Speech by Eric Trevett to the 12th National Congress of the NCPB
New Worker Online
Britain, to the 12th National Congress of the NCPB
Comrades,
We should be very happy. According to Messrs. Biair and Brown, the
Prime Minister and Chancellor no less, the class struggle has ended
and given way to peace and partnership between workers and employers.
Unemployment will be eliminated -- in the sweet by-and-by.
The economy will go from strength to strength, crisis-free, and immune
from the problems that have already caused havoc in Asia, Latin
America and led to mass unemployment in Germany. and many other
European countries.
All the workers have to do is to exercise patience and overlook the
fact that there is an increase in the number of people affected by
poverty, and that up and down the country workers are being sacked --
sorry -- old thinking. What I should have said is being declared
redundant by their employer-partners without so much as a
by-your-leave.
One other thing; as well as exercising patience, the workers must also
practice restraint in relation to their pay claims.
The workers and pensioners should look after the pence, the employers
will look after the profits themselves.
Then in international affairs, Mr. Cook tells us, the Foreign
Secretary tells us, that the government is operating an ethical
foreign policy. In fact it is an imperialist foreign policy. with
Britain a willing participant in a war to break up Yugoslavia a member
country of the United Nations, destroying its infrastructure and
inflicting thousands of casualties on the people of that country.
Then there is the continuing bombing of Iraq, and the calculated
application of sanctions that have and are a direct cause of killing
thousands of Iraqi children each month.
It is a peculiar form of ethical foreign policy and inflicts mass
murder on children. But where is the clamour for Blair, Clinton, Cook
and Robertson to be tried for mass murder for to be condemned as war
criminals?
Our Congress not only condemns these shameful acts of murder, war and
deception, we must agitate harder and expose them and their
perpetrators to the rising anger of our labour movement to help build
the pressure for an end to the aggression and sanctions against
Yugoslavia and Iraq.
We also need to demand the ending of imperialism's efforts to break up
Russia.
We also demand the end of imperialism's policy of facing both ways on
Taiwan. Taiwan and Tibet should be recognised as being part of China.
We also call for the establishment of full diplomatic relations with
the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea.
We call for condemnation for the continuing sanctions against Cuba,
and we call upon the United States to pay reparations to Vietnam for
the cruel war of aggression against that country.
Now that agreement has been reached we must continue to campaign to
ensure that the terms of the Good Friday Agreement on Ireland are
strictly adhered to.
The argument presented so winsomely by the mass media that the IRA
should decommission its weapons before the peace process moves forward
was always wrong. It was tantamount to saying that the IRA should
disarm unilaterally. Since there has been no significairt handing over
of weapons by any organisation, and the partisan Royal Ulster
Constabulary is unreformed and British troops are still in occupation
of the six counties. It must be remembered that the Six Counties still
have the status of being a Crown Colony.
Blamed for the difficulty in advancing the peace process lies with the
bigots in the unionist ranks and, above all, by the calculated
indecision of the British ruling class that still favours a divided
Ireland.
At home the struggle to advance working class interests should centre
on the campaign for higher wages, pensions, student grants and the
defence of benefits.
Higher direct taxation on the rich and major cuts in military
expenditure.
The repeal of all anti-trade union legislation and arising from the
Paddington rail tragedy which has given rise to a new appreciation of
public ownership, a campaign to end the moves to privatise air traffic
control systeen and the re-nationalisation of all public services.
We must campaign vigorously to make sure that international agreements
on the environment are implemented and extended.
Comrades, our National Congress determines the political line of our
Party. That includes strategic and tactical issues. The decisions we
make are binding on us all. That point needs to be strictly adhered
to. The alternative is for our Party to degenerate into a social
democratic organisation. The collective will of our party is paramount
and must take precedence over subjective individuality. That is a
crucial political principle of true Leninist parties.
Our Congress also elects the Central Committee which is the continuing
committee of Congress. That Central Committee is accountable to the
Party. It is reponsible for carrying out Congress decisions, and
giving clear leadership in the period between congresses.
Our Congress therefore plays a crucial role in the life of our Party,
and problems causing some members to have misgivings as to the policy
of our Party have to be addressed and not swept under the carpet.
A problem has arisen in the minds of a few comrades questions our
attitude to the Labour Party and Labour Government and asserts that we
should no longer vote for a Labour government in elections.
These misgivings are compounded in the broader labour movement where
there are fresh moves to try and weaken and break the link between the
trade unions and the Labour Party. These aims are inspired by the
ruling class and its media and although some right-wing leaders do not
want a complete break they are influenced by the media's propaganda.
These moves are not only favoured by Tony Blair and some right-wing
leaders; they find favour with Arthur Scargill, who has formed another
social democrat party riddled with Trotskyist elements who have always
sought to break the link between the trade unions and the Labour
Party. Such a call has been made by Ken Cameron of the Fire Brigades
Union,
and influence by the destructive Straight Left Faction, has even been
reflected through the Morning Star. That may have had a bearing on why
Ken Cameron of the Fire Brisacie's Union felt it was correct to make
such a call.
