"Our most important challenge is to respond to the openings before us," said Jonathan Silberman, reporting for the outgoing Central Committee.

The delegates made three intertwined decisions. Firstly, that the incoming Central Committee would rapidly decide on national targets for the industries where League members should get jobs and the corresponding industrial unions they should establish party fractions in. Secondly, to increase the geographical spread of the League by establishing an organizing committee in Scotland within a few weeks. Thirdly, to refocus the political work of the branch of the League in London so that a substantial percentage of the branch's weekly propaganda activity is concentrated within the working-class district near its current headquarters.

These decisions were taken to increase the ability of the League to respond to the growing resistance among workers and farmers in the United Kingdom to the employers' offensive and to function as a more disciplined, politically centralized national organization. The Congress also elected a new five-person Central Committee.

The opportunities for building the League as part of an international communist movement were highlighted in the course of a daylong International Socialist Educational Conference held on the eve of the CL Congress, hosted by the Communist League and Young Socialists.

A feature of this event was a panel presentation and discussion by Young Socialists participants in the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students that took place in Algiers August 8–16. Speakers on the panel came from the United States, Canada, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK (see front-page article in the September 17 Militant).

The panelists described the participation in the festival of thousands of young people from countries oppressed by the imperialist powers. Jacob Perasso, Young Socialists National Executive Committee organizer in the United States, said he saw at the event a "tremendous hunger for ideas, for Marxism, and a desire among many revolutionary-minded youth to build the kinds of organizations capable of effectively leading the toilers in their countries in the struggle against imperialism." This hunger was behind the sale of nearly 600 Pathfinder books and pamphlets to festival participants.

Five festival participants were among the 11 fraternal delegates from the Socialist Workers Party in the United States and Communist Leagues in Canada, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand given voice and consultative vote by the congress delegates. Several other festival participants attended the congress as observers.  
 
Shift in political situation
In his report to the congress, Silberman pointed to the panel discussion and emphasized what the experience at the festival in Algiers revealed about the shift in the world political situation. "The festival shows both that imperialism is weaker today and that the relationship of forces within the workers movement has been altered," Silberman said. "It confirms in real life the judgment made by the communist movement in 1990 that imperialism lost the Cold War, and that the shattering of the Stalinist apparatuses in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe did not register a shift in the relationship of forces in favor of imperialism.

"No longer can anti-imperialist fighters be prevented from getting to know each other and sharing experiences. The drawing together of struggles of working people the world over will mean that more anti-imperialist fighters will become revolutionaries and more revolutionaries will become communists. Through this process a proletarian leadership and international communist movement will be rebuilt."

Silberman pointed out that the current relationship of forces also registered the failure of the ruling-class offensive in the 1980s against workers and farmers, spearheaded by the administrations of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Britain. The working class had retreated in the face of this offensive, but the imperialist rulers had failed in their attempt to turn around the long-term decline in the rate of profit.  
 
Growing inter-imperialist conflict
At the eve-of-congress educational conference, SWP leader Norton Sandler gave a presentation on "The Working Class Road to Peace and a Livable Environment," in which he explained the sharpening inter-imperialist conflict between the United States and its European competitors as well as within Europe.

In his report to the congress Silberman developed some of these points. "The failure of the bosses to inflict the kind of defeats they need on workers and farmers will lead to sharper conflicts among the capitalists themselves, and sharper inter-imperialist rivalry," he said. "In every military conflict against the toilers--from the Gulf War in 1991 to Macedonia today--there is also a simultaneous conflict between the imperialist powers themselves."

Within the general weakening of imperialism, there has been a relative decline of British imperialism, Silberman noted. "For example, London is supplying half the troops in Macedonia today but this puts an even greater strain on British troop deployments around the world." To this should be added, Silberman said, the British ruler's failure to defeat or head off the determination of the Irish toilers to end British rule in Ireland; the growing strains along the national seams of the United Kingdom in Scotland and Wales; the conflicts within the ruling class over the European Union; and the related ongoing crisis of the Conservative party--historically the main instrument of capitalist rule in the UK--which has suffered two heavy election defeats and is deeply divided.

The political openings for communists in the UK had to be seen within this international context, the CL leader said. He pointed to the "sea-change" in the mass psychology of workers in the second half of 1990s when "the retreat of the working class in the UK bottomed out." This was shown in Britain in 1997 with the overwhelming defeat, after 18 years, of the ruling Conservative government by the Labour Party. Many workers showed up for work the next day punching the air with delight.

