Athens Meeting 18-20 November 2005, Contribution of New CP
of Britain
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From: SolidNet, Monday, 28 November 2005
http://www.newworker.org , mailto:party@ncp.clara.net
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International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties
"Current Trends In Capitalism: Economic, Social And
Political Impact. The Communists' Alternative"
Athens, 18-20 November, 2005

Contribution of New CP of Britain

Dear Comrades,

We meet again at a time of sharpening contradictions and
the primary contradiction in the world today is between
United States imperialism and the rest of the world it
seeks to dominate. The Bush administration represents the
most reactionary and aggressive sections of the American
ruling class bent on world domination, which they call
"globalisation" and the "new world order". Supported by the
most venal and craven sections of the British ruling class
they have invaded and occupied part of Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan and Iraq and their rockets and guns threaten
Democratic Korea, Cuba, Syria, Iran, Venezuela and anyone
else who dares to stand in their way.

Ireland, Korea, Cyprus and Kashmir remain partitioned. The
Palestinian Arabs remain under Zionist occupation and
imperialist forces straddle the world with their arsenals
and fleets. But wherever there is oppression there is
always resistance. The dreams of Anglo-American imperialism
are turning into dust on the streets of Iraq as the heroic
Iraqi partisans move from resistance to attack. The Cuban
and Venezuelan peoples have mobilised to defend their
freedom.

The remaining bastions of socialism, People's China,
Democratic Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos stand firm
politically and economically while the capitalist world
sinks into decadence and economic stagnation. And in the
developed capitalist world, the imperialist heartlands of
North America and Western Europe millions of working people
are now demanding change. Oppressed sections from France's
ethnic minorities have taken to the streets in open
rebellion. A massive anti-war movement has arisen to
challenge the neo-colonialist conspiracies of the ruling
circles in Britain and the United States and millions of
European workers voted to reject the proposed new EU
constitution this year.

In Britain Prime Minister Tony Blair's iron grip on the
Labour Party was broken this November with a back-bench
revolt in Parliament against repressive anti-terrorism
plans that put a brake on those sinister forces that want
to take us towards a police state. Forty-nine Labour MPs
took the principled stand, to oppose new "anti-terror"
legislation who together with the Tories, Liberal Democrats
and other opposition parties were enough to inflict a
stunning defeat on the Blairites.

When a Labour Government seeks to give the police draconian
new powers including the right to hold suspects for up to
three months without trial and the Tory leader becomes a
champion of civil rights, you know there must be something
deeply rotten in the heart of the Labour Party.

It is, of course, Tony Blair, and his "New Labour" clique
who serve the most reactionary elements of the ruling
class.

Blair's credibility had already been weakened by the
resignation of one-time favourite David Blunkett, following
new allegations that he violated the ministerial code of
conduct. Blunkett, who resigned last year under a similar
cloud, is gone for good. Blair, hopefully, will soon
follow.

Dissent is now, at last, emerging within the Cabinet and
from the most unexpected quarters. Deputy premier John
Prescott has come out against new Blair plans to further
privatise education; others have forced the Government to
drop plans to transfer hundreds of thousands of health
service jobs into the private sector and the Government has
retreated over public sector pensions..

Blair is going before the next election but he refuses to
name a day. But every day his power over his Cabinet and
the parliamentary Labour Party recedes as members of his
own "New Labour" clique gravitate around the bloc led by
Chancellor Gordon Brown. For his part, Brown wants a
seamless succession to avoid a formal Labour election that
would force him to make promises to the unions to secure
their votes that he wouldn't want to keep if he gets the
top job. But the succession is not entirely in Brown's
power nor is he the only alternative to Blair within the
Cabinet.

Blair can only be forced out by a vote of no-confidence
from his own Cabinet or a demand for an election by 20 per
cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party. A Cabinet defeat is
extremely unlikely and to get 20 per cent of the Labour
bloc in Parliament means getting 70 MPs to move for an
election, which is difficult but not impossible these days.

At the moment the hunt is for a credible candidate to test
the waters in essence a Labour backbencher with nothing to
lose who can bag the 70 votes to trigger the contest in the
hope that bigger guns will enter the fray once the race is
on. This was the way Margaret Thatcher was ousted back in
1990.

