Fruit in UK: ‘Workers need to take political power’
MANCHESTER, England — “Workers need to rely on ourselves if we’re to fundamentally change the conditions we face,” Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, told participants at a Militant Labour Forum here Aug. 18. This was the start of her weeklong tour in the U.K. organized by the Communist League.
“There’s no easy, quick fix. But we can’t be looking for solutions from those responsible for the assaults on working people. We need a class break from the capitalist rulers and their parties, a course of independent working-class political action.
“Our campaign is the only voice in the U.S. representing the interests of our class and I mean our class worldwide,” Fruit said. “That’s why it’s a joy to be here. Workers face similar conditions. And we face a common international challenge — forging a working-class leadership in a world marked by an unending capitalist crisis, social convulsions and war.”
Communist League leader Hugo Wils chaired the meeting. Several of the 25 participants had learned about the event through the CL’s campaign during the recent U.K. general election. The party’s candidates found serious interest as they discussed a working-class alternative to the Conservative, Labour and other capitalist parties, and the need to build a party of labor.
Fruit pointed to the key development in U.S. politics. “As conditions of life for the working class deteriorate, and wars escalate, millions of workers are being drawn into politics,” she said. “More workers are organizing unions and using their unions to fight.” And it’s among fight-minded workers that the SWP’s campaign gets a response.
The following day, Fruit met with ticket collectors at Northern Trains, fighting for recognition of their union, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. Fights like this begin to lay the conditions for building a mass working-class party, a party of labor, Fruit told meeting participants. It would organize working people of all nationalities, religions, skin colors and both sexes to deepen our struggles.
“I realize from what Rachele explained, that it’s down to us, to working people,” Derick Osei Appiah, a delivery driver attending the meeting, told the Militant. “We have to unite in struggle, build unions, build a working-class movement.”
The SWP campaign points to the importance of “defending constitutional freedoms won by working people in the U.S. through years of struggle. They will be critical in our future battles,” Fruit said. But they’re under attack today, especially by the Democratic Party, “through frame-ups — the stock-in-trade method for going after working-class fighters — and attacks on freedom of speech.”
Similar questions are posed in the U.K., Fruit said, following the recent murder of three girls and ensuing riots. The government has targeted people for arrest based on what they say and write using thought-control “hate-crime” laws.
Presenting a road forward for working people “also means opposing the rulers’ march to war. For decades, the U.S. imperialists have deployed tens of thousands of troops, warships and jet fighters in Europe and across the Middle East to protect their interests. They’ve expanded their presence in Asia and the Pacific seeking to contain China’s influence. And both parties are discussing raising the military budget. The SWP opposes U.S. military deployments anywhere in the world.”
Watershed in world politics
“This is especially important with the watershed in world politics marked by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel with the help and direction of the capitalist regime in Tehran. At the center of a working-class program today is fighting Jew-hatred and pogroms, including defense of Israel’s existence as a refuge for Jews,” Fruit said. Following the meeting, she was interviewed by the Manchester-based weekly Jewish Telegraph.
The solution to all these questions — the march to war, national oppression, Jew-hatred — involves the working class taking political power, Fruit said.
“It’s a revolutionary perspective in continuity with Lenin and the Bolsheviks. It’s not only necessary but possible, as shown by what struggles of revolutionary proportions in the U.S. have accomplished — from the victorious war for independence against British rule, the Civil War against slavery, gigantic workers’ struggles that led to organization of industrial unions in the 1930s, the proletarian-led struggle for Black rights that brought down Jim Crow segregation.
“We can resolve the question of questions, which class rules. Only by taking power out of the hands of the capitalist rulers can working people stop the march to fascism and war. That’s true in every capitalist country in the world: the U.S., Britain, Israel, Iran, Russia, Venezuela. It’s the SWP’s and the Communist League’s reason for existence. We hope that you will join us in this effort.”
