Issued: 1977
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
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The past two years in Britain has witnessed the beginnings of a powerful mass upsurge in which hundreds of thousands of people all over the country – workers, women, national minorities, students, youth and intellectuals – have been drawn into various forms of rebellion and resistance against the capitalist/imperialist social system, against the tiny handful of parasites, 2 per cent of the population who own over 50 per cent of the property, who are holding on to the political power in their hands like grim death. The material basis for this excellent situation, where the people are astir while their enemies are in total disarray, is the all round and rapid disintegration of the economy which is based on importing nearly all the raw materials that are used in the industries of Britain and more than 50 per cent of the food that is consumed in the country. This re-exporting economy, as with the old imperialist world economy it is a part of, is in its final death-throes. The economic crisis in turn has given rise to the most unprecedented political, social and cultural crises. The fascist bourgeoisie of Britain, past masters at passing on the burden to the countries of the Third World, are no longer able to do so in the same old way because the countries of the Third World (the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America) led by Socialist China are today on the warpath against the evil old world of colonialism, imperialism and hegemonism that is propped up by the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union and their hangers-on such as Britain. Living on borrowed money and on borrowed time, the fascist bourgeoisie are therefore trying desperately to get out of the crisis by pushing it on to the shoulders of the people of Britain, in particular the working people, in so many ways. The past two years has therefore seen on the one hand wage restraints while on the other uncontrollable inflation, high-level of unemployment and massive cutbacks in government expenditure for public services (education, health, etc.). Large numbers of small businesses, too, have gone bankrupt. Furthermore, the whole “welfare” system is in shambles. The social-fascist “Labour” Party is now exposed as never before. The latest budget is in fact the tenth “package deal” that the “Labour” government has pushed through in three years!
Poverty stalks the land. The standard of living of the people has been reduced so drastically in so short a time. Eight to nine million low-paid workers are in dire straits. Nine million pensioners are living far below subsistence level. Already in 1975 it was estimated that five million people in Britain had less than £1.60 a week each to spend on food and that two million parents went to bed hungry so that their children could be fed. These are the raw facts of Britain – facts which are adding fuel to the indomitable fighting spirit of the people of Britain. No con-trick of the British fascist state or their agents within the working-class movement can restrain them now!
The mass upsurge in Britain is essentially of a spontaneous character. The forms vary. They are:
1. Strikes and work stoppages. Strike struggles are mainly of the unofficial type. From January to September last year, alone, there were 1,463 such actions against unemployment and for secured rights to live. The struggle involved such trades as steel, automobile, aviation, machine building, construction, coal-mining and ship building. Work stoppages against wages being restrained have also been conducted.
2. Occupations and sit-ins. They have taken place in many work-places against lay-offs and closures; in teacher-training colleges as in the massive action in the April-June period of 1976 when over 100 colleges were occupied in the struggle against unemployment; and, in the recent sit-ins and occupations in well over 30 university colleges against fee increases.
3. Marches against unemployment. Unusual in the past few decades, two such marches took place last year involving thousands of unemployed workers from various parts of Britain. One was held in February-March, last year, when the participants marched from Manchester to London, to be met by surprise attacks and arrests by the British fascist state as the thousands of marchers entered London. Not cowed by this, hundreds of young unemployed workers marched from London to Brighton to militantly denounce the annual gathering of the trade union scabs in September, last year.
4. Demonstrations. Large number of demonstrations in quick succession have taken place all over the country against the attempts of the fascist bourgeoisie to shift the burden of the crisis on to the people. The massive demonstration of November 17, last year, against the public expenditure cuts with over 60,000 participating in London is one of the biggest seen in recent times. Demonstrations have also been held against the attempts of the British fascist state to carry out a policy of planned racial murders on the one hand while promoting overt fascist organisations, such as the National Front, as a ruse.
5. Conferences, rallies and meetings. Various national conferences, rallies and-other kinds of meetings have been held to give vent to the deep anger and indignation felt by workers, women, national minorities, students, youth and intellectuals at the rapidly disintegrating situation in Britain. In all of them, the bogusness of the so-called ”Labour” Party has been exposed and the keen desire for genuine socialism have been widely expressed.
The political temper of the people in Britain is indeed rising in a revolutionary direction. As beloved Chairman Mao has said, “poverty gives rise to the desire for change, the desire for action, the desire for revolution.”
The members and supporters of the Workers’ Institute have participated actively in the midst of this spontaneous mass upsurge in Britain, resolutely upholding the PROLETARIAN REVOLUTIONARY LINE OF CHAIRMAN MAO, have worked to give orientation and leadership to these struggles – to build the Party of the proletariat in the course of struggle. In demonstration we have proudly carried the portraits, of beloved Chairman Mao, something very distinct in the political scene in Britain, to symbolically reflect the correct line. In all our activities we have waged sustained and militant battles of annihilation against the nauseating bourgeois reactionary lines peddled by the misleaders of the mass movement -the agents of the fascist bourgeoisie within the working class movement: the revisionists, the trotskyites, the trade union scabs, the social democrats and in particular the “gang of four” in the imperialist heartlands, Birch-Bains-Reakes-Evans.[1] Our comrades have widely distributed thousands of revolutionary leaflets and have engaged thousands of people from all over Britain in discussions about the excellent new stage in the world today and the tasks that communist revolutionaries in Britain must undertake at this stage in leading the revolutionary mass movement.
