The Young Communist League’s new General Secretary, Johnnie Hunter, has released a New Year’s address to mark the beginning of 2020.
Dear comrades
The Young Communist League sends peace and solidarity to the working people of the world in 2020. We wish you a year full of struggles and victories.
As we begin the New Year, the Centenary Year of Communist Party, it is a good time to take stock of the lessons of the past year and the struggles which lie ahead in the next.
The result of December’s general election came as a significant blow to working people across Britain. The election of a left-led Labour government would have had the potential to end a decade of austerity and implement a number of significant progressive reforms, providing room to regroup for the left and the labour movement. Instead we face a very different prospect, another 5 years of Tory government under Boris Johnson.
The Tories have made no secret of their plans for the next 5 years. They will continue to attack working class living standards and public services. They will work to implement an antiworker Brexit, maintaining the big business policies of the EU while declaring war on worker and trade union rights and environmental and consumer standards. Johnson will offer the NHS on a platter to Donald Trump for privatisation by US corporations.
Britain’s ruling class has proven itself unable and unwilling to tackle the global climate crisis because this would interfere with profits in the City of London. Peoples in the Third World and the Global South are already experiencing the impact of climate change. Unless action is taken now, human civilisation will become impossible to sustain.
The stakes for Britain’s working class and humanity could not be higher. But this is no time for despair. Tory austerity and climate catastrophe are not inevitable. Where working people are prepared to resist, where there is a will to win, the fight always can be won.
If you are one of the many millions of young people asking themselves what they can do in the face of these developments, we say now is the time to join the struggle for peace and socialism in our lifetimes.
History and recent experience have shown us that socialist change will be impossible in Britain in the absence of a strong communist movement. Our objective must be to build a strong Communist Party, YCL and a mass extra parliamentary shift centred on the trade union movement and popular campaigns. In the final analysis the Labour Party is a social democratic party which aims to mend capitalism – not to end it. The various capitulations made during the previous election campaign and especially in relation to respect for the Brexit referendum result demonstrate this.
The fight against this Tory government will take the form of a thousand struggles in our communities, campuses and workplaces. In 2020 Britain’s communists will be throwing ourselves into this fight, all the time building a stronger, more disciplined communist movement. For us there is one road – the struggle for socialism.
If you are determined to resist this government’s plans. If you believe this climate crisis must be tackled at all costs. If you want to fight for peace and socialism in our lifetime, join the YCL!
In comradeship
Johnnie Hunter
General Secretary
Young Communist League
1 January 2020
London, Britain
[*The YCL has a membership of over 350 as of 1 July 2020]
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