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TASKS, ORIENTATION AND SLOGANS OF THE IMG Introduction. .
This shert resolution is for voting at ti. IMG Conference. It highlights eniy the chief questions that need to b» clarified at the conference and by no means includes all of our work or even priorities. It ia in line with the three decuments submitted to the IMG pre-conference discussion by the majority of the Central Committee which remains a basis for delegation to the conference. 4. How do we build the IMG?
This IMG conference takes place against the international background of the developing confrontations in Central America and the unfolding ~ political revolutien in Poland. In France, the Mitterand victery opens up @ new political period in Europe. These international factors combine in Britain with the tremendous left developments taking place inside the Labour Party.
The central question faced by the IMG is how to buiid a revolutionary party cut of this situation. Indispensable to any stable gains in this task is the rapid deepening of the turn te industry and the building of a revolutionary youth organisation. These will be the key levers in the construction of a strong faction of Labour Party supporters.
The political crisis in Britain is part ef a thoroughgeing transformation of the British political situation: the beginning of the end of stable parliamentary democracy based on the gains of empire. These developments condition the emergence of currents at the base of the Labour Party and unions whose core is inside the industrial uniens. These, through a process of splits and fusions, will previde the initial foundations for the building of a mass revolutionary party.
The experience of the last Labour government and the impact of the grewing polarisation between the classes has had an important effect on the rank-and-file leadership of the class. The determination to defeat the right-wing leaders ef the Labour mevement, to take control over the actions of the parliamentary leaders and the adoption of central class struggle policy positions has led to the emergence of a Bennite current whose final political direction is not yet decided.
This Bennite current has its most important base in the industrial unions.
The evolution of this base in the unions is more and more towards lending its weight to resolving the crisis in the Labour Party in favour ef class struggle action. This layer will determine the evolution of the Bennite current as a whole. Understanding this precess means reaching eut from within this layer inte the Labour Party and to reach out from the Labour Party into this layer.
A pre-condition for ua to be effective in this task is to rapidly boost the 20 per cent of our members in industry. Our objective must be to complete our goal of a majority of our existing members taking industrial jebs within the next two years before the next IMG conference, This requires that a ‘second wave’, led by the leadership has to be launched from this conference.
We must aim rapidly for the majority of our supporters to be active in the Labour Party. This must be led by our supperters in industry.
In the next period it is most likely that the bulk ef our recruits will come from within the ranks of the radicalising youth. Building a strong youth organisation has to be a central task. All experience shows that the youth, through the LPYS, will be a decisive factor in the resolution of the crisis in the Labour Party in a class struggle direction. 4a
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In order to achieve these political projects we will aim to ensure the constructien of a professional apparatus centralised around Socialist Challenge. This will take high priority in the allocation ef resources. 2- Part of building the Fourth International.
We see our efforts to build the British Section of the Fourth International from these developments at the base of the Labour Party and trade unions as part of the intervention of the Fourth International to build mass parties world-wide.
Viewing the world revolution as a combined but uneven process we understand the necessity to concentrate the resources at our disposal against the weakest links in the chains ef domination exercised by imperialism and its chief prop, the Stalinist bureaucracy.
We therefore support the chief campaigns of the Fourth International for solidarity with the struggles in Central America and the Carribean and in Poland. The chief anti-imperialist task of the British section will remain building the movement against British imperialism's presence in the north of Ireland, Within the contéxt ef oppesing the massive remilitarisation of imperialism and eur campaign for unilateral disarmament we situate our taske of building a front against intervention in Central America and the Carribean, We explain that Reagan's offensive not only threatens to put a road block in front of the revolution in El Salvador, but also threatens the gains ef the revolution in Grenada, Nicaragua and Cuba. This means that we get the truth out on these resolutions to British workers.
It is this task of explanation which is at the centre of our work on Poland. This revolution in an advanced industrialised country and the response of the industrial workers te the deep social and economic crisis has provided a great epening fer the world revelution and also allows us to explain the most cemplex questiens ef workers democracy and workers control by reference to a living struggle. We must become the main partisans of Solidarity in this country, through explanation of their policies, providing platforms for their representatives, and establishing links between the British and Polish workers.
The effects of the crisis of imperialism on the British state and prospects for the British revolution are nowhere more graphically shown than in the rapid sharpening of the Irish crisis in the last year.
This crisis of Britain's domination of Ireland which has reflected itself in the beginning of the break up of bipartisanship on the part of the Labour Party, epens up the opportunity to put on the agenda once again the building of a mass movement for the withdrawal of troops from Treland.
In all three cases the principal area where we wish to build an internationalist current is among the radicalising forces at the base of the Labour Party and the trade unions and amongst youth. We anticipate that we will be able to build our organisation from those currents who actively identify with the struggle of the working class in all three sectors of world revolution.
