Resolutions passed at Counterfire Conference 2023

Resolution 1: The continuing crisis of the British regime

Conference notes:

1. That Britain has one of the weakest economies in Europe: low and erratic growth, high inflation, low investment.
2. That the country’s public infrastructure is in an unparalleled state of decay across, for instance, the rail network, schools, universities, housing, the police, the NHS, social care, and welfare provision.
3. That Britain is a low-wage economy and that in work poverty, as well as for those on benefits, is endemic.
4. That the British ruling class has no answer to this crisis: a dysfunctional Tory Party and a post Corbyn, Thermidor Labour leadership share social conservatism, virulent anti-socialism, pro-business, and pro-imperialist politics.
5. That the revival of trade-union struggle, while still limited by the trade-union leaders, is the most significant wave of strikes since the defeat of the miners’ strike in 1985.
6. That millions of working-class people are likely to vote for Labour, not out of any support for Starmer but on a class basis and/or to reject the Tories. However, it is noted that many left-wingers and former Labour members are too aghast with the current Labour leadership to countenance voting for Labour.
7. That a defeat for the Tories would increase workers’ confidence and on that basis, we support a Labour victory in the absence of a left alternative.

Conference believes:

1. That the crisis of the welfare state is a vital part of the overall crisis. The current focus is on wages, but the fuel of the anger is a wider crisis of institutions.
2. That while the Labour Party remains a ‘bourgeois workers party’, Labourism will be dominated by the extreme right of the labour movement for the foreseeable future, and the left around Labour will continue to be attacked “ruthlessly” (in Starmer’s words) on the basis of preventing any prospect of a repeat of the Corbyn project for future generations.
3. That the Tory party is relying on culture wars and the ‘war on woke’ to overcome its lack of legitimacy.
4. While the Tory attacks on identity politics should be resisted, those politics are an inadequate response the crisis.
5. That rank-and-file organisation needs to be rebuilt on the principle of the Clyde Workers Committee of 1915: ‘with the union leaders when they rightly represent us, independently of them where they do not.’
6. That stronger revolutionary socialist organisation is necessary in the trade unions and in the working class generally in order to both build rank-and-file organisation and connect the trade-union movement with wider social movements and to develop political representation for workers.

Conference resolves:

1. To redouble our efforts to build the rank-and-file conference in June.
2. To recruit as widely as possible to Counterfire.
3. To increase our emphasis on Marxist education, especially in regard to the history of rank-and-file organisation, the trade-union bureaucracy, syndicalism, and so on.
4. To argue at the next general election for a tactical vote for Labour, except where there is a viable socialist alternative while sustaining a thorough-going opposition to Labour’s leadership. In the event of Jeremy Corbyn standing as an independent in Islington North, we will give full support to his candidacy. Counterfire will not promote un-nuanced ‘Vote Labour’ publicity; avoiding this can allow us to retain an independent socialist position crucial to serious participation in any, much-needed, left alternative to Labour (or the SNP in Scotland) in the future.
5. To educate our supporters on the Marxist theory of oppression and to provide a class alternative to identity politics.
6. To continue our support for the People’s Assembly.

Resolution 2: Socialists, the rank and file and the strikes

Conference notes:

1. That the number of strike days for 2022 was higher than for any year in over three decades, a pattern that has been sustained into 2023 so far.
2. That the unifying issue behind strike action has been pay, fuelled by the cost-of-living crisis and high inflation in particular.
3. That the dominant form of strike action so far has been the national one-day or two-day strike, though sometimes there has been a significant series of such strikes.
4. That there has been an element of coordination between unions, with 15 March representing a peak in joint strike action, but also some missed opportunities for coordinated strikes.
5. That a number of striking unions, including NEU, PCS and BMA, have reported increases in membership.

Conference believes:

1. That the upsurge in strike action represents a positive shift for the trade-union movement after over thirty years of low levels of strike action, but the recovery is from a low base and therefore has contradictory features, such as the reluctance to pursue indefinite strike action.
2. That the situation has been extremely uneven, with some union leaders (for example in Unison and GMB) showing little appetite for industrial action, while a number of unions have failed to reach ballot thresholds.
3. That there has been, despite impressive levels of strike participation, a lack of major victories, with some unions (notably in the health sector) settling for underwhelming deals following negotiations.
4. That in a number of unions, such as RCN and UCU, a degree of antagonism has developed between the union leadership and many elements of the rank and file.
5. That the strength of grassroots membership and organising, rooted in building at the base of the unions, is often a critical factor in determining industrial dispute outcomes and in building union strength.

