First Issued: n.d., circa March/April 1968.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
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WHY IS THE WILSON GOVERNMENT ATTACKING WORKING CLASS ORGANISATIONS?
WHY IS IT ATTACKING WORKING CLASS LIVING STANDARDS?
AND ABOVE ALL ELSE, WHY HAVE WE BEEN SADDLED WITH THE MOST REACTIONARY GOVERNMENT OF THE PAST 50 YEARS SPEAKING IN THE NAME OF LABOUR?
We may well ask these questions; you must have asked them yourself during the past few months.
We will not insult your intelligence by telling you that the Labour Party is no longer a socialist party, as a matter of fact it never was.
Capitalism is now in a state of almost permanent crisis. Gone are the days when a huge colonial empire provided the super-profits to enable the capitalist class to buy off sections of their workers.
For it is above all else the withering away of these colonial super-profits which is exposing social-democratic parties like the Labour Party to the working people in their true colours as forces of reaction rather than of social advance. These days imperialism seeks to maintain and extend its declining influence by the export of capital, so as to control the economies of under-developed countries, and through this to control their governments also. Britain, however, is no match for the United States which has now taken over the crown of world imperialist exploitation. Today Britain herself is being sold out by reactionary Labour and Tory politicians. America is not only buying up more and more European and British industry, but is now sending over its own managements as well.
The European capitalist class have not as yet lost control of their state machines, and in order to meet this threat an alliance of European imperialists is developing.
In the light of this imperialist dog-fight, it can now be seen just why the working class is under attack. For if European imperialism is to succeed in its aim of meeting U.S. penetration with an imperialist expansion of its own, the first thing it has to do is to reduce the living standards of its own workers, cut state spending, discipline the working class and smash its militant organisations.
The man chosen to carry through this destruction of the labour movement by assimilating it into a fascist type of corporate state is Harold Wilson. People sometimes make the mistake of thinking that fascism is something that is imposed from without. This is not quite correct, for although fascism is the direct rule of the big monopoly bosses, the basis for this fascist rule is created within the working class movement by the agents of monopoly capital who have penetrated into the labour movement for this purpose, and attempt to split the working class and to prevent it from taking independent action in its own class interest.
This is quite bad enough, but to make matters worse the leaders of Labour’s left wing, together with the leaders of the Communist Party of Great Britain, instead of fighting this threat, are providing a “left” cover for it by their continued support for this now openly reactionary party of monopoly big business, the Labour Party.
We do not suggest that the Labour and Communist Parties do not contain thousands of sincere socialists; they most certainly do. But to continue to give support to the Labour Party today is an act of class-collaboration and a betrayal of the working class movement. Until the working people of Britain come to recognise that all those, like the Communist Party, who claim that socialism can be established through an alliance with the Labour Party, are traitors to their class and begin to organise independently of the capitalist parties to build their own independent organs of struggle, there can be no advance towards working class power, the only real foundation of socialism.
The socialist alternative exists in fighting for a socialist Britain with its wealth owned by the people, and power in the hands of the working class – but how is this fight to begin?
The first task is for the working people of this country to free themselves from the yoke that has been firmly placed around their necks by the combined forces of the monopoly bosses and their lieutenants in the labour movement. We therefore call for the following actions to be taken now:
1. THE FORMATION OF ACTION COUNCILS OF TRADE UNIONISTS, TENANTS AND OTHER REPRESENTATIVES OF THE WORKING PEOPLE. The Action Councils to be organised on both an industrial and a residential basis in order to co-ordinate resistance to these attacks on the working class.
2. THE PUTTING FORWARD OF INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS CANDIDATES by these Action Councils in both national and local elections, in order to expose parliamentary democracy in its true light as the concealed rule of the capitalist class, and to develop through independent working class initiative the basis for the future representative councils of the working people.
3. STOP PAYING THE POLITICAL LEVY NOW – and instead set up local and national funds.
a) to help build the Action Councils, the organs of struggle which will defend working class rights and liberties,
b) to finance the fighting of elections by working class ” candidates.
4. NO ACTION THAT IS NOT LED BY A VANGUARD PARTY OF THE WORKING CLASS CAN LEAD TO THE NECESSARY REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE, NOR CAN SUCH A CHANGE TAKE PLACE THROUGH PEACEFUL PARLIAMENTARY ACTION, BUT ONLY THROUGH A UNITED STRUGGLE WAGED ON ALL FRONTS IN ORDER TO GAIN WORKING CLASS STATE POWER.
THE MARXIST-LENINIST ORGANIZATION OF BRITAIN EXISTS FOR THE PURPOSE OF BUILDING SUCH A PARTY.
WE CALL UPON ALL MILITANT WORKERS TO JOIN AND SUPPORT US NOW!
WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE!