http://themilitant.com/2017/8116/811658.html
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Vol. 81/No. 16 April 24 2017
BY TONY HUNT
MANCHESTER, England — When Peter Clifford knocked on his door in the
Gorton neighborhood here April 1 to introduce his party, the Communist
League, Dave Evans said he would like to elect a government that “can
make some reforms.”
“The problem workers face around the world is not ‘bad’ governments that
resist changes, but that we face the rule of the capitalist class and
the effects of the crisis of their social and economic system,” Clifford
told him.
“As the bosses and their politicians sharpen their attacks on working
people, we need a discussion to chart a course forward in the direction
of a struggle by millions to take power,” Clifford said, “and put in
power a government of working people.”
Clifford, a 61-year-old meat worker, is the Communist League candidate
in two May 4 elections, for mayor of Greater Manchester and for Member
of Parliament for the Manchester Gorton constituency.
Val Evans, Dave’s wife, said she joined the Labour Party, believing
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership would lead to change, but had become
disillusioned and left. Clifford showed them Are They Rich Because
They’re Smart? by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist
Workers Party, the Communist League’s sister party in the U.S. She said
that when she worked as a caregiver, her manager had asked, “Why don’t
you become a supervisor, you’re intelligent,” implying that the other
carers were stupid, and that she could rise above them, like her.
The couple decided to get Are They Rich Because They’re Smart, as well
as The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record and Is Socialist Revolution
in the US Possible? They’re interested in joining Communist League
members in an extended weekend of campaigning over the Easter holiday.
‘Brexit is a mess’
One of the biggest political questions being discussed and debated is
what “Brexit” will mean for working people. The country’s rulers are
negotiating the break with European Union leaders with a deadline of
April 2019.
“Brexit is a mess,” Watson Muzamh told Clifford. “You wouldn’t buy a
house if you hadn’t seen it,” he said, quoting former Labour Party
leader Anthony Blair, an opponent of the U.K. breaking from the EU. “But
both the U.K. house and the EU house are coming apart,” Clifford said,
“and workers across Europe are paying the price.”
Muzamh told Clifford about the conditions he faces as a “self-employed”
contract worker at Fedex. He pays a financial penalty if he’s sick and
the bosses have to find a replacement worker. “We need a union,” he said.
This is a big issue for working people. The number of self-employed
workers has risen sharply. In October 2016 there were 4.75 million out
of a total U.K. workforce of some 32 million. This unorganized section
of the working class is saddled with lower pay and loss of hard-won
protections.
“Labour is not my party any more,” Ann Driscoll told CL campaigners Dag
Tirsén and Hugo Wils. “All the parties are interested in Brexit, but
they’re not interested in what the people were after when they voted for
it.”
She said she voted for the rupture because EU membership meant “letting
immigrants in and giving them preferential treatment for housing over
British people.”
“All workers have to stand together, immigrants and British, women and
men,” Tirsén responded. “That can unite the working class. It’s the road
to build strong trade unions that fight not only for their own members
but for all the oppressed and exploited.”
After talking it out, Driscoll agreed. “Yes we have to unite all of us,”
she said.
Philippe Delcloque, a French citizen married to a Kenyan, was concerned
they could both be deported post-Brexit. He’s a Labour Party supporter.
Clifford explained that the Brexit vote, like the election of Donald
Trump in the U.S., was the result of workers looking for a way to
protest against the conditions they face, the attacks of the bosses and
their governments, and looking for a sharp change.
“Those workers won’t support deportations of fellow workers,” he said.
Delcloque took out a subscription to the Militant after hearing about
how the paper covers and supports the Cuban Revolution.
The Communist League calls for workers to fight for a government-funded
public works program to address joblessness and build homes, hospitals
and schools, as well as tackling crumbling infrastructure. This can help
to overcome divisions imposed on the working class between employed and
unemployed, and between British-born — and long-time British resident
immigrants — and foreign-born workers.
Naila Fahad was interested in this when Clifford knocked on her door.
“What can we do?” she said. “Isn’t Labour for the workers?”
“It will take a struggle to implement a public works program,” Clifford
told her. “The idea isn’t to make capitalism ‘fairer,’ but to strengthen
the working class on the road to replacing it. Labour claims it can make
dog-eat-dog capitalism better, but that’s impossible.”
“The Communist League presents a working-class perspective in contrast
to all the other parties — from Labour to the Conservatives. They all
seek to prop up capitalist rule over a declining Britain and the little
left of its empire,” Clifford said. “The Communist League wants to
organize the working class to fight to take political power.”
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