For British independence, for peace

After the Second World War it must have seemed that the main cause of war in the world was fascism, and that with its defeat there would be no more war.

Communists had always said that fascism was only a more violent, aggressive form of capitalism. Supporters of capitalism – which they like to call “democracy” – have always worked to create an entirely opposite point of view.

They lump fascism together with communism as “totalitarianism”. They deliberately ignore the fact that Hitler’s first and main objective was to eradicate Marxism, to destroy communism – the same aim as that of present-day supporters of capitalism.

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are described as “allies” because of their 1939 non-aggression pact. Yet Britain had already signed a treaty with Hitler in 1935, and in 1938 signed a further agreement, at Munich, to allow Hitler to carve up Europe. That’s ignored too. As is the Soviet Union’s earlier wish for a pact with Britain, which was refused.

But it was not fascism that led to the Second World War, it was capitalism. And since the cause of war was capitalism, and as capitalism was not uprooted in 1945, then the threat of war continued to exist.

The other, equally dangerous element of pro-capitalist thinking is that communism – the force which ended the first world war as well as the second – is labelled as the problem, not the solution.

Hounded

Communism and communists have been hounded and diminished to a dangerous level. That makes a third world war more likely. Before socialism triumphed in 1917, wars occurred in Europe in pretty much every generation since antiquity. With the triumph of socialism over fascism in 1945 there was nigh on half a century of peace in Europe – unprecedented.

Post-war supporters of capitalism falsely claimed that the USSR was the greatest threat to peace. Communists tried to explain that without socialism in the world restraining capitalism, war would follow. History has borne this out completely.

NATO was formed in 1949 to oppose the supposed threat of the USSR. The end of the Soviet Union in 1991 also saw the dissolution of its military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. NATO should have been abolished then as well, according to its apparent reason for existence. But within two years, NATO bombed the formerly socialist country of Yugoslavia

NATO has doubled in size since 1989; now there are 32 members. It is not a defensive organisation but an aggressive, warmaking organisation of belligerent states led by the USA and Britain.

The truth that generations of communists sought to explain before, during, and after the last world war will have to be explained afresh – capitalism causes war. Until and unless capitalism is uprooted there will be war. And the more unchallenged capitalism is, the bigger the war, and the greater the threat.

That is why the times we live in are so dangerous.

But there’s another, possibly unpopular, idea: an even greater threat would come from failing to oppose capitalism and all its impacts. Our inability, or worse still, our lack of desire to oppose it, threatens us all.

The inability of enough people to oppose fascism in the 1930s led to war. Now the inability of enough people to oppose NATO will lead to another world war – unless something changes.

Where is Britain in all this? Britain is the USA’s second in NATO. The older, wilier ruling class, Britain never fails to be there for its transatlantic boss. But opposition here will need to be on its guard. Given half a chance Starmer will do Trump’s bidding.

Crucial to any ruling class attack plan is to make sure that the people do not oppose them. And key to this is to demonise those with whom they want to go to war.

Saddam Hussein, who the west had supported for decades, suddenly became a bad man because he wouldn’t do what he was told, and because the US ruling class wanted Iraq’s oil.

Too many people avoid seeing the truth. Some believed, or chose to accept, lies about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2003. And now they blame Iran for having non-existent nuclear weapons, which the USA until recently agreed they didn’t have!

‘An even greater threat would come from failing to  oppose capitalism and all its impacts…’

The truth about WMD is the direct opposite of what we’re constantly told. Iraq, Iran and the 30 or so countries attacked or invaded by the USA since the end of the Second World War suffered precisely because they do not have WMD. Those countries with WMD – Russia, China, and now North Korea – have not been invaded.

The US view of Russia as untrustworthy and aggressive is paraded as undeniable truth. Yet it was the USA who broke agreements it made with the Soviet Union. The deal was clear: in return for the USSR agreeing to a reunited Germany joining NATO, NATO would move no further east. That was simply ignored.

And now we must apparently accept the US view of China as a country that steals technology and is an unfair trade competitor. China is painted as militarily aggressive because it wants to take back part of its own territory, Taiwan, stolen from it with US support in 1949.

