The first congress of WR

The ICC section in Britain, World Revolution, held its First Congress in April of this year. The Congress confirmed the work achieved by World Revolution in 1975, and the discussions at the Congress centred on the perspectives for the crisis and class struggle in Britain and the role and parti­cipation of World Revolution in the work of the ICC as a whole.

The First Congress was above all a ‘working’ congress in that it permitted World Revolu­tion to consciously account for its resources, maturity, and capacity to inter­vene in the class struggle. It was also the occasion for a balance-sheet to be drawn up or World Revolution’s origins and its activities since it began to participate fully with the groups which later constituted the ICC.

The Congress endorsed the intention of publishing the magazine, World Revolution, more regularly as soon as possible. Other resolutions and documents, which expressed the level of clarity achieved by WR on vital issues confronting the working class today, were also endorsed. Among these documents were the ‘Theses on the Class Struggle in Britain’ and the ‘Perspectives on the Crisis and Class Struggle in Britain’, both of which are included in World Revolu­tion no.7. In this issue of the International Review we are presenting another document which was discussed and approved by the Congress: the ‘Address to Revolutionaries in Britain’. This ‘address’ is a contribution of WR in regard to a central concern of revolutionaries in our period: the need for all revolutionary forces to unify and regroup their forces around the basic lessons of the historical struggle of the proletariat. After fifty years of counter-revolution, this necessity is all the more urgent, all the more crucial, when the forces of the proletariat, dispersed and weak, face immense tasks in this epoch of crisis and rising class struggle.

The fundamental gain of WR’s First Congress was that it reaffirmed WR’s participation in the work of the ICC, and as part of that whole, it pledged itself to play an increa­singly decisive role in the struggles of the proletariat in Britain.