New Communist Party of Britain

This is just one section of the Main Political Resolution adopted at the 2009 16^th Congress of the New Communist Party of Britain.
An index to the other sections can be found here -> [2009 Policy Documents]

ADVANCING FASCISM

The New Communist Party continues to warn of the dangers of advancing fascism.

Fascism is the direct rule of the most reactionary and ruthless section of the ruling class. It opposes all forms of democracy and eschews all human rights and denigrates bourgeois liberal ideas. It is afraid of communism, socialism and the organised working class and seeks to suppress all working class organisations.

Since 1688 Britain has been ruled by a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through an elected Parliament with a constitutional monarchy. This regime has been an alliance of landowners and capitalists who have found this form of state the best to allow British capitalism to flourish at home and abroad.

In 1688 the state consisted largely of the standing armed forces under the control of the crown, the judiciary also under the crown and Parliament, the legislative part of the state. The crown was subservient to the will of Parliament; the higher echelons of the armed forces were and still are dominated by landowning families and the right to vote was conditional on landownership.

Since then, in the 19th and 20th centuries there have been added to the state machine a massive civil service, elected local authorities, state−controlled education and health services and other state welfare bodies and a civilian police force.

Frederick Engels also noted that in the later part of the 19th century Britain acquired a large military−industrial complex, which would make impossible a parliamentary road to socialism here, since Parliament has ceased to be — if it ever was — master of the state.

Conflicts of interest between the bourgeois parliamentary government and the landowner−dominated armed forces are very rare. But in 1916 Lenin pointed out — after the Curragh mutiny in Ireland where senior army officers refused to carry out Government orders to stop the Carson rising of Ulster Loyalists against the Home Rule Act — that the elected Parliament had no control over the landowner−dominated army.

Since the mid 1970s there has been a creeping change towards fascism, beginning with internment without trial in the occupied north of Ireland, followed by the Diplock Courts and the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

In the 1980s Prime Minister Thatcher began a process of gathering more and more power to the office of the Prime Minister at the expense of parliamentary democracy. This process has continued under the Major and Blair governments.

There has been a procession of Police and Crime Acts, Immigration and Asylum Acts and anti−terror legislation. And since the 11th September 2001 attacks on the United States, there has been an avalanche of very repressive anti−terror measures, including detaining suspects indefinitely without charge or trial, the introduction of control orders — amounting to house arrest — and Anti−Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos).

These orders are imposed in respect of behaviour which is not necessarily criminal and require a low standard of proof. Breaching them can result in imprisonment without further recourse to courts, leading to people, often young or vulnerable, being liable to imprisonment without proper legal process. Such orders have been imposed on people suffering from autism and other mental disorders who could find themselves in prison simply because of their illness.

Existing anti−terror legislation has already been used against people who are plainly not terrorists — usually peace protesters. They include Walter Wolfgang, a peace activist in his 80s, who was barred under anti−terror legislation after he was forcibly removed from the 2005 Labour Party conference for heckling the Foreign Secretary.

Further draconian measures are planned, including the outlawing of the “glorification of terrorism”, which could be interpreted very widely; the compiling of a massive database of personal information, including biometrics, on every resident in Britain, to support a national identity card scheme. The scheme is intended to become compulsory in a few years. The Brown government also wishes to extend to 90 days the period in which a suspect can be held without charge or trial. This compares to the South African apartheid regime’s notorious 90−day law, under which opponents of the regime were often held for 90 days, released for half an hour and then re−arrested. It was primarily a weapon of political repression.

In the streets now CCTV monitoring schemes can recognise individual faces and track car number plates, while various public transport travel passes leave an electronic trail wherever the user goes.

The Home Office, at the behest of the secret security services, is seeking to create a new database with records of all telephone, email and other forms of electronic communication.

Much of these new aspects of state control and monitoring of individuals is made possible by advancing technology and much of the administration of this is done by private enterprise.

Giant privately−run computers now administer the Passport Service, the Immigration Service, the Inland Revenue, the National Insurance database, our education and health services, our agriculture and food control and many other Government departments.

The involvement of the private sector in the administration of the state is such that we are heading towards the monetarist ideal state — in which the elected legislative at national and local levels, meets once a year to hand out contracts — or rather to rubber−stamp recommendations prepared by private firms of consultants, as already occurs in parts of the US.

In this way the giant capitalist monopolies are, effectively, more and more administering the bourgeois state directly without recourse to democratic procedures. They are able not only to monitor the population closely but also seek to micromanage our behaviour. They want to control us both politically and economically — to guide our behaviour in order to exploit us to the maximum. The national identity database is the ultimate dream of every marketing manager.

The accelerating advance towards fascism is not a response to any current threat from the organised working class, though it may to some extent be in anticipation that such a threat might arise in the future.

It is happening against a background of advancing fascism internationally as the most reactionary, brutal and greedy elements of the global ruling class seek to gain hegemony over the whole world, especially its fuel resources.

This section of the international ruling class has suffered two major setbacks since our last congress: military defeat in Iraq and a major global economic crisis. The most extreme United States neo−cons have been removed from power and replaced by the Obama regime. This appears to be more liberal and pro−democratic. But in the background, global imperialist relations are basically unchanged and in Britain the advance to greater state control, administered by the private sector, continues.

We must resist this advancing fascism and prevent it becoming more established. The organised working class is our chief defence. The fascist state with its giant database and close monitoring and control of the population will be complex to administer and require an army of civil servants — who may be employed by the Government or by private agencies.

Currently trade union membership is highest within the public sector. Non−compliance by those members of the working class expected to administer the system — and by the population in general — will make it difficult if not impossible for the ruling elite to establish the level of control they seek.

But there will almost certainly be a huge struggle. We must be ready for this and not discouraged or panicked by a class enemy that is ruthless. We must remember that it is also desperate. The ruling class generally prefers to rule through a bourgeois democracy. Resorting to fascism is in itself evidence of desperation.

Many sections of the bourgeoisie will also be oppressed by this system and there will be scope for class alliances to oppose fascism, though we must remember in this context that the working class is strongest, most reliable and should lead the alliance.

Opposition to advancing state fascism is already growing through organisations like No2ID, which we should support.