LAYING IT ON THE LINE

POLITICAL REPORT GIVEN AT RECENT MEETING OF THE NORTHERN DISTRICT COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF BRITAIN 
CARLISLE, CUMBRIA, UK, 18th August 2012

Many parts of the world are in turmoil as the people of several nations confront the challenges that are placed before them. 

In South America the struggle to maintain the advances gained through the Bolivarian Revolution and the courageously sustained principled stand by the people of Cuba continue to thwart the undermining efforts of the counter-revolutionaries aided and abetted by the United States.  The 'Arab Spring' held out much hope and promise for the people of North Africa and the Middle East yet has resulted in frustration and disappointment.  In some cases, such as Libya, it created an opportunity for western direct military intervention just as it is now providing chances for covert action to achieve destabilisation and regime change in Syria.  Nato, led by the US continues to prop up puppet regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan whilst US drones inflict a terrible toll on the populations of  Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US ignores the Geneva Convention and the UN Human Rights Convention and maintains the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay.  The US holds Bradley Manning in inhumane conditions for allegedly revealing 'state secrets' - namely, exposing US attrocities in Iraq - and this paranoid, psychopathic nation now seeks to get its hands on Julian Assange.

Meanwhile, Israel, with the backing of the US, Britain and some middle eastern Arab states, is seeking to find an excuse to launch an attack on Iran.  The people of Palestine continue their struggle for freeedom from Israeli occupation.  In Russia, the legitimacy of President Putin's election is being challenged.  In South Africa, over thirty protesting trade union miners were shot dead by police.

In Britain, a repeat of last year's 'London Riots' failed to materialise to the disappointment, one suspects, of the news media. Britain's unelected government, composed of a rich gang assisted by a nest of little helpers, is busy conducting an ideological campaign to dismantle every social gain enjoyed by the people of this country since 1945 namely, the Welfare State and the National Health Service.  This gang and its helpers are merely the servants of the group that is really in charge - the Ruling Class, and it is this class that remains in power whichever political party is elected to parliament.  This assault on the working class has been described as a 'blitzkrieg' but it is more like a Tory 'Operation Barbarossa' as it has been conducted with such speed and on such a wide front.  Unlike the initial Soviet resistence to the Nazi invasion, the response of the British working class is to roll over and hoist the white flag.  As for the battalions of organised workers in the Trade Unions, the response has been to call for a day's outing every six months or so for members to join together to parade through the streets with flags, banners, placards and balloons, blowing colourful plastic horns and shouting fray-edged slogans, flogging badges, tee shirts and handing out leaflets before returning to their coaches for the journey home where they can simply wait for the next outing to be arranged. 

The task before us is immense.  Our attempts to mobilise people to campaign against the arms trade, the succesor Trident submarine building programme, the development of new nuclear weapons, further military interventions, privatisation of the National Health Service, attacks on social services and welfare benefits, rising unemployment, homelessness, the rise of Fascist ideology, attacks on pensioners and the disabled, racism, blacklisting, corruption in banking, the media and the police force, loss of civil liberties, privatisation of the education service, raising the age of retirement, erosion of women's rights and the rights of the lesbian, gay and transgender community are exhausting.  In addition to the above however, we must also seek to build the Party, encourage support for the People's Charter and promote sales of the Morning Star.  We are indeed a tiny spark in a sea of darkness.

"Maybe the answers (to building an anti-monopoly alliance) are still out there." suggests comrade Graham Stevenson, chief organiser of the recent Bishopgate Conference, adding "We will need to find the means to force the Labour Party leadership to be part of the solution, not part of the problem by siding with the class enemy or even adopting its policies wholesale.  We will need to unify all those unions in struggle as well as forge an alliance between organised labour and the mass of the people." 

Perhaps we might begin to find our way towards those answers when we ask why trade unionists and trade union councils ignore policies agreed at annual conferences of the Trade Union Congress, why some Communist Party members do not purchase and read a daily copy of the Morning Star or contribute nothing in time, effort or money to their Party branch, why there exists a Communist Party of Britain, a New Communist Party,  a Communist Party of Great Britain, a Revolutionary Communist Group, a Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and a gaggle of other parties purporting to be Communist, Marxist, Socialist, etc.  If we cannot ourselves unite, how can we hope to unite the working class?  This, comrades, is a serious question and deserves a serious answer.

Finally, an indicator of class consciousness from that working class town, Barrow in Furness:
"A lot of people in this town don't think they're working class.  And the rest don't think."