Facing mass unemployment, rampant employers equipped with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won education, health and weltare services, the working class in Britain faces a real crisis - an avoidable crisis created by the historic failure of its official leadership.
Socialist Outlook exists to fight for a new type of working class leadership, based on the politics of class struggle and revolutionary socialism, to tackle this crisis.
HOME NEWS The capitalist class, driven and politically united by its own crisis, its reauirement to maximise profits at the expense of the workers, has been given determined, vanguard leadership by a brutal class-war Tory high command.
The Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions with legislation, and to fragment and weaken the resistance of the working class and oppressed, allowing them to pick off isolated sections one at a time, using the full powers of the state.
In response, most TUC and Labour leaders have embraced the defeatist politics of 'new realism', effectively proclaiming total surrender on every front, while ditching any pretence that they offer a socialist alternative. Every retreat and concession they have made to the employers and the government has simply fuelled and encouraged the offensive against jobs, wages, conditions and union rights.
New realism is the latest form taken by the politics of reformism, seeking no more than improved conditions within the framework of capitalist rule.
Socialist Outlook rejects reformism, not because we are against fighting for reforms, but because we know that the needs of the working class - for full employment, decent living standards, a clean environment, peace and democracy - can never be achieved under capitalism.
Nor, as we argued long before the collapse of Stalinism, could these demands ever be achieved under the bureaucratically deformed workers states and degenerated USSR, whose regimes survived only by repressing their own working class.
We are a marxistcurrent, based not on the brutish totalitarian parodies of state marxism, nor on the tame, toothless version of 'marxism' beloved by armchair academics, but the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
Our socialist alternative is not based on parliamentary elections or illusions of peaceful legislative change. We fight to mobilise and unleash the power of the working class - the overwhelming majority of society - to topple the corrupt and reactionary rule of capital and establish its own class rule.
We struggle against fragmentation by building solidarity, working to link and unite the various struggles of workers, tries world-wide. right wing. Name. Address Phone Age the unemployed, of women, of pensioners, of the black communities and ethnic minorities, of lesbians and gay men, of students, of youth - and of those fighting imperialism in Ireland and throughout the world. Socialist Outlook is above all an internationalist current, in solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises co-thinkers in 40 counSectarianism Unlike some other groupings on the British left, we do not believe a mass revolutionary party can be built simply by proclaiming ourselves to be one. Too often this degenerates into sectarian posturing and abstention from the actual struggle taking shape within the labour movement, playing into the hands of the Nor do we believe that the demands of women, black people, lesbians and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland and Wales should be left to await the outcome of a socialist revolu- tive!
• Please tell me more about Socialist Outlook tion. The oppressed must organise themselves and fight now around their own demands, which are a part of the struggle for socialism.
But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring socialism. The fight for policies which can mobilise and politically educate workers in struggle, must be taken into the unions. the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed fight for their rights.
To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key issues such as fighting racism and fascism - in which various left currents can work together for common objectives while remaining free to debate their differences. If you agree with what you see in Socialist Outlook, and want to join with us in the struggle for socialism, readers' groups meet in towns across the country. Contact us now, get organised, and get acWANT YOUR event included? Send details by May 20 to What's P.O. Box 1109, London N4 2UU. ALL-LONDON NUT reps meeting 5.30pm-7pm Camden Town Hall Judd St WC1 Fri 13 SALSA y Sevillanas! proceeds to Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign 8pm-midnight Conway Hall Red Lion Square WC1 Cocktails & tapas Disabled access tickets £5/£3.50 details 071-272 9619 Sat 14 LEVELLERS Day The Welfare state under threat 10am to 4.30pm Warwick Hall Garden Burford Oxfordshire with Tony Benn, Shelia Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Jack Jones details 0865 735360 Sat 21 ANTI-APARTHEID Movement National Workshop Towards a new agenda for international solidarity with Southern Africa' 11am-5pm, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 registration £5 from AAM, 13 Mandela Street NW1 ODW NATIONAL free speech day - picket your local McDonald's details London Greenpeace 5 Caledonian Road N1 9DX Weds 25 BIRMINGHAM Socialist Outlookforum: The Rise and Rise of Italian Fascism -speaker Phil Hearse. 7.30pm, Trade Union Club Pershore Road Sat 28 ANTI NAZI League Demonstration & Carnival Liberation! and Socialist Outlook sellers meet 11am for march from Kennington Park SE11 through Brixton to carnival with The Levellers, Credit to the Nation and more in Brockwell Park SE24 Sun 29 NORTH London Socialist Outlook social food & win evening details 081 455 5805 DEMONSTRATE to close down Campsfield House detention centre Liberation! and Socialist Outlook sellers meet 1pm car park Exeter Hall Kidlington, by junction of A34 and A4260 (off M40 exit 9) LIBERATION! meeting 10.30am sharp London Sat 11 FIGHT for Full Employment! Socialist Campaign Group Supporters Network conference with Arthur Scargill, Tony Benn, Dawn Primorolo, Dennis Skinner and others 11am-5pm Manchester Town Hall Credentials £10/25 (includes SCGSN membership) from SCGSN, 3 Blades House, Kennington Oval, SE12 5TW Tues 14 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK discussion: The retreat of National Liberation Movements - Ireland, South Africa, the Middle East and Central America. 8.00pm, Unicorn pub, Church Street, Manchester. Sat 25 WHAT'S LEFT summer conference with John Edmonds, Alan Simpson, Dawn Primorolo, John Prescott and others Conway Hall Red Lion Square tickets £7/£5 from 'What's Left', Tribune, 308 Gray's Inn Road, WC1X 8DY ANTI-Apartheid Movement Extraordinary General Meeting SOCIALIST OUTLOOK discussion: Permanent Revolution. 8.00pm, Unicorn pub, Church Street, Manchester Thur 14 INTERNATIONAL Workers Aid for Bosnia benefit Red Roae Club, Sever Sisters Road, N7 Fri 22 - Fri 29 INTERNATIONAL Youth Camp Tuscany Italy All-in price £150 leaflets/details from Liberation!, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU AUGUST Thur 25-Mon 29 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK Summer School: ANALYSING RACISM AND FASCISM. Residential school in Aberystwyth, en suite rooms, plenaries, workshops and full social programme. £80/230. Details from Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU.
MAY Thur 12
JUNE Sat 4
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 62, May 14 1994, Page 15 Wed 8