LOOK Facing mass unemployment, rampant emplovers equipped with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won education, health and welfare 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.
The capitalist class, driven and politically united by its own crisis, its requirement 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 • Yes, I want to become a Socialist Outlook supporter Send to Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU 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, howevergood, 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 ioin 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 June 3 to What's P.O. Box 1109, London N4 2UU. 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 BOB SMITH MEMORIAL MEETING 7.30pm Birmingham Trades Club Pershore Rd speakers: Mohammed Idris (West Midlands Anti-Deportation Campaign) Shirley Toshi Birmingham CARF, Socialist Outlook editorial board and others NORTH London Socialist Outlook dine & wine evening £7/£4 details 071 263 8289 Tuesday 31 Socialist Outlook discussion: Where do family values come from? with Terry Conway 7.30pm Stationer's Park Comunity Centre Maylield Road off Weston Park N8 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) SCOTTISH CND demonstration Assemble at Whistlefield picnic site at 12 noon for rally at Faslane gates at 2.45pm details 041 423 1222 Wed 8 LIBERATION! meeting 10.30am sharp London Socialist Campaign Group Supporters Network
OPEN DISCUSSION Friday 10 EDINBURGH Miner's Gala and festival march from Regent Road at 10.30am details: Gordon McDougal 041 332 4946 VIVA AFRICA: workshops, stalls, music 11am - 4pm Albany theatre Douglas Way Deptford SE8 4AG free entry Sat 11 FIGHT for Full Employment! Socialist Campaign Group Supporters Network conference with MPDennis Skinner, Seumas Milne, Alice Mahon, Jeremy Corbyn, Alan Simpson and others Register 10.30 11am5pm Manchester Town Hall Credentials £10/£5 (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 18 LESBIAN AND GAY PRIDE march 11am Hyde Park to Brockwell Park details 071 737 6903 VIVA AFRICA: live music with African artists, poets, speakers & dance 8pm Albany theatre Douglas Way Deptford SE8 4AG tickets 081 692 4446 box office 23/£2 SPEAKERS, WORKSHOPS & With Dennis Skinner Seumas Milne Fri 24 Opening of Cities and sustainable development: Global Forum 1994 in Manchester tel: 061 234 3741 Fax: 061 234 3743 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 Manchester International Peace festival opens details: Olive or Linda on 061 234 3325 ANTI-Apartheid Movement Extraordinary General Meeting Foucault anniversary conference 9.30am-5.30pm ULU Malet St WC1 details 071 809 5068 Tuesday 28 SOCIALIST OUTLOOk discussion: Ireland: peace or capitualtion? with Liam Mac Uaid 7.30pm Stationer's Park Comunity Centre Mayfield Road off Weston Park N8 OXFAM GLOBAL VILLAGE Fête 2pm-8pm Battersea Park Live music, International Co-operative day third world fair trade fair, Children's festival and Oxfam 5km run SOCIALIST OUTLOOK discussion: Permanent Revolution. 8.00pm, Unicom pub, Church Street, Manchester Thur 14 INTERNATIONAL Workers Aid for Bosnia benefit Red Rose Club, Seven Sisters Road, N7 Fri 22 - Fri 29 INTERNATIONAL Youth Camp Arezzo Tuscany Italy All-in price £150 leaflets, posters and details from Liberation!, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU Tuesday 26 Socialist Outlook discussion: Racism & fascism: the politics of despair, with Tony Benson 7.30pm Stationer's Park Comunity Centre Mayfield Road off Weston Park N8 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK discussion: The United Front. 8.00pm, Unicorn pub, Church Street, Manchester. 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/£30. Details from Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU.
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¡BOB SMITH ¡Memorial Fund Regular readers of Socialist Outlook will have read t! SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 63, 1 June 1994, Page 15 Tues 12
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