We will alse deepen our own understanding of these revolutions through intensive educational activity and by continuing the discussion in the Fourth International both on Cuba and the meaning of events in Poland. 3e_The Central Question of Government. eo Se ee oD ot Me ek OO em Dee Increasingly the British political situation is dominated by the question of government. In the next two years the upcoming general election will overshadow all other events in the class struggle. oe ex
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For the bourgeoisie, the disastrous record of the Thatcher government poses the possibility of an electoral collapse of the Teries and the election of a Labour government unable to restrain the ranks ef the labour movement. The Secial Democratic Party/Liberal Alliance has therefore become increasingly attractive for the bosses as an instrument for preventing the election of a Labour government and for assembling a coalitien government of the bourgeois parties.
At the same time the Labourite bureaucracy, both left and right, has used the ‘dampening effects' of mass unemployment to inhibit, divide and obstruct the tendency for the massive anti-Tory sentiment inside the working class to be translated into mass action with the aim of removing the Tory government. Instead they have proposed a strategy of forcing the Tories to dange their policies to those of the alternative economic strategy adopted by the labour movement.
Ag against this utopian and diversionary policy we should counterpose the necessity of unity in the fight against the Tories. Already there is a tendency for the trade unions to act on political questions and the Labour Party to mobilise on the social and economic preblems facing the working class. We express this tendency and the need for the working class to plan out its struggle and give it a political focus through the slogan of: Joint trade union and Labour Party action to kick out the Tories! For a Labour Victory?
At the same time the political dynamic informing the growth of the Bennite movement is a determination amongst the rank-and-file leaders of the working class to prevent a return to the type of Labour government in office between 1974-79, This expresses itself in the fight for socialist policies against the Tories and against the right wing of the labour movement. As against the alternative economic strategy = a pregramme for the structural reform of capitalism « we put forward the need for a trade union and Labour Party plan to beat the crisis. Such a programme should be based on the fight for jobs against remwilitarisation; for workers control and workers democracy; for a government which backs the workers against the bosses.
We advance this plan as one to mobilise the working class against the attacks of the bourgeoisie. Our slogan is therefore:
We will advance these slogans not in counterposition to the present partial and fragmented struggles against the Teries but as their extension. Neither will we counterpose the fight for secialist policies to left advances in the party but as their conclusion.
Alongside the fight for a class struggle programme we have the aim of building a class struggle left wing in the unions and the Labour Party.
This left wing similar in type to that of the Minority Movement and the National Left Wing Movement of the 1920s will, in this period, be built as a product of the evolution of the Bennite current.
The decisive feature of this current in relation to the left wings of the 1930s and the 1950s is its mags base both inside the constituency labour Parties and the mass industrial unions. This base, still moving to the left, aima to prevent any more anti-working class governments of the Wilson/Callaghan type. To this end it fights to bring its bureaucratic leadership under democratic control, starting with the Parliamentary Labour Party. The movement supports important aspects of a class struggle programme; notably opposition to wage restraint, the reduction of the working week without loss of pay and unilateral disarmament. wo Bess
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We unconditionally support this current against the right wing. We support Benn in the leadership battle that continues inside the Labour Party. We build long-term alliances on specific questions of policy.
We place ourselves within this current as part of its developing class struggle left wing.
The Benn leadership represents that small section ef the bureaucracy which seeks to put itself at the head of the radicalisation inside the working class. The programme around which the leadership attempts to head off this movement is that of the alternative economic strategy. ut the movement as a whole does not share this political framework.
We anticipate that as this movement increasingly collides with a leadership which is not prepared to wage a consistent struggle against the Teries and the right wing of the bureaucracy that a process of differentiation, which has already begun will continue, dividing the Bennite current between class struggle and class collaborationist currents from top to bottom in the labour movement. We will seek to actively promote this differentiation and the building of a clase struggle left wing by the following means; *pursuing the fight against the right wing of the labourite bureaucracy through taking the struggle inside the Labour Party deeper and deeper into the unions, backing all initiatives which tend to do this; increased affiliation te the Labour Party, formation of Labour Party factery branches, the 'New Broad Left' formations in some unions and the initiatives of alliances in the Labour Party to take their struggle into the unions. *fighting for joint trade union and Labour Party action behind struggles against the Tories, the building of solidarity campaigns which give us a platform within the radicalisation of the shop stewards movement. *premoting our national campaigns inside the Labour Party and the unions committing the Labour Party and trade unions to actively mobilise behind unilateral disarmament and in solidarity with those fighting imperialism in Central Americas te promote and arplain the cause of the Polish workers in their struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy; to take the discussion of British imperialism's role in Ireland into the unions from the Labour Party; maintaining our battle for the right to work, for positive action in favour of women, youth and black minorities; for an immediate reduction of the working week without less of pay; for the nationalisation without compensation under workers control of all firme hived off by the Tories or declaring large-scale redundancies.
We will maintain our fight for a women's right te cheese. Our aim in this is to build an internationalist current inside the labour movement which actively campaigns on behalf of the oppressed. *the fight to construct a mass youth section of the Labour Party in the belief that such a mass youth section can be won, as a whole, to a class struggle orientation. .
The fight to build a women's movement and a black movement which is proletarian in leadership and programme is also a vital element of our fight to build a class struggle left wing. Through official and unofficial, tendencies and structures within the unions we fight to build a leadership that can champion demands of black people and women. 2°_Partysbuilding tasks and the Labour Party.
