The Workers Revolutionary Party is calling for an exit from the EU and the ousting of the Tories.
Frank Sweeney, leader of the Workers Revolutionary Party Central Committee.Just a stone’s throw away from the tomb of Karl Marx, Frank Sweeney heads the meeting of a few dedicated socialists, who believe the time of capitalism is approaching end.
With seventy-two days until Brexit is due to occur, and the recent landslide commons defeat of Prime Minister May’s deal, the possibility of a second referendum is attractive to some MPs. Frank Sweeney anticipates Brits would take to the streets in a fashion which, “will make France look like a children’s tea party.”
The Party’s literature is strongly Socialist and includes their own publication The News Line. The WRP has been unhappy with media coverage of Brexit.“We want a revolution. We’re called the workers revolutionary party because we believe that capitalism’s in crisis. There’s a huge economic and political crisis. Their solution to the crash that took place in 2008 was to increase debt.”
After a decade of austerity, it seems apparent to the WRP that current measures are ineffective.
“Austerity is only for the working class and the middle class, it isn’t for the politicians, it isn’t for the capitalist, it isn’t for the bankers and the businesses. The disparity in wealth in Britain between a small group who control most of the wealth and what used to be called the 99%, well that has got wider after ten years, it hasn’t lessened. So there hasn’t been any austerity for them.”
The WRP believes that the EU is undemocratic, and accountable for austerity measures.Cuts to Tax Credits and education have had particularly damaging affects in London which in 2018 reached a ten year high in homicides, mostly adolescent victims of stabbings.
“I know it sounds simplistic, but it is simplistic. They cut so much money out of the schools, there aren’t enough teachers. Kids get excluded from school not because they’re slow or whatever, but even if they were there used to be the conditions where children who found it a bit more difficult could be helped. There was sufficient funding. Children who had family or social problems, they could get one on one teaching, they could get help.There used to be youth clubs in London, it’s all been closed down now.
Society’s reached a point where it’s like a boil, at some point it has to be lanced because if you don’t lance it, it will poison you. Capitalism is the boil that we have to lance. It’s killing our children.”
“The majority of people using food banks are actually working, but their wages are so low that they can’t pay their rent, feed their children, and put clothes on their back. There’s real poverty and it’s this poverty that’s bred revolutionary hatred and determination to change things, and that’s what’s come forward in this referendum.The reason why workers voted to leave Europe was because of the huge economic crisis that developed in the capitalist system. Within the European Union the form that this took, was that the capitalist class and their political parties had the working class pay for this crisis, so called Austerity.”
“They didn’t care how many newspaper articles, how many television programmes, how many Trade Union leaders or Labour party leaders told them that if we came out of Europe jobs are gonna go, services are gonna suffer conditions are gonna be worse, because that’s what people were experiencing anyway. It was EU legislation that was pushed on things like the Post Office when they privatised the Royal Mail, when they privatised railways. They used EU legislation to insist that you couldn’t do anything about this.”
It is true that the EU creates a lot of difficulty in nationalising certain services because of its competition laws but in 2017 French President Emmanuel Macron successfully nationalised a shipyard, preventing an Italian acquisition of the company.
However many of ‘Yellow Jackets’ have claimed Macron is a friend of business, not the people. Likewise the WRP believes that the EU operates as a despot in service of capitalists first and foremost, and the needs of business and profit are put before the needs of people.
“Through financial and through diplomatic means they’ve created a dictatorship and presented it as some kind of benevolent democracy. You have to break EU legislation, smash it to smithereens. Eu legislation are like the chains on the working class, manacles on the legs and chains on the arms. They make you a slave.”
Members of the party plan to fill the need for a guiding light should revolution occur.The WRP have been unhappy with Labour’s handling of Brexit and though in 2017 they encouraged people to vote for Labour in constituencies where there own party did not stand Mr Sweeney now says, “Their position now is not what the working class wants.”
“We believe that the only solution to this problem is a socialist solution. We believe in world revolution, we don’t believe that you can build socialism in a single country. With pro-European propaganda is they’ve been able to present it as if you want to come out of Europe you’re anti-European, anti-migrant, anti-foreigner, when the opposite is true. We believe the solution in Europe, is a Socialist United states of Europe we’re not opposed to workers from other countries coming here. We don’t believe in any immigration limits.”
“This is the period where things are gonna be resolved, what began in Russia in 1917 is now coming up for completion. We’re for bringing down this Tory government, for a general strike to clear them out. A workers government that will legislate for the working class and against businesses and against bankers. They’ll be guaranteed the things they need to live. Everything could change! And a revolutionary party’s gonna make the difference whether that change is for the better of for the worse.”
Featured Image by Mike Knell. (CC BY-SA 2.0) Cropped for purpose.