“The League is different than a year ago,” reported Central Committee member Tony Hunt. He described how last autumn League members and others supporters of the Militant newspaper sold 159 subscriptions to the paper, more than double the 66 sold in the previous circulation drive. “What is important though is the degree to which the bedrock of this campaign was sales at factory gates, to union fighters, and in plants where members of the League work,” Hunt said.

As part of the “long war” Washington projects to “fight terrorism,” Hunt said, the UK rulers are both struggling to maintain their position in the world and deepen their assaults at home on the social wage—pensions, free health care, and welfare benefits. London continues to “box above its weight” through its alliance with U.S. imperialism, Hunt said, paraphrasing a former government minister. But without deepening their attacks on working people at home, this place in the world for British imperialism can weaken.

The congress decided on two moves to advance on the communist movement’s progress in the UK. One is to build on the success of sustaining a bookshop in London, open several hours per day, to expand the distribution of books.

Jonathan Silberman reported that after the move of the shop from its previous premises, where it had been located for over 30 years, to the Brick Lane area of east London, it had proved possible to maintain the sales effort.

“Some £40,000 of books and pamphlets were sold and distributed from the shop throughout the UK, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia,” he said. “This included some 1,000 copies of the two recently published editions of New International.” Sustaining this effort is necessary, he said, “as fighting workers need more and more to learn the history and experiences of the working class movement.”

Second, delegates decided to strengthen the leadership resources and nationwide spread of the League in organizing union fractions of its members in the meat and clothing and textile industries, and to regularize contact with coal miners. “This is vital to ensure the League can gain a broader experience and integrate its work more into struggles by working people and their unions,” Hunt said.

Several delegates pointed to recent experiences in workplaces that show openings to build a proletarian party today. Joyce Fairchild, a sewing machine operator in London, said many Militant readers, including former Heathrow airport workers who struck the Gate Gourmet company last August, eagerly renewed their subscriptions to the paper when League members visited them and exchanged experiences.

Caroline Bellamy, a meat worker in Edinburgh, Scotland, described how newly hired Polish workers were starting to get involved in the union at her plant, and several recently bought the Militant for the first time.

Silberman said a weekly factory gate team he is part of sold 11 books and pamphlets one time at the end of last year. “Organizing such regular sales at factories and mines is at the heart of circulating communist propaganda today,” he said.

During the congress, the Young Socialists held a meeting. Reporting back from this gathering to the CL congress, Alex Xezonakis from Leeds said the young socialists discussed how “Marxist education and political activity go hand in hand.” As well as joining with League members in factory gate sales and other propaganda and mass work, they will also be joining classes on Teamster Rebellion, which describes the class-struggle leadership of the 1934 strikes in Minnesota that were at the heart of building the industrial unions in the United States. YS leader Xerardo Arias urged everyone to attend the June 15-17 SWP convention in the United States.

A high point of the weekend was a Militant Labour Forum on April 8 to discuss and promote the new Pathfinder book Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution.

Silvia Blanca, first secretary of the Cuban embassy in the UK; Bobby Chan of the Chinese rights organization Min Quan; Ana Nazario of the Youth of the Fifth Republic of Venezuela (JVR); and Jonathan Silberman spoke at the forum.

Referring to images peddled by the media here of Chinese gangs as representative of the Chinese community, and recent deaths of undocumented Chinese immigrants, Chan said that what he learned from the book on how the Cuban Revolution ended discrimination against the Chinese shows that “the Cuban experience serves as a positive image for Chinese communities.”

“We are carrying out a strategic, political, ideological, and social process we call the Battle of Ideas to improve our system and defend what the Cuban people have achieved,” said Blanca. “While the United States is escalating its blockade, we are extending solidarity, including treatment for eye disease, sponsored by Cuba and Venezuela,” she said.

Our History is a book “that helps explain the collaboration between Cuba and our struggle against imperialism in Venezuela,” said Nazario of the JVR.

Pointing out that in April, “we celebrate the 45th anniversary of the defeat of the U.S.-organized mercenary invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs,” Silberman said that a key lesson from the book is that a social revolution was necessary in Cuba to end discrimination against not only Chinese, but Afro-Cubans and others, and that kind of revolution is what’s needed in the UK to end racist oppression and class exploitation.

Celia Pugh contributed to this article.  
 
 
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