Defeat the Fraudulent Austerity Programme!
Organise for the Working Class to Adopt
its Own Independent Political Agenda!

This year’s Durham Miners Gala comes at a time when the working class movement is stepping up its organised resistance to the government's fraudulent “austerity” programme with demonstrations and co-ordinated strikes. At the same time, the Durham Miners Association is engaged in a struggle alongside the rest of the working class movement in the northern region to safeguard the future of the Gala and Big Meeting as a political rallying point in the fight for their alternative political, social and economic outlook and values. In this respect, our Party recognises the significance of these days as one of the immediate fight to defeat this fraudulent “austerity” programme and the necessity for the working class to fight for the alternative. It recognises also the necessity for the working class to build its own modern communist party to clear the path so that the working class can adopt its own independent political agenda to take the lead in the nations of Britain so as to vest sovereignty in the people and effect a new direction for society.

Over the last four and a half years the government has continued apace the aim of previous governments to ensure that society first pays tribute to the interests of the financial oligarchy and their banks and monopolies. The plan of this minority is to plunder the resources of society with their drive for maximum profit in a jobless “growth” economy. An economy serving working people who are the producers of wealth is put in the last place. The Coalition government has been systematically wrecking any semblance of a pro-social national economy, with manufacturing and public services that meet the needs of working people, the young, senior citizens, the disabled and the unemployed. This has been done in the name of “austerity”, with the outcome of destabilising society and threatening its very future.

To turn this situation around requires that the whole movement continues to build its unity in action to defeat this fraudulent “austerity” programme which labels the interests of the people as a “cost” and the interests of the powers-that-be and their monopolies, with their chaos, violence and war, as sacrosanct. As RCPB(ML) pointed out in its call to the working class on May Day, the struggles over the past year, at the points of production, in public services, in health and education, for the rights of the various collectives in society – these struggles have shown that the powers-that-be are intent on depriving the working class and people of any decision-making power. By summing up their experience, the people involved in struggle are becoming very clear that the fight must be to challenge this dictate of the powers-that-be. Experience shows that incoherence, violence, chaos and actual war are all that the ruling elite has to offer. This experience can be generalised to draw the conclusion that all over the world, the workers are the only social force capable of saving the day. Summation shows that marginalisation from decision-making is a fundamental problem facing the working class and people.

We give the call to all participants in the Gala to ensure that they keep the initiative in their own hands and organise their own political agenda, recognising that the worship of the power of capital in the big party consensus has been causing the working people to lose their bearings. However, it is also the case that where the fight against marginalisation has been taken up, the fight to roll back the prevailing ethos of dictate, then the working people have been more than capable of setting their own agenda for the well-being of society and its members.

The goal is to deprive the owners of capital and their representatives of the power to disempower the people from being the decision-makers. This is a profoundly political struggle, a school of the working class and people for running a modern economy, a modern society. The task in the coming year is to become still more powerful and effective in challenging the marginalisation of the people from economic, political and social affairs, and for the working class to bring forward its own worker politicians.

By the time of the 131st Durham Miners Gala, a general election will have taken place. The Northern Region of RCPB(ML) takes this opportunity to call on the whole working class movement to go all out in this intervening period to ensure that the fraudulent, anti-worker and anti-social “austerity” programme of the Con-Dem government is defeated, and that candidates who oppose the agenda of austerity are elected. The working class must rely on its own outlook and the strength of its organisation and numbers to ensure that a path is opened for its own independent programme. The working class and people will prevail if they set their sights on becoming the decision-makers and persist in their struggles with this outlook.

No to Austerity! For a New Direction for Society! Organise for the Working Class to Fulfil its Historic Mission and Vest Sovereignty in the People!
Long May the Durham Miners Gala and Big Meeting Continue!