Conference resolves:

1. To sustain practical efforts at pursuing coordination across trade unions, especially in the form of joint strike days.
2. To ensure that our members within trade unions are caucusing regularly to develop and implement agreed strategy and tactics.
3. That all members should be fully involved in their union branch and in actively building union organisation. They should seek to stand as reps, stewards or for local branch roles where appropriate. Any member standing for any elected union position above the level of shop steward or local branch committee must agree with the Steering Committee in advance the desirability of standing and the policy platform on which they stand.
4. To build the rank-and-file conference on 10 June, getting union branches and trades councils to support and sponsor it while aiming to maximise attendance.

Resolution 3: Revolutionary organisation: theory and practice

Conference notes:

1. That revolutionary organisation is different from all other organisation on the left because it starts from the understanding that workers have contradictory consciousness under capitalism.
2. That capitalism often forces workers to fight but it also creates passivity, divisions and competition.
3. That revolutionary organisation is unlike that of Labour parties, which reflect existing, uneven consciousness, and trade unions, which organise together all workers, whatever their opinions on a sectional basis. Revolutionary organisation fights for a clear class consciousness and aims to challenge all oppression and overcome all divisions in the class.
4. That the social crises, the collapse of Corbynism and the abstract and sectarian nature of most of the revolutionary left makes the revival of a genuine Marxist left a matter of urgency.

Conference believes:

1. That this means organising together the most clear-sighted and militant workers in a separate, revolutionary organisation with an agreed set of politics and aims.
2. That it means then turning outward and campaigning alongside workers who are fighting back to strengthen the movement and to convince them of the need for revolutionary transformation. In Lenin’s words ‘First separate, then come together.’
3. That this means aiming for units, or where possible branches of revolutionaries everywhere who meet together regularly to discuss their work. It also means establishing or sustaining caucuses for our union work.
4. That it means both working in a non-sectarian way to build the rank-and-file movement, the Stop the War Coalition and the People’s Assembly and openly building and recruiting to Counterfire.
5. That it means using our website, local public meetings and national zoom events to fight for a class analysis and a revival of Marxist theory within the movement.

Conference resolves:

1. To ensure all members are involved in Counterfire organisation. The exact form of geographical organisation will depend on our local strength, but the aspiration is for weekly members’ meetings and monthly in-person public meetings, as suggested in the five-point plan agreed at the February national meeting.
2. To establish local leaderships to ensure that we are in regular touch with all members and that all members receive and distribute the Counterfire freesheet through local organisation or the post.
3. That union members should attend relevant Counterfire caucuses.
4. To encourage members to produce reports, reviews, articles and interviews for the website.
5. To launch a recruitment drive from conference.

Resolution 4: Branch Organising

Conference notes:

1. The nature of the period we are living through, which is characterised by a cost-of-living crisis, deep political instability nationally and internationally and a nascent revival of the trade-union movement.
2. The extreme alienation of ordinary people from establishment political parties and institutions, including across the nations and regions of the UK.
3. The need for a revolutionary pole in every locality to try to connect with trade-union and other struggles, give political expression to the level of class anger, and cohere the above with an overall strategy for class struggle against the British state.

Conference believes:

1. That strengthening local Counterfire branches will enable us to better relate to the national dimensions of the current strike wave.
2. That the right will make gains in areas where socialists fail to make persuasive arguments.
3. That recent successes of local branches in areas like Glasgow can provide a model to grow and develop existing branches.
4. That the most effective way to help existing, new, or potential members to develop themselves is to engage them in regular branch activity linked to a national strategy. This includes building the Rank-and-File Conference, ‘How We Fight, How We Win’, in June, but also work relating to strikes, or in key united fronts like the People’s Assembly, Stop the War Coalition and other local campaigns.
5. That university campuses are a good place to generate interest in local branch activity.
6. That branch members’ workplaces are a vital place to build links to the local branch.
7. That the effective division of organisational work among local branch activists is key to growing and developing Counterfire.
8. That reading groups set up by local branches can provide two important functions: to facilitate the development of existing members’ theoretical ideas for political action and to act as a hub to attract non-members interested in socialist ideas.
9. That posting photos, videos, and reports from regional branches on social media gives confidence to members of the organisation as a whole.

