The Necessity to Fight for a
Change in the Direction of Society!

Call of the Northern Region of RCPB(ML) on the Occasion of the 129th Durham Miners Gala and Big Meeting

The Durham Miners Gala and Big Meeting organised by the Durham Miners Association (DMA), taking place on Saturday, July 13, 2013, again brings together thousands of working class people, of all ages, from all over Durham and the north-east of England, as well as many other parts of the country. Besides the DMA and the ex-pit village lodges, union branches in all sectors of the economy from manufacturing, steel and transport to public sector workers in local government and health now regularly send their members and organise for them and their families to take part. Also, as is well known, the Gala has a noted international character with miners and workers in struggle from other countries taking part every year as well.

The prospect of the Gala brings huge excitement to the working people of the north-east at a time when the working class and people are under extreme pressure from the attacks of Coalition government. It is a government which has shown in practice its contempt for the very notions of society and the public good, as well as for the values and traditions of the working class which uphold what is progressive in society. That is why for the working class and people the Gala always stands out. The Gala gives the lie to the assertion that the workers with their traditions, their organisation, their culture, their interests and their rights are a thing of the past. The Gala affirms that what is central to the workers’ lives is that they must be political. Recent years have seen the DMA organised in the ex-pit lodges, and the strengthening of the ties with the other unions across the northern region and nationally. This year as well there has been a new initiative launched by the DMA to safeguard the future of the Gala, launched with union branches and individuals affiliating to the new Friends of the Durham Miners' Gala Society, which has been a huge success.

Durham Miners Gala 2012As workers take part in the Durham Miners Gala and Big Meeting this year there is one thing that captures the essence of what is facing the working class movement at this time. It is the necessity to fight for a change in the direction of society, it is for the workers to constitute themselves as the Workers’ Opposition. The banner has been raised to fight for the alternative. This means to take up for solution how to turn things around, how to end the backward neo-liberal direction which the monopolies are imposing on society which is causing untold hardship. It means to take up the pro-social direction based on the independent politics and programme of the working class. It means building the broadest political unity around that independent politics and programme of the working class, a political unity based not on handing over the initiative to any condescending saviours but on the strength of the working class itself, who are capable of getting into motion to resolve the crisis in favour of the majority of society. It means the working class itself utilising the strength of its organisation and numbers to rally all of society round it to build the new.

For the people to have control over their lives means that people wherever they live and work have to be the decision-makers. This in turn entails that the owners of monopoly capital must be deprived of the power to disempower the people from being the decision-makers. An alternative direction for society, the fight for a society which is human-centred, means that the social product produced by the working class must be reinvested in social programmes, public services and the productive economy, especially manufacturing, so that all can prosper from industrial mass production and not just a privileged few.

Usworth Lodge - Workers of All Countries Unite!
You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Chains!
You Have A World to Win! (2012 Gala)Today, our Party takes part in the Gala with its programme, Fight for the Alternative! Stop Paying the Rich, Increase Investments in Social Programmes! For an Anti-War Government! This represents the embodiment of the independent programme of the modern working class fighting to place itself at the centre of politics in Britain, to build its resistance and its opposition, to fight for a new direction for society.

The working class is the only social force capable of establishing this new society. This includes building its own political party based on the new, based on modern definitions, based on being the most organised force, with one programme, a programme to end the exploitation of persons by persons and uphold and defend the rights of all.

With this in mind, and being cognisant of the crisis in the system of unrepresentative democracy which denies the working class its voice in government, we give the call to all participating in this year’s Gala to plant the seeds of the Workers’ Opposition. This means to build on the movement to fight for the alternative by strengthening the mass character of the workers’ organisations, to act in a new way, with the sights set on defeating the anti-social offensive and its austerity programme and establishing a new pro-social, pro-worker and pro-public direction for society.

Fight for the Alternative!
Fight to Turn Things Around and Resolve the Crisis in Favour of the Working Class and People!
Unite for a Change in Direction for Society!
Plant the Seeds of the Workers’ Opposition! We Are the Opposition to Austerity! We Decide!