Within this political framework the IMG must decide on the best way to dispose its forces to best build a revolutionary party. We must carefully centralise our forces both pelitically and organisationally to have an impact. wobec
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Our fractions will advise all supporters of the IMG's policies to take out Labour Party membership as supporters of Secialist Challenge.
This will enable them to identify themselves as part ef the class struggle left wing of the Bennite current in the workplaces, the trade union branches and within the Labour Party itself.
We will maintain this orientation towards the Labour Party not for a short time, as was the case with the Trotskyist movement's entry tactics in the 1930s, but for an extended period, aa we believe that the political evolution ef the currents at the base of the Labour Party and trade unions will take a leng time to develop.
Socialist Challenge will remain the main way in which we put forward the need to build a-mass revolutienary party to lead the struggle for state power. On demonstrations, in the unions, on our pamphlets and fer our public meetings, Socialist Challenge will be the name that we organise under. We will recruit from all areas ef our werk te the IMG (British Section of the Fourth International). We will maintain some comrades as spokespeople fer the IMG both locally and nationally. The IMG will be a public organisation. We will make sure that all aspects of branch life cf the IMG are strengthened with special emphasis on education and political discussion, adopting weekly branch meetings as the norm. Likewise in the Labour Party Yeung Secialists Revolution will be the main way in which our comrades advocate the building of a revolutionary youth organisatien which fights to build a revolutionary party. This is what we mean by having an independent pelitical profile.
Our work in the CLPa will aim te reinforee at every level the link between the trade unions and the Labour Party. We fight te lead the left in the struggle against the right, but prioritising cur method and line. We reject strategies within the Labour Party which are based eu standing councillors for the 1982 electiensg Instead we aim to reach out to the base of the Benn current within the unions and te fight for the Labour Party to be fully imvolved in solidarity with workers in struggle and mass campaigns like CND. These are the priority tasks for our supporters in the Labour Party.
The fractions that the IMG nationally and lecally will form to discuss eut developments in the Labour Party and to plan astion will be rapidly expanded over the next peried to the peint where a majority of our supperters are active in the Censtituency Labour Parties. The axis of our activity in the Labour Party will be at the peint where the unions link up with the LP. We therefere seek to become umien delegates to GMCs; party events such as the various regional annual and women's conferences; and such campaigns that we prioritise such as LARC, LCI and ethers.
Especially we seek to build up Labeur Party factory branches where they exist or back independent moves to form them. Werk at the ward level does not place us in the best pesitien te deepen the participation ef the unions in the political developments in the labeur movement. This . is not to aay that today none of eur supperters will be ward activists <but this ward activity should not be the focus or goal of our orientation.
Recognising that our fraction will be initially composed of activists at a ward level rather than from union delegation to the GMCs this puts &@ premium on strong disciplined fractions led by eur industrial comrades and on getting a majority of our comrades into industry.
All our supporters in industry must be encouraged te be active in the Labour Party. The leadership at all levels must lead the work in the Labour Party. oe
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In this sense building a fraction in the Labour Party ia part of the same process as the turm to industry and the fight te build a youth organisation.
The turn te industry by the IMG will therefore be essential te carrying eut the work of building our organisatioa in relatien to the events inside the Labour Party. Withont deepening the turn we will miss most of the Opportunities that are Presented to us. This means that we must: *Aim for a majority ef the organisation to be in industry in the next two years through a second wave of comrades changing their jobs, led by the leadership. We will continue to build the fractions that we have established in the nationalised industries and seek to extend theme In particular we will wage a campaign to build a fractien in the NUM, starting with pricritising our interventien areund Seargili's campaign. *continue te effect a transformatien in the way in which our work is carried cut, prioritising our intervention in the industrial unions in all aspects of eur work and continuing the change in the style of our press and in the internal life of the organisation.
In building the youth erganisatien we will again stress two aspecte ef the work: *the necessity for the IMG to maintain a Gonstant orientation tewards the ongoing youth radicalisation in all aspects of its work. *to build Revolution Youth seeing it as the main way in which a cadre will be trained for the Fourth International in Britain im the next period.
Implicit in this appreach should be the understanding that it is among youth that the IMG will recruit the greatest number of new people to our movements. — 'Put the paper " firet! has to be the slogan whieh every member ef the organisation comes away from our cenference armed with. Socialist Challenge is our prierity of priorities, because it is the main way we will project ourselves in the next peried: *Socialist Challenge will be the exclusive way that we recruit te the IMu "Socialist Challenge is the main way that we fight for our campaigns inside the labour movement *Socialist Challenge is the main way in which we raise our income *Socialist Challenge, alongside Revolution, International and the new Fourth International quarterly will be the way in which we educate our periphery and ourselves.
If we can successfully realise the target of 5000 tetal sales of the paper in the next period we will have accomplished two things. Firstly we will adjust ourselves for the prolonged period of. work with the Labour Party.
Secondly we will have made a long overdue sorrestien to the error of the IMG not to place the paper at the centre of all ite activities. extjes