The full manifesto can be found here.
The Workers Party of Britain:
- by committing to a review of policing priorities, will support a refocus on street safety and estate crime as an antidote to policing by Twitter and criminalising speech and thought.
- makes no apology for our support for Palestine and the people of Gaza during the current brutal onslaught which has been enabled by Labour and Tories alike. We call for a single state in which all those born in Palestine-Israel can live in peace with equal rights.
- will undertake a thoroughgoing review of our defence and foreign policy.
- is calling for a referendum on membership of NATO with a view to a national debate on all our collective security arrangements. Our own position is clear – under current circumstances, we will continue to campaign for Britain to leave NATO as a clear and present danger to the security of the British population and seek new collective security arrangements centred on the protection of peoples and not of states or industries.
Commitment to trade unionism and opposition to the Labour Party
We do not hide our belief that the greatest block to working class aspirations is not the Conservative Party but the Labour party itself. We supported Jeremy Corbyn insofar as he was able to advance the struggle, but we believe there was an inherent naivety about the determination of foreign powers, business and capitalist interests, through their agents in the Labour party, to destroy any challenge to the established order. Failure was inevitable once compromises were made on key issues like membership of the European Union and the handling of false accusations of antisemitism. Corbynism was unintentionally designed to fail from the very start and ‘capturing the Labour Party for the working class and socialism’ is an inherently futile strategy.
Today, the Labour party is an integrated part of the imperialist State machinery as we have seen in its tolerance for war crimes in Gaza. Its very existence marginalises opposition to attacks on wages at home and war abroad. Labour weakens popular demands for an end to exploitation, for redistribution and for control of State mechanisms that serve foreign powers such as the United States of America and its proxies like NATO. We will continue to expose the nature and crimes of the Labour party both past and present. If elected into office, we will not make self-defeating compromises to maintain weak coalitions dominated by politicians whose only links are to the State and not to the People.
Creeping buro-fascism
The usual suspects of late liberal capitalism are frightened. Be in no doubt of this. They are, even now, tearing off the worn velvet glove of liberal values to show their rusty iron fist but they dare not act as brutally as they would like (except through proxies like Netanyahu or Zelensky).
The neoliberals and their type are forced into stealth oppression and stealth totalitarianism – a ‘buro-fascism’, the distinctive fascism of legislation, regulation, lawfare, cultural engineering and attempting to ‘chill’ dissent through police action. Has the futile attempt to suppress protest over the evil assault on Gaza not demonstrated this?
The Workers Party of Britain is a free speech party supportive of the new social media despite its flaws because its very existence smashes the control of neo-liberals who own the corrupted legacy media.
We will undertake a review of all legislation and regulation to define only what is strictly harmful speech (intimidation and bullying rather than robust opinion) as well as all the emergency powers and related regulation that the State has provided itself with in order to repress any attempt at a fundamental change in the capitalist system. We will make it a criminal offence to deny a political organisation or individual a platform.
We are so confident of our position that we encourage debate with our opponents on equal grounds – whether of the lacklustre centre or the right. We will undertake a review of media ownership with a view to banning foreign ownership of the means of communication and information where it is clear that owners are interfering directly or through algorithms in free debate or are acting as agents under the instructions of foreign interests.
We will also be watching the emergence of artificial intelligence with great attention. It is too early to have a specific policy on what may be the next major technological revolution but we can institute a national debate on risks and benefits and develop policies that ensure that AI products and services and block-chain based cryptocurrencies and contract systems operate wholly in the interests of the working classes.
Democratic Reform
The Workers Party of Britain is socialist but it is also radically democratic. We seek to persuade through our words and our actions. We will take as long as is necessary to break through the matrix of half-truths and downright lies that hold the current system together and offer an alternative Left vision for this country.
We uphold the right to peaceful protest, free speech and resistance to attempts by authority to ‘chill’ legitimate opposition through surveillance, fear and misuse of the law.
For us, the Crown is a problem. It is the heir to feudalism and is used as cover for maintaining the capitalist structures that exploit and manipulate the population. But we also recognise that the identity of many British workers, including many who see it as guarantor of an ethos of service to the community, is bound up with tradition and that this tradition includes allegiance to the Crown. This is sincere and to be respected.
