(Roger Silverman’s contribution on perspectives at the Campaign for a Mass Workers’ Party meeting at the recent Connections conference.)

It’s right that we start by discussing perspectives: where we are, through what stage we are passing. Because until we know what the objective situation is, the context in which we are working, we’re not going to have a clear enough understanding of our tasks.

Comrades, the planet is already on fire. The scenario today is uncannily similar to the 1930s. That and the previous decade represented just a pause in what should really be seen as a European and global Thirty Years’ War. Those so-called inter-war years saw the collapse of all but one of the ruling dynasties of Europe – the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and of course the Romanovs; the only surviving dynasty was the Gotha-Saxe-Coburgs, who had hastily changed their name to the Windsors. There were continental-wide uprisings, and the common intervention of all the belligerent powers of both sides in the only just ended world war into a new war to crush the only surviving revolution, Russia, leaving it starving, crushed and overshadowed by a rising new political despotism: Stalinism. That period also saw constantly raging local wars; the emergence of new and especially cruel forms of tyranny; the birth of fascism in Italy and Portugal as early as in the 1920s; the brutal invasions of Ethiopia in Africa, and China in Asia, and in Europe the civil war in Spain which brought up to a million casualties… And this was a time of so-called peace! All of these were just a prelude to the bloodiest war in the whole history of humanity, bringing with it the unprecedented horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the gulags and the concentration camps…

And is today so very different from that period? A genocidal holocaust is taking place in front of our eyes: in Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon and the war with Iran. Civil wars are raging in Yemen, Congo, Sudan, Myanmar… An American president calmly threatens to wipe out an entire civilization, to bomb it into the stone age. Governments are spending billions on new armaments and introducing conscription, preparing and speaking openly of a third world war. Troops have occupied American cities; migrants are snatched off the streets. A dark cloud has descended across Europe and most of the world, in the form of far-right or in some cases arguably neo-fascist regimes, from what was once regarded as the social-democratic Mecca of Sweden and the Scandinavian countries to Italy, once the home of the biggest mass communist party outside of the Stalinist bloc, with most of Europe already under far-right governments or coalitions including such parties, with the AfD in Germany, the National Rally in France, and Reform in Britain all hovering, poised to snuff out the last remaining chinks of light. In London and cities throughout Europe we see fascist mobs strutting the streets. If we don’t act decisively soon, then frankly, we could find ourselves before too long debating our differences in a concentration camp. We have been warned! History will not forgive those who stand in our way.

Within just the five years 2020-2025 – a period that covered widespread suffering worldwide: the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and the Gaza genocide – during that whole period of mass suffering throughout the world, the collective wealth of the billionaires grew by 81% ($8.2 trillion), to a total of $18.3 trillion: enough, according to Oxfam, to eradicate global poverty 26 times over.

In the 1930s in the industrially developed countries there was mass working-class resistance: general strikes, political turmoil, even armed mobilisations. There were mass workers’ parties, rival mass Internationals, millions of whose rank-and-file members were consciously striving for revolution, though they were tragically and catastrophically split. And today? We don’t have such parties. There’s a demobilisation and scattering of what was once a concentrated industrial proletariat; it was liquidated by calculated intent on the part of the ruling class. For instance, in Britain Thatcher consciously and deliberately eradicated most of heavy industry, precisely out of fear of the combativity and militancy of the industrial proletariat. The consequence is that the working class today is still less prepared for the life-and-death struggles to come.

Yet we have no cause to be pessimistic – certainly not fatalistic – about the consequences. When we launched our Campaign for a Mass Workers’ Party two or three years ago, many people were sceptical. There was not a hint of any such proposal coming from the official left. But we said look, there’s a yawning vacuum in British politics: the vacuum left by the half a million people who poured into the Labour Party to support Jeremy Corbyn; the mass rallies during the 2017 election campaign; the four million extra Labour voters that were won in the 2017 election, completely dwarfing the figures that Starmer won in the so-called landslide election of 2024; the wave of public sector strikes; the mass protests against the Gaza genocide; the 800,000-plus people who signed up within days to the call for a new party, and were then tragically left stranded… The scientists say nature abhors a vacuum; well, we say: so does politics. Somehow or other, that vacuum will be filled. And that’s why we’re here today.