Such calls play into the hands of the capitalist class. The ruling
class fears working class unity and therefore seeks to divide and
weaken the working class at all costs. One key aim has been to
encourage the weakening and breakup of the organizational link between
the trade unions and the Labour Party. It fears the potential
influence that a militant trade union movement would have on a Labour
government directly linked to. Short of that, the capitalist class
does not wish the working class the retain such a degree of
organizational cohesion.
It should be clear in our Party that our policy favouring the link
between the trade unions and Labour Party being maintained serves the
interests of the working class. It is a failacy to imagine that the
link with the Labour Party is responsible for the low level of
militancy in the trade union movement at the present time.
Many unions at present have right-wing careerist leaderships. We do
not think that the way forward from this situation is for members to
leave those unions and set up alternative unions. Indeed, the teachers
have gone along that path but the original union, the NUT, with all
its weaknesses, remains more progressive than the other four or five
which many teachers belong to, and the teachers as a whole are weaker
as a result of such fragmentation.
For those few comrades in our Party, as well as those outside our
Party, who claim they would be greater resistance to
anti-working-class policies if a Tory government was in office, I
would point out that was not the case when the war over the Falklands
was unleashed. Nor was it the case during the privatisation of the
public service industries which was done by Tory government without
any major opposition from inside or outside those industries. Nor did
it stop the anti-trade union legislation being passed.
Breaking the organizational grip of riqht-wing leaderships and
breaking the grip of social democratic ideology which is at present
dominant among the working class as a whole, will come as a result of
strengthening the New Communist Party and the left in the Labour
movement.
The capitalist economic crisis causing an ever greater sense of
insecurity among the working class can give rise to a strengthened
working class militancy and growth of class and political
consciousness based upon the mass involvement of the working class
around key demands and by closing ranks around the vanguard party of
Marxism-Leninism. But we have to work effectively for these
opportunities to be fulfilled.
Another factor condusive to breaking the grip of right-wing democracy
is the development of anti-imperialist consciousness and struggle
nationally and internationally.
Comrades, as far as our members are concerned, the question as to
whether to vote Labour or not has arisen out of righteous anger with
the Labour government for the actions I have already referred to. But
our emotional response has to be tempered with reason in order to
determine our policy. Always remembering that in making our policies
we strive to further the interests of the working class. We endeavour
to link immediate demands to the struggle for socialist revolution.
But we have to take specific circumstances of the present into account
when deciding the questions of tactics.
Failure to do so makes it more difficult for the working class to
identify with us and can only succeed in isolating us. That is a key
reason why we have, on setting up our Party, abandonned the practice
of merely standing our own candidates to record a protest vote.
When discussing these complex problems it is often a good thing to go
back to basics.
What is the Labour Party? A working class organisation whose mass
membership is from its trade union affiliates. Supported by the
socialists of the day, it was established by the trade unions to
defend and represent them in Parliament. Up to 1918 it had no
individual members and no Clause 4 reflecting socialist aspirations.
Is the Labour Party a revolutionary Party? No it is not and never has
been. It is a reformist party, at best it can help to working people
improve their lot within capitalist society, but its right-wing
leadership priority has always been to perpetuate capitalism.
The establishment of the Labour Party around about the beginning of
this century was a significant step forward for the working class
which up to then had supported bourgeois parties. The formation of the
Labour Party reflected a rise in class consciousness,
What about political consciousness? That also arose, but on a far more
limited basis. It had its reflection in the formation of the Communist
Party of Great Britain and the growth of socialist aspirations in the
trade union and labour movement which has given rise to a continuing
battle between left and right. The left generally embraces people who
aspire to achieve a socialist society. The left iin the Labour
Movement are our natural allies; they, like us, aspire to achieve
socialism. However there is a fundamental difference between them and
us. They are still social democrats who believe that socialism can be
legislated for through a bourgeois Parliament, they have no clear
understanding of the crucial issue of state newer. Our position is
that if the working class doesn't first establish state power, there
is no way it can build a socialist society.
This is why we put so much emphasis on the necessity for revolutionary
change.
Lenin put if very clearly; he argued that every type of state power
whether it be slave society, feudalism, or capitalism, was a form of
dictatorship. And he went on to claim that the only fully class
conscious worker is he or she who understood the necessity for the
working class to smash the capitalist state machine and take power
unto itself in order to exercise what he called the dictatorship of
the proletariat.
The struggle between right and left against imperialism and for
socialist revolution has always been affected by national and
international developments.
The Labour Party's Clause 4 which called for the public ownership of
the means of production, distribution and exchange, was included in
the Labour Party's Constitution in 1918 as a result of the mass
revulsion to the imperialist war and the positive impact of the
Russian revolution.