"What we are now seeing," Silberman said, "are the initial stages of a vanguard taking shape, forming and reforming in the ebbs and flows of the class struggle. The only obstacles to communists being an integral part of this vanguard are those we place in front of ourselves."

As an example of the openings, the CL leader referred to the four-month struggle by the workers locked out by Friction Dynamics, an auto components manufacturer, in Canaerfon, North Wales.

"This is the most recent example of resistance in the automotive industry where the bosses are seeking to resolve problems of overcapacity by driving down production costs as they seek to restore their competitive edge. They're taking it out on workers through speedup, the use of temporary and agency labor, outsourcing, different tiers of wages, flexible hours, and other measures. The bosses are going after conditions built up by workers through their unions over decades.

"At Friction Dynamics, the employer launched a direct assault on the union. When the workers responded through a series of strikes, they were locked out and later sacked. But they've not gone away," he said. "They've maintained a 24-hour picket line and reached out for support. They've received solidarity from fellow members of the Transport and General Workers Union and from working people in the local area in particular. Their July march drew 1,000 participants while a further 2,000 lined the streets to applaud and cheer. Standing on the picket line, you realize how deep the support goes in the local area. It appears as though drivers in every other car passing by hoot their horns in solidarity. A number of farmers in this rural area have brought food to the picket line.

"Also on the picket line is a copy of the book Capitalism's World Disorder by Jack Barnes, bought by one of the strike leaders, who described it as 'my sort of book' and said he'd make it available to others on picket duty," Silberman said.  
 
Resistance by farmers
The struggle by exploited small farmers in defense of their livelihoods was an important component of resistance of working people in the UK, Silberman noted. "The sharpest manifestation was the protest movement that developed a year ago by farmers and truckers over fuel prices. In the space of one week it put the skids under the government, belying the claimed strength of Anthony Blair's New Labour government. What so rattled the rulers," he said, "was the combination of resistance by farmers to the worst farming crisis in the UK since the 1930s with the overwhelmingly favorable response within the working class to the blockades of the oil depots."

Working farmers have come under a further assault in the form of the Labour government response to the foot-and-mouth outbreak, which they are resisting. About 1,000 people joined an August demonstration in London called by Farmers for Action (FFA) demanding a public inquiry into the foot-and-mouth crisis. This demand is a response to the three government-established inquiries, none of which will be public. The FFA has now announced a second national demonstration that will take place in London October 20.

Silberman also pointed to the reception given to Randy Jasper, a farmer from Wisconsin who traveled from the United States to participate in the fuel protests in London last year. "He was given a platform. Working farmers in this country welcomed the opportunity to get to know one of their own from another country an ocean apart."

Silberman quoted from a recent report by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. "Our success," Barnes said, "will be gauged by our ability to recognize, adjust to, and 'catch up' with such developments and integrate ourselves into them. It will be gauged by the growing numbers who look to us as a component of working-class vanguard militants--a worker-Bolshevik component armed with the traditions and generalized lessons of the modern international proletarian struggle for more than a century and a half."  
 
Regroup to redeploy
A year ago the CL leadership decided to close the League's branch in Manchester and regroup the party's forces in London to prepare to field an organizing committee in Scotland.

Over the past year's work, the League registered some gains. Sales of books from the London Pathfinder Book Shop have increased from a total value of £8,500 in 2000 to the same amount in the first eight months of 2001 (£1=US$1.47). This is part of a broader increase in sales of Pathfinder literature. Sales through Pathfinder's commercial distributor in the UK have increased 70 percent over last year.

The London branch waged a successful circulation drive for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, with half of the 40 new Militant subscribers and 12 Perspectiva Mundial subscribers coming from the working-class district within a mile or two of its headquarters. A number of the new subscribers have participated in the weekly Militant Labour Forums, whose attendance is younger, more multinational, and larger over recent months.

A new chapter of the Young Socialists has been established and the League and YS collaborated in building a delegation of eight to the World Festival of Youth and Students, part of the broader 35-member delegation to the festival from Britain.

One of the League's industrial union fractions, at the General Motors IBC plant in Luton, has gained some valuable experience in the union resistance that developed in response to the job cuts at the adjacent GM Vauxhall plant. Fraction members have taken the lead in working with leaders of the Friction Dynamics strike/lockout within the Transport and General Workers Union at the plant and more broadly. The fraction sold four subscriptions to the Militant during the circulation drive and has sold 18 Pathfinder books and pamphlets this year.

