Pa unity 2017*

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CP BRITAIN

Build now for a Labour government

CPBRITAIN

communist-party.org.uk July 2017

‘The Morning Star is the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media’ Jeremy Corbyn

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results of 8 June show that the people of Britain are open to progressive politics that will improve their lives writes Andy Chaffer.

The Labour Party Manifesto For the Many Not the Few outlined polices such as the renationalisation of the railways, the establishment of publicly controlled utility companies and also proper funding of public services and people across England, Scotland and Wales voted for this in their millions.

The Labour Party campaign co-ordinated by the Corbyn office and Momentum reached out to and won over people who had never been involved in politics before.

It worked especially well with younger voters but it was people of all ages who were enthused. The campaign mixed social media with good old political rallies and bypassed the Tory-controlled media by meeting the people on the streets, on the doorstep and on their social media page.

Now the political agenda has moved in a progressive direction we need to build on the work.

The Conservatives are establishing their ‘Coalition of Chaos’ with the bigots of the DUP but we need to help the MPs to make sure this coalition is history as soon as possible. That means building the campaigns against austerity, defending the NHS, supporting strikes and trying to stop all attempts to cut services.

Hopefully the Labour Party in Parliament will be supporting this by trying to defeat the government whenever possible and proposing some of their popular policies .

It also means starting now for the next election by working in those seats that should be Labour or are winnable to be Labour with campaigning work. Work out who lives where and make sure everyone is registered to vote. Make contact with the Labour Party in constituencies that need to be won. Let’s build to the next election because we need it NOW. HE ELECTION

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ORY MYTHS that public sector pay rises are impossible – as Theresa May said: ‘There is no magic money tree’ – have been exploded by the billion pound bribe to the DUP. The wheels have come off the austerity bandwagon, although Blairite holdouts like Ed Balls stick with the Tory lie that Labour’s spending plans are unsustainable.

The truth is that Britain needs a pay rise and Jeremy Corbyn’s amendment to the Queen’s Speech – which would end the public sector pay cap – is just the first step in recalibrating our economy in the interests of the many and not the few.

Employers have had it rich with a tenyear pay freeze boosting profits.

HE MORNING STAR is the world’s only English language socialist daily paper and has just celebrated its 50th birthday.

It was founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker to be the organ of the central committee of the Communist Party and in 1948 became a co-operative, the People’s Press Printing Society. It is run by an elected management committee which currently has ten national trade unions in membership.

The paper provides day to day coverage of the fight for workplace rights, equal rights and the struggle against austerity. Until his election as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was a Disgraced ex-Tory chair Grant Shapps – Progress, New Labour bosses in the weekly columnist. party machinery and the liberal media giving voice to the feeling that the Tories Leading figures in the labour and trade plan to derail Labour from its new may not retain power – can see the union movement and progressives and course. writing on the wall. Austerity must end. peace activists write regularly in the Behind these political forces lie the If you want to know how the poor die paper. There is a vibrant arts page and look at Grenfell Towers. This disaster was banks, big business and the NATO the paper’s sports coverage, especially security establishment who are actively football (including womens’ football), the culmination of years of austerity and planning to undermine Brexit. privatisation, with a cost-cutting Tory boxing and racing is renowned.

Corbyn’s electoral credibility was council skimping on building maintenance, The paper’s online edition is proving strengthened by his commitment to Boris Johnson axing fire stations and very popular with busy trade union respect the referendum vote. firefighters’ jobs, trade bodies rejigging activists who want and need reliable and The truth is that big parts of Labour’s informed labour movement news. The standards to maximise profits and a programme: ending spending cuts, government bent on deregulation.The Morning Star is on sale at all Co-op housing crisis can be tackled – but only by reversing privatisation and taking Stores, RS McColls and can be ordered command of capital are impossible if we at your local newsagent. a massive rise in council house building remain in the European Union and the and the redirection of capital, ending the single market. flow of profits abroad and raising This government is on the ropes. domestic infrastructure spending.

Labour policies command a majority in We need a Labour government that the minds of the public. We must means what it says. keep up the pressure to bring this Jeremy Corbyn and his team are leading in the right direction. But an government down and end austerity and open the unholy alliance of right wingers in way to working class the parliamentary Labour Party, political power. corporate funded think tanks like

NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION SATURDAY 1 JULY

NOT ONE DAY MORE

TORIES OUT|NO MORE AUSTERITY

May must go

Tax the rich

A US left-wing view of Donald

ELECTION

represents a “left of centre” alliance.

