Learning from the struggles of yesterday

So as socialists we have been involved in many struggles throughout the yars most notably in the Militant socialist party ranks the poll tax and the struggles around the liverpool council in the mid to late 80's.

I want to make this appeal to many trade unionists and activists campainging against the cuts to not repeat the mistakes of history as a famous quote goes.

We must not dismiss big important struggles on the left. We as members of the CWI who have been involved in very tough struggles over the poll tax leading to over 18 million non payments of the poll tax across the UK. We as Militants leading the fightback to the nasty Maggie Thatcher and eventually forcing her to resign as a sign of her going far too far and working class people saying enougg is enough.

Sadly i do not think the same pressure is out there today. Even though this con-dem government is extremely weak having made more u-turns than my grandad on a bad day and being completely split on many issues the labour movement has failed to organise itself properly as yet. June 30th will be a big step towards rectifying this situation with a co-ordinated strike but this must be followed up in the autumn with bigger wider mass action.

But my main point is that we as socialists get ridiculed for reading about past struggles and how we could have won but these lessons from history must be learnt or we face making the same mistakes again.

Although this time with the trade union and labour movement at possibly its weakest its ever been this could speel tradegy for many workers with a ultimate fall of the movement. i Certainly hope this will not happen.

But the risk is there we win and we gain in huge confidence to take forward we loose we set the tone for the movement of a air of defeatism and a downward spiral. This first test comes on June the 30th and we must win to take workers confidence and continue to build for the autumn which shall hopefully see up to 4 million workers joining the 3 quarters of a million estimated to be out on June 30th.

We as Marxists look forward and look to predict what will happen but this coming tide is unclear and we wait to see how much the labour movement can mobilise itself. We of course in the socialist party will be there on every picket line, every protest and every class based action we can to interveen and put our points across that there must be pressure put on the TUC for the autumn to get behind a one day public sector general strike.

Failure to put this message through to the mass's of workers will bea failiure on our part as even if our messages are not carried through we can be sure that we had the right ideas and the best strategy for the wider anti cuts movement to take forward in trying to forge the biggest and broadest anti cuts movement possible.

We must not forget what comrades have been through in the past. The struggles they had to overcome and today can recount such struggles to us so we can learn lessons from them. Where they went wrong and felt we could do better and where we got it right. As we well know we are not perfect by any means and assessing our strategy for the future is key to winning more workers to our ideas and theories .

On a similar note we must not be detered by defeats in the movement and continue to explain our ideas and theories to the mass of workers in the hope some will start to take note of our thoughts and join us in our battle of ideas with the movement.

One of our main ideas that sets us aside from otehr left organisations is our idea and belief in the formation of a new workers party. As we believe the vehicle for a working class fighting party in labour is a unlikely happening and workers and increasing amounts of them including the unemployed and others are looking for a alternative to not nessesarily bring about socialism but certainly campaign for it and stand up for workers wherever and whenever it can. As we in the socialist party point out we dont nessesarily believe in socialism coming about via the ballot box whilst at the same time we recognise it is important for workers to feel they have a political voice to stand up for them and their rights. We stand by this and hope as part of our work this new mass workers party can become reality.