Details of the gala plus first chapter of David Temple’s history of the Gala
http://durhamminers.org/Gala.html

Party banner 2011 Durham Miners Gala The Durham Miners Gala and Big Meeting which takes place on the second Saturday in July continues to be one of most remarkable manifestations in the calendar of the working class movement in Britain that brings people out in their thousands for “our day in Durham”, which is inexorably linked to the aims, struggles and sacrifices of the working class itself over more than 100 years of the Gala. That much is seen from the wonderful banners that are still displayed at the Durham Miners Gala today that reflect the heroic struggles of the working class and the contributions of the communist movement to the struggle for socialism in the past as well as today. The mining communities and the working class of the northern region still come to the Gala bringing whatever class battles and the resistance that they are engaged in. It is to highlight this strength of character of the working class and to turn this into a powerful force to change society which is the duty and responsibility of a modern communist party today. RCPB(ML) has intervened and assessed this event dating back to 1981 before the heroic miners’ strike of 1984-85. Today, the Party programme, Fight for the Alternative!, Stop Paying the Rich, Increase Investments in Social Programmes! For an Anti-War Government! represents the embodiment of the independent programme of the modern working class fighting to place itself at the centre of politics in Britain to build its resistance and its opposition that can deal with the objective situation from the workplace to public services where people are denied the right to take decisions on what direction the country is taking, what direction the economy is taking and what direction society is taking, so they can fight for a new direction for society. For answering the question what kind of party does the working class need to carry its alternative programme to victory is a decisive question for its success. This is why for the information of our readers we are reviewing the interventions of RCPB(ML) in the Durham Miners Gala which it has made in order to point the necessity for the working class to take up its own independent programme and achieve its aims and goals. This is an important part of the work to clarify the necessity for a modern mass communist party in Britain.

The Follonsby banner, VI Lenin at the centre The miners fought their heroic year-long strike in 1984-85, organising against the attacks of the state. The communists of the Party in the northern region, joined by others from other parts of Britain, organised with them on the picket lines and in their communities, supporting the strike and its aims politically and in practice.

When the deep mines closed in the early 1990s, the question was posed for discussion, also raised by many miners and their leaders, that the fate of the Durham Miners Gala and Big Meeting and safeguarding its future was of crucial importance. It was a time which was now a period of the retreat of revolution and of the working class in the face of the onslaught of the monopoly capitalist offensive in Britain and world wide. The Party made its views known to as wide a circles as possible that the essence of the Durham Miners Gala was not just its link to the mines, which had closed, but the whole question was its “link to the aims of the working class movement, and of the role of the workers should play in society”. The Party in its statements and work at the time recognised that there has always been something forward looking about the traditions of the Gala, in the organisation of the workers, in their own cultural traditions, values and by recognition that politics should be at the centre. At the same time, what was prevalent and backward was also a roadblock to the development of the whole working class movement that workers do not take up politics themselves but leave their fate in the hands of political representatives of the big parties whose aim was marginalising the workers in order to serve the interests of the financial elite and capitalist monopolies. It was posed that the workers should directly engage in politics and put forward a programme to lead society out of the crisis, and such a programme was the Party's “Draft Programme for the Working Class” published in 1994 that in a nutshell called for recognition of all inviolable rights, that more be put into the economy than is taken out, for democratic renewal of the political process and recognition of the inviolable right of all peoples to determine their own affairs nationally and internationally.

Striking Spanish miners
addressing the Big Meeting 2012 The 112th Durham Gala took place in 1996, a year before Tony Blair and New Labour came to power. Developments were placing on the agenda that the workers need a party of a new type, and that the workers cannot “have faith in any political party that does not analyse the concrete conditions of society today and is not prepared to organise the working class to come to power itself and provide democracy for the people”. As the Party pointed out, “problems in society are presented as just a problem of right, new, or left policy of government”. In other words, the working class was being lined up at that time to accept the replacement of the anti-social direction of right-wing Thatcherism which was a direction openly in the service of the monopolies at the expense of the interests of the people with the “centrist” anti-social direction of Blair's New Labour which had the same aim as Thatcherism. All were being called on to unite with the “centre” around “New” Labour whether “left” or “right” so that the ruling circles could continue their offensive from “the centre ground” of politics. In contrast, the “lessons of the Gala were that if the workers can organise uplifting events like the Durham Miners Gala, the Big Meeting, take charge of Durham city for the day, whilst the capitalist class with all its monopoly resources, media, etc., at its disposal is lowering the political and cultural level of society with such tragic and barbaric consequences for the people then it is the workers who should be organising not just one city for a day but the whole of society permanently”. But firstly the workers should be engaging in politics, “the workers should become society's leaders". In other words, the workers’ movement should build their own opposition and place their worker politicians at the centre of the political life of the country.