Basically, we have disseminated widely, in popular form, the important -scientific conclusions arrived at during the Conference on Britain held by the Institute from August 1 to 8, 1975, in London. Enthusiastically inheriting the great revolutionary tradition of the working class of Britain, the oldest section of the international proletariat, this historic Conference comprehensively summed up and dealt in depth with the question of Party building and the mass movement in Britain, integrating Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and in particular the proletarian revolutionary line of Chairman Mao to the concrete conditions of Britain. The essence of this Conference, which goes against all the reactionary lines peddled by the agents of the fascist bourgeoisie within the working-class movement, is contained in the principal guideline of the Workers” Institute: PRACTISE MARXISM, NOT REVISIONISM; UPHOLD PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM:
More explicitly, the conclusions of the historic Conference are:
ONE. Repudiating the “gang of four”, Birch-Bains-Reakes-Evans, it affirmed that the world has entered a new stage where the principal contradiction between the people of the world, including the people in the imperialist heartlands such as Britain, and the two hegemonic superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, is on the verge of being resolved. The principal aspect of this contradiction is the people of the world, in particular the people of the Third World, led by Socialist China. The method to resolve this contradiction, which influences every other contradiction, is through world people’s revolution, the victory of which will result in the establishment of the INTERNATIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT i.e. the transformation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China from national into an international one. Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line, which embodies the historic mission of the proletariat to liberate the whole of mankind, shows us that at this stage the two hegemonic superpowers which protect themselves with the military blocs, NATO and WARSAW PACT, must be dismantled so that the SOCIALIST NEW WORLD can be born and mankind can march onward to Communism. For this purpose beloved Chairman Mao has painstakingly built the three magic weapons: the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China, the heroic and invincible proletarian internationalist army under its absolute leadership, the People’s Liberation Army of China, and, the International United Front of the people of the whole world led by Socialist China. Party building in Britain can be correctly done only by upholding the authority of the Communist Party of China – the Party leading world revolution to victory.
TWO. It was affirmed that the mass movement in Britain and in other parts of the imperialist and social-imperialist heartlands is essentially of a spontaneous character. But these mass upsurges objectively merge with two other historic currents in the world: (a) the socialist revolutionary movement, in particular the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; (b) the national democratic revolutionary movement in other parts of the Third World, taking two main forms – people’s war (e.g. South East Asia, West Asia, Southern Africa) and the struggles of about 120 countries for a new international economic order. The objective merging of these three historic currents is what makes REVOLUTION THE MAIN TREND IN THE WORLD TODAY. The danger of war, arising from the rabid contention between the rapidly declining hegemonic superpowers is the dominated trend. It is therefore necessary for communists in Britain to imbue the struggling masses with this revolutionary optimistic perspective.
THREE. It was affirmed that the British state is a fascist state. In the contradiction between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism, the latter is the dominant aspect. The open terrorism on political people under the guise of “preventing” terrorism since 1974 (in the Prevention of Terrorism Act, for example) only shows clearly that the fascist bourgeoisie is aware that they are at the end of their life. The imperialist nature of the state was also noted and particular attention was drawn to the often forgotten fact that the British state is an integral part of NATO. Therefore, only in the context of the victory of world people’s revolution, with the dismantling of NATO by the People’s Liberation Army of China and the reorganisation of the world under the INTERNATIONAL DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT, can the British fascist state be destroyed and the working-class of Britain exercise leadership in everything.
Since the Conference in 1975 to build the vanguard Party of the proletariat in the course of struggle and in the midst of the masses the comrades of the Workers’ Institute, led by our Party Committee, have undertaken the unprecedented task of BUILDING A REVOLUTIONARY STABLE BASE AREA in and around Brixton, a poor and oppressed working-class area in South London. Our comrades have consciously restricted their bourgeois right and have taken to the path of self-sacrifice to politically mobilise the people in the area with the PROLETARIAN REVOLUTIONARY LINE OF CHAIRMAN MAO. Struggling against concrete manifestations of revisionism within our ranks and continuously learning from the working people we have built deep roots in the community.
When beloved Chairman Mao passed away on September 9, last year, our comrades worked tirelessly to transform our profound grief into great strength. Right in the heart of the revolutionary base area in Brixton we have opened from October 1, 1976, the MAO ZEDONG MEMORIAL CENTRE – a workers’ Centre, Library and Bookshop – the only one of its kind in the world. Thousands of working people have visited the Centre and hundreds of them have participated in the vigorous revolutionary programme (meetings, film shows, etc.) conducted by the Institute. A steady core of them are now attending regularly the Political Evening School and the theoretical study groups which popularise invincible Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought at the Centre.
This new development in Britain, has taken the British fascist state by storm. In its vain attempt to escape the verdict of history it has spared no efforts to intimidate and harass the comrades of the Institute. Arrests, expulsions from jobs, evictions, psychological warfare in various forms, etc. have not in any way restrained our comrades, workers and intellectuals, men and women, young, middle-aged and old, of different nationalities of the world, from being the devoted soldiers of beloved Chairman Mao in the imperialist heartlands. Our comrades have steeled themselves in acute and violent class struggles in the past two years. Fearing neither hardship nor death in upholding the proletarian revolutionary line of Chairman Mao and following closely our great, glorious and correct Party, the Party of World Revolution, we are preparing ourselves to greet the greatest event in the history of mankind – the victory of world people’s revolution and the establishment of the International Dictatorship of the Proletariat!
Party Committee
March 31, 1977
[1] The worker aristocrat Reg Birch leads the so-called ”Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)” and is a member of the notorious General Council of the discredited TUC. Hardial Bains is the bankrupt renegade theoretician of the so-called ”Communist Party of Canada (M-L)”, the so-called ”Communist Party of England (M-L)” and the so-called ”Communist Party of Ireland (M-L)”. The last two social-fascist parties are led by the renegades Carol Reakes and Alan Evans. These ”gang of four” viciously attack the proletarian revolutionary line of Chairman Mao and vainly challenge the revolutionary authority of our Party Central Committee in the international communist movement.