We need our own collective voice: a fighting working class party!

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
11 July 2017

A month after May’s election debacle, all the chatter inside the Westminster bubble is about whether May will resign or whether she will be sacked.
    May herself, on the other hand, is busy trying to counter the Tories' tribal rivalries and their overbidding, by looking for support and suggestions from other parties (that is, other than the DUP!) - or, at least, this is what she says.
    As to Corbyn, he keeps demanding a new general election.  But what for?  To gain a majority for the same unreconstructed Blairites who keep throwing banana skins under his feet?
    Either way, what the main parties have to offer, is irrelevant to the problems faced by the working class.  As if a different prime minister, or even a completely new set of MPs, could make any difference in the real world!
    What would they actually do to alleviate the chronic housing crisis, rising inflation, inadequate wages, ever-growing numbers of casual non-jobs, the collapse of the NHS or damage caused by social budget cuts?
    And what about the cost of Brexit?  Even if it doesn't happen at all, workers will still have to carry on paying for the current capitalist crisis.  But if Brexit does happen, another big bill will be presented to the working class.  Because no way will the bosses’ politicians ask them to pay for the political mess they’ve made.

The problem is their profit system

Of course, the problems of the working class are not just caused by "bad policies".  They are caused by the system itself - which is designed to serve the interests an greed of the capitalists who own everything, at the expense of the working class majority which owns little or nothing.
    Yet the politicians we are meant to vote into office every five years, without ever having any control on what they do, consider that their role is to manage this profit system as it is.  They might promise to tweak it here or there, but even if they deliver on their pledges - and that’s a big "if" - the last thing they intend to do is to change it.
    This is why their parties are useless to the working class - because as long as this fat-cat-feeding system remains in place, the working class will be robbed of its labour and even its most basic needs will be contemptuously ignored, as the Grenfell Tower disaster showed, once again.
    Think of how easily and quickly these politicians "forget" their pledges, especially when these have something to do with the interests of the working class and could cut into the profits of the capitalists.  Likewise, think of the double-talk they use - like Corbyn who wrote in big letters "For the many not for the few" on the cover of his manifesto and then, inside, promised the bosses that, under Labour, corporation tax would remain among the lowest in the world!  "For the many"?  No, it wasn't.  It was a pledge that could only benefit "the few"!

The party the working class needs

Today the working class faces the prospect of more attacks from the exploiters and, probably, another all-out offensive against its jobs, wages and conditions, because of Brexit.  At such a time, the last thing it needs is more "forgotten" pledges or double talk from politicians.
    What the working class does need though, is its own independent party - which relies on workers' consciousness and a clear understanding of what’s in store - unlike today’s political parties which rely on sowing confusion, lies, and illusions.
    It needs a party which dares to say clearly that there is no "soft" nor "left" Brexit.  That Brexit, in whatever form, is being used to deceive workers into believing that British laws and bosses are a lesser evil, and even that foreign workers are enemies.
    A true workers’ party, unlike Corbyn’s Labour, would not shy away from stating clearly that ending the free movement of EU workers and discriminating against foreigners, is an attack against the whole working class.  And that this is designed to undermine its capacity to fight back, by dividing its ranks.
    What is needed is a party which, instead of seeking to accumulate cushy jobs from one election to the next (while claiming that there's nothing workers can do in between to defend their interests), aims, on the contrary, to rebuild workers’ collective strength and self-confidence.   And one which is determined to help us to fight back, whenever necessary.
    This party's ultimate aim would have to be the overthrow of this decrepit capitalist system, replacing it with a society organised to provide for the needs of all: in other words it has to be a revolutionary workers' party - and it needs to be built urgently!