Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today, Woman Worker, Class Fighter and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

[Returned to office after five years of Labour…]

Socialist Press no. 208, 30 July 1980 · scan pp. 10–11 · about 541 words

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Returned to office after five years of Labour betrayals, the Tory government has immediately begun wielding a sharpened axe oin jobs; conditions and social services. Trade union rights face. imminent legal attack. Prices are already Plum sectors of state industry will be handed to the Tories' profiteering big business backers; and the pay rises to police and armed forces mark only the prelude to increased state violence against pickets and anti-fascists and an intensified army crackdown The Callaghan-Healey leadership has made it clear that it will oppose any perspective other than settling down and meekly acceptWHEN IT LOOKS LIKE And, though they have once more dusted off their near-forgotten "socialist" speeches, Labour's 'left wing' MPs have continued to duck away from any fight to remove Callaghan.

TUC leaders, 1o0, have set out to establish a basis for collabora- THERE'S NO WAY OUT tion with Thatcher and the Tory cabinet, parallelling their anti-working class alliance with Wilson and then Callaghan.

But the working class has experienced and overcome such betrayals before-to topple Heath's union-bashing government in 1974, and sinash through Callaghan's reactionary Phase 4 of wage controls in a series of monumental pay batties in the winter of These experiences are not dead. They point to the way that jobs, social services and hard-won union rights can be defended against But a principled, revolutionary leadership is needed if the Labour traitors, the TUC collaborators and their hangers-on in the Communisit Party are to be exposed and pushed aside, and the mass struggles mobilised that can defeat and remove the Tory governSuch at leadership must fight day in and day out for a programme of transit ional demands which, starting from today's conditions and today's consciousness within the working class, lead workers to And in taking up democratic demands-such as an end to racial and sextual discrimination, it must show the crucial role that must be played by the working class as the only consistently revolutionary class capable of leading the struggle for the emancipation of Anıd it must fight on an international basis-mobilising solidarity for an ti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggles-whether in Ireland, South Africa or elsewhere throughout the world, and drawing streng th and political lessons from revolutionary upheavals such as that which ousted the hated Shah in Iran. This means fighting for the re construction of the Trotskyist Fourth International Tro this end, the Workers Socialist League is affiliated to the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee which fights to reaffirm and devellop the method and principies of the 1938 Transitional Programme, and for full discussion in the world Trotskyist more. policies to defend jabs, The next period will see major class struggles in Britain. A principled Marxist leadership is essential. Our movement though wages and social services JOIN U:S and take forward the struggle for socialism! rocketing upwards.

in the occupied North of Ireland.

ing five years of Tory devastation. 1978.

renewed Tory attacks.

ment.

grasp the: necessity for socialist revolution.

mankir id. merit.

strong in programme is small in numbers. the answers in PRESS ECUR SOCIALIST fighting RATES:

Trial sub (UK):

Six issues.

Six months One 'year..

Europe:

Six months Rest of the Workd:

Six months....

Please send me tria of Socialist Preca. I Name...

Address.

6XX.

Scan page 11

Wednesday July

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 208, 30 July 1980

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