elections in Bermondsey and Darlington before the 1983 General Election confirmed this trend. Many traditional Labour Party supporters would only give their vote to a 'moderate' Labour candidate. In the absence of such a candidate it went to the Alliance.

The 1983 General Election dramatically confirmed these points. The Labour Party polled its lowest popular vote in any General Election for 50 years. The skilled trade union organised base of the Labour Party moved to the right voting SDP/Liberal Alliance. Only 39% of trade unionists voted Labour. On the other hand many of the poor, the unemployed and the most oppressed workers not only did not vote Labour, they did not bother to vote at all. A pre-election survey showed that only 33% of black people intended to vote. In those areas where the poorest sections of the working class were concentrated, the turnout was far below the national average of 72%:

Hackney and Stoke Newington 54%
Newham South  54%
Vauxhall (including Brixton)  60%
Manchester Central  60%
Riverside (including Liverpool 8)  62%

These figures underline the polarisation of class forces in Britain today: the growing split in the working class movement between the labour aristocracy on the one side and the poorest and most oppressed workers on the other. In this situation the Labour Party can only go into deep crisis. Unable to appeal to the most oppressed - for to do so would threaten the very basis ofthe Labour Party's existence - it is inevitably forced even further rightwards. Neil Kinnock during his campaign to become leader of the Labour Party made this clear:

'...we can only protect the disadvantaged in our society if we appeal to those who are relatively advantaged. The apparent overconcentration of our energies and resources on these groups like the poor, the unemployed and the minorities - does a disservice both to them and to ourselves...if we are to be of real use to the deprived and insecure we must have the support of those in more secure social circumstances - the home owners as well as the homeless, the stable family as well as the single parent, the confidently employed as well as the unemployed, the majority as well as the minorities.'
The message is clear: the Labour Party will now abandon in words, as it has abandoned in deeds, the interests of the poorest and most oppressed workers. It has never been clearer that the Labour Party is a corrupt bourgeois racist pro-imperialist, and now declining, party. It will never be won to defence of the interests of the working class and oppressed either in Britain or internationally.

TRADE UNIONS AND THE CRISIS

The present Thatcher government is engaged in all-out attack on basic trade union rights and working class living standards. In this war against the organised trade union movement it continues to inflict crippling defeats. In the face of this attack the organised trade union movement is retreating and has exposed its inability to defend trade union rights, living standards, working conditions and the provision of services vital to the working class.

The threat of growing unemployment, the run-down of traditional sectors of British industry has dramatically curbed the power of what were previously militant sections ofthe working class. Steel workers, car workers (British Leyland), railway workers, miners over the last few years have chosen to hang on to the jobs they have rather than fight for jobs for the future. Where workers have fought they have done so sectionally and divided and although a small minority have still had the power to push through their demands, others have gone down defeated.

The long, sustained and militant 8 month health workers strike in 1982 was sabotaged by the leadership of the trade union movement. Throughout the 8 months the TUC refused to conduct a determined battle on behalf of the health workers. They chose a series of demoralising one-day strikes, which failed to have any impact, rather than call an all-out strike. For the NHS workers' readiness for an all-out strike pointed to the possibility of a confrontation that would not only have shaken the peaceful coexistence between the TUC and government, but also would have challenged the position of the bought-off leadership of the TUC.

Throughout industry trade unions have been all too ready to allow jobs to be sold off, knowing full well that the other side of voluntary redundancies is youth unemployment. It is little surprise that this same trade union leadership has done nothing to prevent the regimentation of tens of thousands of young people into youth training schemes as cheap labour, paid £25 per week for often dirty, dangerous and boring work.

The organised trade union movement has accepted four million unemployed without fighting. It has stood by as the health service is being run down, as schools are closed, and as public transport is cut back. It has done nothing to combat the attacks on social security benefits. In short it cares little for the oppressed, the poor and the unemployed.

The trade union movement has made no effort to combat attacks on trade union rights. It accepted the restrictions on trade union activity contained in the 1980 Employment Act without fighting back. At its Congress in 1983 it made it clear that it is prepared to discuss with Norman Tebbit his latest package of anti-union proposals. The TUC leadership has come to terms with its 'political reality' - it is prepared to collaborate with the Tories.

