For many readers in the UK, this May 1st may arrive through a cloud of despair, a painful reminder of the apparent failures of the Corbyn process. The feeling of social isolation imposed by COVID-19 (worsened by the Tory government’s expected mismanagement of public health) only increases the feeling for revolutionary socialists that we are scattered and weak against a strong and united Westminster regime.
In spite of this, we remain hopeful now more than ever. The sheer scale of the Corbyn process and the utter lack of compromise from the ruling classes (from the government to the Labour Party leadership) has the potential not only to demoralise, but to harden the resolve and sharpen the perspective of many of the youth who first cut their teeth organising for Corbyn. Outside of the Labour Party, we see a growing consciousness of the real role of the Labour Party in consequence to the suppression and decline of relatively principled reformism. This is an important step for a generation of young people towards real revolutionary consciousness.
May 1st is a day which extolls the virtues of unity of the working classes, whose conscious political identity is the revolutionary proletariat. While it is true that this unity is not, in an immediate objective sense, in our hands, we offer a perspective, a call to our friends around the region and around the world, that might serve as a foundation for a real political unity.
The United Kingdom is at a historical crossroads. Leaving the European Union was a result of the ongoing crisis of capitalism-imperialism: the ruling classes of diverse countries are feeling the competition between them ever more sharply. The Westminster regime is willing to sacrifice some of its international good will in order to tighten control of its “home” territory. Obviously, this can mean greater danger for the workers and oppressed in this territory, particularly the political organised and the socially marginalised, the radicals and the scapegoats. However, it also opens up new problems for the regime:
Firstly, it is a well-known fact, much publicised on both sides of the Irish Sea, that the Good Friday Agreement has been jeopardised by the arrogance of Westminster and Stormont towards the occupied north of Ireland. The six counties, long thought a resolved question not only by the ruling classes in Britain, but by Irish liberals, are again a site of political concern, with Unionist and Republican political actors in the news with a frequency and seriousness not seen for years. Additionally, the partition line (“border”) with the Free State regime in the south brings the UK into continued economic confrontation not only with the Free State ruling classes (themselves facing significant dissent “from the left”, which has provoked an unprecedented unity of the right wing of the Oireachtas), but with EU imperialism which will seek to use them as a pawn against British imperialism.
The class-conscious proletariat does not take the side of British or EU imperialism against one another, knowing as we do that imperialism (as the highest stage of capitalism) is in fact the most powerful, longest-lasting means of capitalist exploitation and dominance. We know that any pleas from the EU against Westminster’s regional bullying are flimsy pretexts to carry on peaceful conflict between Brussels and London. Nothing could lay this fact more bare than nearby France, one of the most powerful economies and states in the EU, which has been most brutal in its violence against migrants and refugees, and has been among the most oppressive in its “democratic” treatment of “indigenous” minority nations, such as the Bretons. However, on both sides of the Irish Sea, the most powerful and immediate enemy of all workers and oppressed is British capital and British imperialism, based out of Westminster and looming over Ireland from Stormont. The ruling classes in all countries in this region can be most effectively fought once this fact is soberly grasped: the ruling classes in the Free State need to hold back the completion of the Irish Revolution because it was on this basis that they haggled their power. The ruling classes in Britain fear the finishing of the revolution that began in 1916 because it will be the most humiliating blow to their “local” and international imperialist position.
Secondly, British imperialism faces a threat even on the island of Great Britain itself: the impetus the crisis has imposed on the ruling classes of every country to tighten control of whatever territory they control has strengthened the hand of Scottish nationalists across the political spectrum. Just as Westminster now tries to take back its partial peace agreement with the occupied population in the north of Ireland, they attempt to deny the Scottish people the democratic right to self-determination. The Scottish ruling classes, being weaker both within the union and on the international scale than the English ruling classes, overwhelmingly opposed Brexit from the beginning, where the English ruling classes were known to have been strongly divided. While anti-imperialism is not about side-choosing, but about combatting imperialism as a stage of capitalism, it is objectively an act of defence of English capital to stand on the sidelines as the ruling classes in England seek to trample over the Scottish people’s rights. Only a firm defence of the equal national rights of the Scottish and Welsh peoples up to and including the right to self-determination can truly reflect the international perspective of our class.
Thirdly and most importantly, even if Ireland were reunited and all of the island of Great Britain shared a single national identity, it would only be an island country in a literal, geographic sense. Even if the EU continues to crumble, Britain is right next door to a powerful imperialist rival and crucial trading partner in France.
