Deel 5 - LA36 KB articles 1988 98 and cuttings 128 005

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In the face of the grave, indeed crisis, situation prevailing at present, one cannot simply rely on old certainties. Nor can generalities or phrases learned by rote suffice. Serious work needs to be undertaken with a view to developing an independent politics for the working and oppressed people of this society. Events this week in Brixton, south London, provide further proof, if indeed further proof were needed, of the fact that extremely acute social and class contradictions are present in British society and it would be a foolish illusion to believe that a climate of social peace can be guaranteed. Furthermore, as we look at the magnificent class struggle now underway in France, we can see a reflection in the rising tide of industrial militancy, such as in the struggles of the Merseyside dockworkers and the Scottish postal workers, as well as the JJ Fast Foods strikers in north London and the Hillingdon Hospital workers in north west London. These strikes are taking place in a context where a combination of government legislation and the objective situation, including scientific-technological advances and the constantly changing composition of the working class, serve to ensure that such workplace-based struggles can no longer be seen as purely economistic but rather immediately raise major political questions. And since the days of the miners' great strike of 1984-5, and before that disputes waged by Asian women workers, such as that at Grunwicks, the ability of workers to sustain their strike action has increasingly centred on the mobilisation of the vast and multi-layered support to be found within the wider community. We live in a time not only of great changes in the world, but also in British society. The likely prospect of a Labour government for the first time in the memory - indeed in most cases of the lives - of the younger generation; the process of European integration, and the splits in the ruling class this is engendering; the development and future of the fledgling and threatened Irish peace process; the decline of traditional manufacturing industry and the shift in the centre of international economic gravity to the Far East; the rising tide of national feeling among suppressed nations within Britain itself, specifically Scotland and Wales; and the changes in class structure and composition, with an ever- increasing proportion of the working class being drawn from women, national minorities and other oppressed layers, the eroding of the hitherto secure and privileged positions of many middle class and professional layers, and the burgeoning number of those who are homeless,

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