Many have argued that the recent stand of the TUC represents a shift to the 'right'. But this is too simplistic and ignores the character of the British trade union movement. It represents the interests of the more privileged strata of the working class. During the period of the last Thatcher government (1979-83) this stratum held its own - for example, well-paid skilled manual workers increased their overall wages by £1.70 per week (1.2%). Compare this to a drop in income of £15.30 per week (21%) for a recently unemployed worker, a loss of £8.05 per week (8%) for a semi-skilled manual worker with a family and a drop of income of £4.24 per week (4.6%) for a council manual worker. Over the last year real wages for people with jobs rose by approximately 4% to June 1983. The 'political reality' of the privileged strata of the working class who hold onto their jobs begins to look quite different from that of the more oppressed strata of the working class. And this gap will widen as the Tories intensify their attack on the poor and unemployed. Little wonder those the TUC speak for want to hold onto what they have and not risk it by 'unnecessary' confrontation with the Tory government.

The political alternative which the trade union movement - both its 'right' and 'left' wings - offer as an alternative to Thatcher's monetarist policies is another expression of the class interests of this privileged stratum ofthe working class. Thatcher understands all too well what is at stake for her class as the crisis of imperialism rocks every corner of the world. She is determined that imperialism will not be destroyed and is prepared to see millions of people crushed, brutalised and annihilated to achieve her end. Socialism or barbarism are the choices now facing the vast majority of humanity. There is no third way. Typically however the opportunists in the British labour movement, unable even to contemplate this reality, seek a third way - their 'alternative economic strategy'.

During the post-war boom the leaders and representatives of the organised working class movement were happy to share in the spoils of British imperialist oppression and exploitation. Now that imperialism is in deep crisis all they can think about is how to hold onto their privileged position. They don't want to fight imperialism - so they intend to 'reform' it. To do this they have put forward hopeless utopian and reactionary alternative economic programmes for the recreation of employment and wealth.

Fundamentally the alternative economic strategy aims for a programme of economic expansion by increasing social expenditure and investment at home - revamped Keynesianism. To rebuild the home market selective import controls have to be imposed as well as controls on the export of capital abroad. In such a way these opportunists will in one fell swoop reform imperialism and end the crisis under a system of protectionism at home. British people are urged to be patriotic. Trade unions are to sponsor 'Buy British campaigns' - 'to develop National Awareness to buy British' (TGWU - Moss Fvans). Outdoing Thatcher in nationalism, this reactionary British socialism attempts to tie British working class interests to those ofthe British imperialist nation.

Capitalists as part of their contribution to this utopian fantasy are urged to be patriotic. These reactionary socialists conveniently leave aside the fact that wealth is only produced and employment created under the capitalist system where an adequate profit can be made. It is not a question of 'patriotism' or 'preferred policy' but financial survival that forces businesses and banks to expand their investments overseas. 'Patriotism' for the capitalist is a question of profitability. They have no time for the reactionary patriotic claptrap that underlies the British trade unions' 'National Awareness to buy British campaigns'. In the plain language ofthe imperialists, capitalists will invest in Britain when the rate of profit compares to that overseas. That is, British workers will have to accept the same kind of conditions imposed by imperialism on workers in the oppressed nations - high unemployment, low wages and viciously repressive regimes.

To sum up. The condition for the ruling class to remember its 'patriotic' duty to invest at home is a rapid increase in the rate of profit of British industry. This can only occur ifthe capitalists inflict a massive defeat on the British working class. The trade union movement with its alternative economic programmes for the creation of wealth and employment hides this stark reality behind its utopian and reactionary schemes. It is yet another attempt to divert the inevitable anger of the British working class away from a direct attack on imperialism into harmless and respectable channels. Anything but a resolute struggle against imperialism.

The more 'left' elements in the Labour and trade union movement have recently come to recognise the dominant role played by the imperialist banks in the British economy at home and in the export of capital abroad. As part oftheir alternative economic strategy they call for the nationalisation of the banks. Labour Research, whose political backers come from the 'left' of the Labour Party and the misnamed Communist Party, puts forward the case for nationalisation.

