Leadership is vital in fight to mobilise class action

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¡of the working class, but rather ¡a social and economic problem for "the nation" which has to be solved by "mutual' sacrifice.

Their emphasis throughout is on the maintenance of the capitalist system and class society.

Here, of course, the Labourites and their co-thinkers abroad face a problem. Capitalism in crisis is unable to offer any reforms.

The reformist is therefore obliged to approach the working class with empty hands. What we get, as in the present period, is reformism without any prospect of reform!

Even past gains are stripped away in the frenzied drive to protect the accumulated private capital and restore profitability.

But the reformist leaders, committed as they are to the maintenance of the system, are obliged to go along with this every step of the way.

Only the construction of a revolutionary party, which starts not from what capitalism permits or can afford but from the basic requirements of the werking class in defence of jobs and living standards, can now offer workers a serious alternative to the destruction of what once seemed the most basic rights and working conditions.

"The bosses are on the offensive and the mood amongst many workers has also shifted to the right.

"Whereas ten years ago picket lines were respected, now trade unionists break them; instead of blacking and support to help fellow trade unionists they are left out in the cold"

Evans PnuIE Nazi rally • The sentiments expressed above are far from rare amongst sections of workers.

With a ruthless Tory government actively forcing the pace of an employers' offensive against trade union rights, jobs, living standards and working conditions, many workers feel nested trayaom framin thetleaders, have become demoralised.

But the quote does not come from a confused and demoralised worker. It comes from a leaflet distributed on the gates of British Leyland's Cowley Plant by the Socialist Workers And, as such it sums up in a nutshell the reason why the SWP cannot offer workers a revolutionary lead in the present period.

Incapable

It shows that the SWP are incapable of recognising the nature of the present period; incapable of correctly assessing the recent past; and incapable of pointing out the central political tasks to be confronted now.

Because while it is of course true that the bosses are on the offensive, it is not true that "the mood of many workers has also shifted to the right"

The fact is that the Thatcher government has-according to its own statistics--been presiding over a wave of strikes in excess of anything since the 1926 General Strike.

Steel workers-after 50 years near dormancy in a right-wing dominated union-responded instantly to an official strike call, and stayed out solidly without strike pay for 14 weeks.

When BL Convenor Derek Robinson was sacked a staggering 32,000 carworkers in various Midlands plants walked out in an almost unprecedented show of solidarity-only to be manoeuvied back to work through the sabotage of union officials.

Sell-out

Moss Evans" subsequent sellout of the BL pay struggle took place with 18,000 workers already on strike and others ready to join the mass walk out.

The solidarity of NGA print workers last month confronted and largely defeated determined attempt at a bosses' offensive.

Even Len Murray has admitted that the 1979-80 pay round has brought an unprecedented number of membership rejections of officially endorsed pay offers.

Everywhere there is evidence that the militancy on the shop floor far outpaces the mealy-mouthed left' . statements and anti-Tory conference speeches, trotted out by union bureaucrats and Labour leaders.

But the SWP's political analysis is incapable of recognising such contradictions.

For them, the fact that the union bureaucracy has succeeded in controlling and blocking actual struggles is not a sign of the necessity to expose and combat the bureaucracy and mobilise workers to force their removal, but a sign that "the mood amongst many workers has shifted to the right"! SWP leader Tony Cliff