26.09.1996

Five communists’ message

From the Workers’ Weekly, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, September 24 1926

The government chose an appropriate moment to imprison us and our comrades ... Satisfied by the action of the Liverpool conference that the official labour movement was safe in the hands of middle class opportunists, the attack was launched on the Communist Party ... In returning to take up our share in the struggle, we consider it our duty to express quite clearly how we see the situation ...

The two great outstanding facts, facts that must be burned into the mind of every worker, are the distinct roles that were played by the workers and their leaders during the historic period of May 3 - 12 ...

It was class confronting class, and the workers were not dismayed ... They were ready to face the struggle and its consequences. But the leaders! While the workers exhibited a solidarity and courage that is an inspiration to every fighter in the movement, the leadership was the last word in meanness, cowardice and treachery.

What is the cause of this glaring contrast? It is because the leaders, following the policy of ‘collaboration with the employers’, have become the shameless agents of capitalism ...

We must face the fact that the officialdom of the trade unions, guided and influenced by the middle class leadership of the Labour Party, do not believe in prosecuting the class struggle ...

But the response of the masses to the attack on the miners came as a thunderbolt to Baldwin and the bureaucrats. The question of wages became a question of power. The issue became the defeat of the workers or the defeat of the capitalist government. Terrified by this alternative and the consequences it suggested, a complete and unconditional capitulation was made by the leaders, including the so-called ‘lefts’ ...

For many years the Communist Party has advocated “More power to the General Council” ... The struggle to give more power to the General Council must go hand in hand with the struggle to change the leadership. A change in leadership has become an urgent necessity ...

Our Party will go forward with its fight for membership and leadership of the Labour Party ... The growing intensity of class struggle ... is forcing the masses to realise the need for a new revolutionary policy - and this will inevitably entail the acceptance of a revolutionary leadership such as only the Communist Party can give...

The need of the workers is for a real Labour government, which will fight for the workers against the capitalists.

W Gallacher, Wal Hannington, Albert Inkpin, Harry Pollitt, W Rust