'If a number of Western countries nationalised all banking operation, it would enable governments to exercise greater political control over their operations and resources. This in turn could make it easier to divert resources back to substantial increase in aid to poorer countries, thus lessening the burden of debts and the political dominance of commercial interests.'
Can anyone be so naive as to think that British banking, whose interests are spread today throughout the world can simply be nationalised and brought under political control without the over-throw of British imperialism? This is paternalistic imperialism - pious wishes from those privileged strata of the working class who wish to 'reform' imperialism. Exercise political control over the imperialist banks so more aid can be given to the oppressed peoples whose wealth has been exploited, plundered and stolen by these very same imperialist banks! This will no doubt then allow a labour aristocracy - or at least its left wing - to live comfortably in Britain but with a clearer conscience.

The brutal exploitation and oppression of 'poorer countries' by the imperialist banks will only be ended when imperialism is destroyed. Those who really want to express the unity of interests of the British trade union movement with oppressed peoples fighting imperialism will not only call for the nationalisation of the banks but also demand the immediate liquidation of all debts of oppressed peoples to those very same imperialist banks. But that's the last thing the labour aristocracy - even its left wing - is prepared to contemplate. For the profits from British imperialism's operations overseas including those from the imperialist banks, are the source of their own material, social and political privileges.

This inability of the trade union movement to defend the British working class arises from its dependence on British imperialism. The evolution growth and 'success' of the British trade union movement has been the foundation of the massive apparatus - luxurious premises, conference halls, full-time staff, newspapers, pension funds etc - that are the dominant characteristics ofthe British trade unions. They are not fighting organisations.

The fact that the trade union movement has allowed 14 years of imperialist terror in Ireland, racist terror against black people in Britain, the suppression of democratic rights and the bloody imperialist slaughter in the Malvinas/Falklands to go by without opposition only confirms their subservience to their paymasters - British imperialism. The ruling class is able to exploit fully this subservience when it comes to dealing with domestic issues such as wage claims and industrial disputes. Thatcher, fresh from her imperialist triumph in the Malvinas/Falklands, a triumph only possible because of Labour Party and trade union backing, was able to say 'The Falklands Factor' has irrevocably changed British attitudes and that the leaders of ASLEF, the train drivers union, then on strike, did not understand 'the new mood of the nation'.

Mrs Thatcher appealed for unity for her kind of Britain:

'...the nation that had built an empire and ruled a quarter of the world.'
The very empire, built on the blood of millions of oppressed people, that the Labour Party and trade union movement has defended throughout its history. Little wonder that in the industrial disputes of today, the trade union leaders are incapable of waging a serious struggle against the very British imperialist state that they themselves have helped build and defend. The monkeys cannot turn against the organ grinder for he is the source of their 'food'.

These developments show conclusively that a revolutionary trend cannot arise or be built first and foremost in the existing Labour Party and trade union movement. This does not rule out the development of massive working class struggles as rank and file trade unionists are forced out of desperate necessity to defend jobs, wages and living standards. Only that such workers and their struggles will inevitably be betrayed by the very same leaders who have consistently betrayed the Irish people, the black people and all peoples oppressed by British imperialism.

STATE SECTOR WORKERS

Whole sections of the working class - in the region of 30% - are directly employed in the state and public sectors. The growth of state expenditure during the post-war boom allowed millions of workers to find jobs, security and enhanced status and privilege which had not been previously available to such a large section of the working class. The cutback in the growth of public expenditure, as Thatcher's monetarist policies strike home, will have a dramatic impact on these workers and lead to a further polarisation in this wide sector of the British working class. Some trends are already beginning to emerge.

The more privileged, highly paid sections of these workers who constitute the managers, administrators and guardians of the imperialist state are a new labour aristocracy. Included among them will be the upper echelons of the civil service, professions and state and local government administrators. To these must be added those directly concerned in defending the interests ofthe imperialist state - nearly all those employed in the forces of repression, the armed forces, police, prisons and courts. Both these groups are tied to the apparatus of the imperialist state and identify their interests with it.

Then there are the middle layers among state sector workers who, while quite well paid, have conditions of work which bring them more directly into contact with the devastating effect Thatcher's cut-backs are having on the poorer sections of the working class. Their jobs are also under threat as cutbacks in the civil service, social services, education and the national health service take place. These include local government workers, lower civil servants etc, sections of teachers and social workers, and some medical staff. These relatively privileged layers of the working class are faced with a choice and can go either way - either to identify their interests with those of the more oppressed sections of the working class with all the risks this entails, or to attempt to hang on to their well paid jobs and privileges no matter what takes place. The outcome of this development can only be determined in the course of the struggle itself.

