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Vol. 82/No. 9 March 5, 2018
Communist League in UK says workers need to fight for power
BY ÓLÖF ANDRA PROPPÉ
LONDON — Pamela Holmes, the Communist League candidate for mayor of the
borough of Tower Hamlets, East London, took her communist campaign to an
area where residents are demanding the borough council improve the
safety of their homes. Their efforts follow the deaths of 71 people at a
fire at Grenfell Tower in West London last June where authorities failed
to take measures that could have prevented the rapid spread of the inferno.
The fire was fed by cladding on the building’s exterior that the council
knew was a hazard, but did nothing about, creating a death trap. Tens of
thousands of other workers around the country continue to live in
similar housing. Tower Hamlets residents have presented petitions
calling on the council to inspect the cladding on the blocks where they
live and immediately install sprinklers.
Joined by campaign supporters, Holmes knocked on doors Feb. 10 to talk
to workers in Tower Hamlets.
“Neither Conservative nor Labour parties have an answer to the political
and moral crisis of the capitalist rulers,” Holmes told construction
worker Segree Hall when he answered the door. “That’s why the Communist
League explains that workers need to organize independently of them and
build a movement of millions that can take power from the U.K.’s
capitalist rulers.”
“There are plenty of construction workers around here who could do all
the work that’s needed but the jobs go to workers at the big companies,”
Hall said. With some 1.4 million people out of work according to
government figures, workers are forced to compete with each other to try
to make a living.
“Working people need to find ways to overcome the competition for jobs
as we fight to meet the need for safe homes,” Holmes said. “The
Communist League fights for a public works program to put millions back
to work at union-scale wages to make the repairs and build the houses,
hospitals and other facilities workers need.” Hall set an appointment
for Holmes to come back to talk further and to take a look at the CL’s
literature.
Supporters of the campaign also introduced the party’s revolutionary
course as they joined thousands demonstrating here Feb. 3 against
declining health care from the country’s National Health Service. The
campaign table displayed placards, including two that read: “It’s not
who you’re against it’s what you’re for! Workers must take political
power!” and “Organize all workers — agency and permanent, native born
and foreign born! Amnesty for undocumented workers!”
For lack of sufficient government funding thousands of people have had
“nonurgent” surgeries canceled this winter, and there has been a
shortage of beds with many patients kept waiting in ambulances outside
hospitals. In January Accident and Emergency doctors wrote to Prime
Minister Theresa May complaining that patients were dying in corridors
while waiting for treatment.
The demonstration was called by the People’s Assembly and Health
Campaigns Together under the banner: “NHS in crisis: Fix it now.” The
People’s Assembly says the answer is to throw out the ruling
Conservative Party and replace it with Labour.
“I travel a lot,” Angus Ford, a film location worker attending the
protest, told Holmes. “And every time I come back there are new stories
about how the NHS has got worse. Might it not be better with a Labour
Party government?”
“No, Labour promises to protect the NHS and make capitalism ‘fairer.’
But it’s not just a matter of putting more funds into health care,”
Holmes replied. “Under capitalism health care, like everything else, is
a commodity that’s bought and sold for profit. In these conditions there
will always be a class-divided crisis of health care for working people.
“Workers here must look to our own capacities like the toilers in Cuba
who overthrew capitalist rule, ending its dog-eat-dog social relations,
and set out to build a society based on human solidarity and the needs
of the toiling majority,” Holmes said. She pointed to the decisive role
played by Cuban doctors and medical staff in eliminating Ebola in West
Africa. Ford picked up a subscription to the Militant to follow the
campaign.
The Communist League is also running Hugo Wils for Tameside Council and
Catharina Tirsén for Manchester City Council.
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