International Socialist League
The International Socialist League is reproducing the Moviment Corrent Roig (Red Current Movement) statement from Catalan for the slate of Catalan candidates for the 14-F (14 February) elections. This article, published in English, as a sign of our solidarity with Moviment Corrent Roig and Corriente Roja. We think the statement will be of interested, despite a different history of struggle, to the British working class, the oppressed minorities and those fighting for their rights in northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
The British government puts our lives in danger in different ways with more than one thousand Covid-19 deaths a day in January, they implement Brexit for the interests of their class, they plan more austerity attacks while the economy slumped by 10% in 2020 the worst in 300 years due to the virus.
We agree whole heartedly with the point of view of the statement that “We are very clear that, without the struggle, mobilisation and self-organisation of the working class and the people of Catalonia in the streets and neighbourhoods of our towns, it is not possible to impose the measures that we present in our programme.” Likewise, we have to defeat the anti-working class attacks of this government and the compliance by the Labour Party by the self-organisation and mobilisation of workers and the people throughout the UK.
Because of this, workers in the UK have a pressing need to construct a revolutionary organisation and programme that will present the people and the youth with a viable alternative, that will secure permanent jobs, good wages, housing, the prevention of infection, good living conditions and face the climate crisis.
The absence of a revolutionary leadership was glaringly felt by the people when Johnson appropriated the project to exit the EU that will benefit big companies and the elites. A workers’ alternative to leave the EU could have been led by Jeremy Corbyn but Corbyn “sat on the fence”. In the coming years workers in the UK have the task to build a real alternative to the present system that will organise the working class and poorer sectors of society and that will give voice to the people and build common struggle with all European workers and people.
Here we want to present the candidacy of our comrades from Corrent Roig (Catalan section of Corriente Roja), since the fight of the Catalan people is also the fight of the peoples and workers of Europe, who stood in the 14 February elections in Tarragona.
Catalan Elections 14-February: Vote for the Moviment Corrent Roig slate in Tarragona, the voice of the repressed women in Parliament
For democratic rights, health, education, bread, housing, work, equality and working class and popular dignity
On 14 February in the electoral district of Tarragona the candidates of Moviment Corrent Roig aim to defend the democratic rights of the working class and the people of Catalonia and that want to be the voice of the repressed women in Parliament. That is why our candidacy is headed by Elisabeth Martín, prosecuted for a protest action in the prison of Mas de Enric and a nursing auxiliary, a worker of the Levante health complex. She is followed by Roger Español, an activist who lost an eye due to police violence during the referendum of 1 October and is a caretaker at a public high school in Barcelona. He has been retaliated against by the Spanish state, with a two and half year lawsuit for attacking the authority, and by the Generalitat [The Catalunya government], with three complaints and fines of hundreds of euros for disobedience for cutting the Meridiana. The third candidate is Lidia Navarro, indicted for public disorder during her participation in an unauthorised demonstration during the protests against the sentence.
The candidates of Moviment Corrent Roig, therefore are repressed women, activists and militants of ARA (Assembly of Repression and Activists) and Corrent Roig who intend to put at the centre of the political debate the struggle against repression and against a state and a justice system inherited from Francoism that represses us and systematically denies us the most elementary democratic rights. It is also a candidacy that fights for public health and education, bread, housing, work and for the dignity of the working class, for which we must build a real social and health emergency plan to confront the nefarious management of the pandemic and the serious economic and ecological crisis to which the monarchist regime and its parties are leading us.
We are very clear that, without the struggle, mobilisation and self-organisation of the working class and the people of Catalonia in the streets and neighbourhoods of our towns, it is not possible to impose the measures that we present in our programme. But we are also very clear that, without presenting a clear programmatic alternative to the electoral machines of the parties of the regime, victory is not possible either, since we need to reach the hearts and consciences of all workers and the working classes everywhere. And the electoral contest is a platform and stage that makes this possible.
If to organise the referendum and stop the police violence we needed the strength of the people, today we need the support of the people. To remind the big parties and institutions that there can be no division between “first-class” defendants and “second class” defendants.
That is why we ask you to vote for the Moviment Corrent Roig candidacy on the 14 February. A democratic, determined and anti-repressive candidacy.
Many other parties will campaign using the figures of political prisoners as an electoral attraction, but none of them will be politically and programmatically consistent with their defence. The Moviment Corrent Roig candidacy is made up of the political prisoners and those imprisoned by both the Spanish State and the Generalitat. We are the ones who, like thousands of people in the streets, left our skin and bones at the 1-O referendum and the fight against the sentencing of the pro-independence leaders. It is we, with our own voice, who are asking you to vote. A vote of solidarity, struggle and class.
Read our manifesto to know our main programmatic axes and follow us during the electoral campaign in our Social Networks:
@Corrent Roig
@Assembly of Reprisoners and Activists
