17.10.1996

Waging the class struggle

From the Workers’ Weekly, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, October 12 1926

Just before our Congress opens the new situation created by the eventful days of May is convincingly demonstrated at two conferences representing labour and capital respectively: on the one hand the conference of the mineowners’ party, the Tory Party, and on the other hand the delegate conference of the Miners Federation of Great Britain ...

The mineowners are fighting the cause of the capitalist class as a whole ... On the other hand, the miners are fighting the cause of all workers in this country.

Their victory will check the offensive of capital. Their defeat will let loose the forces of reaction.

... What were the most important features of the Tory conference? ... The present situation of British capital found its expression in the speech made by the prime minister, ‘honest’ Stanley Baldwin ...

Baldwin admitted that, had the General Strike “been successful, it would have overridden the constitutional government of the country.” In other words Baldwin understands the great potentialities of the General Strike ...

The great lesson of the General Strike, as well as that of the recent conference of the Tories, consists in the fact that the greatest pillar of the dominant classes at this stage of the decline of British capitalism is the bureaucracy of the Labour Party and of the trade union movement ...

Baldwin openly said to his conference that he knew that, in his fight against the General Strike, he had the tacit support of the leaders of the Labour Party. He only reproached them for not supporting him openly ...

Big fights are ahead, but let us not forget that our forthcoming conference will be the first Congress when our Party begins to function as a mass party.

We have succeeded during these weeks of the new epoch in our class struggle in recruiting more fighters than we obtained during the previous five years of our existence.

The new six or seven thousand members who have entered our ranks are only the vanguard of the great masses of workers who have begun to reconsider their whole previous attitude and are becoming more convinced every day that the reformist leadership in all its forms and shades means treason and defeat ...

To bring home the lessons of the General Strike, to give expression to the new tendencies among the workers, to strengthen the vanguard of the working class - these are the duties of our Party Congress.

R Stewart