Contingents passing the 'County' in 2001 The next Durham Miners Gala, in 1997, took place in the context of the election victory of New Labour. The Party summed that over the previous 18 years of the Thatcherite anti-social offensive, it was the miners and their communities who were amongst those that took the brunt of this offensive and who fought back courageously, particularly in the year-long miners’ strike of 1984-5. The ruling elite were well aware that class conscious workers and progressive people had always rallied around the most militant sections of the working class and that the workers of the North of England see the Durham Miners Gala and Big Meeting as a focal point of opposition to the anti-social offensive which not even the closure programme of all of the Durham collieries had been able to put a stop to. The question being posed by the working class movement at that time was that there was a way forward and that there was an alternative to the path of the previous 18 years and the issue was one of uniting the whole movement regardless of the political party that any individual or collective belonged to. The question was how to take the independent programme of the working class forward at that time. Right at this juncture, the new factor was what was the contemporary role of the New Labour government. Whilst Tony Blair arrogantly refused to attend the Gala, the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, did address the Big Meeting. Everything that John Prescott said at the Gala in July 1997, on behalf of the New Labour government, concentrated on one issue – that everyone should support “New” Labour, i.e. make party politics the issue. Trying to manipulate the sentiment of the mining communities, their hatred for the devastation of the northern region through the Thatcherite programme, he called on people to unite with New Labour against the Tories, regardless of the deep concerns over the New Labour policies which were by then carrying forward the same anti-social and pro-war policies that the miners had been in the forefront of opposing.

Gala singers singing for the Chilean miners 2011“New” Labour had no intention of uniting the working class and people, or supporting the alternative programme of the working class, but wanted to split the working class on party lines and sabotage the unity of the workers in order to continue the anti-social offensive against them. In this situation, activists of Northern region of RCPB(ML) carried out work at the Gala to take this situation confronting the workers there head on. Hundreds of leaflets were distributed giving the call The Issue Is Not Party Politics But What Should Be The Programme? It is worth noting, and RCPB(ML) said at the time, that the exclusion of the President of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill, from addressing the Big Meeting, because he had formed the Socialist Labour Party reflected that attempt by New Labour to split the working class on party lines. At the same time, the aim of the Deputy Prime Minister was to try and eliminate from the working class movement any discussion on what should be the alternative programme and to discuss what kind of Party the working class needed. RCPB(ML) pointed out in its call, “The working class can afford to have no illusions that there can be any advance other than by fighting for its own independent programme. In our view, the central point of such a programme is to Stop Paying the Rich! Increase Investments In Social Programmes! Only the elaboration and implementation of such a programme can be the first step to developing both a planned national economy and a new political system where the people are sovereign. In other words, in our view only such a programme starts to put the interests of the people at the centre of the economy and of society and is the only way society can advance towards socialism at this time.”

David Hopper, David Guy,
Chilean miner Carlos Bugueno Alfara 2011That the workers’ movement was drawing important conclusions about the nature of the big parties was already evident at the 1999 Gala. The General Secretary of the Durham Miners Association, Dave Hopper, pointed out: “The last Gala of the twentieth century takes place a few weeks after NATO stopped the bombing of Yugoslavia. Who would have thought that a Labour Government would have so readily supported Clinton’s bombing campaign with so much relish?” After pointing out that it was an illegal act of NATO to bomb Yugoslavia and that NATO had made the situation in Kosovo even worse than it was before by the three months of conflict, he continued on the theme of the disillusionment with New Labour: “Who is to wonder that there is disillusionment when those in most need in our society are under attack through the proposed changed to the Welfare Benefit System, in which the right to Incapacity Benefit and Severe Disablement Allowance has been curtailed?” He went on to point out, “More and more we see evidence that the policies of the three major parties have moved closer together.”

