Facing mass unemployment, rampant employers 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.
HOME 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 O Yes, 1 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, 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 June 17 to What's Happening?, P.O. Box 1109, London N4 2UU. MAY Fri 10 EDINBURGH miner's gala and festival march from Regent Road at 10.30am details: 041 332 4946 VIVA AFRICA: workshops, stalls, music 11am - 4pm Albany Theatre Douglas Way Deptford SE8 4AG free entry rica, the Middle East and Central America. 8.00pm, Unicorn pub, Church Street, Manchester. Weds 15 DEFEND London Weighting! Lobby NUT executive 4.30pm Hamilton House Mabledon: Place WC1 Fri 17 NICARAGUA Health Fund benefit with Robb Johnson 8pm The Lord Henniker The Grove Stratford E15 Sat 18 LESBIAN AND GAY Pride march 11am Hyde Park to Brockwell Park details 071 737 6903 VIVA AFRICA: live music ference with John Edmonds, Alan Simpson, Dawn Primorolo, John Prescott, Peter hain, Barbara Castle and others Conway Hall Red Lion Square tickets £7/£5 from 'What's Left', Tribune, 308 Gray's Inn Road, WC1X 8DY McLIBEL day of action details 071 837 7557 MANCHESTER International Peace festival opens details: Olive or Linda on 061 234 3325 ANTI-Apartheid Movement Extraordinary Meeting FOUCAULT anniversary conference 9.30am-5.30pm ULU Malet St WC1 details 071 809 5068 Lord Healey, Richard Norton taylor, Rosemary Hollis & John McNaughton 7pm Westminster Central Hall SW1 LIBERATION! Commitee meeting 11am London PSYCHOLOGY POLITICS RESISTANCE founding conference 10am-5pm Aytoun Building (by Piccadilly BR) Manchester Metropolitan University workshops on gender, heterosexism eurocentrism & racism, institutional abuse Guest speakers from South Africa, psychiatry system surSOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 64, 11 June 1994, Page 15
This year's International Youth Camp - to be held in Italy late next monthwill have the biggest delegation from Britain since 1990. Further details from Socialist weekly meeting 6.30pm London Greenpeace 5 Caledonian Road London N1 details: Dan 071 223 5295 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 Tues 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