10.10.1996

The biggest job

From the Workers’ Weekly, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, October 8 1926

The Labour Party conference meets under conditions which are a test of its ability and desire to express the will of the working class.

The miners are being hard pressed. No resolutions on a living wage can help them. The correct programme for the next Labour government is irrelevant if the Labour Party does not throw its weight into the struggle now.

We know about the half-hearted 11th-hour campaign which has been undertaken - a campaign in which the struggle is being presented purely as a miners’ affair, in which the plain truth has not been told that the organised labour movement has not done all that it could on behalf of the miners; in which the levy and the embargo has not been advocated.

The rank and file at Margate must say plainly that this type of campaign is of little use. It must demand the flooding of the weak areas by Labour MPs and propagandists. It must make the campaign in the main industrial centres hinge around the question of the levy and the embargo, and must seek to mobilise working class effort behind the demand for the resignations of the present government.

Unless that is done, the conference will be a failure.

The left wing at the conference must not hesitate to fight for this policy and for the complete reversal of the policy of Liverpool.

The working class spirit is rising. The workers are in no mood for the cowardly temporisings of the right wing. The left wing at the conference must express that spirit and force the conference to do its duty.