Finally there are the low-paid workers in the state sector - hospital workers, council manual workers, transport workers and so on. A high proportion of the more oppressed sections of the working class have jobs in the state sector. Black, Irish and women workers constitute a large majority of such workers and have been employed to keep the cost of the state sector as low as possible. Many of these workers will be forced into opposition to the imperialist state as the crisis deepens. At present their struggles are limited by their ties to the political organisations of the labour aristocracy - the Labour Party and organised trade union movement. The health workers dispute in 1982, in spite of the militancy of those involved, was defeated because it was sabotaged by the official trade union movement. So were the strikes of low paid public sector workers of the winter 1978/79. However these workers have no material ties to British imperialism and would be prepared to follow the lead of any organised revolutionary anti-imperialist trend that developed in the working class.

It should now be clear why a revolutionary trend can only be built on an anti-imperialist basis and first and foremost must arise from the most oppressed sections ofthe working class. Their understanding of imperialism and their opposition to the British state, their rejection of constitutionalism and the parliamentary sham are the fundamental requirements for the fighting organisation that will take on the British imperialist state and the Tory and Labour governments that defend it.

All revolutionaries have a duty to support all working class struggles to defend jobs and living standards. Where we fundamentally differ from the middle class socialists is that we do not regard this elementary duty as a strategy for revolution. The class struggle in the political sense is not the same as the fight of one section of the working class to defend jobs and living standards. The class struggle requires consciousness of the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class as a whole, that is against its state. Today that state is an imperialist state with all the consequences that entails - the split in the working class movement and the division between the oppressed and oppressor nations. In the light of this the primary task of revolutionaries in Britain today is to build fighting anti-imperialist organisations. Only when this is done will the possibility exist to destroy once and for all the influence of the reactionary Labour and trade union leaders.

THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM

The years of the boom gave rise to an unparalleled growth in white collar and professional sectors, with over 4O% of white males for example occupying such jobs. Their privileged and secure existence which they owe to imperialism has given them the material conditions, aspirations and views of a petty bourgeoisie. How these sectors will respond to the deepening crisis and which class they will eventually ally with will be determined in the course of the struggle. Those employed in the non-management sectors will find their lot worsening and may follow the lead of a revolutionary working class movement. Those white collar workers employed in the lower levels of the state sector have at least an interest in defending the welfare state. As yet though these layers have suffered little direct effect from the crisis. Nor have they been forced by major struggles between the poor and oppressed and the ruling class to choose their sides in the struggle.

One factor has however disturbed the still tranquil existence of the middle classes. Imperialism is showing unmistakably warlike signs. And imperialist war on a major scale will mean nuclear war. Unlike any previous imperialist war none but the most wealthy will escape the holocaust. The prospect of the destruction of humanity is a real one. It is this factor which has begun to move a section of the middle classes. They have not been moved by the growing poverty they see around them or by the sufferings inflicted on the oppressed nations by imperialism. They have been moved by self-interest and self-preservation. However in the course of their struggle for peace they have begun to see imperialism and its ruthlessness for themselves. In virtually every capitalist country a massive peace movement has arisen and has developed a militant wing which has begun to confront the forces of the state.

In Britain it has been the women of Greenham Common who have rejected the passive and 'respectable' methods of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The CND believes that by winning public opinion and working through constitutional channels, particularly Labour Party channels, the imperialist nuclear war drive can be stopped. They do not campaign against conventional methods of warfare eg the non-nuclear genocidal methods used against oppressed nations. They believe that imperialism can be made to recognise the irrationality of wiping out the world. The Greenham women rejected the constitutional channels and took the direct action of setting up a peace camp against the siting of cruise missiles at Greenham. Since their camp began they have on several occasions broken into the base, danced on missile silos and caused extensive damage to equipment. The British state has taken a dim view of this and of the extensive publicity and admiration their actions have aroused. Police with the army playing a back-up role, courts and prisons have been used to try and break up the camp. None has so far succeeded and each level of repression has only resulted in opening the women's eyes to the reality of the British state. They have treated courts with contempt and used them to make political propaganda, they have used prison sentences to make public the appalling conditions suffered by the mainly working class women inside. In short they have begun to create a serious protest movement with determination and resolve and have invented or rediscovered methods of struggle which make the constitutionalist CND and Labour Party horrified. The fact that they are women and untainted by the traditions of the existing labour movement has certainly played a role in the freshness and directness oftheir methods.

