Steps continue towards a party of labour in Ukraine!

Strong steps towards the organisation of an independent workers/Labour Party are continuing in Ukraine following a highly successful conference in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih.   An organising committee for a new party is now engaged in preparatory work and a new Ukrainian workers paper has been launched Social Revolution.

On 18-19 October at the Bohdan Khmelnytsky House of Culture a conference on entitled: “Social and economic protests and working class participation in solving social and industrial problems”, took place. Attended by trade unionists, independent socialists and grassroots activists from across Ukraine.

The conference was opened by the Oksana Dutchak of the Centre for Social and Labour Studies (Kyiv), she said that the existing political parties are not concerned with industrial disputes.  That worker, who make up a massive social group are deprived of representation in the government.

The head of the Independent Union Miners of Ukraine (NGPU) said that a social mobilisation in taking place – that there is a need to be involved in it and steer the process in the right direction. Oleksander Bondar Chairman of the NGPU at “Evraz Sukha Balka” said that the goal of the workers struggle is the “lustration companies” that do not meet their social obligations, as well as overcoming the “corruption of management,” who determine workers’ wages.

Speakers emphasised the need to extend the front of the struggle. While trade unions have fought for survival, the party in power, plundered the country, said in a technical labour inspector of NGPU NPHU Victor Onuchko.  Almost all the speakers acknowledged the need for revolutionary force that would protect workers in terms of their social interests.

The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign has been supporting the initiative to set up a new left, worker party in Ukraine.  USC supporter Mick Antoniw, a Labour Party member of the National Assembly of Wales addressed the conference (in Ukrainian):

Wayne Thomas the NUM South Wales General Secretary addressed the conference:

With Ukrainian translation:

The USC will continue to support the efforts to create a Labour Party in Ukraine that can give Ukrainian workers the voice in politics they so desperately need.  It is initiatives like this that should be the focus of solidarity in the labour movement in the UK.