During this Gala in 1999, activists of RCPB(ML) in the region engaged people in discussion and distributed hundreds of leaflets with a Statement from the Regional Committee of the Party. The Party clarified: “For all New Labour’s talk of a ‘new and modern Britain’, all now acknowledge that this conception is one where the needs of the people are being sacrificed to the interests of big business and the financial circles. This reality is one of huge economic blocs, including dominant war industries, who are lining up against each other for the sole purpose of bleeding the people dry, subjugating sovereign nations and peoples to their interest for maximum profits and paying the rich, using the most barbaric and brutal interference.” The statement concluded: “The working class and people should place themselves at the centre of the discussion on the programme to bring about a socialist Britain in the new millennium. They should strengthen this vision: that it is they and not the monopolies who should take the decisions on the social product; that it is they who should have first claim on it; that it is they who should manage the economy to meet the needs of the people who live and work in it. It cannot be accepted that it is the rich and their warmongering and other activities in the global market that have a prior claim. The issue is that the working class and people should take control of what belongs to them.”

One of the Unison health branches at the GalaThe Durham Miners Gala of 2000 showed that the workers’ movement had clearly had a view of the role the Gala had in the working class movement for the new Millennium. The Gala programme pointed out that “there were those who thought that the Big Meeting had no relevance once Durham's deep mines had been destroyed, but they have been proved wrong. By raising the finance to continue the Gala, the communities have demonstrated that our 'Day in Durham' means more than just mines. The Durham Miners' Gala is not so much about the 'hewing of coal' as the 'hewing of a society'.” And “this activity is not pure nostalgia harking back to a bygone age but a living movement. Testimony to the unfailing spirit that makes the Durham Miners' Gala a force for change in the New Millennium.” It was precisely this theme of the Gala as a force for change, as RCPB(ML) had been clarifying, since 1994 under the conditions of the retreat of revolution had come to the forefront. RCPB(ML) gave its call to the Gala in 2000 that The Working Class Must Set Out On The Line Of March To The New Society in order to start this important next phase of the work.The activists discussed with many young people, workers and other political activists on the field and around the Party's bookstall at the riverside. These youth saw in the Gala the seeds to the way forward in the sense that it is the working class which holds the solutions to the problems in society. Starting to elaborate this question the statement pointed out that “the challenge is to tackle the great problems of how the rights of each are to be recognised and guaranteed, how to renovate society from top to bottom, how to solve the problem of democracy and replace the archaic political system of the 'sovereignty of Parliament' in the service of the monopolies with one where the working class constitutes itself the nation and vests sovereignty in the people”.

Central to these discussions was the question that the Party was raising there that the way forward for the working class was to raise its political and cultural level by neither accepting the "Third Way" of New Labour, nor returning to some social democratic values of Old Labour that have workers tied to the system. The way forward starts from the conception of a society built on the rights of all and of workers setting their own agenda and getting organised on the basis of bringing about the revolutionary transformation of society to socialism, the most modern and humane society there is.

In the 2001 Gala, the Party gave the call to “make the Durham Miners Gala a force for the alternative”. Amongst other things warning of the war on terrorism that the government was about to launch with the US the statement warned of the “global ambitions and military adventures of the British government, such as the continued criminal bombing of Iraq, threaten the sovereignty and resources of developing countries, are a block to peace and stability in the world and are contributing to the danger of world war”.

