Adopt the Independent Programme of the Working Class!

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Adopt the Independent Programme of the Working Class!

Stop Press!
May Day March for Rights

The new year began on the one hand with Tony Blair, champion of the rich, in a critical situation. His retrogressive programme is a warmongering and imperialist one of aggression, occupation and intervention abroad, and support for torture, incarceration without trial, and the anti-social offensive at home. But there is no one the ruling elite can put forward in the face of the opposition of the working class and people as an alternative champion, try as they might. This is the only meaning of what Tony Blair refers to as "New Labour in the ascendant".

On the other hand, such is the crisis of the anachronistic system of representative democracy that the working class movement is beginning to take up in a broad way the issue of resolving this crisis. There is a growing consciousness of the disenfranchisement of the working class and other sections of the people, and the requirement to take up the struggle for democratic renewal. The movement, while encompassing the need for a Trade Union Freedom Bill, such electoral reform as proportional representation and the right to recall MPs and demand their accountability, is also beginning to address the necessity to change the party-dominated political system. In particular, it has to take up the opposition to the system of parties in parliament under which they implement the right-wing agenda of the financial oligarchy and refuse to address the well-being of the working class and people.

It is the workers who must come to the head of this opposition and movement for democratic renewal by themselves becoming political. The watchword of the present system of government is paying the rich, "investment with reform", privatisation, denying the rights of all, war and neo-liberal globalisation. The workers must put their stamp on the movement to turn this situation around with the conscious adoption of their own independent programme, Stop Paying the Rich – Increase Investments in Social Programmes! They have the characteristic of working as a collective to uphold the rights of all and provide problems with solutions. This characteristic should also be their demand for governance, recognising that it is their own independent programme which will save the day.

The situation, already anti-social and anti-worker in Margaret Thatcher’s day, has deteriorated critically to the present, and the fabric of society and the economy as a whole are unravelling dangerously. The alliance with US imperialism, no matter what high-sounding justifications New Labour gives it, is trampling on the sovereignty of peoples and nations, and is intent on destroying national identities and leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives, in war and poverty. It is truly breathtaking that New Labour can speak of a "respect" agenda and promote the chauvinist conception of "Britishness founded on responsibility, liberty and fairness" in these circumstances.

It is an urgent necessity that workers must activate themselves to oppose this agenda with their own programme, spearheading their movement with the need for democratic renewal and inscribing on their banner the upholding of the rights of all and the vesting of sovereignty with the people. It is the working class who can and must lead this progressive agenda and fulfil the demands of the present times.

Stop Paying the Rich – Increase Investments in Social Programmes!

Meeting today, January 25, 2006, the TUC Executive has called for trade unionists to march for trade union rights and in support of a Trade Union Freedom Bill on May Day. The TUC will join with the traditional London May Day march to provide a national focus on May 1, which this year is also the May Day Bank Holiday. Local May Day events around the country will also give trade unionists the opportunity to back the TUC's campaign.

More information about the march and rally will be available at www.tuc.org.uk/mayday in the run up to the countrywide events. The London march will assemble at Clerkenwell Green and march to Trafalgar Square for a rally.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "People at work in the UK enjoy fewer rights than most people in the rest of Europe. Union campaigns have won advances such as the minimum wage, better time off and union recognition laws, but there is still a long way to go to win decent minimum rights for all, as we saw at Gate Gourmet. This is why today's TUC Executive called on Britain's trade unionists to march for modern rights for modern workplaces and a Trade Union Freedom Bill on May Day."