The only serious communist response to such a movement is to support its struggles and encourage those going through a serious political experience to recognise that peace can never be attained or guaranteed as long as imperialism exists. And further to recognise, against the pacifist and anti-Soviet ideology of CND, that those who want peace must support the struggle of oppressed peoples to destroy imperialism and the right of the socialist countries to defend them- selves from imperialism.

Some of the Greenham women have certainly shown a spirit of solidarity with struggles in Ireland and South Africa. They have attacked the racism in Holloway prison and of the police. Whether they will go further remains to be seen. The middle class socialists have attacked the Greenham women for 'pacifism', 'feminism' and most extraordinarily from the SWP 'making people feel guilty'. They are attacking them for daring to ignore the labour movement and take action themselves. Genuine communists reject such attacks. In so far as the middle class mobilises against the interests of imperialism, we will support them. More, communists will try to win them to the anti-imperialist and communist movement.

THE RESPONSE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS LEFT

The crucial struggle facing communists in Britain today is the fight against opportunism which as Lenin pointed out is the 'principal enemy'. The urgent task is to fight for a split from the reactionary opportunist leadership of the organised Labour and trade union movement and its political expression, the Labour Party. This is the only basis for building fighting anti-imperialist organisations from which a new communist party can emerge.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the corrupt bourgeois and pro-imperialist character of the Labour Party, the middle class left almost without exception calls for support for the Labour Party. This political standpoint is frequently justified by citing Lenin's advice in 1920 that the British Communist Party should affiliate to the Labour Party. Such justification depends on a gross and ignorant distortion of Lenin's position.

Lenin's attitude to this question was a tactical one based on a concrete analysis of the conditions then prevailing. Firstly, the revolutionary upsurge of the working class movement in the immediate aftermath of the First Imperialist World War was already in decline by 1920. Secondly, the Communist Parties affiliated to the Third International had succeeded in winning and organising sections of the vanguard to their ranks but had yet to win the masses away from their social democratic leadership. Thirdly, it was believed that sufficient 'freedom of criticism' existed to allow the British CP, if affiliated to the Labour Party, to conduct open propaganda and agitation against the Labour Party leadership for the purpose of winning workers to communism. Fourthly, the British Labour Party had not yet formed a government. With all these conditions in mind and insisting on the precondition that 'freedom of criticism' existed, Lenin recommended affiliation.

What Lenin meant by 'freedom ofcriticism' was made clear by the example of the British Socialist Party which was allowed to have its own press in which the Labour Party leaders were attacked as 'social traitors'. Also it was possible to openly raise the question of affiliation to the Third International and force an open discussion in all party branches and sections on the issue. Today's example of the Militant Tendency makes it absolutely clear that such 'freedom of criticism' has long since been abolished. The reactionary pro-imperialist Militant Tendency finds itself attacked, and its leaders expelled, for its extremely muted 'criticism' of the Labour Party leadership. In any case, the Labour Party consistently rejected affiliation from the British Communist Party.

That the issue was a tactical question is further confirmed by Lenin's quite different attitude in an earlier period. In early 1916 during the Imperialist War Lenin praised the British socialist who called for a split from the Labour Party:

'In Britain even a moderate paper like the Labour Leader publishes Russell William's letter urging the necessity for a split with the trade union "leaders" and with the Labour Party, which he says, has sold out the interests of the working class.' (Lenin Collected Works Vol 22 p128)
In this period a split from the social democrats to build a new anti-imperialist movement to lay the basis for a new International was the necessary and urgent political task. The task was to create independent Communist Parties in all countries. Workers in this period were increasingly responding to an anti-war, anti-imperialist position. Also, at this time social democratic leaders were participating in imperialist war cabinets. In these conditions, the issue was not affiliation to or support for the Labour Party but a split from it.

