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 East Anglia

 Saturday 17 March.
 12 Noon-4pm
 12 noon: informal discussion.
 1 pm: meal
 2 pm: Discussion of Annual       Conference Agenda.

The Conservatory,
 back room of Rosary Tavern,
 Rosary Rd, Norwich.

FIRCROFT COLLEGE,BIRMINGHAM
SUMMER SCHOOL
The SPGB Proudly Presents,
For Your Amazement and And Amusement,
The Most Noted Political Thinkers of the Last Century
Friday,13th -Sunday,15th July 2007
Full details and booking information will be available shortly



   Enfield & Haringey.

Contact secretary for details of meetings

at 7 Dorset Road , London N22 7SL or
julianvein@blueyonder.co.uk
Manchester branch

Monday 26 March, 8.15pm

Discussion on the situation in Iran

Hare and Hounds,
Shudehill,
City centre
     Central London

Sunday 25 March. 3pm

What is Terrorism and Why?

Speaker: Gwynn Thomas.
Socialist Party,
52 Clapham High St, SW4
(nearest tube: Clapham North).





The MacMillan Government, with the general support of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress, is going ahead with the scheme to associate Britain with a European free trade area that is being built up round a separate, more closely integrated “common market” of Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

 The six countries in the “common market” aim by stages to abolish customs barriers and free movements of labour and capital within the area. The larger “free trade area” is a sort of half-way house to full integration; in particular British food production and imports would continue to be on the basis of preference for Commonwealth countries.

 The motive for the decision of the Government to go in is the powerful one that British industry cannot afford to keep out. When the European “common market” area is formed, with a protected market of 50 million people,thus enabling mass production industries to operate on a scale that will justify the necessary enormous investments of capital, British manufacturers fear that they will be undercut, not only in Europe, but in world markets; for the 50 million population of Britain is far too small a market to serve as foundation for modernised industry.

 For British Capitalism it is a question of getting into the European group or being crushed by the three great production areas that will then exist, America, Russia and United Europe.
(Editorial, Socialist Standard, March 1957)




Object and
Declaration of Principles

 This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the formation of the party in 1904, its original language has been retained.
 

Object

The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds

 1. That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class,and the consequent enslavement  of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.

 2. That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those who producebut do not possess.

 3. That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.

4.  That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.

  5.That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.

 6. That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class  must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national  and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression
 into  the agent of emancipation and  the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.


7. That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of all sections of the the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.

 8.  The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.

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