Revolutionary communists do not stand aside from the clay to day class struggle of the workers at the place of work. They bring to the economic battles of the workers, the awareness of the long term interests of the workers as a class. They pursue the struggle against opportunists and misleaders in the course of fighting the bosses.
The working class in Britain is today suffering an attack on its conditions and standard of living on a scale not seen since the 1930s. Since 1974 the real value of our wages has dropped by £6. Unemployment has rocketted, whilst health, education, social services and housing programmes have been slashed. All this at a time when the Labour Party – supposedly, we are told, the party of the working class – is in power. Our living standards have been hit MORE under Labour than under the previous TORY administration! Facts show that, despite the Labour Party’s “Socialist” label, both Labour and “Tory” are capitalist parties playing the bosses game. They are two wings of a single bird of prey.
What have the Trade Union leadership been doing to oppose this attack? In short – nothing. On the contrary they have been working hand in hand with the Government, and the bosses PLANNING it. The T.U.C. has taken into its hands the job of acting as a policeman for the ruling class, to divert or openly attack any spontaneous resistance by rank-and-file workers. These are not real “leaders” of the working class, they are MISLEADERS sabotaging the class struggle. Their frequent talk of “socialism” and. “the workers interests” is nothing but a sham. They say one thing and do another, such is their opportunist nature. Opportunist misleaders like these exist not only at the top, but at every level of the Union structure, selling out to the bosses in a thousand different ways. Because of their “left-wing” mask and the confusion they spread, undermining our struggle within, Lenin called such opportunists “better defenders of the bourgeoisie (the ruling class) than the bourgeoisie themselves!” Dead right. Events prove it every day.
The Trade Unions were set up by workers so that we could defend ourselves in a united and organised way – to give us collective strength. The martyrs who were transported and persecuted for asserting the collective strength of the workers were not defeated by capitalism’s attacks on the right to unite. Nor shall the workers today be defeated in the struggle against capitalism, by the tricks of the opportunists. In the course of fighting the bosses we must also fight the opportunists in the Unions. Only in this way can we turn the Unions into fighting class organisations.
The struggle to defeat opportunism and to turn the unions into fighting class organisations is going to be a long and hard war. We will not change them overnight, but we need to fight back now. It is a struggle that will only be won through mass action of the working class. It will be won precisely because it is a struggle in the long term and immediate interests of our class as a whole.
For the struggle to be effective we need to be able to pick out the main issues at every stage. We have many grievances, but to have an effect on a national scale we must concentrate the bulk of our fire on the main issues, The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain (RCLB) has raised 5 slogans in this struggle:
1) No class collaboration with the bosses!
2) Fight for democratic unions!
3) We won’t pay for the bosses’ crisis!
4) Stop paying Labour to attack workers!
5) Oppose oppression and discrimination of black and women workers at the place of work!