LONDON — “Building strong unions and extending solidarity in labor battles is key,” Hanna Tesfay told Jonathan Silberman, the Communist League candidate in the Holborn and St. Pancras parliamentary by-election here, as they discussed a road forward for working people after Silberman knocked on her door Sept. 19. Tesfay is a driver on the London Underground and a member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.
Tesfay said she was concerned about rising unemployment. She thought “some young people don’t want to work.” One million youth are neither employed nor in education or training, some 13.5% of all those aged 16 to 24.
“The bulk of the jobless don’t make unemployment a life choice,” Silberman replied. “Unemployment goes up and down as the capitalists respond to economic shifts, always looking to boost their profits. Today they’re cutting jobs.” Nine million are currently out of work in the U.K.
“Millions without jobs intensify competition between the employed and unemployed, the main division facing the working class,” Silberman said. He told Tesfay about a woman he’d just met campaigning who has a long record of working as a temp. “She can’t get full-time work. A young man in the same block said he had his temporary contract ended that day.
“The unions need to fight for cutting hours with no loss in take-home pay when job cuts are threatened,” Silberman said. “And for a program of government-funded public works to provide jobs at union-negotiated pay rates to build the homes, hospitals and infrastructure workers need.”
Silberman said that such a course would contribute to forging a fighting working-class movement. “A union-led fight for jobs goes together with fighting for rights of workers born abroad and against deportations,” he said. “And it goes alongside a fight against scapegoating Jews for problems that come from the profit-driven capitalist system.”
Tesfay took campaign leaflets to pass around to her workmates and subscribed to the Militant.
So did Sonai Miah, who works at a real estate office. “What concerns me most are the spreading wars,” he told Silberman. When he saw the CL’s campaign flyer pointed to the march of the imperialist powers toward another world war he said, “That’s spot on. That’s the future for my kids.”
“Some 100 million perished in World War I and World War II, the vast bulk were working people,” Silberman said. “And the troops — workers in uniform — are treated with disdain.” He described the treatment of sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln during Washington’s recent bombing campaign against Iran.
“They didn’t have shore relief for nine months!” Miah said.
“Another world war is not inevitable,” Silberman said. “It can be prevented by workers taking political power out of the hands of the capitalist war makers. For that we need a political party to lead a movement of millions. That’s why the Communist League exists.”
‘Never-ending price rises’
“It is hard to raise a family today,” Lianne de Vera, a community worker with two young children, told Silberman on her doorstep. She pointed to “never-ending price rises.”
Officially U.K. inflation is 3%, Silberman said. “But the government uses the consumer price index that understates inflation. And for working people it’s higher still because we’re forced to spend more of our income on essentials like food.” Food prices rose by 40% in the five years since January 2020.
“Wages should be protected against inflation by automatic increases,” Silberman said. “Unions should fight for cost-of-living adjustments in every wage agreement.” De Vera asked to keep in touch with the campaign.
CL campaigners Hugo Wils and Julie Crawford met Dary Kyela, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, when they knocked on his door. He told them that since independence from Belgium, working people in the Congo have faced economic crises and war.
“To gain real independence means uprooting exploitation,” Crawford said. She pointed to the example set by Fidel Castro, who led workers and peasants in Cuba to overturn capitalist rule.
“They started to organize society based on human needs and social solidarity, extending this solidarity internationally,” Wils said, pointing to Cuba’s aid to national liberation struggles. Kyela bought a subscription to the Militant along with a copy of Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Cuban revolutionary leader Víctor Dreke.
The CL’s campaign was launched at a meeting Sept. 19. Silberman described how the major capitalist parties hide the class divisions that underlie all politics. “Prime Minister Andrew Burnham says, ‘Britain must believe in itself.’ Green Party leader Zack Polanski pledges to ‘work with’ Burnham and ‘challenge him on the gaps in his plan.’
“But there are two Britains — the Britain of the ruling rich and the Britain of working people,” Silberman said. “We tell everyone we meet that our campaign begins and ends with the interests of working people. We advance a course of united struggle for workers’ self-emancipation, building the Communist League.”
Eleven subscriptions to the Militant and seven books on revolutionary working-class politics were sold in the first four days of campaigning.