Calls for a "stalking horse" challenge are growing amongst
Labour's backbenchers. Many Labour MPs fear that Labour
will be hammered in next year's local elections if Blair is
still at the helm. Some former ministers may be persuaded
to throw their hats into the ring and the Labour
Representation Committee parliamentary group, which our
Party is affiliated to, is also considering mounting a
challenge if no one else does.

There's little in it for the pro-European wing of the
ruling class. Brown has never been keen on greater European
integration within the European Union and he's certainly no
supporter of the Euro. Their only hope is that Blair's
successor will be less subservient to Washington and more
willing to co-ordinate foreign policy with Germany and
France and more susceptible to pressure from the pro-EU
element within the unions and the ruling class.

Kenneth Clarke's defeat in the first round of the
Conservative Party leadership race showed that the
overwhelming majority of Tory MPs are as Euro-sceptic as
ever. It is also clear that most of them approve of the
Blair-Bush axis. The war-party represents the most venal
and aggressive sections of the ruling class and it is no
wonder that they should be well represented amongst the
ranks of the party that has been their political wing for
the greater part of the last century.

Peace remains the central issue. The labour and peace
movement must maintain the fight to bring about the
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all British
troops from Iraq. At the same time it must mobilise to stop
Blair or whoever takes his place from spending more
billions on the needless and useless replacement of the
Trident nuclear weapons system.

Capitalism, which only exists to ensure that a tiny elite
of exploiters and oppressors can live the lives of Roman
emperors, has long plundered and exploited the masses of
the Third World. Now it has to increasingly turn the screws
on its own domestic working class by attempting to take
back the gains made by organised labour in the latter part
of the 20th century to increase the overall rate of profit
and finance the global imperialist war-machine.

Capitalism is in deep crisis. It cannot solve the problems
of the millions of working people whose labour it exploits
but it always seeks to divert the masses to perpetuate its
rule. Throughout Europe we are witnessing the "creeping
fascism" of the bourgeoisie who couple their attacks on
working class rights and living standards with tactics that
seek to scapegoat asylum-seekers, religious and ethnic
minorities and immigrants to divide and weaken the working
class. Civil liberties and rights that had been taken for
granted for decades are being stripped away as the forces
of repression are granted more and more powers of arrest
and detention. At the same time they encourage the bogus
theories of personal freedom, bourgeois democracy and the
illusions of social-democracy as an alternative to
scientific socialism. In the 1970s it was called
Euro-communism. In the 1990s it was the "Third Way". Now it
is the "European Left Party".

The "European Left Party" is a bloc of revisionists, left
social-democrats and trotskyists that specifically rejects
Marxism-Leninism, which it calls "Stalinism", while
claiming to be the heirs of the European communist
movement. What they are the heirs to is the revisionist
ideas that destroyed the mass parties of Italy and France
and provided the ideological cover for the traitors who
brought down the Soviet Union and the European socialist
camp. They elevate parliamentarianism and bourgeois
democracy. But bourgeois democracy is democracy for the
exploiters and dictatorship in all but a formal sense for
the exploited. Bourgeois elections, when they are held, are
used so that the smallest number of people can manipulate
the maximum number of votes.

Communists proceed from the principles of proletarian
internationalism, peace and friendship among the peoples.
The Paris Communards fired the first shots and paved the
way to progress. The Great October Revolution lit the torch
that still burns in Asia and the Caribbean. The Communist
Parties of Europe and Asia were the centre of the
resistance to fascism during the Second World War and the
Soviet Union led by Stalin played the decisive role in the
defeat of Hitler and Hirohito. The international communist
movement led by Lenin and Stalin lit the flames of
revolution in Africa, Asia and Latin America and inspired
the independence movements that broke the chains of
colonial slavery.

We believe that while calls for the re-establishment of a
formal Communist International are premature, a
co-ordinated international communist response is needed to
rally working people against the imperialists and
oppressors. We must work to restore the momentum for
revolutionary change; strengthen co-operation and united
action with communist and workers parties around the world;
build solidarity with the global anti-war movement and
forces for liberation in the Third World to unite the class
and march towards a new tomorrow the world Marx and Engels
predicted and a world that will surely come to pass.

Andy Brooks
General Secretary