2002: A Year of Implementation

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2002: A Year of Implementation

Northern Regional Forum on the Mass Party Press Sums up the Work of 2001

To mark the turn of the year, members of the Central Committee met on December 30.

Their discussions centred on summing up the work of the Party, and the national and international situation, in 2001, characterising the present period and the orientation of the Party's work in 2002.

The past year has been a key year of the work of the Party in the period between the 3rd and 4th Congresses. It was the year in which the full implications of the 3rd Congress have been put into practice after the start-up period of this work, and in which the tasks of the Party pointed to by the 3rd Congress have been crystallised and the policy for all the aspects of the work of the Party have been set. In the sphere of the work to build the Mass Party Press, work as regards the technical base, including the journalistic work, had been consolidated in practice and the regional forums on the Mass Party Press had ensured that the Party had operated as a complete system in this sphere. In the sphere of the work to participate in the political life of the country, the tactical line of Plant the Alternative on the Soil of Britain! Build the Workers' Opposition! had been formulated and quickly put into practice, with the experience of the election campaign, encouraging worker politicians to come forward, and the subsequent building on that experience. The Party had participated in the movement against the "war on terrorism" in order to build the Party within the movement itself and to work to advance this movement towards its goals.

This work has been carried in spite of the Party being a relatively small force by having the orientation of maximum political mobilisation and that the workers must be made conscious of and organised to achieve their historic mission.

This all points to 2002 being the year when everything is done to focus on implementing the tactical line to Plant the Alternative on the Soil of Britain -- Build the Workers' Opposition! with the work to build the Mass Party Press being put in its service. Although forms of struggle may vary, this represents the tactical line for this period. One of the features which characterises this period is that, while September 11 has been seen to deepen all the trends in society, the prevailing trend is that of deepest reaction all along the line and on all fronts. At the same time, the progressive forces have to rise and are determined to rise to the occasion. Despite the fact that a very serious situation faces the world, the broad democratic sentiment of the people is to take a stand in opposition to the imposition of the Anglo-US "New World Order".

The Blairite programme has become exposed as one of reaction and retrogression. In these circumstances, questions which had been settled by history after the Second World War have once more become burning questions of the day, as under the guise of "interdependency" and the assertion of "universal values", the "West" is tearing up the relinquishing of force to settle conflicts, the norms of international law and relations, and the right of nations to their sovereignty. Obscurantism and pragmatism are increasingly entrenched under the Blairite programme as methods to justify the right-wing agenda.

In opposition to this and as part of its self-motion and its work to guide the people's movements, the Party deepens its conviction in itself as representing what is the most advanced, most enlightened and most humane in life, its conviction in the revolutionary role of the proletariat and its conviction that the broad masses of the people must solve the problems of society by themselves becoming the decision-makers. In this connection, the work of the Party on the theoretical front is set to mature in 2002.

This whole work, the tasks which have been crystallised in 2001, including the organising work – all the work along the line of march set by the 3rd Congress – is also carried out within the context of the key task of our times following the collapse of the bi-polar division of the world: that of restoring the unity of the communists in Britain, which the Party had put on the agenda in 1994, as well as that of transforming the Party into a Mass Communist Party, which the Congress in 1999 put on the agenda.

In short, 2002 is the year of implementation, and within this work in 2002 the seeds of the agenda of the 4th Congress of RCPB(ML), scheduled for March 2003, will also germinate. This programme for 2002 is carried out in a manner commensurate with the level of our work and the strength of the forces at our disposal, and consistent with the Party’s tasks and programme that it sets for itself as well as the tasks which the workers’ and people’s movements require to take up to advance. In this way, it will be a year of the militants of the Party finding their feet in the implementation of the Party’s tactical line and programme, and guided by the Party’s theoretical thinking and its overall line of march, which is that of creating the subjective conditions for revolution. This work will build on what has been achieved in 2001, in which the Party and its militants have intervened in the political life of the country, avoiding getting swayed off course from the political line of march, but neither ignoring the objective world developments nationally and internationally which provide the context and the motive-force for that work.

The meeting of the Central Committee, in discussing the programme of RCPB(ML) for 2002, decided that it would be appropriate for an event to be held at the turn of the year as a stepping stone to the year of the 4th Congress, to which the whole Party would be invited.

The toast at the conclusion of the meeting was to the advance and further success of the Party’s work in 2002.

Plant the Alternative on the Soil of Britain! Build the Workers’ Opposition!

At a meeting of the Northern Regional Forum in December, the participants emphasised that the 3rd Congress of RCPB(ML) set the Party’s task to continue to build the Mass Party Press in the heart of the working class and to unite people around the task of the Groups of Writers and Disseminators. Then after the start-up period of the work set by the Congress and the holding of the two National Consultative Conferences, the Party took up the task of intervening in the political life of the country, starting with the General Election.

Following the terrible events of September 11 and the war against Afghanistan with the intervention which is still continuing and the plan to extend the "war on terrorism" to other countries the vital work of the Party is continuing in this new situation. The Party in the region has responded to those events by participating in this movement, taking up a number of vital questions and acting as a uniting force. It has striven to implement the leading role of the Party in the sense that the Party's analysis and theoretical depth is able to give orientiation to the movement, clarifying important issues, and works to unite the movement to achieve its aims. At the same time, the work is continuing to get the people to take up the alternative. This has been reflected in the discussions in the Northern Regional Forum.

Why a small force in the region has been so effective and its political influence in the General Election and in the Stop The War Coalition has far outweighed the size of the actual numbers involved is because the activists in the region based themselves on the Party’s line and on the continuous study of Workers’ Weekly and WDIE and giving advanced positions in the movements of the people at all times.

The Northern Region participated in the General Election campaign, where the conception of worker politicians was fleshed out as workers constituting themselves as the alternative, standing a candidate and supporting candidates of the alternative, on the basis that there was an alternative to this party-dominated system, that there is an alternative to the "Third Way" of Tony Blair and that everybody should unite and support those candidates. This was very important in terms of opening up this front of work and beginning to plant the alternative on the soil of the North East as well as in the country.

Following the election, the anti-social offensive was intensified at great speed. The government speeded up the attacks on public services and more and more gave way to the interests of the financial oligarchy to run everything. The activists of the northern region played a role in putting forward the advanced position that workers must constitute themselves as the political opposition to this agenda. This can be seen in the work done with North East Workers and Politics and the work to safeguard the future of the health service, with the health workers setting their own agenda. The work with Workers’ Weekly, WDIE with North East Workers and Politics has strengthened the conception of people reading and writing and taking the Mass Party Press as the arbiter in their struggles and learning from it.

The Northern Regional Forum discussed the advance in other fronts of work, particularly those among the youth and students and the work to restore the unity of the communists as it is reflected in the region.

The Regional Forum also paid special attention to discussing the further development of the Mass Party Press in the region and the work of the Regional Forum itself.