Our attention was recently brought to a disgusting editorial penned by Communist Party of Britain (CPB) general secretary Robert Griffiths for the Morning Star on 1 May, in the run-up to the local elections. (The overwhelming defeat of the Tories must be our top priority at the local elections)
Justifying support for imperialist Labour
Amongst its many profundities, it contained this contradictory statement:
“Disgusting though Starmer’s pro-Israeli genocide, pro-Nato, pro-nuclear rearmament policies are, even they do not represent a fundamental departure from Labour’s traditionally pro-US, pro-imperialist standpoint which has been in place since 1924, when Ramsay MacDonald ordered the aerial gassing of Iraqi villages.
“Although millions are repelled by the industrial slaughter in Gaza, an all-round anti-imperialist consciousness has yet to develop on a mass scale. People want to inflict a defeat on the Tories on 2 May and then sweep them out with the rubbish at the general election.”
So the CPB ‘recognises’ that the Labour party has always been imperialist, but advises its followers to stick with it nevertheless because an ‘all-round anti-imperialist consciousness has not yet developed’! The question of what role a communist party is supposed to play in speeding up the process of this much-needed development is left unanswered.
After admitting that huge numbers of voters have already abandoned Labour and the bourgeois electoral process, Griffiths skates over the true meaning of this important phenomenon, which reflects the increasing poverty and alienation of the mass of poor workers and indicates a deep well of anger.
Instead of addressing the question of how to give leadership to this growing section of impoverished and angry workers, Griffiths turns his attention to those (mainly privileged, labour-aristocratic) members of the working class who do still vote, saying:
“Despite Starmer’s backsliding, U-turns and betrayals, millions of working-class people will be voting for the only alternative party of central government come the general election.
“Are we with those millions or against them?”
So the logic is this. Forget the fact that Labour doesn’t represent the interests of the mass of the poor workers and they know it. Forget the fact that the Labour party is imperialist to its core and a vital social prop of imperialism amongst the working class. There are many people who call themselves ‘socialists’ (but who in reality, thanks to Griffiths and his ilk, don’t actually know what the word means) and who still identify with the Labour party and vote for it. Therefore we must be ‘with them’ by agreeing with and continuing to promote the myth that a Labour election victory would be ‘better than the Tories’.
Racist and social chauvinist to the core
Ask anyone from an oppressed country whether British imperialism changed its behaviour when the state had a Labour government in place and the answer is a resounding ‘No!’ But Griffiths wants his readers to think that such matters as criminal wars and plundering abroad are secondary and of no real significance to workers in Britain.
The whole article is saturated with such self-satisfied and chauvinistic formulations, all implying not only that British workers in general only really care about ‘domestic’ issues, but that this is somehow natural and inevitable. Once again, the role of communist leadership in helping workers connect the dots between austerity at home and imperialist aggression abroad – both of which are impelled by the deep global capitalist crisis of overproduction – is ignored.
The masses don’t realise these things are connected so there’s no point trying to make such issues central to our election campaigning. Don’t you see?
Of course, we know why the corporate media and politicians encourage this view. And we know that the realities of life in an imperialist country – the imperialist control of the mass media and the hefty social bribes – contribute to the phenomenon. But to reinforce this rather than challenging it, and to do so at a time when so many workers are finally waking up to the reality of the connection between their situation and the crimes our rulers commit when plundering abroad, is not just lagging behind the curve and hanging at the tail of the movement – it is positively criminal.
Says Griffiths: “The Communist party’s view, confirmed at its 57th congress last November, is that a Labour victory is preferable to a Tory victory. While guaranteeing nothing without a struggle, it would nonetheless raise people’s morale, confidence and demands.”
How exactly swapping ultra-zionist servant of Anglo-American imperialism Keir Starmer for ultra-zionist servant of Anglo-American imperialism Rishi Sunak as the CEO in charge of austerity and war is supposed to ‘boost people’s confidence’, Griffiths does not explain. Especially given the fact that the trade unions under a Labour government will be even more quiescent than they are now thanks to their absolute loyalty to the party.
It is simply taken as read. Another one of those things that ‘everybody knows’ and which therefore doesn’t have to be proved.
Revolutionary leadership desperately needed as the crisis deepens
This type of snivelling, social-democratic, parliamentary cretinism is precisely what has turned the much of the world communist movement into an irrelevance over the last 70 years. The working class needs tailist, Labour-promoting charlatans who brandish a red flag and intersperse their writings with the odd quotation from Lenin like it needs a hole in the head.
What we actually need is unashamedly revolutionary leadership that can help the masses to break all political and organisational links with the Labour party – which has long been an integral part of the imperialist establishment and state machinery – at every level. We need leadership that inspires workers with confidence in their collective power and which aims to exponentially increase that power by connecting it with the profound guidance and programme of socialist science.
Not that you would know it by reading the ritual resolutions and editorials of the CPB, but the world has entered a new era of revolutionary upheavals. With the overproduction crisis deepening by the day, a third world war is already raging openly in eastern Europe and the middle east, while preparations for a ‘third front’ are rapidly advancing in east Asia. All around the world, oppressed peoples are taking heart from the battlefield reversals of the USA and its Nato allies and proxy forces. From the Sahel to Gaza to Haiti and beyond, popular movements to break the imperialist stranglehold are taking up arms.
There is a very real prospect that if handled correctly, the coming period could see the workers and oppressed peoples inflict a decisive defeat on the entire global imperialist system. At such a time, what is needed in every country is the development of the forces that will ensure the success of this effort. What we need in Britain is not a Labour government but the development of the British front in the worldwide anti-imperialist Axis of Resistance.
We will certainly not solve the problems of the British working class by changing the make-up of the parliamentary circus, but we can and should help to deepen and exacerbate the political crisis of the ruling class, which is a bitter enemy to workers everywhere. One small contribution to this might come from disrupting the smooth functioning of the British parliament. Another aspect is contained in the ongoing exposure of the criminality of our ‘elected representatives’ to growing numbers of workers in Britain.
The mass movement for Palestine is the most important social phenomenon in Britain for decades. It must be strengthened on every level and every effort made to inject its adherents with an understanding of the driving factor behind the crimes being committed in Gaza, which did not start last October and are not unique to zionist Israel. Every attempt must be made to widen the demands of this movement, which is already starting to look not only at the zionist colony but at the whole edifice of imperialism which stands behind it.
This movement is providing an opportunity to connect a growing number of awakening workers with the truth about imperialism: that it operates at home as well as abroad; that it profiteers from privatising our social services and pushing down our wages and conditions as well as from the arms industry, the suppression of peoples and the looting of their resources abroad.
We call on all workers to put burying Labour – the main agent of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement – and all its ‘left-wing’ hangers-on, at the heart of this election.
For the first time in living memory there is a nationwide opportunity to use our parliamentary votes in a way that could disrupt the smooth workings of imperialism.
We should campaign widely amongst the electorate to refuse to vote for genocide-enablers from any of the main parties. And to refuse to vote also for any of the cretins who continue to support the Labour party ‘from the left’.
We should help the campaigns of – and give our votes to – Workers party or independent candidates who are anti-genocide, anti-Nato and anti-Labour. Those of us who don’t have a suitable candidate standing in our own constituency will certainly have an independent campaigning nearby.
No votes for genocide-enablers or Nato warmongers!
No votes for the Labour party or any of its hangers-on!
End the genocide! Free Palestine! Victory to the resistance!