Our demand is that the British people be given a say in the future of the monarchy, and that a referendum be held to decide this. We do not seek to set down the precise question, nor propose an ideal form of change to the existing constitution, let that be informed by rational public debate.
However, we see no gain if the public are persuaded to vote against monarchy only to have a form of Republic that simply replaces the Monarch with a billionaire or ex-Prime Minister whose sole purpose is to maintain the current system in aspic. Our commitment is to supporting a referendum on this important question but we will engage in that debate ourselves to ensure that we do not fall into the trap of Americanising ourselves rather than creating a collective socialist democracy.
Across the board, we will widen and deepen democracy and transfer as much of the royal prerogative back to the representatives of the people as is possible. We reject the State’s misuse of the Crown to give itself excessive powers at our expense.
We will ask those questions once asked by Tony Benn of every person with power at hand: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you? These are questions we want everyone to ask about their situation and the WPB exists to ask those questions on behalf of the working class.
Amity not enmity with the rest of the world
The Workers Party of Britain will reverse British foreign policy which has been dynastic and then capitalist for centuries. This is not a matter of simplistic slogans about an ‘ethical’ foreign policy that invariably ends up with us either bombing or supporting the bombing of the innocent in defence of so-called liberal and democratic values. Most of this is just cover for the profits of bankers and arms dealers. Foreign policy should be about doing the right thing in the interests of ordinary British people and their counterparts across the world.
We are unashamedly anti-imperialist. We are a friend to all and an enemy to none who do not threaten us. We are not pacifist but we oppose all war that is not defensive in purpose. We deplore all forms of racist discourse but especially, at this moment in history, an ignorant Islamophobia as well as the whipping up of hysterical Sino- and Russophobia. While we deplore the global misbehaviour of American imperialism, we remain absolutely positive about the American people who are as trapped as we are by corrupt systems of party and corporate control.
We will undertake a thoroughgoing review of our defence and foreign policy and we will definitely re-orient Britain away from Washington especially where we are placed in constant confrontation with the enemies of US corporate interests. We are indomitable enemies of profit-seeking international military-industrial interests with a stake in war. We will become independent trading partners developing friendly relations with the BRICS, the rising powers of the world who are building a new multipolar world. Only the Workers Party of Britain understand what it means to be Global Britain.
We will also continue to support liberation movements. We will maintain friendly relations with all peace-loving nations knowing that they must create their own path towards democratic socialism without foreign interference. We will seek radical reform of the United Nations to empower it as genuine representative of the global community and help it to resist the domination of Washington which only undermines its prestige and influence.
We make absolutely no apologies for our support for Palestine and the people of Gaza during the brutal onslaught carried out by Israel with full support from the US and Britain, politically backed by Labour and Tories alike. Our position on Ukraine centres on a condemnation of the expansionary provocation of NATO in alliance with another ethno-nationalist government that throws its own people into a perpetual meat grinder. We will withdraw all military support from war zones and work for a negotiated and peaceful settlement whenever and wherever war breaks out.
Why Palestine is Important
The Workers Party of Britain is the only significant British political party to have pointed out the position of the Palestinians as victims of ethnic cleansing and brutal treatment from the very start of the recent conflict (and long before). It is a reflection of our humanity. Thousands of children have been killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced.
There can be no justification for the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Gaza. The complicity and lack of moral compass of the Labour Party has shocked many naïve activists who have been in denial about what their Party has become.
The pain will haunt human hearts for generations. Powerful forces, chiefly the US and Britain, have brought about, sustained and nourished the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and the denial of Palestinian statehood despite every international plan and UN resolution.
The United States is the chief beneficiary of the current chaos engulfing the Middle East, as it was also the chief beneficiary of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The Workers Party believes that the future is now One State: Israël – Palestine or Palestine-Israël or the Holy Land, the details cannot be worked out by us, but the picture is becoming clearer by the day. We also, in this context, support the right of return for all those Palestinians ethnically cleansed over many years and an immediate end to Israeli settlement on the West Bank.
However horrific this storm is, it will not last. It is a part of wider and longer struggle against imperialism and war. The old world is dying, but the new world is not yet ready to be born.
Palestine is a symbol for us of a much deeper problem. That a network of neo-conservatives and neo-liberals has seized control of Western states and, wholly unaccountable to their peoples because they have inherited dynastic modes of thinking, have adopted an aggressive militarism exemplified by NATO and maintained by a sinister arms industry.
