Workers Power is a revolutionary communist organisation fighting to turn resistance to capitalism into a struggle for working-class power and international socialism.
Britain is one of the richest countries in the world. Yet millions struggle to pay the rent, heat their homes or get the healthcare they need. Wealth accumulates at the top while wages and public services are squeezed. Money can always be found for war, while governments retreat from even their limited promises to confront climate breakdown.
These are not separate failures. Society is organised around profit and controlled by a small capitalist class. Governments can change, but the banks, corporations, media owners and unelected state institutions retain their power. They set the limits of what is possible—and make working people pay for every crisis.
Workers strike; tenants organise; students occupy; communities mobilise against racism, war and environmental destruction. Such struggles can win real gains. But they remain divided and defensive, repeatedly contained by leaders whose strategy goes no further than negotiation, pressure and the next election.
Workers Power exists because capitalism will not be defeated by protest alone. The working class needs its own organisation, programme and leadership: a movement capable of uniting immediate struggles into a conscious challenge to capitalist rule.
Who we are
Workers Power is a revolutionary communist organisation in Britain. We have several branches and a national organisation. Our members are active in their workplaces, trade unions and a wide range of campaigns, from Palestine solidarity to fighting the far right.
We publish the Workers Power newspaper and this website. They are the scaffolding of our political work: a means of developing common arguments, reporting struggles and reaching beyond our branches. Prinkipo is our publishing house for books and pamphlets.
We run regular political education and hold an annual summer camp. Marxism is a method for understanding a changing world and acting within it. A revolutionary organisation needs members who can analyse events, learn from experience and argue for a course of action.
We are a small organisation. We do not pretend to be the revolutionary party the working class needs, or claim to lead struggles in which our forces play only a modest part. We are building an organisation that can contribute to the creation of that party.
Why the working class?
The working class is far more varied than the old stereotype of the male factory worker. It includes all those who must sell their ability to work in order to live: in hospitals, schools, offices, shops, transport, logistics, construction and manufacturing, including those in insecure employment.
Workers keep society running. Their labour creates its wealth and gives them the collective power to stop the flow of profit. Capitalism brings workers together and forces them to cooperate. Every strike contains a lesson: that capital depends on our labour.
But this does not automatically become political power. Workers are divided by competition, racism, sexism, nationalism and sectional interests. They can overcome those divisions through common struggle.
Fighting oppression is therefore part of working-class politics, not a diversion from it. The working class can only lead a movement to transform society if it fights every attempt to divide it and champions the liberation of all the oppressed.
From resistance to revolution
We participate in struggles for better pay, secure jobs, affordable housing, public services, democratic rights, climate action and freedom from oppression. Every genuine gain is worth fighting for. But gains made under capitalism are partial and reversible.
The question is how immediate struggles are fought and what they prepare for next.
A pay dispute can raise questions about profits, prices and who controls a workplace. The fight against unaffordable energy can advance from price controls to expropriating the energy companies and placing production under workers’ and consumers’ control. Climate action raises the need to take transport, energy, land and industry out of private hands and reorganise them through democratic planning.
We fight for demands that meet real needs while strengthening the confidence, organisation and political independence of the working class. This is the transitional method: finding a road from today’s struggles to a confrontation with capitalist ownership and power.
A programme has to be tested and developed through experience. It must identify what a struggle needs to win and which forms of organisation can take it forward—helping workers move from protesting against decisions made by others towards imposing decisions of their own.
Workers must control their own struggles
Trade unions are the basic defensive organisations of the working class. Every socialist should support them and, wherever possible, be active within them. But their bureaucracies depend on negotiating compromises between workers, employers and the state. Even left-wing leaders can retreat when struggle threatens the union machinery, the law or their political alliances.
Workers therefore need the means to control their own disputes: sovereign mass meetings, elected and recallable strike committees, effective picketing and direct links between workplaces. When several groups of workers face the same employer or government, the answer is coordination and common action rather than isolated campaigns conducted industry by industry.
At high points of struggle, councils of action and delegate assemblies can unite workers, tenants, students and communities. They allow working people to debate, decide and act collectively—the beginnings of a democracy based on participation and accountable delegates.
Unity in action, independence in politics
Revolutionaries will usually be a minority in the struggles they join. We work alongside supporters of reformist parties, other socialists and people with no settled political outlook. Where we agree on what must be done, we seek the broadest possible common action.
