Intervention of Stelios Christodoulou, member of AKEL’s International Relations Bureau, at the European Communist Meeting “Work among the working class and worker’s movement as a prerequisite for the rupture with the EU, for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism”

Brussels, 11 April 2018

On behalf of the Central Committee of AKEL, permit us to express our gratitude to the Communist Party of Greece for the invitation to participate in today’s meeting. At the same time, we congratulate the organizers for choosing the specific topic because it corresponds to the needs of our times for the strengthening of the organization and struggles of the working class and working people in general in every European country.

This is so because, despite the fact that there may be different approaches between us on issues related to strategy and tactics, we all acknowledge that the organized and systematic intervention of the members and militants of each Communist and Workers Party – which is the advanced form of class organization of working people – in trade unions, mass-political organizations, the cooperative movement and the social agencies of each country represents a fundamental and daily task. Especially, however, as regards the workers movement, this task is of crucial importance, serving multiple objectives:

1. The need to have, maintain and strengthen the militant orientation of the worker’s movement in each country.
2. The continued strengthening of the Party’s ties with the broader popular strata. In our opinion and according to our own concrete experience, the most solid and lasting ties with the people are forged by the active engagement of Party members and cadres of the Party in everyday life, in the struggles for the immediate problems and demands of the people of labour – whether for big or smaller problems. That is precisely where communists can and must win the trust of the working people and the people in general, even of working people who don’t identify politically with us and aren’t party-affiliated or who don’t agree with us on everything.
3. The ideological-political influence of communists within the masses. The promotion and injection in working people’s hearts and minds of the values ​​of solidarity between the various sections of the working class (immigrants, women, unemployed), anti-racism, internationalism, and, ultimately, the revolutionary and anti-capitalist education of working people towards the rupture with the system, character and policies of the European Union, and in the direction of the socialist perspective. Besides, it is with the actions of the class-orientated trade union movement, through which many working people become ideologically aware of and become members of the Party, that is, the force of the revolutionary perspective.
4. At the same time, as we as AKEL have stressed in the decision of our Party’s Programmatic Congress in 2014, the active participation of party members in trade unions strengthens the party’s ability to elaborate a correct policy in general, because it shapes this policy taking into account the real concerns and thoughts prevailing among working people.

Before presenting our own thoughts about actions within the worker’s movement, we ought to point out two specific peculiarities in the case of Cyprus:

• Firstly, it is a fact that our country’s Communist movement emerged under British colonial rule, simultaneously, if not earlier, than the first attempts to establish trade unions, while social democracy didn’t manage to appear earlier and even more so to assert its own intervention in the labour movement. In fact, it was the Communist Party of Cyprus (CPCP) itself that was at the forefront and led the way in the establishment of the first worker’s associations and trade unions. It was the CPC which organized and guided the first strike struggles on our island.

It is no exaggeration to say that, at least until the 1950’s, the leaders of the CPC and its successor, AKEL, were at the same time also the leaders of the workers’ movement in Cyprus, a fact that was generally recognized by the people. “The Cypriot Communists have been the soul of the Worker’s Movement in the first difficult steps of its birth and development. In the course of time, this relationship was further strengthened as a result of the struggles waged for working people’s rights and for the improvement of Cypriot working people’s lives, with AKEL being a steadfast, consistent supporter and fellow fighter in their struggles and assertions.”[1]

• In addition, we must also take into account that for many decades in Cyprus there is no single “all-national” worker’s federation or confederation that unites all trade union organizations and labour associations. The reason for this specific peculiarity is the anticommunism and nationalism that prevailed during the 1940’s and 1950’s on the island, which led to the split from the Pancyprian Trade Union Committee of the right-wing and anti-communist forces which subsequently founded SEK[2]. So today, in the trade union movement of Cyprus, the following trade union organizations are active:

∙ PEO (Pancyprian Federation of Labour), which is the biggest, oldest and class-oriented trade union organization of the island, whose soul and consciousness are the militants and members of AKEL.

∙ Cyprus Workers’ Confederation (SEK), which is the trade union organization of the Right.

∙ DEOK which is the much smaller trade union organization, aligned to Cypriot social democracy.

∙ At the same time, there are several sectoral trade unions, of which the most powerful is the Pancyprian Public Servants’ Trade Union (PASYDY) and the Cyprus Union of Bank Employees (ETYK) where our intervention as a Party is limited and with a clearly smaller influence than AKEL’s electoral strength, a fact which very often leads these organizations to follow the logic of government and employer’s policies. In contrast, the Progressive Movements organized and active within the trade unions in the education sector are growing stronger constantly.

Based on all of the above, our own priorities as regards our intervention in the worker’s movement in Cyprus can be summarized as follows:

1. Strengthening PEO in every workplace and sector where it is active and the organization of workers in new enterprises, particularly in the service and commerce sectors. Without any doubt the crisis, insecurity and the terrorization of working people, together with the propaganda promoting the depreciation and defamation of the trade union movement by the ruling mainstream mass media and the Anastasiades government, has had a significant effect on the level of working people’s organization within the ranks of the trade union movement. This has to be stopped by targeted work.