Today the necessary and urgent political task facing communists in Britain is to build an anti-imperialist anti-racist movement as the basis for building a Communist Party. To do this requires a fight for a split from the 'trade union "leaders" and the Labour Party' as they politically represent the interests of the labour aristocracy and are steadfast supporters of British imperialist interests in the working class. Secondly, the crisis has pushed to the forefront of the struggle a section of the most oppressed layers of the working class who through their opposition to the racist British state will oppose British imperialism. This layer has arisen outside the traditional working class organisations and must be organised independently of those organisations. In these conditions to call for support for the Labour Party amounts to an attempt to drag these forces back into the fold of the Labour Party and under the control of a labour aristocracy whose interests it expresses. It is also an attempt to prevent other sections of the working class from following the lead of these new forces.

The political attitude of the middle class left organisations to the Labour Party flows from their overall political stance. The relative prosperity of the post-war boom in the imperialist nations allowed the creation of new relatively privileged layers in the working class. This new layer of mainly salaried white-collar workers has grown with the growth of state and social services employment. Its social and economic status depends on the continued prosperity of imperialism and the accompanying conditions of bourgeois democracy. As the imperialist crisis deepens, this layer finds itself threatened. On the one hand uprisings on the streets and growing anti-imperialist struggle internationally threaten to destroy the very imperialist system which sustains it. On the other hand, the imperialist response to the crisis - military and police violence, erosion of democratic rights, cutbacks in the state sector and the prospect of nuclear war - also threaten to undermine the social and economic conditions which were the basis ofthe security, enhanced status and privilege of this layer in the post-war boom. They are increasingly confronted with a choice: either to side with the oppressed fighting imperialism or, in a desperate and doomed effort to maintain their position, to side with the oppressor - the British imperialist ruling class and its Labour and trade union allies in the working class movement.

The small forces of the British middle class left draw their membership predominantly from this new privileged layer and reflect its political standpoint. Confronted by the central choice - to side with the oppressed or with the oppressor - the British middle class left has, in the past few years, made it clear that it has chosen to side with the Labour Party and organised trade union movement against the oppressed.

The disintegration of the Labour Party has carried in its wake the virtual disappearance ofthe major organisations to the left ofthe Labour Party. Some have dissolved themselves into the Labour Party. The others, while remaining outside the Labour Party, nevertheless called for a Labour vote in both the 1979 and 1983 General Elections and have ceased any independent political activity which would expose the Labour Party. During the 1983 election campaign the 'Communist' Party manifesto was almost indistinguishable from that of the Labour Party. The SWP despite its attacks on those who have entered the Labour Party nevertheless engaged in incredible distortion to justify a Labour vote:

'You've a chance to show how you feel about Margaret Thatcher's policies on 9 June.
Are you sick to death of rising unemployment? Are you bitter about the continual toll of factory closures? Are you opposed to the deployment of Cruise, Trident and other weapons of mass destruction?
Do you think Thatcher's South Atlantic war was a futile and bloody venture? Do you want to resist anti-union laws?
If so you will vote Labour.'
Labour, they argued, had at least made a 'half-hearted protest' about these things. Yet the 1974-79 Labour government more than doubled unemployment to 1,400,000. Factory closures massively increased when Labour was in power. Labour has always supported NATO and British imperialist war. The Labour Party fully supported the Malvinas war. These distortions are necessary for these organisations which look to the organised labour movement for socialist advance. Needless to say, the SWP leaflet on the election did not mention Britain's imperialist war in Ireland and the British state's daily racist assault on black people in Britain. In this they share the Labour Party's contempt for the oppressed.

Those organisations such as the SWP and RCP, for example, who reject entry into the Labour Party, nevertheless share with the rest of the middle class left the belief that socialists must work first and foremost among the more privileged sections of the working class in the organised trade union movement. This forces them to adapt their political position to the prejudices and interests of this layer. The brute reality that the traditional 'big battalions' of the organised trade union movement have repeatedly proved incapable of even defending their own jobs and conditions whilst the trade union struggles of the lower paid and most oppressed workers have repeatedly been betrayed by the organised trade union movement, has forced the SWP to take this standpoint to an absurd extreme. The SWP has adopted the position that the only form of socialist work possible today is to support the small, for there are no 'big' ones, trade union struggles of small sections of the organised trade union movement. This despair, born of the SWP's refusal to follow Lenin's dictum to go 'lower and deeper' into the masses, elevates the elementary duty of supporting the workers' trade union struggles to the only possible revolutionary strategy. The truth is that the only revolutionary strategy today is to work among the most oppressed sections of the working class to build an anti-imperialist movement which can destroy the influence of the labour aristocracy over the working class as a whole.