On May 1st, it would be good for revolutionary socialists in Great Britain in particular to remember our southern neighbours. The French penchant for strike actions is the most obvious point of reference on this day. Despite syndicalist and reformist limitations, particularly situated as they are in a left political culture which has trended towards nationalist reformism ever more dangerously since the end of the student protest movement of the 1960s, the French working classes are far advanced of most Anglo countries in their willingness and ability to organise in defence of their interests. In a time when NHS workers and service industry workers are risking their lives under appalling conditions which show no signs of improving under such a right-wing government, in the face of a sharp right turn by the only electoral alternative, we in Britain must not shrink back from the crucial work of organising labour in its immediate form to use the most powerful weapon in their hands: the ability to cut into profits.
Further, although not nearly so successful as the Irish Republican movement in threatening the imperialist state which oppresses it, we have in nearby Brittany the example of the Breton nationalist movement, whose relative radicalism can serve as a powerful example to the rebel youth in Wales and Scotland in particular. Revolutionary socialists of all national backgrounds ought to share a perspective of the unity of oppressed peoples in struggle against their oppressors, against the imperialist world-system which has held back their liberation. To those who would downplay the significance of this or that national question in the fight for socialist, we remind them of the wise words of Comrade Engels:
““Without restoring autonomy and unity to each nation, it will be impossible to achieve the international union of the proletariat, or the peaceful and intelligent co-operation of these nations toward common aims.””
For revolutionary socialists of oppressed and minority national background, the struggle against their “own” bourgeoisie cannot be carried out as in a vacuum from the threat of British imperialism and its immediate political dominance in our region. To quote the IRSP's Naomi Brennan:
““[We] realized that to have national freedom, we must have socialism, and that, also to have any chance of socialism, we must have national freedom.””
Indeed, the cause of socialism is the cause of all liberation: it is not only the case that for the individual victim of oppression on the basis of nationality, gender, disability, etc. their capacity to grasp a universal proletarian consciousness they must, in an immediate sense, perceive the world through the lens of their particular oppression. It is also conversely the case that to achieve a universal and revolutionary proletarian consciousness means to articulate the universal liberation of all proletarians. Thus do we affirm, that in order to really achieve each liberation, we must have a movement that really stands for the liberation of all, and that, also to have any chance of really liberating all, we must really stand for the liberation of each.
May 1st is a day to proclaim our commitment to the workers of the world, in all of their multifaceted particularities. May 1st is a day that transcends borders and offers hope to the exploited that together they are strong. Let the disheartened youth know that it was not Corbyn which gave them power, but they who gave Corbyn power. Let the toilers risking their health during this pandemic know that their tormentors are few and they are many.
Our movement’s internationalism and universality must be made manifest here in our own region: the proletariat are not “British labour” or union “leadership”. The proletariat are a material class which we can discover in the reality of social relations, and can emerge as a political subject to confront them. The proletariat are the migrant workers who lived at the mercy of the EU yesterday and at the mercy of the Brexit regime today. The proletariat are the refugees, the racialised minorities, the trans youth, and the disabled. The proletariat are retail workers, fast food workers, transport workers, office workers, NHS workers, sex workers, and so many others. The proletariat are all of these, brought together, those who have nothing to lose but their chains, throwing themselves together against their bondage and in rage at their tormentors.
On this day as all other days, we affirm that those who say otherwise seek nothing less than the division of the real proletariat, the strengthening of the hand of bourgeois oppression, and the prolongation of class society. If we find within ourselves an identification with the forces of reaction against the oppressed and exploited, we find within ourselves the very enemy that it is our creed to defeat.
The Lever does not exist to gain hangers on who will stroke our egos and show up in London on May 1st with a great red banner. The Lever exists as a call to our class, to all of our real friends, to raise up all forms of struggle which are bubbling beneath the surface in our region: from Belfast to Birmingham, from Brittany to Bangor.
Our humble task is to serve as one of the voices crying for the unity of all workers and oppressed. We hope that all revolutionary, socialist, democratic, and progressive forces in our region will be in touch with us in a comradely and critical fashion with the aim of building common popular institutions of our class. We again emphasise our particular perspective of the need for a smaller, accountable, organised, and theoretically rigorous vanguard organisation for the struggles to come.
Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!
The Lever Editorial Group