11.07.1996

Don’t apologise - fight!

From the Workers’ Weekly, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, July 9 1926

We print elsewhere the General Council’s apology for its conduct during the General Strike. The whole apology is based upon the absurd assumption that the other unions were assisting the miners out of sympathy and that the miners might have been more grateful for the other workers’ sacrifice.

The other unions were not assisting the miners out of sympathy. They were beating back the first phase of an offensive directed against the miners as a preliminary to being directed against other sections of the workers.

If the General Strike is viewed against this background the explanations of the General Council are seen to be nonsense ...

The General Council is still being tested. The workers are waiting for a lead against the capitalist offensive. The General Council is expected to make a stand against wage reductions and lengthening of hours. It is expected to force the Labour Party to do the same. It is expected to organise victory for the miners by calling for the embargo and by organising better international assistance through the calling of a meeting of the Anglo-Russian Committee to discuss ways and means of ensuring this.

The nature of the capitalist offensive is now being realised. We are faced with the need not to display our sympathy with the miners but with a struggle for working class self-preservation.

Will the General Council fail a second time?