2003 Dr Alba Portela Sabari General Secretary,
Provincial Committee of SNTS Santiago De CubaBy 2004 to those attending the Gala the criminal intent of the Anglo-US powers fully unleashed against Afghanistan and Iraq was evident. The Gala that year marked the 20th anniversary of the heroic miners’ strike of 1984-5 and the Party issued a statement not only marking this event but giving the call that Only the Workers' Opposition Can Safeguard the Future of the Country. The call pointed out that workers are concluding that a new workers’ opposition must be built, and that history once more demands that they elect their best representatives to Parliament to uphold their collective and individual rights. It said that in this movement there is increasing realisation that a new society must be brought about which is free from racism and warmongering and in which the rights of all to the fruits of their labour is recognised and guaranteed. The party called on workers “to join in the building of the Workers’ Opposition to safeguard the future of the country and bring about a pro-worker, pro-social and anti-war government that is fully accountable to the people”.

Since 2004, the Party has continued to elaborate in its interventions at the Gala on its theme for the need to build the Workers’ Opposition and the need to take up the responsibility for the fate of society. David Guy, President of the Durham Miners, who tragically died after a long illness in 2012, chairing the Durham Miners Gala in 2009, called for everyone to get behind the steel workers in their fight against the cutbacks and closures at Corus in Redcar ( steel works that have since reopened). He pointed out that the calls of the working class enshrined on the banners of the contingents were the values that stand the workers in good stead today. “Such slogans as Workers of all countries, unite! An injury to one is and injury to all! are just as much watchwords now as they were in the past, and will be in the future.”

Party stall 2010 Durham Miners Gala Today, the resistance that the working class is undertaking since the demise of the Labour government in 2010 and the imposition of the Conservative/ Liberal coalition has its origins from this period. Whilst the period is still the retreat of revolution and the conditions such that the working class is on the defensive, the resistance of the working class and people is developing across the whole of society, particularly against the broad attack on public services, benefits, pensions, etc. The fight to safeguard the future of NHS and the huge marches under the call of the TUC to fight for the alternative is the space in which the people are developing the strength of their resistance. At the same time, under the cover of “austerity” the ConDem government has become brazen in the imposition of its anti-social offensive against the people – an offensive that is in favour of the monopolies and private interests at the expense of the public good and which holds great dangers of further interference and wars undertaken by the ruling circles.

Today, the role of the RCPB(ML) as a modern communist party in its interventions at the Gala is to take up its responsibility to clarify the present conditions facing the working class movement and provide a line of march for the working class. Last year, at the 2012 Durham Miners Gala the Party said in its statement: “This ongoing capital-centred agenda is wreaking havoc on the whole economy, public services, the NHS, jobs, pensions, pay, small businesses and on all the rights of the people. Once again the Durham Miners Gala will play its role in bringing the working class and people of the north-east together in their thousands to meet and discuss how to further build the resistance around the alternative and to zero in on the government’s arrogance that it can get away with anything. This workers’ opposition is not just a rearguard action undertaken in desperation but it is resistance that continues with its agenda that there is an alternative and that the crisis must be resolved in favour of the working class and people.

2013 Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign “Over the last year many workers who looked to the Labour Party have seen that it continues to be unable to carry out its own declared redefining of itself from ‘New Labour’ to ‘Labour’ and it maintains the pro-war consensus over Afghanistan, Syria and Iran and echoes the divisive stands of the ruling elite that try to wreck the unity of the people in this fight for the alternative. Many of the youth do not look to the Labour Party, and whilst the movement is for the unity of all in building the Workers’ Opposition this can only be done in addressing the question as to how the struggle for the alternative can engage the whole movement of the people and be effective.”

The times demand that the workers build their opposition and become organised as an effective independent political force in their own right. Their demands will need to centre around: an economy that guarantees the right to a livelihood; safeguarding the NHS as a publicly-provided National Health Service with an end to privatisation; an end to the barbaric wars and the bringing of the troops home from foreign soil and withdrawal from NATO; education provided as a right and not a privilege; respect for the natural environment in the interests of human existence; not-for-profit banking, credit and insurance under direct public control; public ownership of industries fundamental to the social economy; a peaceful social environment in which the national economy is developed not to serve maximum profit of the rich who take more out of the economy than they put in, but to serve the claims of the people on society. Such a programme can be summed up as: Stop Paying the Rich! Increase Investments in Social Programmes!