Conference resolves:

1. To build branches by having monthly events, regular organising meetings and reading groups.
2. To have regular stalls and leafleting sessions in order to build monthly events, sustain regular contact between branch members and promote the organisation in local communities.
3. To have a greater emphasis on building for local Counterfire events and recruitment on university campuses and in branch members’ workplaces.
4. To hold regular strategy meetings in addition to organising meetings to plan our interventions in strikes, national campaigns and local movements.
5. That one or two members in each branch should take up the role of branch organiser.
6. To post local branch activity regularly on social media and to encourage local members to write for the Counterfire website, where possible on a regular basis.

Resolution 5: Marxism, gender and women’s oppression

Conference notes:

1. That austerity and the cost-of-living crisis has a disproportionate effect on women, who are more likely to be in low-paid work, have unpaid caring responsibilities and need public services.
2. That women have been at the forefront of the current strike wave in sectors such as the NHS and education and will be particularly affected by the draconian provisions of the anti-strike bill.
3. The continued attempts by the far-right to use false ideas of the protection of women and children as justification for racist attacks, as shown by their mobilisation against refugees in Knowsley.
4. The emergence of a strand in the women’s movement which defines women’s oppression explicitly as a ‘single issue’, on which common cause can be made with groups from across the political spectrum, including the conservative, religious and far right.
5. That recent works, such as Kenan Malik, Not So Black and White, have opened up the debate about the problems of identity politics as a way of understanding the workings of oppression.

Conference believes:

1. That women’s oppression is a product of class society and that class analysis remains of central importance. Specifically ‘women’s issues’ also have a class dimension. The fight against oppression cannot be separated from that against exploitation.
2. That gender is socially conditioned and closely linked to women’s oppression, helping to ideologically reproduce the subordination of women.
3. That while women’s oppression will only be finally overcome with the ending of class society, socialists must fight for reforms against it in the short term.
4. That these reforms must be fought for on the basis of class interests. Allying with those who represent a section of ruling-class interest will either prove self-defeating or at best will advance the interests of a few ruling-class women at the expense of the majority.
5. That women’s oppression therefore cannot be opposed by compromising with oppression on the basis of race, sexuality or gender.
6. That widening the understanding of the Marxist theory of women’s oppression is key to advancing struggle in this area.

Conference resolves:

1. To continue to provide opportunities for theoretical discussion of women’s oppression alongside campaigning work around strikes, but also on issues such as police misogyny, violence and abortion.
2. To increase the range of written work we produce on Marxism and oppression.
3. To continue to stress the importance of a class analysis of oppression in our political interventions.

Resolution 6: Trans rights

Conference notes:

1. The continued existence of oppression on grounds of sexuality or gender.
2. The attacks by the right on trans people as part of the ‘culture wars’ agenda and the need to defend trans people against these attacks.
3. The divisions on the left about the relationship between trans and women’s rights.
4. The attempts to ‘no platform’ gender-critical feminists and prevent their events from taking place.

Conference believes:

1. We are unequivocally opposed to all forms of discrimination on grounds of sexuality, sexual orientation or gender. We fully defend trans rights and are against the oppression of trans people.
2. That the oppression of trans people is rooted in the oppression of women and the function of the family under capitalism, and that it has to be approached from a materialist point of view, not simply from one of individual identity.
3. That these divisions mean that there is no natural unity of the oppressed, which has to be fought for ideologically and in practice. This is the case in the debate over women’s rights and trans rights, and differences can only be resolved by recognising them and trying to resolve them in a way which does not discriminate against either group.
4. That although the oppression of women cannot be reduced to sex, sex does play a constitutive part in the way the oppression of women functions under capitalism. The experience of being oppressed as a woman is in part the experience of how sex is used to bolster oppression and is part of the material reality of oppression.

Conference resolves:

1. To reaffirm our position of combatting the oppression of both women and trans people, from a Marxist perspective, rejecting the ideological frameworks of both postmodern gender theory and radical feminism.
2. To ensure that our articles and meetings reflect these views and try to promote positive ways to get them to a wider audience and to develop our understanding.
3. To recognise that within the left, including among LGBT people, there are various views on this question which must be discussed openly and without abuse or intimidation. We are opposed to no platform except for fascists.
4. That within a revolutionary organisation, discussions on contentious issues are decided by the whole membership.
5. To reaffirm our earlier statement (September 2020) on this question, reprinted here as Appendix 1.