Certainly, there is no case for doing anything that might rehabilitate the Lib LMOST 13 million people voted for a left-wing Labour Dems. Their share of the vote has deservedly fallen and the ejection of manifesto with its policies Nick Clegg from his seat should spare for more progressive taxation of us many more of those TV appearances the rich and big business, massive where he misrepresents almost public investment in the NHS and public services, public ownership of everything about the EU and the strategic industries and utilities, an progressive case for leaving it.

It is now up to Lib Dem, Green, SNP expansion of employment and and Plaid Cymru MPs to decide trade union rights and a halt to whether or not they want to privatisation writes Rob Griffiths. concentrate their fire on the Tories and The Tories have no mandate for public spending cuts. In raising Labour’s their policies and help ensure a fresh vote by 10 percent, Jeremy Corbyn and general election and a Labour his leadership have been vindicated. And government as soon as possible.

The prospects are bright. In this in the teeth of a vicious media particular, the UKIP collapse and the campaign, including obnoxious attacks return of many working-class in the supposedly left-of-centre supporters to Labour vindicates Guardian.

Corbyn’s insistence last year that the It is an even more remarkable referendum decision — that popular achievement in the wake of a two-year sovereignty in fact — should be campaign inside the Parliamentary respected and implemented.

Labour Party (PLP) to slander and His principled stance enraged the unseat him.

Corbyn confounded his critics with a pro-EU fanatics in the PLP and triggered a second Labour Party leadership campaign of public meetings, election — and a second overwhelming walkabouts, workplace visits and TV Corbyn victory. Half of UKIP’s appearances. He took his manifesto message directly to the people, trusting deserters turned to Labour and class politics accounting for at least half of them to put aside Tory and media lies the increase in Labour’s share of the and misrepresentations. poll. This underlines the importance of His own strength of character has Labour maintaining its principled stance shown through the most scurrilous in favour of leaving the EU while character assassination carried out in protecting the interests of workers and British politics since the days of their families not only here but in Labour’s founding father, Keir Hardie.

Europe and internationally..

Corbyn and Labour’s campaign and Finally, the Communist Party insisted policies enthused millions of students and young people to vote, many for the that progressive voters everywhere should vote Labour. In most cases, this first time. Turnout among young is the approach which has enabled electors nearly doubled. Workers and Labour to win seats, including in Wales trade unionists also rallied to the red flag, helping to raise the overall turnout where the party trounced the Tories.

Britain’s Communists have also to 68 per cent — the highest since the argued consistently that mass 1997 election that put Blair in office. campaigning, workplace action and class Now the priority must be to unite around the Labour Party leadership and politics raise people’s class consciousness, confidence and political its policies, while reviewing the rightwing’s love affair with nuclear weapons. understanding. So it has proved in two Labour Party leadership elections and There was some tactical voting for now in this general election.

Labour by some Green, Lib Dem and This same perspective will bring Plaid Cymru voters. Some working-class further advances for Labour in the new electors in Scotland are returning to election that will be necessary in the class politics, without abandoning their national aspirations. This is all the more very near future, once Theresa May resigns by popular demand. reason to bury all chatter about building some kind of “centre-left” ROBERT GRIFFITHS IS GENERAL SECRETARY OF alliance in British politics.

Electorally, the Labour Party already THE COMMUNIST PARTY

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HERE DID the huge General Election response to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Manifesto for working class people come from asks Bill Greenshields. All the media pundits and political experts just can’t understand it!

But we in the anti austerity movement understand it. It did not just drop from the skies. .. it was the result of our sustained and developing mass movement struggle, organised through the People’s Assembly and increasingly confident trade unions defending their members. We broke through the Tory bullshit and lies – and Labour’s Manifesto and leadership were part of that breakthrough… what’s not to understand?

The reason the establishment didn’t get it is that working class people are outside their terms of reference… just pawns in their media expert games. Well, they may now begin to see the truth… and they don’t like it.

It’s a struggle increasingly recognised as being between the working class – the 90% of the population who have to go to work for a living, and are rarely more than a few pay packets away from personal financial disaster – and the parasitic ruling class of big business bosses and the banks, who don’t give a damn for our well-being or lives – as recent tragic events have demonstrated all too clearly We’ve made great progress. Not only do more and more working class people reject the lies of the Tories, and the cowardice and treachery of remaining Blairites, but they are more and more refusing to be governed in the same old way. The advocates of austerity are on the back foot. The next election – coming soon – should see the Tories out of office – but the ruling class will still hold real power!

