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   Vol.65/No.15            April 16, 2001 
 
 
UK Communist League launches campaign
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BY PHIL WATERHOUSE
LONDON--Against the background of a deepening crisis facing working farmers, the Communist League launched the campaign of Paul Davies for parliament in the upcoming elections. Davies, a car worker and a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union, is standing in North Southwark and Bermondsey constituency in south London.

Davies said at a March 30 meeting that the campaign is one "of working people involved in struggle, reaching out to others who are taking a stand and championing unity and solidarity in the face of the assault by the bosses and the government."

Davies and his campaign supporters joined picket lines of the London Underground rail workers, members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers, who struck for 24 hours over health and safety issues. "Privatization of the old British Rail national rail network has been a disaster for working people," he said. "Thousands of workers have lost jobs, and many more have been reemployed at lower wages, in worse conditions, and on temporary contracts."

The crisis facing working farmers, he said, has been made worse by government restrictions in the wake of an outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease. "We urge the trade unions to support the struggles of farmers as they fight to prevent the loss of their incomes and their land," Davies said, "including immediate and full compensation for armers affected by the mass slaughter and restrictions on movement of animals. Farmers should be guaranteed they will not lose their land and an income sufficient to cover costs of production and a decent standard of living."

Central to the Communist League's program is the need to build support for the struggles of working people worldwide, from the Palestinian people fighting Israeli state aggression to the nationalist struggle to end British rule in Ireland. Davies called for the complete withdrawal of all British and NATO troops from Yugoslavia.

In his talk here Davies said the Labour government over the last four years has led the assault on the social wage, won in struggle by working people, especially following the Second World War. The government of Prime Minister Anthony Blair has "cut single parent allowances, imposed tuition fees on students, introduced welfare-to-work reforms that have forced many unemployed workers into low-paying jobs, and cut back on universal pension rights at a time when 2 million pensioners are living below the poverty level."

In a world of growing insecurity for working people, where the slowdown in the U.S. economy is giving ruling classes the world over the jitters, the Communist League's campaign is presenting demands aimed at uniting working people and protecting workers and farmers from the effects of the world capitalist economic crisis. These include a sliding scale of wages and hours and for cancellation of the Third World debt.

"Our campaign is the most realistic of all the political parties. We explain that the only way working people can win is by making a revolution and overthrowing the capitalist class," Davies said. He pointed to the example of the Cuban revolution, where "working people set out to change the intolerable conditions in which they lived and in the process transformed themselves into people who were capable of overthrowing the capitalists in Cuba and facing down the mightiest imperialist power on earth."  
 
 
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