Taking Control of Our Future! Workers’ Weekly Youth Group

The importance of the youth and students participating in political affairs and being organised to take up modern communism cannot be over-stressed.

Workers’ Weekly Youth Group will fully participate in the Conference on this basis. They will make a presentation on their work and how this is related to the consolidation of the aim of Improving the Content and Extending the Readership of Workers’ Weekly.

WWYG will affirm that they are taking up in word and deed their slogan Taking Control of Our Future!

They will explain how they are taking up the work of the Party as their own, and how they are proud of their achievement in accomplishing the task which they set themselves after the 3rd Congress of RCPB(ML).

The Regional Forums on the Mass Party Press have been forums where initial experience has been gained on the significance of consolidating RCPB(ML) on the new historical basis, and as forums where activists and friends of the Party could participate in setting the agenda for the all-round work in the regions, and make the decisions of the Party their own. This initial experience will be summed up at the Conference.

For example, the Northern Region will explain how this form has been of significance in the organising work in the region in the start-up period. They will explain how, though this work is in the initial stages in this period, the initiative to ensure that everything is discussed in the collective, that everyone is made conscious of what the issues are and that nothing is left to chance, has been of great significance. They will show how, in their view, this has been the most crucial initiative in this start-up period, giving new impetus to the work.

The Northern Region will emphasise the conclusion that to fulfil the aspiration of the workers to discuss their experience out in the open and work out the solutions to the problems which they face, the Mass Party Press and the Mass Communist Party play a central role.

Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, setting out the government’s coming legislative programme, manifests a deeply disturbing programme for the direction the government is taking society.

This is so, not only because the legislative programme has nothing to offer in providing solutions to the problems which beset people’s lives, and not only because it represents a slimmed-down programme as it is anticipated that this sessions of parliament will be cut short by a general election. It is mainly disturbing in that it represents the bankruptcy of a government whose "New Labour" style of "progressive governance" is being revealed as the opponent of everything which is progressive and enlightened.

In a society where marginalisation from any say in political affairs is pushing many sections of the people into a sense of hopelessness, especially the youth, where political struggle is made the target of "law and order" measures – in short, where the whole society is being criminalised in lieu of political solutions, the government is introducing more and more legislation to punish the victims of society under the signboard of "tackling crime", "combating benefit fraud", and so on. Even there, the second part of the old slogan about being "tough on the causes of crime" has been conveniently forgotten.

At the same time, the legislation on the NHS Plan is an exercise in hypocrisy, presenting the escalating the direction of the health service in filling the pockets of the private financiers as one of pouring resources into the health service.

Another deeply disturbing exercise in both hypocrisy and criminalisation is the Bill to ratify the Britain’s signature on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The contrast of high-flown humanitarian words with a dangerous chauvinist aim is highly marked. If an international criminal court to try those guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity were properly constituted, as was the Nuremberg Tribunal to try the Nazis for their monstrous crimes, it would be a step forward for progressive humanity. But such a court which the US and its allies could manipulate, for example through the Security Council of the United Nations, poses serious problems for those whom the US and its allies would like to label as "rogues" and "terrorists" and the "world’s tyrants". In the British government’s eyes, such an international criminal court would be an open-sesame for interference against sovereign peoples under the signboard of high moral values.

Such a legislative programme as presented in the Queen’s Speech cannot be accepted by any democratic person. It represents both the bankruptcy of the political system and the bankruptcy of the government. It underlines the necessity for the people to get organised to take control of their own future.

In the Queen’s speech it was announced that the government will introduce 15 Bills during the next session of parliament. The Bills mentioned were:

Armed Forces Bill
Children’s Commissioner for Wales
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) Bill (introduced for third time after the first two were thrown out by the House of Lords)
Finance Bill
Health and Social Care
Homes Bill
Hunting Bill
International Criminal Court Bill
Private Security Industry Bill
Regulatory Reform
Social Security Fraud Bill
Special Educational Needs and Disability
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion
Vehicles (Crime) Bill

At least four Bills will be published in draft and will include:
Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland)
Export Control and Non-Proliferation Bill
Proceeds of Crime Bill
Safety Bill

Number 10 Downing Street, in its information on the Queen’s Speech, said the following:

The police will be given new powers to tackle crime, including drunken, loutish and other anti-social behaviour. There will be fixed penalties for offences of disorderly behaviour in public places, powers to close licensed premises, bans on drinking in public places, and raising the age of child curfew scheme from nine to fifteen.

There will also be legislation on car crime, the private security industry and the salvage industry. A draft Bill to provide new powers to seize the assets of criminals will be published.

The Queen's Speech also announced measures to implement the NHS Ten-Year Plan, matching new investment with reforms, and to end tobacco advertising and promotion.

Staff in higher education have backed action short of a strike after employers refused to improve their pay offer of 3%, plus 1% for manual workers.

A recent ballot undertaken by UNISON supported action which would include overtime bans and work-to-rule, by nearly three to one in favour. The TGWU and NATFHE have balloted for full strike action, and have warned that this is still an option if there is no progress by the New Year.

On Tuesday, over 100,000 university workers took part in a wide range of activities, including rallies, as part of a campaign by all six unions which organise in higher education. These are: NATFHE, EIS, MSF, UNISON, TGWU and GMB.

A lobby of the Welsh Assembly took place between noon and 1.30pm in Cardiff.

In Scotland, 30,000 university staff took part in rallies in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

University of East London workers held a special general meeting at its Docklands campus to discuss sanctions, and marched round the campus, as well as lobbying the university governors and submitting a petition.

Ten Private Finance Initiative Schemes, backed by £150 million from the government, were given the go-ahead on Tuesday. The schemes underline that the direction in which the government is taking public services is to enrich the private sector.

The projects include a waste management service in Leicester, schools in Lincolnshire and Salford, a social and health care centre in Tenterden, Kent, and street lighting in Sunderland.

This is the eleventh group of local government PFI projects endorsed by central government.