A central challenge confronted by delegates was the necessity for centrally decided political priorities on where communists should work in industry, based on accumulated years of experience, knowledge of who the employers are targeting in their offensive, and following the lines of resistance amongst workers.

In remarks to Congress participants describing some of their experiences in the United States, SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters noted that, "Where communists work and build fractions must be based on political decisions by the party setting national priorities and targets to guide the work of comrades on the ground--not least those who will be part of the organiz ing committee in Scotland. Those decisions can only be arrived at by integrating ourselves more deeply into the industrial proletariat, considering the differential impact of the assault of the bosses in various industries, and where these assaults are breeding resistance," she explained.

"A decentralized approach toward industrial union fraction-building is always completely connected to a lack of revolutionary centralism and discipline in the way a branch unit functions," Waters continued.

At the end of their discussion, delegates voted to set a two-week deadline for the incoming Central Committee to decide on which national fractions the League should now build.  
 
Organizing committee in Scotland
Presenting the proposal on establishing an organizing committee in Scotland, Silberman noted in his report that "we need it to bring the scope and reality of the developing resistance into the party. An organizing committee isn't a small branch. It won't have a headquarters or forum series, for example. It's not necessarily a permanent institution that will grow into a branch. It's established for the purpose of following the resistance. Wherever we start, we may have to move after having some experience in the first location. But we can't build a proletarian party today without it; the League is too small to be in touch with the resistance if we are based only in a single city."

"We're proposing the move to Scotland," he said, "because of the vanguard role of workers in Scotland; because of what we've concluded about politics in the UK: that the crisis of British imperialism means that cracks are appearing along its national seams." Silberman noted the high sales of the Militant and Pathfinder books by a series of teams fielded by the League in Scotland over the past two years. For example, two years ago at four plant-gate sales to oil rig construction workers, 120 copies of The Militant were sold in a period following a short dispute with the rig construction bosses. There have also been good sales to miners in Scotland.

"Recent experience has also confirmed the connection between Scotland and the Irish struggle. The recent 5,000-strong hunger strike commemoration march in Glasgow was not only the first demonstration on Ireland to have taken place in that city for 20 years. It was also the most proletarian march on Ireland to have taken place in Britain in years," Silberman said.

Members of the League who participated in the march reported on the openness to communist literature, especially books by leaders of the Cuban Revolution. The CL leader noted that the establishment of the organizing committee in Scotland would also help the League in maintaining consistent political work among working farmers which the party had done less of in recent months.  
 
Workers district branch
Integral to the decisions on the fractions and establishing an organizing committee was the decision by the congress to transform the functioning of the London branch to respond to the qualitatively new openings that exist to root the propaganda work of the League in the working-class district near its current headquarters.

"By concentrating a substantial percentage of the branch's weekly sales and literature tables in the district around the London headquarters we can build relations with a layer of workers, get our literature around, draw "regulars" to the weekly Militant Labour Forum, plus one or two new participants each week, and recruit to our movement," Silberman said. "Developing that kind of stable base, which is possible today because of the political changes we've been discussing, means that our response to political opportunities citywide and nationally, as well as internationally, will be more effective."

Another issue addressed by the congress was the irreplaceable contribution made by supporters of the communist movement to its work. One delegate strongly urged delegates to learn more about the work of supporters who are part of Pathfinder's international reprint project, and to follow their very successful efforts to increase sales of Pathfinder books and pamphlets through commercial bookshops in London, Manchester, and elsewhere throughout the UK. Following the congress, special meetings of supporters in London and Manchester were held to hear reports on the party's decisions and Pathfinder's publishing and promotion plans.

Silberman concluded his remarks by noting that the party-building course the CL was deciding on was only possible because the organization was part of an international movement. The League's congress followed and built on the accomplishments of the recent Active Workers Conference organized by the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists in the United States, a convention of the Communist League in New Zealand, and a conference of the Communist League in Australia. He added that international participation in the congress deliberations aided League delegates in coming to their decisions.

"The perspectives we're discussing at this congress are the result both of the objective conditions in the UK and of the experience of other parties in our movement," Silberman said. "Our respective parties are at different stages of development to be sure. There's unevenness. But that doesn't mean that we're not faced by common tasks today. The objective conditions allow us to converge. We can work more closely together today as the World Festival of Youth and Students in Algiers demonstrated."  
 
 
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