lefts held power, the Labour Party would become an adequate vehicle for socialism. The experience of the working class since the war has left the bulk of class conscious workers cynical and sceptical about the lefts.
This relationship between the lefts and the broad working class vanguard has been demonstrated over and over again during the last months: the failure of the Manifesto groups; the lack of enthusiasm for the chauvinist campaign over the EEC; the lack of polarisation in the mass organisations over the Labour Party leadership contest; and many other examples. On the other hand, there has been a growth of movements expressing political activity outside the framework of labourism - the women's liberation movement and NAC; the anti-fascist committees; various solidarity movements; etc.
In addition, we have seen the development of trends at the base of the mass organisations seeking anternauves to renance on the lerts. the National Assembly on Unemployment the CP; the IS "Right to Work' march (which despite its sectarianism got substantial declarations of support from trade union bodies); and the MCAPP conference.
How should these currents fight within the mass organisations? Should their main task be to build *a united left movement'? Vote the right out of office and the left in? Get all unions to affiliate to the Labour Party and flood back in the CLPs? That is the logical line for those who think that the key task is to replace the Labour Party leadership.
We disagree with this line. We think that the key task is to organise REC basically organised by turn in mass struggle. Nowhere is the uneven character of the combined process of the European revolution more clearly shown than in Britain. The miners' strike brought down the Heath Government. By this action, they set back not only the Tory Party, but also the project of confrontation backed by the ruling class. Yet two years later, the labour movement bureaucracy has led the working class into a number of defeats.
Since the summer of 1975, the political defeat suffered at the hands of the bourgeois coalition headed by Wilson in the Common Market referendum, the effect of the f6 limit in driving down real wages by over six per cent, and the increase in unemployment to nearly two milion (in real terms) have both accompanied and reinforced a sharp downThe crisis, reflecting the underlying decline of the rate of profit, has continued to affect all the classes. This is shown by the continuing inability of British imperialism to defeat the Republican masses in the north of Ireland and the development of the national, social and economic crisis in Scotland.
Photo: CHRIS Massive redundancies of women workers, along with slashing attacks on social expenditure, result in the throwing of the burden of social provision back onto the family.
POTENTIAL The racist measures of the Labour Government aimed at immigrants -with the collahoration of the TUC leaders have provided fertile ground for the renewed growth and activity of the fascist groups.
These features of the objective situation have not eliminated the potential of the mass struggle of the working class as a principal political feature of British society, and do not represent a qualitative defeat. On the
continued contrary, the basis for our perspectives over the next year must be that the working class is capable of launching successful defensive struggles against the assault of the ruling class.
The achievement of a second round of severe wage restraint by the Labour Government, in collaboration with the trade union bureaucracy, confirms the rightward shift of the main leaders of the mass organisations, particularly those previously associated with the left (Jones, Scanlon and Foot).
LEADERSHIP The intervention of Scanion in the recent disputes in British Leyland indicates that fight backs against the Government's policies, however fragmented and partial in the first instance, will run full tilt into the opposition of this bloc. This poses the question of a struggle for the leadership of the mass organisations themselves in this period.
Revolutionaries must confront the arguments of the reformists that the mass struggle of the working class will have the effect of bringing down the Labour Government, by pinning the responsibility for Labour's likely fall from office on the right-wing leaders of the labour movement and by posing the removal of this leadership. OPPOSED Such an approach is directly counterposed to the ultra-left position of bringing down the Labour Government, or the belief that it is possible to create an electoral alternative or new political party for a section of the mass of the working class in this period.
The recent wave of strikes in the car industry, the big turn-out at the National Assembly on Unemployment, and the latest round of union conferences show the existence of a layer of militant rank-and-file workers starting to commit themselves to a struggle against the policies of the Labour Government. Vacillating between them and the pro-Government bloc are the official lefts' like Benn, Buckton and Clive Jenkins. These opportunists aid the right in deeds, but attempt to prevent themselves from being outflanked in an upsurge.
The IMG must fight to unify in action all those forces prepared to fight against the Government's policies, isolate and defeat the supporters of these policies, and continually force the lefts to take action in relation to the struggles of the working class or expose them in the eyes of the greatest number of workers.
The major practical task of the IMG must be a turn towards the formation of tendencies in the trade unions, and actively encouraging our fellow socialists in the Labour Party to do likewise. The activity of such tendencies will be centred on the fight for a permanently structured, cross-sectoral opposition within the mass organisations which fights for their leadership around a programme of demands which enables forms of class-wide action to be built giving the present defensive struggles an anti-capitalist dynamic. The most decisive points of this programme must deal with the questions of incomes policy, cuts and unemployment.
CAMPAIGN DEFEND In the wages field, it means a a oratonate be cared on vard cost of living index. This principle of automatic compensation for in the context of social expenditure, combined with the demand for the opening of the books to lay a politicittees. starting point for the struggle against unemployment through demands relating to work-sharing without loss of pay enforced by workers control. In this context the demand for a programme of nationalisation ant of our activity and public works, to meet social need and employ the jobless, becomes part of a practical strategy of struggle for the working class.
The guiding theme is the struggle for workers control of the economy, counterposed to all forms of class-collaboration promoted by the bureaucracy such as participation commsation of the working class as the leadership for all the oppressed layers in society must also inform our work among women, black people and students. The formation of action committee type bodies Africa. in the localities provides the best organisational means of cementing alliance between those sectors and the organised working class. We must initiate mass action around demands which lead them to the firm conclusion that the only way out of their oppression is in alliance with the organised workers.
The growth of the fascist groups and the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus through such devices as the Prevention of Terrorism Act mean that campaigns for the defence of democratic rights and consistent propaganda for workers selt-defence must be part We will more directly orientate our work around the demands of "Troops Out Now from Ireland' and 'Self-Determination for the Irish People' into the trade unions and Labour Party. We will fight against the imperialist cordoning off' of developments in the south of Europe from the rest of the European working class devoting increasing resources to solidarity action with the struggle in Iberia and drawing out the lessons of these revolutionary experiences for the vanguard in Britain.
A further priority will be in relation to the armed struggle in Zimbabwe, which poses also a deep crisis of one of the most important imperialist bastions in the world - the racist state of South RED WEEKLY The transformation of Red Weekly into an organ more capable or relating to the wider debates inside the mass organisations is an essential part of centralising the work of the org anisation and greatly increasing the numbers of advanced worker militants within its ranks.
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PRACTICE Red Weekly 3 June 1976
systematic campaign for the sliding INHS 3 scale of wages, based on a workers
PRINCIPLE The principle of the self-organi-