The coming events will be a shock. But the prospects are not the same as in the thirties, not even the anticipation of far-right governments. They will not come at the end of a period of struggle, in the wake of defeats leading to a smashing of the organisations of the working class. The whip of counter-revolution will awaken hidden reserves of protest. The working class will not be crushed so easily. There is resistance. There is solidarity. The mass murder in Gaza aroused the biggest wave of worldwide demonstrations in history. The mass uprising of the people of Minneapolis is a microcosm of the kind of resistance we can expect; it shows us what is possible. That was an act of solidarity by the entire population of one provincial city in the USA, a mobilisation in defence of migrants, united in defence of people who had been victimised by the vicious thugs of the Trump regime.

So what about the new party? One way or another, a new party will be built, despite the setbacks we’ve seen. We have to say: we’re a working-class party, not just a random gathering of well-meaning free-wheelers, like the Greens or the Lib Dems. Still today, according to statistical surveys by opinion polls, 60% of the population consider themselves working-class. That’s the same figure, incidentally – it’s quite stunning – as when they did a similar survey as far back as 1983: before Thatcher had destroyed the factories, the shipyards, the steel works and coal mines. Today teachers, university lecturers, nurses, doctors, lawyers and civil servants have all been forced into industrial action alongside railway workers. These are the same layers of the population which a hundred years ago, during the general strike of 1926, were queueing up to act as strikebreakers, alongside the students, who likewise nowadays you couldn’t imagine volunteering as strikebreakers. In other words, the working class may have changed in its character and complexion, but it’s maintained its size and specific weight in society.

Not one of the striking unions I’ve mentioned is affiliated to the Labour Party. Sooner or later, like the trade unions 126 years ago, they will need a political voice. Where will they turn? To Starmer’s Labour Party? Or even Burnham’s Labour Party – though if he becomes leader there may possibly be a brief and faint ripple of guarded hope, which will soon be dashed (he’s even supporting Shabana Mahmood’s racist threat to migrants), so that will not last long. The Labour Party is now a weak and fading alternative reserve party of the ruling class. So where else will workers turn if not to a revived left party? And meanwhile, what about the rank-and-file activists organised in unions still affiliated to the Labour Party? They too will be asking: why are we still paying affiliation fees to this crypto-Tory party, particularly if it’s about to be wiped out, as it’s likely to be in the next election? What’s the use of remaining in this party when it no longer even has any influence or power, never mind any policies in any way favourable to the workers’ interests? The Bakers’ Union has shown the way by disaffiliating from the Labour Party; and we can now see moves in the same direction within UNITE and UNISON, the two biggest unions, towards the possibility of breaking their link too. And to those people who object that we need to appeal to those who don’t consider themselves workers, we say a party of the working class can be a real pole of attraction for the 99%. To those who are not among the 60% who recognise themselves as belonging to the working class, we say a workers’ party is your only hope of finding any salvation.

But in this horrific scenario that’s opening up, we need a clear perspective. We have been cursed with too many distractions, particularly with the botched formation of what is called “Your Party”. I think we all agree that that is not going anywhere; it doesn’t want to be a party, it has no aspirations to be a genuine mass party of struggle and resistance. We have no time to pontificate about questions like: do we really need a party? and what should we call ourselves? and how should we pick our delegates? and what do we do about people who are already in a party (in other words, those who have not been prepared to wait until we build one)? We’ve said all along: enough of this procrastination, dithering, pontificating, temporising, squabbling. Above all, we must keep our eyes on reality. Spanners have been thrown in the works. There are all kinds of secondary questions that need to be sorted out, including, OK, how to reconcile the legitimate interests of people who are uncomfortable with their assigned gender and the equally legitimate interests of those who are defending their hard-won rights to respect for their existing gender. In a socialist society such issues will be easily cleared up.

But the survival of human civilization and even perhaps human existence is at stake. We need to act NOW! Time is short.

I’d like to end by quoting one of my favourite poems, by the revolutionary poet Bertolt Brecht. He starts by quoting a parable told to his disciples by the Buddha:

Lately I saw a house. It was burning. The flame

Licked at its roof. I went up close and observed

That there were people still inside. I entered the doorway and called

Out to them that the roof was ablaze, so exhorting them

To leave at once. But those people

Seemed in no hurry. One of them,

While the heat was already scorching his eyebrows,

Asked me what it was like outside, whether there was

Another house for them, and more of this kind. Without answering

I went out again. These people here, I thought,

Must burn to death before they stop asking questions…

And truly friends,

Whoever does not yet feel such heat in the floor that he’ll gladly

Exchange it for any other, rather than stay, to that man

I have nothing to say.

And Brecht adds:

We too believe that to those

Who in face of the rising bomber squadrons of Capital go on asking too long

How we propose to do this, and how we envisage that,

And what will become of their savings and Sunday trousers after a revolution

We have nothing much to say.