The political positions adopted by the middle class left on major issues facing the working class movement reflect their overall standpoint.

IRELAND

From the CPGB and Militant at one extreme to the SWP and RCP at the other, all the middle class left organisations have attacked the Provisional Republican Movement. Militant calls the Republican Movement 'green nationalists' 'sectarian' and even 'fascists'. The RCP accuses the Republican Movement of representing the interests of 'small farmers and businessmen'.

SOUTH AFRICA

With the sole exception ofthe CPGB all the middle class left organisations have attacked the ANC's struggle against the racist apartheid regime.

THE UPRISINGS OF BLACK YOUTH

Without exception all middle class left organisations have condemned the uprisings of black youth and other dispossessed sections and demanded that these forces retreat into the smothering embrace of the organised Labour and trade union movement. Whether it is expressed in the more polite terms of decrying these sections as 'unconscious' and not part of the working class (RCP) or the more outrightly abusive 'primitive' and 'lumpen' (CPGB/SWP), the fundamental refusal to recognise these sections as newly emerging revolutionary forces is common to all the middle class left organisations.

THE SOCIALIST COUNTRIES

All the middle class left organisations have joined in the imperialist cold war offensive against the Soviet Union and all other socialist countries. They have opposed Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and supported the anti-socialist organisation Solidarity in Poland. When Arthur Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers and previously idolised by the middle class left, defended the Soviet Union against Reagan and Thatcher's imperialist warmongering he was denounced by the SWP in terms indistinguishable from those used by the most right-wing newspapers. They accused him of making 'idiotic speeches' which 'help tie the Russian albatross round our necks' and told him to 'shut up'. Scargill's letter to the WRP pointing out the anti-socialist character of Solidarity in Poland managed to unite most of the middle class left, especially the Trotskyist groups, in virulent denunciation of him.

Whatever their differences on this or that question, the middle class left organisations are united in opposing anti-imperialist movements internationally; opposing the newly emerging revolutionary forces in Britain; and in supporting the organised Labour and trade union movement. They have made their choice. Rather than unite with the most oppressed they have chosen to unite with the organised Labour and trade union movement and have adapted their political positions accordingly.

FORCES OF THE FUTURE

The emerging revolutionary forces in Britain stand in stark contrast to the pro-imperialist Labour movement and its supporters. The new revolutionary forces are emerging amongst the most oppressed sections of the working class -those with nothing to gain from imperialism.

Black and Irish people, the unemployed, the youth, low-paid workers, women workers - their struggles have begun - in different ways - to challenge the British ruling class and its state. The oppressed sections of the working class, black people in particular, have given other sections a revolutionary lead. They recognise the forces of the state, especially the police, as their enemy and the protector of their oppressors. In 1981 they showed their willingness to confront and fight the police by forcible methods. They have decisively rejected the constitutional and impotent reformist path of the Labour movement. Their experience at the hands of the state has left them with no illusions about its democratic character or potential reformability.

Their oppression at the hands of imperialism has also awakened their internationalism and solidarity with the oppressed peoples fighting imperialism throughout the world. Increasingly they see their struggles and those in Southern Africa, Central America and Ireland as 'One Struggle! One Fight!'.

Black youth are a revolutionary anti-imperialist vanguard and inevitably, as they did in 1981, their struggles will draw other sections of the working class behind them. As the crisis deepens and growing sections of the working class are faced with unemployment, poverty and repression they will cease to identify their interests with capitalism and imperialism and be increasingly drawn to the revolutionary anti-imperialist example given by black youth.

It is the task of communists to prevent all these vanguard forces being isolated and destroyed. We must fight alongside them, defending their struggles both from the state and the opportunists, and at the same time building together with them revolutionary anti-imperialist organisations. We recognise that once political organisations have been built which express their revolutionary standpoint, the most oppressed will play the leading role in the creation of an anti-imperialist, communist movement in Britain.
 
 

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