Vol. 80/No. 16      April 25, 2016

 

Communist League in UK: No road to ‘fair capitalism’

 
LONDON — “The Communist League offers a perspective of independent working-class political action,” Jonathan Silberman, Communist League candidate for mayor, told a March 31 meeting of 30 rail workers hosted by the Regional Council of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union. Among those present were tube (subway) drivers who had held a 24-hour strike the previous week over safety and company intimidation.

Green Party’s mayoral candidate Sian Berry also spoke, saying organized labor has an important role to play in creating a “fair society.”

“What’s needed is not a perspective of trying to make capitalism fair,” Silberman replied. “What’s needed is the road of revolutionary struggle to overturn the dictatorship of capital and establish a workers and farmers government.

“All capitalist politicians say what they will do for Londoners,” including the Greens, he added. “But the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself. It will not be bestowed upon us by a reforming London mayor.”

Silberman, 64, a pharmaceutical worker on a zero-hours contract through an agency, is a member of the UNITE union, and has been active in the labor movement for decades. “The unions must organize all workers — ‘permanent’ and agency, British-born and foreign-born — and use union power to defend workers’ interests,” Silberman said.

“What you said about forging united action and organizing agency workers hit the mark,” a tube driver Silberman had met on the picket line told him. “Many agency workers are immigrants. Their conditions are inferior. And it’s a divide-and-rule opening for the employers.” He bought a Militant subscription and a copy of The Cuban Five Talk About Their Lives Within the US Working Class. Five others at the meeting bought copies of the Militant.

A dozen Communist League members and supporters went door to door the next day in the Higham Hill area of the North East London Assembly constituency, where Silberman is on the ballot. Yuki Tsugehara, an exchange student from Japan, joined the effort. “We met all sorts of people,” she said. “Some had jobs, some were retired, some were students, but they were all working people. We introduced them to a new perspective.” Over two days of door to door campaigning 14 people signed up for Militant subscriptions.
 
 
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