Vol. 81/No. 21 May 29, 2017
Communist League in UK: ‘Workers need to take power’
“Working people are taught that we can’t do anything, that we’re spectators in politics,” Ólof Andra Proppé, Communist League candidate for Parliament in the Essex town, told Horton and her husband Richard.
“The biggest battle we face as a class is to throw off that self-image and learn that the solution lies in our hands,” Proppé said. “We can make a revolution, take power and organize society.”
Proppé was joined by Andrés Mendoza, CL candidate for the London constituency of Islington North. The League’s revolutionary perspective is counterposed to the Conservative, Labour and other capitalist parties in the U.K.’s June 8 general election.
“I’m on a zero-hours contract. That means if one of the people I’m going to visit calls in sick, I lose a day’s pay,” said Kara Horton, a care assistant for young adults with disabilities. “I get just above minimum wage. Loads of workers face similar conditions — and the number is rising.”
“We can already see signs that simmering anger will boil over into resistance and struggle,” Proppé said. “It will be through struggle that workers will take on a broader revolutionary perspective.”
Proppé and Mendoza, both factory workers, pointed to the example of Cuba where working people toppled the capitalist rulers and established their own government. “They replaced the dog-eat-dog social relations of capitalism with human solidarity,” said Proppé.
“That’s what’s needed here — solidarity,” Kara Horton said. “Everything today is divide and rule.”
One of Horton’s children is in a primary school class of 33. “There’s simply no way that the teachers can cope in a class of that size, let alone give the sort of individual attention kids need,” she said. “And if a pupil has a shaven head, they’re not allowed into school. If there’s a food item in their lunch box that’s not approved, it gets removed. They send a note back with the kids that I can pick it up! They’re my kids, but school authorities decide what I and the kids can and can’t do.”
“Schooling is not about education under capitalism,” Proppé said. “It’s about social engineering — preparing young people for the world of work, making them obedient. That’s what the rulers want workers to be.”
The government has announced a cut of 7 percent in school budgets by 2020, meaning classes will be bigger than 35. In response, teachers are organizing protests and work stoppages. Peter Clifford, Communist League candidate in Manchester Gorton, joined a protest of 300 teachers, parents and students there April 28.
The Hortons were excited to learn that a brigade of 45 young trade unionists from the U.K. had visited Cuba in solidarity with the revolution there over May Day. They decided to invite brigadistas to their home to hear what they learned. “One of the things you’ll find out is that real and lifelong education is a fact of life in Cuba,” Mendoza said. Maximum class size in Havana’s primary schools is 20.
Imperialist war
The two communist candidates also spoke with Jo Brown, who they met tending her garden. “For years I was a loyal employee,” Brown, a retired bank clerk, told them. “But they turned nasty on the workers, and I changed my mind.” Like the Hortons, Brown got a subscription to the Militant.
The discussion turned to today’s wars in the Middle East. “I’d do everything to stop my son fighting in such wars,” Brown said. “They’re doing terrible things. And it’s always workers who get injured or lose their lives.”
“Wars abroad are an extension of the social devastation at home,” Proppé said. “They’re not going to stop until we take the power to make war out of the hands of the capitalist rulers. The British rulers are a declining force in the world, but they continue to send young workers to fight and die in alliance with Washington.”
There are currently 1,350 U.K. troops in the Middle East, plus special forces on the ground in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, to defend the interests of British capital. British aircraft join Washington in almost daily bombing raids, Proppé said. London has 500 troops in Afghanistan and is expanding military collaboration with Saudi Arabia, including deploying special forces in Yemen. A new British naval base has just opened in Bahrain.
“We call for the U.K. and all foreign troops out of the Middle East,” Proppé said.
Working class at center stage
Both the main capitalist parties — the governing Conservatives and opposition Labour — are pitching their campaigns to appeal to what Prime Minister Theresa May calls a “quiet revolution” among working people. She speaks of electing a government that works “for everyone,” not just the privileged few.
The Conservative Party campaign says the country needs May’s “strong and stable leadership” to advance “Britain’s interests” in upcoming negotiations over Brexit with the U.K.’s rivals in the EU. May says Brexit will allow her government to slash immigration, opening jobs to those here.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, says he will “transform Britain” from a country “run for the rich” to one “where everyone can lead richer lives.”
He promises to fill government’s coffers by raising taxes on corporations and individuals earning more than £80,000 ($103,000) a year; renationalizing the Royal Mail, railways and energy companies; and establishing a state bus company. He says Labour will fund infrastructure projects and lay out £6 billion in new education spending and cap class sizes at 30 for the first three years of primary schooling.
“The capitalist parties speak about ‘we British.’ They say they stand for a government that ‘works for everyone,’” CL candidate Andrés Mendoza told fellow marchers at the May Day protest in London. ”But there is no such ‘we.’ Britain is class divided.
“The working class is the agency of social change,” he said. “The Communist League advances independent working-class politics, and we do it all year round, not just during elections.”
Some members of petty-bourgeois left organizations at the march criticized the Communist League for standing in the election, saying they should join in and submerge themselves going all-out in support of Corbyn and Labour.
Putting their money where their mouth is, the Communist Party is fielding no candidates for the first time in its history. Nor is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition — an alliance of the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party and others.
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