05.12.1996

Where the miners stand now

From the Workers’ Weekly, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, December 31 1926

During the seven months’ struggle of the miners (in which the General Strike is included) Evan Williams, the chairman of the Coalowners Association, might well repeat the famous phrase of the French monarch, Louis XIV: “The state? - I am the state.”

The only difference between Louis and Evan Williams is that Williams became the state not through any accident of birth, but simply because he was the head of the section of the employing class who undertook to carry through the general capitalist programme - to lower the standards of the workers.

Properly understood, this fact has but one meaning: that industrial fights in present-day Britain cannot be treated as ‘industrial’ in the narrow sense of the word. Even in the struggle to keep the gains of the past the working class will have against them the full power of the state.

For the constitution is nothing else but the traditions and laws which the capitalists have accepted or passed for the purpose of safeguarding themselves against the workers...

In the second place, if at any time the struggle reaches a stage for which the constitution does not provide them with sharp enough weapons, the capitalists do not hesitate to suspend the vaunted constitution and to substitute for it an arbitrary rule. For seven months now the constitution has been suspended and the country has been ‘governed’ (ie, the miners and the rest of the working class have been put under a reign of terror) by police officials and magistrates, acting through the Emergency Provisions Act.

To the EPA the workers must now respond by building their own emergency powers, and by preparing and organising these long beforehand ... From now onwards there must be built up workers’ defence corps in every locality. New struggles lie ahead. New methods must be found...

Today talk of conciliation and arbitration can mean but one thing: the perpetuation and conservation of the capitalist system. But the preservation of the capitalist system in Great Britain would mean the permanent degradation of the workers...

Not only is there no future prosperity in capitalism for the workers, but trade union leaders who peddle these dreams must be given the sack...

“The Communist Party and the Minority Movement still believe in the General Strike. The Labour Party looks with confidence to the general election.” Such was the closing section of the Labour Party chairman’s speech at Margate.

But the various methods of struggle must not be distinguished in this way, shut off from one another in separate compartments ... Parliamentary elections ... have an importance which it is folly to overlook...

But it is equal folly to think that the parliamentary system is either the only weapon or to think that by this means the working class can be emancipated...

There has not yet been an opportunity of seeing a working class majority in the House of Commons and the House of Lords attempting a working class policy...

What is necessary is to combine the various methods of struggle; the full use of all legal possibilities, together with the application of all forms of direct action, whether they are legal or illegal.

What of the General Strike? The General Strike is not only an event which happened last May, from which we can learn much of the methods and forms of working class action. It is a stage on the road to revolution, a stage that is bound to be reached again, perhaps several times. It is not the final stage.

The General Strike alone, with the workers all unarmed and defenceless ... will never suffice to break the dictatorship of the capitalists...

The concentration of the masses behind the slogans and the banners of the Communist Party is the only way to impede the victorious march of reactionaries and to organise the workers for victory...

Already in this country we have entered upon a new stage of struggle. The General Strike and the seven months’ lockout are a turning point in British history.

Already - inconceivably sooner than was expected - the workers of this country have caught a glimpse of the preparations and the equipment of the bourgeoisie, of how they are armed to the teeth against revolution, and that glimpse is not easily to be forgotten...

In this new stage of the class struggle the daily struggle for bread is transformed into a struggle for power.