Their austerity policies – to reduce pay

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and working conditions, massively reduce public spending, lay the foundations for widespread privatisation, and reduce our rights and opportunities to organise against these – are not yet defeated. The working class are the main targets and victims, but the self-employed and small businesses are also under pressure.

Now the People’s Assembly needs to emphasise that the origins of austerity lie in the demands of monopoly finance capital – big business and banks - not aberrant or negligent policies, but carefully designed - and that these attacks will continue in other policy guises and weasel words of their political servants.

A future left-led Labour government following policies in the Labour Manifesto will be under immediate attack from these monopoly Big Business forces. They are ruthless and determined in defence of their pursuit of profit. They will attempt to demonise, destabilise and destroy such a government.

Our movement needs to mobilise millions to force the Tories out, and then immediately in active defence of a Leftled government and its policies, while maintaining our independence in policy and action.

We need a broad based antimonopoly alliance together with the trade union movement, self employed and small businesses, to challenge the political representatives of the ruling class. This is already trade union policy.

The People’s Assembly, working together with the trades union councils movement, is well placed to develop this from policy to action in our unions and communities.

For 40 years we have been fighting a sustained offensive by the ruling class and its political servants in various political parties – including Labour. Now our struggle has forced a change – but that just means we have to step up the struggle in every town and city, in every community and every union… increasingly reaching working class people and building on their needs.

The struggle is at a critical stage… Seize the time!

Morning Star daily paper of the left £1 from your newsagent www.morningstaronline.co.uk

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ONTRARY TO the widespread impressions disseminated by media elites, the working-class vote was not overwhelmingly for Trump, nor was the working class vote the backbone of his success.

The Electoral College totals swung his way thanks to narrow victories in a few key rust-belt states. Many factors contributed to the Trump victory, but two stand out, especially for a left analysis.

First, there was a discernable shift among many voters in working class strongholds previously giving majorities to Obama to turn in the direction of Trump in 2016. As (liberal pundit) Paul Krugman noted in his 2008 alert and warning to the Democrats, addressing relevant economic issues is decisive in winning the working class vote. With the Sanders economic program strangled in the cradle, desperate voters saw nowhere to turn but to the false, demagogic hope of putting the industrial toothpaste back into the tube, of creating jobs out of Trump’s magic.

Democratic Party operatives and their media lapdogs have done their most to evade blame for the Party’s abandonment of working people’s interests. Instead, they have painted workers as pathologically bigoted and ignorant.... By diverting the spotlight to working class dysfunction, the third-way, New Democrats who dominate the party can escape blame for their willful neglect of the multiracial working class’s increasingly desperate plight.

Second, Trump was a magnet for every backward, reactionary, racist element in the US. They, too, saw the arrogant, abrasive, loud-mouth as someone in whom they could place their hopes.

Trump’s aggressive break with the typical politician’s syrupy civility was taken as a sign of contempt for the alien, the different, those perceived as threatening (Ironically, these same hates and fears were, in the past, invested in soft-spoken religious leaders and smooth-tongued conservative gentlemen). Trump engages in the Old South tactic of drawing attention by surpassing all others in racebaiting and fear-mongering, but it’s important to note that this simplistic tactic only works where an atmosphere of racial friction and fear already exists. It’s just that Trump opportunistically says it the loudest. edited extract from Zoltan Zigedy’s blog http://tinyurl.com/znbentp

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The pamphlet examines the EU: its positive achievements but also its neo-liberal economic framework and the consequences both for the crisis of social democracy and the rise of right-wing populism. It looks at the objectives of British big business and the City of London, the relationship with the US, and most important of all, why British big business and the City will not and cannot resolve the basic problems facing the British economy and why public sector intervention is essential. www.communist-party.org.uk

Communist Review theory & discussion journal of the Communist Party Summer 2017 The Overthrow of Tsardom Part 2 The March Revolution Andrew Rothstein Reform and Revolution Matthew Widdowson Marx’s Capital and capitalism today Robert Griffiths Vietnamese CP Contribution to the 2016 International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties The Sealed Train Lars Ulrik Thomsen Soul Food Mike Quille £10 for four quarterly issues www.communist-party.org.uk

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The aim of the series is to arm a new generation of workers and activists with the theoretical tools to analyse contemporary capitalism and chart the way to working class state power. A new post-election edition of All Power To The Working Class – role of the Communist Party with a study guide is in preparation. £2 at www.communist-party,org.uk