Vol. 72/No. 20      May 19, 2008

“The British rulers are not confident that the government of Gordon Brown is a reliable instrument, either at home or in their wars abroad,” said Jonathan Silberman, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist League in the United Kingdom and one of the panelists at the meeting. “Worried that Brown will be unable to carry through the kinds of assaults the rulers need, a number are concluding that David Cameron’s Tory party is a better option for them. Working people, facing rising prices and economic uncertainty, are also turning away from voting Labour. The May 1 election for mayor of London is most of all about these national issues.”

As real incomes continue to decline, said Silberman, protests by working people will grow. “Communists are a part of such resistance,” he said. Days later, Crawford and her campaign supporters joined picket lines of thousands of teachers and civil servants striking over pay.

Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for vice president of the United States, and Ben Joyce, a Young Socialist in New York, shared the platform with Silberman. Crawford cochaired the event together with Alex Xezonakis, a YS member in Britain.

Kennedy and Joyce were on the London leg of a tour that also took them to Edinburgh, Scotland, and Stockholm, Sweden. In the three cities they spoke to high school classes, and to workers at plant gates. They also participated in social protest actions, including a demonstration by restaurant workers in London demanding an end to raids and deportations and a conference by Somali immigrants in Sweden against government harassment. Kennedy was interviewed by BBC radio.

At the London meeting, Kennedy spoke about the class struggle in the United States, including upcoming May Day marches for legalization of undocumented immigrants and protests by truckers against rising fuel prices. She outlined the main proposals that she and Róger Calero, her presidential running mate, were putting forward as the economic crisis deepens and the imperialist wars spread.

Joyce, who is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress in New York’s 7th District, described the openings for the campaign on campuses, where “hundreds of students have engaged in discussion with the socialist candidates.” Joyce described a class at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, where he is a student, at which Kennedy addressed 60 students, the majority of them first- or second-generation immigrants. The discussion centered on the candidate’s views on war and the economy, Joyce reported.  
 
Economic crisis, imperialist war
Silberman said that capitalism is in “the deepest and most significant financial and economic crisis in decades. The prospect is decades of instability and volatility that in years to come will see production plummet, massive long-term unemployment, and bouts of ruinous price explosions.

“It’s insecurity about what tomorrow holds in store that opens workers to a class struggle alternative,” he said.

Silberman pointed to the difficulties just announced by the Royal Bank of Scotland, the second biggest, and most indebted, bank in the United Kingdom. “This is just the latest in a litany of banking failures and write-downs that have hit banks and financial institutions in North America and Europe.”

Silberman said that the imperialist coalition’s military progress through the “surge” of troops in Iraq “opens up the possibility of greater stability for capitalist exploitation there. This is what the ‘surge’ has been all about: combining military might and brutality with a political course aimed at getting forces in Iraq to lead.”

Silberman noted that Washington, London, and other imperialist powers are pursuing the same course in Afghanistan. “NATO forces are in it for the long haul. They’re rebuilding an Afghan army,” he said. “Gen. Richard Dannatt, Britain’s Chief of the General Staff, forecasts a ‘generation of conflict.’” In 1998, the British government projected a military strategy of “go first, go fast, go home.” In contrast, “Dannatt says, ‘go strong, go long,’” said Silberman.

“Parliament is providing the infrastructure and materiel to make this possible, including Apache helicopters and hundreds of a new generation of purposed-built armored vehicles,” Silberman added.

Participants peppered the speakers with questions during a lively discussion period.

“Are the prospects different from in the Great Depression?” asked a worker of Nigerian origin.

“In the 1930s mass Stalinist parties had enough power and influence to betray revolutionary upsurges,” said Silberman. “But these parties are a shadow of their former selves since the collapse of the Stalinist apparatuses in the opening of the 1990s.”

The following day the discussion continued in meetings of volunteers in the Pathfinder Printing Project, the Young Socialists, and members and friends of the Communist League.  
 
 
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