Apologies in advance for the huge wall of text:-
I organise with a communist party in the UK and am in regular contact with other organisers/activists across multiple different organisations throughout my country.
Its become increasingly obvious that the UK is lurching into ever deepening crises with no end in sight, a situation which has provided fertile soil upon which to carry out genuine communist work in the labour movement here. There isn’t a week that goes by that myself and my comrades aren’t called upon to agitate for this or that strike; unions that have been complacent for the longest time are once again in need of experienced agitators to mobilise the workers, more and more of whom are coming over to our side and achieving class consciousness. Our own upstart union groups are finding their legs and being given a seat at the table with some of the biggest pre-established trade unions in the country in order to help them set up their own movement with the Enough is Enough campaign. This in itself illustrates how far advanced the situation has become in the cradle of the capitalist world. It shows no sign of letting up.
With all this said, I’m increasingly convinced that the first great socialist breakthrough in the imperial core will happen here in Britain. Everything from the international isolation caused by Brexit to the moribund state of Britain’s economy and its overstretched security apparatus is heralding total collapse if the country’s current trajectory isn’t radically shifted in the next few years. To top this all off, the British state hasn’t demonstrated the means to achieve such a correction even if it tried. Taking all of this into account, I’m increasingly concerned about interference from foreign powers in the event that the British government is eventually toppled and a socialist one is established in its place. A lot of US soldiers and materiel are present in air bases all over England. It’s extremely hard to imagine that they’ll stand idly by if the US’ chief imperialist lapdogs are swept from power, to say nothing of the French and the Germans looking on from across the channel.
It was stated by the CIA themselves that Maurice Bishop’s New Jewel movement in Grenada represented a uniquely dangerous challenge to the US during the cold war, not because of its economic or military power, but simply because for the first time ever there was a socialist government whose people spoke in the English language; people who could speak directly to the US public. This is part of the rationale used by the US’ security services to justify regime change in that country. If Grenada was pounced on so ferociously, then what exactly would Britain --a country widely considered a fraternal nation to the United States-- have in store? What could Britain’s workers possibly do to keep out an American “peace keeping” operation on its own? The US imperialists would sooner reduce Britain to a dead zone than allow it to limp on under socialist governance.
With all of this in mind, I’m becoming increasingly concerned that especially close ties need to be sewn between socialist movements throughout the Anglosphere, particularly between the British and American proletariat. There may well come a day when internationalism from our American comrades will be needed more than any other group; to spearhead a hands-off Britain campaign that can pull back on the leash of US imperialism and pressure their government to beat a retreat. Trusted points of contact that can smuggle communications past the inevitable media blackouts and place our plight directly in front of the English speaking world will be necessary, and they will have to be established well before a situation like this actually develops. US militants ready and willing to sabotage US munitions and infrastructure will almost certainly be an extremely important element of a hypothetical struggle of this kind.
So what do you all think? Do you think the following scenario is at all likely or is it all in my head? Should British communist movements place a special focus on cultivating connections amongst organisations based in fraternal English speaking nations in the core, so as to disrupt attempts to strangle a potential British revolution in its crib, or should it follow a different strategy?
Let me preface this by saying that other comrades likely have far better input than I. Primarily, I like your post and hope to see others who are more tapped into things contribute. Secondarily, I can provide a couple things that come to mind after reading your post.
I think usonians would be predisposed to sympathize with the British people and I think that a clearly popular communist government would have to painted as a foreign influence to win popular support for an invasion. On the other hand I think usonians are very deeply trained to see anything communist or socialist as a cartoonish 1984-style evil force of satan, and I think people would be quick to support color revolution tactics. A weakness may be usonians lack of trust in media and government, suggesting that social media should be ruthlessly exploited by British comrades to directly communicate the status of the revolution. The maoist-in-front-of-a-bookshelf-aesthetic should probably be avoided and a diverse range of popular and digestible social media formats should be utilized.
If it came to internal sabotage of the USA’s ability to invade Britain, then I think the transportation/logistical infrastructure may be the easiest to disrupt. Organizing worker strikes at ports might be or an idea. For guerilla tactics I’ve noticed that military equipment is sometimes openly shipped by rail, and outside of rail yards I don’t really see any security. I think there are a lot of weaknesses specifically in USA rail infrastructure that could be exploited easily by small guerilla forces. Also, per a Well There’s Your Problem episode from a while ago there is a freight rail tunnel that runs directly under one of the DC government buildings, I think the legislature…
We have some options, however the ones I have thought of so far presuppose Chinese affirmative shift towards foreign intervention (being willing to advise and work with a local communist movement) for logistical purposes.
Global solidarity with labor, peasant and Indigenous movements abroad and the defense of local comrades from the state should be the primary focus. Too much focus on the situation in the Anglo sphere means too much focus on a quality of life created by imperialism, and leaves us far too vulnerable to our own chuavanist tendencies.
Many believe socialist revolution becomes possible, even likley, when crisis occurs. However, this has not played out in the core and I would not expect it to. When crisis occurs we go to war and restructure the world order back in our favor. We should not work with history to stoke the flames but instead work against it to protect historical processes happening beyond the anglosphere.
The UK is currently in the position we in America were in during the 1970s:
Social democracy is failing and neoliberal austerity (unrestrained, wreckless, and total class warfare perpetuated by the bourgeois class) is taking hold of your economy being enacted by your national bourgeois and through guidance from the imperial bourgeois - our scumbags here in America. They are learning from the masters of this craft, yours must be equally as vicious, steadfast, and determined to prevail.
They will attack unions first. They will make strikes illegal, they will infiltrate your groups and push IDPOL to have you tearing at each other instead of working together, they will promote trickle down economics such as tax breaks for the rich and will begin to dismantle regulations on businesses.
To counter this first a nation must be correctly prepared and setup to do so. We were not, ours fell to ultra left maoist adventurism and pette bourgeois gangsterism. Those who did stand were outright killed (see Jimmy Hoffa, MLK Jr., and how the Panthers became the Bloods and the Crips).
So far, France seems to be correctly setup towards countering this. They are also facing the same struggle as yours are, I would take lead from their actions and consult our French comrades.
Secondly, one must cast aside any delusions of social democracy being reliable. Social democracy is and always has been a bourgeois construct. Our class either agrees to concessions alone and an agreement is made to maintain capitalism with reforms (such as in the US with the Great Society, or in the UK or France or in the Baltics for examples), or half-measures are rejected and revolution is sought (Russia and the previously Soviet states). One cannot sue this collapse away, one must strike, rally, riot, and bring the system and it’s rulers to their knees in order to do so.
Third and lastly, yours must be willing to evolve, as the UK and France (same as the US was) is not choosing to become neoliberal, it is being forced to. Stagflation here caused by the high cost of these reforms, high wages, and high profits destroyed monetary velocity here…The system had a heart attack as blood was moving too slowly and vital organs became endangered by the status quo. This means social democracy cannot be returned to, your options are decay or evolve. Become us in the US, or become as Russia once was.
I agree, don’t be strangers. You have many admirers here in the states. I myself admire the British industrial proletariat during the 1800s and the Luddites as well. It’s not my place to fault yours for taking the easy path out, ours did here as well and I’m not British, that is for yours to fix. As always we will help though, we should consider each other sibling proletarians…considering the US came from Britain afterall.
And I agree the US would almost certainly send troops to Britain to stop an uprising, so an effort there must be complimented by one here as the Soviets did. We already have a similar relationship and inexplicit but generally understood agreement with Canadians.
I wish the British working class the best of luck and some friendly advice…body armor is your friend. If only it was for MLK or Hoffa…
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