Clause 4 was removed from the Labour Party's constitution as the
result of the strengthening of the right-wing social democracy in
Britain and throughout Western Europe. That included the growth of
revisionism and social democratic ideology in many communist parties
in Western and Eastern Europe reflected in the failure to defeat
euro-communism and given further impetus by the counter-revolution in
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
The reason why Clause 4 couldn't be successfully defended goes beyond
the smart talking of Tony Blair. It relates to the ideological
weakness and hence organizational weakness of the revolutionary forces
nationally and imternationally.
The post-World War II policy of the Communist Party of Great Britain
to devote it's major resources, both human and financial, to
contesting elections and its dilution of policy through successive
revisions of its basically flawed programme the British Road to
Socialism, helped strengthen social democratic thought inside the
Party and significantly weakened the left ideologically.
Inside the Party the ideas were projected that socialism could he
achieved by parliamentary legislation and without violating the
constitution, and that the capitalist state would not have to be
smashed after all but adapted to serve the interests of the working
class, This was revisionism on a grand scale; "justified" by referring
to the chanae in the global balance of forces necessitating new
thinking and claiming that comrades opposing the new policy were
defeatists and dogmatists.
The key purpose of establishing our Party in 1977 was to affirm
Marxist-Leninist principals and use them in our efforts to adopt
policies that would serve the interests of the working class
nationally and internationally.
Generally speaking, here in Britain up to the present time, the
right-wing has always been dominant in the Labour Party and in the
Labour movement. True there have been times when the Left had growing
influence, as in 1928, when Clause 4 was adopted. But the right-wing
never attempted to implement that policy and never has never had the
slightest wish to challenge the capitalists for state power. Moreover,
in the Labour Party's national Conferences, the right-wing openly
state that they will not abide by any decision they don't like. So
much for their democracy.
We are well aware of the weaknesses of the Labour Party and the
iniquities of the Labour government and have never failed to expose,
critisise and condemn them through our paper, the New Worker, of which
we can justifiably be proud.
Ah, say a few of our members, but we should not vote for such a Party
either.
So what should we do? I looked through the resolutions and amendments
from Districts and Branches to the main political resolution. The
Welsh resolution says we shouldn't support the Labour Party until
Clause 4 is re-adopted, but it doesn't state in what form our
opposition to Labour should take.
I read the pre-Congress discussion documents, but there's no viable
alternative there.
Comrades, at the last General Election our Party saw the priority of
of getting rid of the Tory government. Electorally it it could only be
done by electing a Labour government, and that meant voting for
right-wing as well as left-wing Labour candidates. In in the event the
election was won on an anti-Tory vote. It was not a vote for
socialism.
In campaigning for a Labour victory our Party strove to ensure that a
Labour government be elected under pressure from the trade union and
Labour movement. To repeal all anti-trade union legislation, to
re-nationalise the public services, to put emphasis on increased
direct taxation on the rich, and reduce VAT, and cut military
spending.
In the event a Labour government was elected with a huge majority but
not under any decisive trade union pressure. Therefore the concessions
brought in by the Labour Government have been meagre. Indeed, the
anti-trade union legislation remains in place. The minimum wage
provision which we correctly said would undermine the overall campaign
for higher pay has been set at a derisory level and key anti-working
class policies introduced by Tory governments such as privatisation,
are being implemented and extended.
To combat this it is neccessary for the Labour movement to be more
assertive in it's positive demands on the Labour Government. There are
no short cuts. What of our electoral tactics at the present time?
There is a degree of fiexibiiity. We are advocating a boycott of
European Elections. In general we should continue to vote Labour
everywhere in General and local elections, and seek to mobilise
pressure for policies, demands and campaigns that advance working
class interests and confront capitalism and imperialism. In certain
circumstances we should consider voting for the unofficial candidates.
At the present time the working class can be won to fight for reforms.
But if doesn't see the demand for socialism as being a priority on
it's agenda. Our Party sees the need to have socialism as a priority
on the Labour movement's agenda but without the working class it is
impossible to achieve it.
So we champion the working cIass's immediate demands and we strive to
link those demands to the perspective of fundamental change. In that
struggle we endevour to build the circulation of our paper and the
membership of our party. Adhering to our strategy for working class
unity and socialist revolution and endorsing the section in the main
political resolution headed "For a Democratic Labour Party".
Through struggle and principled leadership our party will fulfill it's
desire to become the vanguard party of the working class enabling it
to play its dynamic and revolutionary role of establishing working
class state power and building a socialist society eliminating
exploitation, poverty and unemployment and enhancing the lives and
cultural standards of the people. We also assert our confidence in the
future. There is no reason to doubt that the new millennium will see
revolutionary advance and the triumph of socialism throughout the
world.