Critical vote for Galloway/WPB and Corbyn without illusions! Organise the mass struggle in workplaces and on the streets!

Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), jointly issued by the RCIT Britain and the International Bureau of the RCIT, 29.05.2024, www.thecommunists.net

1.           Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced a snap election on 4 July. This is the result of the disastrous state of his Tory Party with no prospects of improvement given the horrible political and economic situation in Britain for years. The Tories are rightly discredited as an arrogant party of the super-rich, warmongers and supporters of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

2.           All polls predict a landslide victory for the Labour Party which people consider as a “lesser evil” compared with the rotten Tories. However, while it is still a bourgeois workers party given its ongoing links with the trade unions, it is also evident that Sir Keir Starmer is a staunch servant of the ruling capitalist class who has advanced the bourgeoisification of Labour to unprecedented levels. His unwavering support for the Zionist killing machine, the vicious persecution of left-wing and pro-Palestine supporters within the Labour Party (under the cynical pretext of “anti-semitism”!) and his unashamed pro-business agenda – all this demonstrates that Starmer is a reactionary enemy of the workers and oppressed.

3.           However, the last period has shown that important sectors of the vanguard and the masses are fighting independent of and against the wishes of the Starmer leadership. Most importantly, there is the global pro-Palestine solidarity movement which has mobilised hundreds of thousands of people on Britain’s streets for more than seven months. Many workers and youth, particularly among the oppressed sectors of migrants and national minorities, despise Starmer’s shameful support for the Apartheid and Terror state Israel. This has also been reflected in George Galloway’s spectacular victory at the by-election in Rochdale a few months ago. Another result of this development is the continuing popularity of Jeremy Corbyn – the former left-reformist leader of Labour who has been effectively purged by Starmer but still has a large following among party members and supporters. Both Galloway and his “Workers Party of Britain” (WPB) as well as Corbyn will stand at the election as candidates to the left of Starmer’s Labour.

4.           The current political situation is therefore characterised by the necessity as well as the possibility to break significant sectors of the working class and the oppressed away from the Labour bureaucracy which chains them to the bourgeoisie. Given the available candidates, such a rupture could be expressed, in the current conjuncture, only by voting for candidates like Galloway/WPB and Corbyn. True, there might be also some other left-wing candidates but, in contrast to those like Galloway and Corbyn, they are often without any fame and roots among the masses.

5.           We therefore call for a critical vote for candidates like Corbyn resp. from the Galloway/WPB list. We are doing so without entertaining any illusions about the political character of these forces. Both come from the left-reformist tradition of the Labour Party. Corbyn has a long record of compromising with the labour bureaucracy and of preferring electoral politics to mass mobilisations on the streets. Likewise, his support for the pro-Palestine movement is rather based on bourgeois pacifism and not on revolutionary anti-imperialism. Galloway has a record of being respected among the oppressed masses in Britain (in particular Muslim migrants) and he courageously has taken the side of Iraq, Hezbollah and Hamas in the imperialist-Zionist wars of aggression. However, he has also a long-standing record of supporting Assad the butcher as well as the Iranian dictatorship. His WPB is a Stalinist force which supports shamefully Russian and Chinese imperialism and advocates a mixture of left-reformism, populism and reactionary positions (e.g. against LGBT+ rights and for migration control).

6.           Hence, our critical support for these candidates is not based on agreement with their political strategies. The RCIT considers it as the strategic task of communists to build a revolutionary combat party based on the advanced sectors of the workers and oppressed which fights for an international socialist revolution. However, such a party does not exist at the moment. Under such circumstances, where authentic revolutionaries constitute only a very small minority, it is crucial to relate to the existing advanced sectors of the masses and their contradictory political consciousness. Under the present circumstances, it is important to help workers and oppressed to break from Labour to the left. At this election, this can not be done in any other way than voting for Galloway/WPB and Corbyn.

7.           However, electoral tactics have to be subordinated to a higher goal – organising advanced workers and oppressed independent from the Labour Party bureaucracy. This is why socialists need to advocate the creation of a new workers party which brings together those thousands of grassroots activists in the Labour left, the trade unions and in the pro-Palestine movement who are looking for a political alternative to Starmer’s Labour. In our view, such a new workers party should not have a left-reformist or populist program as it is advocated by Corbyn or Galloway. It should be rather based on a fighting program which links the struggles against capitalist attacks and imperialist wars with transitional demands aimed at overthrowing the bourgeoisie. However, communists must not have a sectarian attitude in case their program does not find support by the majority. In such a situation they have to work within such a party as a revolutionary minority and continue to argue for their ideas.

8.           Such a new workers party, which organises the oppressed independent of the pro-imperialist Labour party, would be a tremendous step forward. However, it can only be an interim stage in the process to build a revolutionary workers party committed to the goal of smashing capitalism and opening the road to a socialist future!

Boycott the Israeli Apartheid state! Victory to the Palestinian resistance! Solidarity with the Arab Revolution!

Nationalise the key sectors of the economy under workers control!

Expropriate the super-rich!

Organise mass struggles for higher wages, full employment and democratic rights!

Full equality for migrants! For Open Borders!

For a workers government based on popular councils and militias!

Neither EU nor UK imperialism! For international class struggle and the United Socialist States of Europe!

Against all imperialist powers (NATO, Russia, China)!