Britain: - After the Elections What Next

| Last February the British working class increasing in militancy and is better organised as they teel either the incessant demands of the not only refused to accept-the burden of than ever. There is not the slightest chance of ruling class for still more right wing policies or PS 32 : a 3 p the working class passivey accepting the attacks the danger of the collapse of their electoral or organisational strength and power to back The Labour and trade union bureaucrats One thing we can be absolutely sure of is up that refusal. are caught in a vice between the dictates of the that this Labour government is going to usher This led both to the electoral defeat of the Tory capitalist economic crisis and the upsurge of the in a period of most tremendous crisis within Government and to the fragmentation of the working class. There are a whole series of issues the Labour party. 3 % ruling class political bloc. — for example, the EEC and the coming Economic crisis, ruling class political decay, : | As the 10 October election results show, attempt to introduce incomes policy — around the emergence of ultra-rightist forces, working Price 20p from RMG branches, or 30p (i | those same tensions still operate and none of the which this strain ould prove intolerable. While class upsurge and huge tensions within the cibineidads Gan? Seek ~— Labour finds it more and more difficult to win the pe a | the increase in the Scottish Nationalist vote y~ aelped to make up for the votes lost by the other capitalist parties.

The disintegration of the capitalist political bloc should have created the most favourable possible conditions for the Labour Party.

Victory appeared to have been handed to them on a plate.

But if the ruling class is in crisis the Labour Party is at an impasse. Labour’s crisis is so severe that it drastically affects its electoral strategy. After being put out of government in 1970 the Labour Party began a ‘left turn’ which although it was opportunist was designed to win it a stronger Workers aré less keen to vote for policies which offer them so little as Labour’s thinly disguised register is out of date, the 6 per cent downturn in Britain’s economic crisis, but it had the Wilson will make. trade usin base:

vote this century. The Liberal vote also went protection in the short term, even they will not down, despite running more candidates. However be able to keep together on a long term basis electoral base in the working class. On coming into : ~ oe Office in February 1974, this turn was halted, » enthusiasm of the working class for its policies, ; 7 MARXIST GROUP (Irish supporters of the Fourth International)

38 Clanawly Road, DUBLIN 5 / would like more information about the RMG and its activities. rrr see eee een eee eens

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| problems for the ruling class have been solved. considerable of self-survival will undoubtedly Labour Party. These are going to be the main ee 38 y Rosd, . seo Gite The Tory Party got its lowest percentage keep the bureaucrats huddling together for objective characteristics of the period before us. Clanawie