Only the Working Class Can Save the Day!
Seize the Initiative!

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Call of RCPB(ML), May 1st, International Day of Working Class Unity and Struggle, 2003

May Day 2003

Only the Working Class Can Save the Day!

Seize the Initiative!

Call of RCPB(ML), May 1st, International Day of Working Class Unity and Struggle, 2003

On the occasion of May 1, 2003, our Party, RCPB(ML), sends its revolutionary greetings to workers, women, youth and the entire humanity in struggle for their rights, for their full emancipation and for a new world in which poverty, war and exploitation are ended and in which the people are the decision-makers.

This May Day is taking place at a time when the United States, with the backing and collusion of the Labour government, is trying its utmost to work out how to bring to a conclusion its occupation of Iraq, despite the Iraqi people’s opposition, and impose its dictate in the Middle East. The US and Britain have taken the criminal path of opposing the people’s will for peace on a global scale, of overturning norms won by progressive humanity in the 20th century with immense sacrifice. These world powers have declared that they are going to impose their will, not just in the Middle East but step by step throughout the world, that no one should stand in their way and that the peoples must pay the terrible price.

However, the world’s people have realised how important it is to seize the initiative, to take militant and broad-scale action and deepen their unity in struggle on the basis of their common humanity. On May Day, 2003, we call upon the working class and people of Britain not to let this initiative slip from their grasp, but to persist in their struggles and to unite around the programme of the working class for an alternative form of democracy, for an anti-war government, for democratic renewal and for socialism. In order that the people’s struggles meet with success and are finally guaranteed victory, we call upon the working class and peoples of England, Scotland and Wales to affirm that only the working class can save the day! This means that it is high time that the working class took steps to constitute itself as the nation, establish socialism, and create the conditions which guarantee that the people become the decision-makers on a lasting basis.

To lead society out of the crisis, out of this dark period of history and bring the alternative into being, a society fit for human beings, the workers must become political leaders in their own right and build up a Workers’ Opposition right at this time. They must:

· fight for and create new democratic mechanisms which represent their interests;

· step up the fight against the anti-social offensive and the wrecking of society, oppose the national wealth being handed over to private capital, fight to guarantee the future of social programmes, and fight to defend the livelihoods of all workers and vulnerable sections of the people;

· reject and defeat all measures which are racist and discriminatory, divide the polity on racial, religious and other grounds, and are designed to violate rights and criminalise dissent and political opposition, such as the Terrorism Act, the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act, as well as the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, and related legislation;

· oppose imperialist war, crimes against peace, intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, violation of the sovereignty and equality of states, and they must fight to end the militarisation of the economy and settle scores with the crimes of British imperialism and colonialism;

· fight for Britain’s withdrawal from all military and neo-liberal blocs and organisations such as NATO and the European Union and fight for their dismantling along with such agents of global intervention as the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organisation;

· demand the complete renovation of the United Nations so that it becomes a body which upholds equality, peace and democracy in international affairs and implements the letter and spirit of its founding Charter;

· oppose the continued interference by Westminster in the affairs of the Irish people and their struggle for unity and independence;

· support the struggle of the Palestinian people for their national rights, against Israeli state terror, against the occupation of their homelands, and the backing of the Israeli state in these crimes by US imperialism and the British government for their own interests;

· uphold the rights of nations big and small to self-determination, independence and to establish a political system of their choice;

· oppose the US imperialist programme of "pre-emption" based on the so-called "axis of evil", support the Cuban people against the illegal US blockade, as well as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in defence of its chosen system, for the reunification of the Korean nation and against the hard-line US provocations, and support the world’s peoples’ struggles to end all forms of colonialism, intervention, occupation and annexation;

· strengthen their unity with the workers of all lands in their struggle for socialism and communism, and take their part in the struggle of humanity for a new and different world.

Victory to the Struggles of the Workers of All Lands!

Seize the Initiative!

Fight for an Anti-War Government!

Stop Paying the Rich!

Increase Investments in Social Programmes!

Hail May Day!

Only the Working Class Can Save the Day!