Vol. 81/No. 9 March 6, 2017
UK: Communist League says workers need political power
The Communist League is presenting a working-class perspective in contrast to all the other parties — from Labour to the Tories. All these parties seek to prop up capitalist rule over a declining Britain and the little left of its empire.
League members found workers they talked to in Huddersfield have counterposed views about the shooting. While many angrily condemned the police, several supported them. “He had a gun in the car,” Shaw, a self-employed landscaper, told Clifford. “So he had it coming.” Shaw was repeating the cops’ story, which the pro-police media coupled with a smear campaign against Yaqub.
After further discussion on both the facts of the killing and the character of the cops as a tool to protect the capitalist rulers and their property, Shaw changed his mind.
“The killing of Yassar was part of the attack on all workers’ rights,” Clifford said. “I should know that, coming from Ireland,” responded Shaw, who decided to get a subscription to the Militant.
“I don’t know if he had a gun or not, but even so they shouldn’t have killed him,” Damian Rhodes, who works as a bricklayer, told Clifford.
“I don’t believe you can change the police.” Clifford said. “The police are a vital prop for the wealthy rulers. We need to build a working-class movement of millions to make a revolution replacing capitalism and end the way the police are used against working people.”
Later Clifford joined in a lively, youthful “Justice for Yassar” protest of about 100 people in the town center. He called for the prosecution of the cops involved in the shooting.
Forging unity among working people comes up frequently in discussions on the doorstep. Eric Abone, a computer worker in Little Hulton, asked Clifford and Communist League member Andrés Mendoza what they thought of Labour Party candidate Andrew Burnham, who has called for curbs on immigration.
“The idea that immigrants are taking jobs, housing etc., that’s a dead end for the working class. It divides us when we need unity,” Clifford said. “Burnham is a capitalist politician, which means he seeks to take our eyes off the source of the attacks on working people — the capitalist bosses.” This was the second time the two Communist League members visited Abone. He got a copy of The Clinton’s Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working People on the first visit and a subscription to the Militant on the second.
On Jan. 14 David Icke, a well-known conspiracy theorist, brought his “World Wide Wake Up Tour” to the O2 Apollo theatre here. He addressed a sellout crowd for over 12 hours peddling Jew-hatred, including among other notions the myth that “Rothschild Zionists” control the world.
Clifford wrote to the Manchester Jewish Representative Council in the name of the Communist League “to publicly register our opposition to what was to all intents an anti-Semitic rally. We express our solidarity with the Jewish people.” Michael Rubinstein responded for the JRC, expressing “gratitude for your message of support.”
“Jew-hatred is a deadly threat to the working class,” Clifford said. “Those who spew this filth aim to protect capitalist rule, scapegoating Jews as the cause of the crisis hitting workers and ruining middle-class layers, not the capitalist system itself.”
There is hysteria in the middle-class left in the U.K. at the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, mimicking similar hysteria in like-minded groups in the States. An online petition here opposing a “state” visit for Trump because “it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen” has garnered over 1.8 million signatures. British Prime Minister Theresa May invited Trump for a state visit — the kind that entails royal hoopla — as part of efforts to solidify the two imperialist powers’ “special relationship” as the British rulers head toward Brexit.
Thousands attended demonstrations across the U.K. Feb. 20 to “Stand up to Trump.” The actions have been marked by British nationalism, Clifford told the Militant. “If Trump has a state visit, I think it will make our country look bad,” student Sara Sharp told the Independent at the action that day in London.
“Those clamoring about Trump’s visit celebrate ‘our’ — i.e. British — values. But there is no ‘we,’” Clifford said. “There are two classes — the working class and the propertied rulers — with opposite class interests.
“The capitalist class here rules by divide and conquer. They keep foreign-born workers as second-class citizens to superexploit them, just like their U.S. counterparts,” he said. “They try to pit us against each other.” In a BBC Radio Manchester interview, Clifford was asked if he would back the call to bar Trump from the U.K. “I wouldn’t turn out to welcome him, but I wouldn’t back a ban on him coming here,” Clifford said. “I would challenge him to a debate. Trump got elected by appealing directly to working people facing American ‘carnage.’ Trump’s goal is to save U.S. capitalism.
“We need a movement of millions of workers to make a revolution to end capitalism,” he said.
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