The worker was responding to comments Arrin Hawkins had made there November 17, to about a dozen of the 40 workers on the shop floor during their lunch break. Hawkins, the Socialist Workers Party vice-presidential candidate in the U.S. elections, visited this area after a post-election campaign stop in Scotland. In her presentation, Hawkins said that her campaign championed the need of workers to build unions and strengthen those that already exist to fight the bosses’ drive to increase their profits by cutting wages and worsening working conditions. These remarks at Respirex, and in an earlier visit with about 10 workers at a shift change at the Hygrade sausage plant in London, stimulated quite a bit of discussion. Both plants are nonunion.

“Workers here won’t stick together,” said another worker at Respirex.

“The bosses will always seek to block union organization,” Hawkins replied. “They play on our fears and insecurities. Workers build up their self-confidence by fighting together. From there not only is union organization necessary but the exercise of union power becomes possible.”

She described the 14-month-long fight of coal miners in Utah, in the western United States, to organize a union and the current strike by meat packers in Toronto, Canada, as examples of this labor resistance that’s bringing workers together.

Hawkins also spent half a day at the nearby Oxted school. She had been invited by students and teachers to speak about the U.S. elections at two classes on politics. Students then took the initiative to schedule a lunchtime meeting to continue the class discussions and invite others who had not been in the politics classes. Sixteen students attended the lunchtime event and participated in a wide-ranging discussion.

Lauren Sullivan, 17, who attended both a class and the lunchtime event appreciated Hawkins’s comments on the need to support the efforts of semicolonial countries to develop their energy capacities in order to achieve economic development. But she quizzed the socialist candidate about the environmental consequences.

“In Britain and the U.S., we have to defend the right of the oppressed nations to develop the sources of energy they need, including nuclear power, in face of the threats from the imperialist governments, like they’re threatening Iran,” Hawkins said. “That’s an issue of defending their sovereignty.

Her campaign, Hawkins said, has exposed the hypocritical drive by Washington, London, and other imperialist governments to prevent—under the banner of “nonproliferation”—countries like Iran and north Korea from developing nuclear energy.

“Then there’s the issue of developing safe and clean energy sources. This is something that the capitalists are not concerned about,” Hawkins continued. “Whether it’s coal, oil, or nuclear. But working people are keenly interested in this. That’s why protecting the environment won’t be resolved by trying to improve, to reform, to tame, capitalism. It’s completely bound up with the revolutionary struggle for a government of workers and farmers.”

Hawkins said that questions like the struggle for a clean environment and against unemployment and imperialist war would be part of the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students scheduled to take place in Caracas, Venezuela, August 5-13 of next year. She urged students to take part. Six students signed up for more information about the festival. Three signed up for subscriptions to the Militant. Altogether, six Militant subscriptions were sold at tour events.

Hawkins’s visit began with a Militant Labour Forum in London, which 40 people attended. Among them were six people who were attending their first forum. Participants contributed £500 (US$930) to cover the tour costs.

After her visit here, Hawkins flew to Stockholm for a similar tour in Sweden.
 

“You spoke about miners in the Co-Op mine in Utah fighting for a union. What kind of support do they get from unions and other workers?” asked a worker attending the meeting.

“I just met a meat packer living in Gothenburg, who had led an effort to get a letter from his plant written in three languages and sent to the miners,” Hawkins responded. “I also know that this letter of solidarity was well received by the miners in Utah.” She also described similar support from other countries and widespread backing for this struggle by unions in the United States, especially in the West—from Operating Engineers, to Longshoremen, and PACE (paper and energy workers union) locals.

“Who pays for your campaign?” a student asked at Farsta Gymnasium, a high school where Hawkins gave presentations at four classes November 19.

“Unlike the parties of big business, and other capitalist parties too, the communist movement does not get or expect any contributions from the state,” Hawkins replied. “We depend entirely on voluntary contributions from workers paychecks as well as from youth, farmers, and others who give because they support what we stand and fight for.”

This was also true at the November 20 public meeting, where about 18 people, mostly youth, donated more than 500 kronor ($72) to help cover the travel expenses of the SWP candidate.

“I think we’re becoming more and more Americanized here in Sweden and I think it’s a problem,” said a teacher at Farsta, reflecting a view commonly expressed by the left in this country.

“Americanism is not the problem,” Hawkins said in response. “The problem is called capitalism, and Sweden is an imperialist capitalist country just like the U.S., only weaker.”

On November 18, at Huddinge Gymnasium, another high school where Hawkins took part in campaigning, a young woman from the Iranian part of Azerbaijan listened with great interest as Hawkins told the story about how representatives of Pathfinder Press got a hold of the unique photos in To See The Dawn: Baku, 1920 First Congress of the Peoples of the East at an old museum in Baku, in the portion of Azerbaijan that was a part of the Soviet Union. The young woman was a member of an Azerbaijani organization fighting for a united, independent Azerbaijan. She later signed up on the mailing list of the Militant Labor Forum and said she wanted to attend a class on the book Socialism on Trial by SWP leader James P. Cannon organized by the Communist League.

During her visit, Hawkins was also interviewed by the Pakistani paper Workers’ Struggle. The interviewer who lived in Sweden said that his party in Pakistan had recently translated Socialism on Trial into Urdu.

At the November 20 public meeting three young people in their teens and early 20s said they wanted to participate in the Socialism on Trial classes. A sale of steeply discounted Pathfinder books was very popular. Many people attending the meeting left with big stacks of books.

Juan Figueroa contributed to this article.  
 
 
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