Appendix 1: Women’s liberation and the trans debate

1. Trans people are oppressed.
2. Trans people should be free of all discrimination, oppression, abuse, violence, or the threat of violence.
3. It is the responsibility of the left and of the entire labour and progressive movement to oppose the oppression of trans people.
4. There are competing theories about why trans people are oppressed.
5. We take the view that it is the centrality of women’s oppression and the role of the family to the continued existence of capitalism which results in the straitjacket of gender which oppresses all those who do not conform to societal norms.
6. We understand others have different explanations and we are firmly of the belief that all those with different views should be listened to with respect.
7. There is among trans people competing views of why trans people are oppressed and these should be listened to with respect. We reject claims by any individual or organisation to speak for all trans people.
8. We are familiar from debates on the nature of racism with a broad spectrum of explanations of racism – black nationalist, black separatist, Marxist, social democratic and liberal to name only some. All those currents are anti-racist positions and no one should be, or has been, excluded from the anti racist movement, let alone considered a racist, because they held one explanation of racism rather than another. The same should be true in the debate over trans.
9. We are familiar from debates over sexism with a broad spectrum of explanations of women’s oppression – feminist, radical feminist, socialist feminist, Marxist, social democratic, liberal and so on. All those currents are opposed to sexism and no one should be, or has been, excluded from the women’s movement, let alone considered a sexist, because they held one explanation of women’s oppression rather than another. The same should be true in the debate over trans.
10. Unity among the oppressed is possible, but never automatic. Unity has to constructed and can never be assumed. Any passing familiarity of the history of relations between the women’s movement, the black movement, and the gay and lesbian liberation movements knows that discussion and debate was frequently necessary for common interest to be forged. For that open, free and respectful debate is essential.

Resolution 7: Imperialism East and West, Ukraine and the new cold war

Conference notes:

1. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Russia occupying a fifth of Ukrainian territory, the high death toll on both sides and the devastating impact on Ukrainian civilians.
2. The West’s decision to fight a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, sending 128 billion Euros in military, financial and humanitarian aid in the first year of the conflict, imposing unilateral sanctions on Russia and ramping up military spending.
3. The ratcheting up of international tensions, especially between the West and China and the Aukus military pact between the US, UK and Australia in the Pacific.
4. Ruling-class attempts to muzzle anti-war voices in Russia and the West, including the suppression of criticism of Nato in the Labour Party.
5. The mounting wider costs of the war including the fuelling of inflation, especially in energy and food prices globally.
6. The connections between war and climate chaos.

Conference believes:

1. That the Ukraine war is an inter-imperialist war, with the Nato powers trying to bleed their inferior competitor Russia, and Russia bent on carving off eastern and southern Ukraine.
2. That socialists must continue to condemn the Russian invasion while focussing on opposing Western escalation.
3. That the labour movements of all countries have a vital interest in pressing for an immediate negotiated end to the war, defending Ukraine’s right to self-determination, while also pressing for its military neutrality.
4. That the war in Ukraine and the cold war between the West and China will deeply affect politics in all countries and have to be addressed by the left.
5. That anti-war campaigning has to link demands for a negotiated peace and an end to the new cold war on the one hand and resistance to the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis on the other.

Conference resolves:

1. To step up support for the Stop the War Coalition at every level, with a particular focus on strengthening and expanding local groups, or building new groups where none exist.
2. To promote anti-war arguments and support for the Stop the War Coalition within the trade-union movement, drawing links between demands for peace and the struggles against the cost-of-living crisis.
3. To raise the issues of war and militarism within the movements against austerity, racism and climate change.
4. To continue to develop anti-imperialist and anti-war analysis through our website and publications.

Resolution 8: Palestine

Conference notes:

1. That the present government in Israel is its most racist, right-wing government in its history, a fact that is widely recognised even by Israelis.
2. That the pogrom against the Palestinian town of Huwara in February, which resulted in at least 35 homes being completely brunt to the ground, hundreds of injured Palestinians and one dead, had the backing of Israeli soldiers who stood by and let it happen.
3. That Gaza continues to suffer in siege conditions, strangled by Israeli blockade, dependent on foreign aid and scarred by repeated military offensive.
4. That the US and the UK continue to provide support to the Israeli state.
5. That in the Labour Party, criticism of Israeli apartheid is barely tolerated.

Conference believes:

1. That Israel is an apartheid settler-colonial state.
2. That there is a thread connecting the mob violence of the Israeli settlers against Palestinians to the very top of the Israeli politicians and state.
3. That Israel has no interest in a peace process or an independent Palestinian state.
4. That in the UK, there is considerable public support for justice, freedom, and equality for the Palestinians.

Conference resolves:

1. To support and build the national demonstration called by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to mark the 75 years of Nakba on 13 May.
2. To support and build the 2023 Big Ride for Palestine which will go from Swansea to Bristol from 3 to 6 August.