Our criticisms in this case are not antisemitic nor supportive of terrorism. Our analysis can be said to be very courageous in the current climate. Our stand against Israel is a stand for the Jewish people. We welcome Jews into our Party and we will remain steadfast opponents of antisemitism. However, we also abhor the weaponisation of antisemitism for dubious political purposes in British politics and consider that the neglect of Islamophobia in society and its weaponisation by the populist Right receives inadequate attention. We are one nation and should think and behave with respect as one nation to every element within it.
Mass Migration
The Workers Party of Britain offers a migration policy that reflects the anxiety felt among the working class about an influx of migrants which appears to be out of control. While some of this anxiety is stoked by the racist Right, people are not wrong to worry about undue burdens being placed on local services, about disproportionate herding of migrants into poorer parts of the country, and about the cost of hosting escalating numbers of asylum seekers.
A distinction needs to be made between refugees and migrants. Migrant workers fill gaps in the labour market e.g. inadequate numbers of trained nurses. There is an issue over immigrants depressing wages but this can be addressed by long term labour reforms in the interest of all, not by immigration quotas.
Refugees, however, that is those claiming asylum, while representing only about 10% of inflow, pose greater immediate challenges in terms of publicly funded absorption. Nothing has worked for long, if at all. The flow of poor people into our country represses wage rates, but British imperialism has shown it is incapable of reforming itself, and unable to deal with the consequences of its warmongering.
We need to turn the telescope around and look at how our own actions as a relatively powerful Western country are creating the flow of asylum seekers. A glance at the countries of origin of many if not most of the asylum seekers shows that those countries have been subjected to deliberate attempts by the US, EU and Britain to impoverish them with sanctions, often following Western military action against them or use of proxy militias to destabilise them.
Countries like Syria, Eritrea, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are haemorrhaging many of their best young people because of our own imperialist actions. Refugees from Central Africa are often fleeing countries impoverished by French exploitation backed up by military interference designed to keep pro-French cliques in power.
A proper policy for a socialist party will focus on removing the spurs to desperate emigration caused by our own actions. This means – no more wars of aggression – lifting all sanctions on developing countries – no more funding of proxy militias – removing unfair trading practices which hamper economic development in poorer countries. It is surprisingly simple when you think about it.
Seven Policies for a Humane and Sustainable Migration Policy
We will undertake a major diversion of resources from the military-industrial complex and from inappropriate investment in NATO towards domestic defence and security structures, national social infrastructure and targeted international development. Neither the free flow of capital out of Britain, nor the free flow if labour into Britain, are conducive to economic planning, we will tackle both.
We will undertake investment in border security, including heightened sea-going and coastal patrols, but also in fair and equitable visa and citizenship arrangements that discourage organized crime and help the most vulnerable to a new life as well as ensuring that migration flows are matched to the ability of local communities to absorb new entrants.
Getting a grip on numbers
We will make a regular calculation of the sustainable levels of migration with entry directed primarily at the protection of those most placed at harm by the operations of foreign state terrorism and war and discouraging economic migrants except in areas of demonstrable labour shortage.
We will rebuild social infrastructures to match the requirements not just of the working class as a whole but to take account of migrants and refugees who meet legislated status requirements – housing, schools, healthcare, social care. This will mean a commitment to the full funding of local authorities in their efforts to provide a wide range of high-quality services for everyone in the community, including refugees as soon as their status is accepted, with follow up fast tracking to citizenship that screens out criminals.
We will invest in training for refugees to fill gaps in the provision of services to the wider population as respected members of the working class and in technical skills to support the use of new technologies for all workers rather than be complicit in driving down wage rates.
We will divert a significant portion of the funds saved from the excessive scale of the military-industrial and oppressive security structures to development projects that target the most vulnerable populations in the rest of the world.
We will challenge global neo-liberalism and global debt and free trade agreements that impoverish overseas working populations while building local middle classes at their expense – for the first time in its history, the UK under the WPB will cease exploiting the world and work with the BRICS to share resources and skills for the betterment of humanity.
We are not utopians. Open mass migration strategies without these measures will break society into identity wars and tribalism no matter how much we would like it to be otherwise. We will resist them on behalf of British workers.