BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN
LONDON - Labour Party leader Anthony Blair has made clear that his government will continue to aggressively defend the interests of British imperialism. And yet where the Communist League is not standing candidates, the League has advised a vote for Labour. Isn't this contradictory, asks Ahmad Haghight in a letter on page 15.

When millions of workers vote Labour, they do so in the hope that a future Labour government can be used as an instrument to advance their interests. One of the striking things about this election is how, despite Blair's insistence that workers should have no expectations from Labour in government, so many workers do.

In discussions with fellow workers, communists say: "You believe that a Labour government can be used to defend our interests. We don't. Let's test it out. Let's first agree on the program we need and that we must rely on our own struggles. Let's campaign together for the Communist League, the only candidates expressing that view. Then vote Labour where the League's not standing. History will show who's right about what a Labour government will do." So we "support" Labour like a rope supports a hanging man. The bigger the Labour majority the better. With a small majority, the leadership and their left apologists will say, "We wanted to do more but the parliamentary balance of forces wouldn't allow it." We want the Labour leadership to have all the rope it needs.

Workers' expectations from and electoral support for Labour have deep historical roots. Over the course of decades in the last century, workers struggled through their unions to break with open capitalist parties and establish an independent mass political party to defend their interests: a party of labor. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels participated in this struggle.

This struggle gained impetus with the rise of "new unionism," when unskilled workers joined the ranks of organized labor. It resulted in the formation by the Trades Union Congress of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900. The LRC won the affiliation of about one-quarter of organized labor, but many founding delegates were Liberals and it won limited electoral support.

The transformation of the LRC into the Labour Party rested on the shoulders of the international class struggle - the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, which gave momentum to the struggle for class independence around the world. In 1906, Labour won 42 seats and formed its own parliamentary party. In 1918 the Labour Party adopted a constitution permitting individual membership and promising "common ownership of the means of production."

But Labour never expressed the interests of the working class. Although formed by the unions, its capitalist program and electoralist structure were determined by the union bureaucracy, a petty bourgeois layer bought off by the vast wealth of the British imperialism. The bureaucracy maintained its roots in the working class by resting on a relatively better off layer within the working class -Lenin called it the "labor aristocracy" - which, also the product of imperialist wealth, falsely identifies with the interests of its masters.

Built into the Labour Party from birth has thus been a struggle between the ranks of workers through their unions and the pro-capitalist leadership. Left-wing social democrats feed off this struggle, presenting themselves as an alternative to the conservative leaders. In 1925, Leon Trotsky wrote, "The working class will very probably be obliged to replace its leadership a number of times before a party would be born which truly corresponds to the historical situation and the tasks of the British proletariat."

How to be part of this struggle for a new leadership -neither abstaining from it nor adapting to the left reformists - has been an important challenge for communists in Britain. Tactics vary depending on the situation. For instance, under the urging of Lenin, the fledgling Communist Party campaigned for affiliation to the Labour Party. Its application was turned down but the fight educated many workers and won adherents to communism.

Political conditions are different today. One change is the fact that the Labour Party has formed the government five times, always showing itself to be a faithful servant of British capitalism. Another is the 100-year decline of British imperialism, limiting the room for the capitalist class to make concessions to the labor aristocracy.

Nonetheless, experience shows that a rise of working- class struggle invariably finds its reflection in a struggle inside the Labour Party. During the 1984-85 miners strike, for example, fighting workers sought to use the Labour Party to generalize their struggle and, both through their unions and as individual members, engaged in a sharp fight against the leadership. Communists in Britain were part of that struggle. Labour's union links are weaker today. Blair states that the "Labour Party is not the political arm of anybody today other than the British people."

But the links have not be broken. Some 4.1 million trade unionists pay a political levy as part of their union dues and are counted as Labour Party members. They have the right to vote in elections for party leader. Union officials carry 50 percent of votes at the Labour Party conference and control 12 out of 26 National Executive Committee seats. The unions account for 54 percent of Labour Party funding.  
 
 
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