18.01.1996

Whole class must unite

To mark the 70th anniversary of the General Strike of May 1926, the Weekly Worker will carry contemporary articles from the communist press each week. The article below is from 'The Workers' Weekly', paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, January 15 1926

THE central committee of the Communist Party declares that the following steps are urgently necessary in order to ensure that the workers’ forces are properly organised against the capitalist attack, and instructs all Party members to regard a campaign for those measures as their main and immediate tasks in their respective trade unions:

• Summoning by the General Council of a conference of trade union executive committees in accordance with Scarborough decisions, to give powers to the General Council to lead the whole workers’ industrial army.
• In addition ... the completion of the Workers’ Industrial Alliance to reinforce the workers’ defensive preparations against the coming crisis ...
• A working agreement between the General Council and the Cooperative Wholesale Society to ensure provisioning the workers and a policy of mutual support between ... the TUC and the Cooperative Union.
• Formation of factory committees elected by all workers irrespective of craft or sex ...
• A national campaign for 100% trade unionism ...
• Organisation of Workers’ Defence Corps, composed of trade unionists, and controlled by trades councils, to protect trade union liberties against the fascisti, and calling upon the General Council to take steps to place the workers’ case before the workers in the army, navy and air forces.
• Formulation of a common programme for the whole movement (£4 a week of 44 hours), supplementary to the demands of each industry ...
• The strengthening of the relations between the General Council and the NUWCM in order to secure the realisation of the unemployed demands, as a counter to the capitalist attempt to force the unemployed into blacklegging.