MIA > Archive > Willie Gallacher
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 23 No. 49, 12 July 1923, p. 497.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
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June 20, 1923
Said that judging by Comrade Lozovskys speech, great changes would be taking place in the International Trade Union movement in the near future.
The day of the Amsterdam International is over. It depended upon a contented working class and it was more concerned with what it should not do than with what it should do. But even in Britain, where the trade unions have at tradition of compromise and where the leaders endeavoured to suppress even references to the class war, there was slowly growing amongst the masses a desire for international action, what was wanted was that concrete demands should be put before the working class to attract their attention to the international working class movement.
Lozovsky’s review of the situation in Britain was incorrect. The Party did not claim that it should be entrusted with all the work in the trade unions, but that it should control all the work that was being done in the trade unions either by, the R.I.L.U. Bureau, or similar bodies. An understanding on this matter had been reached between the R.I.L.U. Bureau and the Party. A Communist nucleus in a trade union branch would be required to secure members for the Party, but as part of a larger trade union formation, it would carry on the work of the Bureau and attempt to bring over masses of the workers to the Profintern. The opinion that the Party was to confine itself to political work only was an absurdity.
He also denied that the change of the name of the Party organ from The Communist to the Workers’ Weekly was an attempt to cut across the work of the Bureau. The change corresponded with a change in the organisation of the Party, They wanted the Party to be a Party of the masses and the paper to be a paper of the masses.
Last updated on 2 September 2021