To the extent that peace exists, how to protect it? There is a permanent, undeclared war, war against workers, at home and abroad. Our class, the working class, needs to recognise this first of all. And then we need to declare war. Class war against our class enemy.

The first world war was only ended by the Bolsheviks in Russia declaring war on their class enemies, pulling tsarist Russia out of the war by destroying the tsar, and his ruling class.

The second world war wouldn’t have ended when it did unless that war had been successfully waged by the world anti-fascist coalition, led by those same pesky Russian Bolsheviks who, even Churchill had to admit, did most of the fighting.

Remove those anti-war forces who are prepared to take up arms against capitalism and capitalism will kill us all. And that is the threat before us now.

What to do here in Britain?

We must be independent of mind, not easily swayed by the organs of propaganda. Our predecessors had to develop such independence.

All the freedom and rights we enjoy had to be wrenched away from a ruling class who never conceded anything unless they felt threatened. 

All of the advances of 1945, the NHS and the rest, came because a million workers were under arms. But there are deep roots to workers’ independence of mind going back to the great Reformation of the sixteenth century.

The controlling of religion that this great movement proclaimed had lasting benefits for the development of Britain – right through to the industrial revolution and the modern working class.

What are the tasks in hand today? First of all, we must as a country assert our independence.

The EU represents capitalism just as certainly as fascism does, just in a different way. We took a huge step forward by declaring our independence from the EU in 2016. But we didn’t uproot capitalism, so we have the threat of the EU all over again.

‘We have blazed a brave trail in leaving the EU. We can be even braver by leaving NATO and becoming independent of the US…’

The EU and NATO are two faces of the same coin. To join the EU a country must become a member of NATO. To share the perceived benefits of EU membership you must be prepared to die for NATO. So to be independent you must leave the EU, and then leave NATO.

We have blazed a brave trail in leaving the EU. We can be even braver by leaving NATO and crucially becoming independent of the USA.

How to do this? Well first of all we can make it known that no US or British planes must go from these shores to kill people in independent countries overseas, whether in Iran or anywhere else.

Withdrawing from NATO will be twenty times harder than withdrawing from the EU, but twenty times more important and necessary. We can’t expect a referendum on an exit from NATO. That will be our national liberation struggle.

We must also make it clear that the gangster capitalism exercised by the US is not supported in Britain. Kidnapping elected presidents is Trump acting in a long tradition of US hegemony and also stepping it up.

While Venezuela has oil, Cuba is the running political sore for the US. For our part we cannot allow the name of the British government to be put to any single move against the Republic of Cuba. The British government must oppose the Americans’ criminal blockade of Cuba, and must break it.

Class conscious

Secondly, we must as workers be independent at work, independent of our employer.

That’s what our trade unions are for. Use them as the place to discuss what’s wrong at work, what should be done to improve things, and then take the necessary steps to assert control. That’s how we can really act as a working class.

Our trade unions must be used to meet, support and embrace each other, not to divide and exclude. Unity is not only the strength of our class, it is now a matter of life and death.

For Britain, independence and peace are now indivisible. We cannot have peace without independence. And unless we assert independence, war will come.

Hate

Hate is a horrible thing – the opposite of love and almost always a negative characteristic. But sometimes it is necessary to hate. We must hate exploitation and exploiters. We must hate torture and torturers. We must hate oppression and oppressors. We must hate fascism, and we must hate capitalism.

Our enemies hate us. Look at the language of Trump, of Starmer, of Thatcher. Not to hate our enemies hands them the advantage. It is because we love our people, our families, our country, that we hate those who would harm all those things.

Capitalism and its political parties and governments hate our people, and want to deny us our country. They want to rule unopposed, and if we don’t oppose them war will come to us, to our families, to our country. 

British workers have had more than two centuries’ experience of capitalism, of the exploitation, the poverty, the sadness it creates. We should put up with it no longer.

On this May Day we celebrate, and we warn. We celebrate our working class, its refusal to be subservient, but we warn that permanent defence means permanent subjection, not freedom.

We celebrate our bold decision, against all the odds, to leave the capitalist club, the EU, ten years ago. Now we must be even bolder, and leave the capitalist war machine, NATO.

• This article is an edited extract from the speech given at our May Day 2026 meeting in London