But unity in action does not require us to conceal our politics. We retain the right to criticise inadequate leadership, argue for escalation and explain where our allies’ strategies will lead. This is the united front: march separately where our programmes differ, strike together where workers’ interests demand it.
We reject both sectarian isolation and the dissolution of revolutionary politics into broad electoral formations. Parliament can be used as a platform, but socialism cannot be legislated into existence. A ruling class that defends its property through the courts, police, army, civil service and economic sabotage will not surrender because it loses a vote.
A record of intervention
Workers Power emerged from struggles inside the International Socialists in the mid-1970s over revolutionary programme and organisation, rank-and-file power and solidarity with the Irish struggle against British imperialism. The Workers Power newspaper first appeared in 1978.
At important moments our members have helped initiate movements reaching beyond our ranks. We were among the organisations that [launched Anti-Fascist Action in 1985] and campaigned against the National Front and British National Party. During the anti-capitalist movement, Workers Power and our youth organisation Revolution joined with other activists to found No Sweat, combining action against multinational clothing companies with solidarity for workers organising in sweatshops.
Through Revolution, our members later helped establish the [National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and played important organising roles during the 2010 student rebellion. NCAFC helped turn opposition to tuition fees into national days of action, demonstrations and occupations independent of the conservative NUS leadership.
These were broad organisations involving different political currents and independent activists. We do not regard movements as the property of those who initiate them. Their history shows what revolutionaries can contribute: political direction, practical coordination and structures through which wider layers can act.
Today our forces mean that our collective intervention is necessarily selective. In important disputes, including strikes in the NHS and postal service, we produce leaflets and strike bulletins arguing for solidarity, coordination and rank-and-file control. Our members participated in the mass Palestine solidarity movement. We do not claim to have led these struggles; we aim to contribute revolutionary politics while building the forces for sustained work.
Why we need a revolutionary party
Mass struggles can erupt suddenly and transform what appears possible. But spontaneity cannot preserve the lessons of previous victories and defeats, develop a strategy or overcome leaderships determined to contain a movement. A revolutionary party cannot be improvised after a decisive crisis has begun.
Such a party must be rooted in the working class, with a common programme, members trained through education and experience, and the ability to act as a coherent political force. Its purpose is not to substitute itself for working-class self-activity, but to fight within it for the strategy necessary to win.
Workers Power is organised on the principles of democratic centralism. Members have the right to discuss and challenge the organisation’s politics, participate in reaching decisions and elect its leadership. Once decisions are made, we seek to carry them out collectively. Democracy is essential because no leadership is infallible. Centralism is necessary because a political organisation exists to act, not simply to exchange opinions.
Membership means becoming an organised revolutionary activist. Members participate in a branch, undertake political education and contribute, according to their circumstances, to activity in a workplace, union or campaign. They help produce and distribute our publications, support the organisation financially and take part in deciding its priorities.
Nobody arrives able to perform every task. Members develop through education, experience and collective work, with employment, health, caring and other responsibilities taken into account. What unites us is a commitment to develop our collective capacity and use it in the class struggle.
An international struggle
Capitalism is a world system. Production and finance cross borders, climate change disregards them, and rival states compete through sanctions and war. A socialist revolution may begin in one country, but it cannot complete its task in isolation.
Internationalism therefore means more than expressing sympathy with struggles abroad. We oppose British imperialism and its alliances while refusing to support rival capitalist powers. We defend oppressed peoples’ right to resist without surrendering the political independence of the working class to nationalist leaders or repressive states. Our allies are workers and the oppressed in every country, not the rulers who claim to speak in their name.
Workers Power is part of the International Socialist League. Our former international tendency, the League for the Fifth International, joined on the basis of an agreed programme and a common commitment to build an international revolutionary organisation capable of intervening in the class struggle. Political clarification and debate continue within that shared framework. No national organisation can meet the tasks of the period alone.
Organise with us
Capitalism is highly organised. The ruling class has its companies, parties, media, state institutions and international alliances. Those who want to overthrow its rule must organise too.
Reading, agreeing and protesting are starting points. The next step is to turn conviction into collective political activity. If you agree that capitalism must be overthrown, that the working class has the power to do it, and that victory requires revolutionary organisation, then we think you should organise with us.
- Read more about where we stand and our programme for working-class action.
- Read the programme of the International Socialist League.
- Subscribe to our newsletter or support our work.