22.06.1995

The BSP and the Labour Party conference

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, June 17 1920

THE ANNUAL conference of the Labour Party will be the occasion of severe, and perhaps furious, struggle between the left and right wings of the workers’ political movement ... Social patriots and pure and simple parliamentarians will be vigorously challenged by the BSP, representing the communist left ...

To a resolution ... the BSP moves to add:

“At the same time the conference warns the workers that ... even the formation of a Labour government will not advance the workers’ cause unless the political action of Labour is consciously and deliberately revolutionary. The conference therefore urges the local Labour Parties to adopt only candidates who pledge themselves to use the political weapon as a means of more vigorously urging the revolutionary class struggle and establishing the dictatorship of the workers, and ultimately overthrowing the capitalist system.”

...The administrative machinery for the realisation of this creative task is indicated by an amendment standing in the name of the BSP.

The amended resolution reads:

“That this Labour Party conference instructs the national executive to negotiate with ... the TUC ... to aim at the realisation of communism by establishing the undivided rule of the workers in place of that of the landlord and capitalist classes, and by reorganising the state on the basis of the transfer of all public power to workers’ councils directly elected by the rank and file and amenable to their direct control.”