undergone a qualitative decline since 1969 with the capitalist class taking the first steps towards a 'strong state'. Thirdly, there is the immediate crisis produced by the inter-relation of the interxist organisation worthy of the ne must seek to develop an agittal programme related to all burning issues contronting the ses and must make this the is of consistent campaign work of comestent work within the o organisations. Such agitation I propaganda will be essential clarifying resistance to the Govtent and the economic crisis; i an absolute pre-condition for Henging Labour's monopoly classes after 1945 It is this situation which allows us to say that the developing crisis of British capitalism is the most intense this century scope even that of the carly 1920% For this reason the United Secretarlat of the Fourth International in its. Theses on Britain defined the present period as one leading to la head-on confrontation between capital and labour' (Thesis Three), It concluded From this unalysis that: Preparation for the appearance of organs of dual power immediately before or during the general strike other form the generalised confrontation between the two classes pending in Britain will take is our main strategic goal in the coming period (Thesis Seven). Only such a line dovetails both the objective necessities of such a confrontation, inc luding the ability to defeat the state British imperialism. Firstly, the dramatic decline of British imperialism requires a complete restructuring of British capitalism -reorienting it towards Europe and developing technologically-based British industry. But the refusal of the working class to bear the costs of this process is producing a big political crisis of the ruling class which has been deepened by the failure of successive policies in Ireland.
welfare state, and the policy of full employment national economic crisis and the working class victory of 1973-74 which finished off the Tory -exceeding in -or whatever necessitate a concentration of 1. The Labour Government has come to office at a time of fusion of three interlinked crises of This is overlaid by a crisis which is developing as the relationship established between the -based on the guarantee of bourgeois democracy, the establishment of tne begins to break up. This relationship has working class around these decisive 'The tactic of the united front. as Trotsky put it, is not something accidental and artificial -a cunning manoeuvre not at all; it onginares, entirely and wholly, in the objective conditions governing the conditions of the proletariat (What Next). "The united front is not at all, either in point of origin or substance, a question of reciprocal relations between the Central Committees of two partles (revolutionary and reformist)...The problem of the united front.. grows out of the unpent need to secure for the working class the possibility of a united front in the strople against capitalism" (On the baited Frons)
the decisive links in the period leading towards the cre ation of organs of dual power are the construction of united fronts flowing from the burning issues of the day, on the decisive points of ou transitional programme, In a Limited way, we have already seen united fronts of this type on unenployment, defence of the weltare state, and more dramatically against In Place of Strife, the Industrial above all, against coming attempts to limpose incomes policy, which form the decisive links in the preparation of the working class for the creation of organs of dual power This completely corresponds with the immediate needs of the class struggle, for the problem facing the sections of the working class is the huge disparity between its potential strength, created by its organisational strength at the base of the trade unions, and its practical political weakness in the face of the attacks and manoeuvres of the burcaucracy. The essential pre requisite for overcoming this fragmentation of the strength of the working class between thousands of factory, industry and sectoral struggles is the adoption of a programme of class-wide demands Lo deal with the developing crisis. the mass