Particular attention must be paid to young people, towards whom we have the duty to persuade them of the importance of trade union organization and the waging of working people’s struggles. This is perhaps one of the most critical issues of our work within the worker’s movement, which is directly linked to the goal of militantly revitalizing and rejuvenating the worker’s movement on a national and European level.

Without a broad workers movement, without mass and active trade unions, the communist Left will not have the principal arena in which it can gain prestige and influence, win the trust, hearts and minds of the people, as well as the ability to rally working people together for today’s struggles, but also for the revolutionary perspective in critical future moments of history.

2. All-round support for the policy of waging a dynamic counter-offensive. This was the decision approved by the Extraordinary Congress of PEO and the policy pursued since 2016 onwards with the main goal being the restoration of the losses suffered by working people during the crisis and the reinforcement and strengthening of the resistance to the policies being implemented by the Anastasiades government and capital.

Already the overwhelming majority of collective agreements have been brought back, either all or to a large extent the concessions made during the crisis have been restored. This struggle must be completed.

In addition, PEO has set the goal of gaining general increases aimed at reducing the huge inequalities created in recent years to the detriment of working people.

It should also be pointed out that we are, for the time being, managing to prevent the privatization of large public utilities in telecommunications and electricity; a struggle which we must continue.

Furthermore, we have projected and put forward specific demands such as: the protection of the right to strike, the institutional and legislative safeguarding of collective agreements, the guaranteeing of a minimum wage and minimal working conditions and terms of employment for those working people not covered by collective agreements, the implementation of the General Health System against the dictates of the private insurance companies and the ruling party, as well as the struggle to protect the primary family home from foreclosures.

These are the goals we have set for our struggle and which can rally and unite the working class, working people from various sectors, and small and medium-sized enterprises that are subject to capital’s policies.

3. Systematic and popularized enlightenment and briefing of working people about what is happening in the European Union, about its character, policies, developments and its direction. We certainly need to make a self-critical admission. The truth is that, as the Left, we have not succeed in convincing the peoples, and especially the working people of our countries, to the extent conditions demand, that what they are going through is due to the class policies being pursued by the ruling class at both a national and European level.

Undoubtedly, the experience Cyprus went through in 2013, with the well-known decisions of the Anastasiades government and Eurogroup, gave the opportunity for the debate on the EU to commence again, while many people recalled AKEL’s long standing positions about the reality of the EU.  However, the despair which the poorest social strata are experiencing unfortunately often blurs the crisis, while the majority of the mass media are because of class interests against us. This is the reason why a painstaking and persistent effort is needed to each time make sense of what lies behind the fine-sounding titles of EU Treaties, decisions and declarations.

“Stability Pact”, “Euro + Pact”, “European Stability Mechanism”, “Fiscal Pact”, “European Semester”, “Enhanced Economic Governance”, “Six-Pack” and the “Two-Pack”. These have all institutionalized austerity, the restriction of national sovereignty in the exercise of economic policy and forced labour costs down. It is the European Union’s toolbox for the imposition of privatizations and restructuring which big capital is demanding, in combination with the imposition of cuts in working people’s incomes and social gains.

Likewise the much-advertised “Banking Union” is aiming at ensuring the centralization of banking capital and protection of the big banks. At the same time, the possibility for a haircut on depositors when demanded, remains among the options, while the developing Capital Markets Union, which according to the European Commission’s proposal will be completed by 2019, will establish a shadow banking system that will serve big investors instead of small and medium-sized businesses. There is even the danger of it developing into a new speculation bubble. In addition, the Juncker plan on the future of the EU is moving even deeper in this direction, given that it provides for the following:

1. Permanent austerity mechanisms in the Member States, namely the so-called competitiveness committees.
2. An all-powerful Finance Minister, who evidently will not be subject to democratic accountability.

III. Preventive “control” of every legislative initiative of the Commission and of the Member States through an economic outlook so that they won’t deviate from the fiscal indicators.

Within this framework, the activity of the European Regional Office (EUROF) of the World Federation of Trade Unions, of which PEO is the Coordinator, is of particular importance. EUROF aims at strengthening the rallying of the class forces in Europe and at intensifying the actions and interventions of the class-based worker’s movement on an EU level.

4. Ideological work should be conducted to reveal the inherently exploitative and unjust nature of the capitalist system and its historical limitations. The outbreak of the capitalist crisis has represented a pretext to point out the real nature of the crisis and system.

Wars, militarization, the competition for the control of energy resources, racism and the rise of neo-fascism are also core issues for the worker’s movement. Not only must international solidarity and the anti-war actions of the workers movement develop around these issues, but also struggles waged against them as they constitute integral parts of an economic system that is decaying, reproducing poverty, inequality, turmoil and generating deadly dangers for the peoples and the world.

It is precisely on the ground of these struggles – and not on a theoretical level – that broader masses of working people through their mass participation can realize the necessity of moving towards an alternative way of organizing the economy and society: socialism.

We hope that with these thoughts we have contributed to the reflection and exchange of views and experiences on the topic of today’s meeting. Once again, we thank the organizers for the invitation.

[1] Positions of the Central Committee to the 22^nd Congress of AKEL (June 2015)

[2] Cyprus Workers’ Confederation (SEK)