Well as I see it since the collapse of the USSR and with the European Union project continuing apace there has been, and is continues to be, a sustained attack upon our public services and the democratic gains made within the twentieth century. It is evident that little has been done by the Labour Government to resist these attacks, and it seems at times that Labour is wagging its tail to the music of the Trans-National Corporations.
What on a simplistic analysis may seem to be unrelated attacks on the condition of those who toil can in fact be seen, in terms of the bigger picture, to be an onslaught waged by a confident ruling class.
While the Labour Party is the mass party of the working class in Britain, they do seem to have been hypnotised by the money and the prestige; as they are seemingly courted by each and every multi-millionaire who passes through London.
Unfortuately I'm sure they are loving it.
Maybe like the pigs in animal farm they have forgotten how to tell the difference between themselves and their ultra rich courtiers and the corporations they represent.
However, the Labour Party does have its roots deep in our communities, with its mass (still mainly working class) membership, through the affiliated cooperatives and the trade unions.
The Communist Party's programme "Britains Road to Socialism" stresses the importance of extra parliamentary action.
But before you start digging out the grenades and Che style berets it may be worth considering what we are to do in practical terms.
We need to raise the Political conciousness in Wales, and Briatain as a whole.... by engaging with workers in their day to day struggles, by resisting the onslaught on democracy; by engaging head to head with the Government and the corporations - applying our knowledge of Marxist Leninism and the scientific approaches of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
This is practical work, as there is no other way.
We are not entryists we engage with people openly as communists with principle and we lend the political to the peoples struggles.
Well apparently, so this leaves us as communists to consider the implications of the election and the potential it presents, the dangers and the opportunities.
First of all the dangers are clearly that the Labour Party is in danger of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, with its inaction over manufacturing, its failure to solve the crisis in the railways, its failure to close the gap between the rich and the poor in our society, its insistance on continuing Tory privatisation policies...etc.
While the Socialist Alliance, seemingly an irrelacence, also represent a real danger - with its attempt to take a nostalgic trip back to the beginning of the twentieth century, in trying to recreate the Labour Party all it is doing is distracting the working class from the real goal of reclaiming the Labour Party from the hands of the 'New Labour' clique. We should take a practical hint from the Communist Party of the USA on this one they opposed supporting Nader, in the presidential elections, as being a distraction away from the real goal of preventing the unrestrained right wing from taking control of the White House.
In the USA it was easy to let the heart, which said Nader, rule the head which said Gore; the failure by the rest of the left to be clear on this resulted in the election of bomb 'em Bush.
So what if Labour win? Then this is not an end in itself but a means to an end. The extra parliamentary struggle to presurise the Labour Party to turn left continues, difficult but not as difficult as turning the Tories.
Firstly we should not be afraid to campaign actively and argue for a return of a Labour government, as a position of practicality.
However, secondly elections raise an amount of potential for communists. For one small period in four years our working class, who are generally misled by the tabloids and sky television, begin to talk politics. We have the chance to turn what can be as banal as talk of Ron Davies moonlight encounters, and Mandys bung, into making the link between those up there and us down here i.e. the connection between the perceived as political and the class struggle.
We can put the politics in the political class struggle.
We can put across our programme during the election not because we are seeking office in a bourgeois parliament, but because we are campaigning to focus minds and it is one time when people read the "political stuff" that I drop through the letterbox.
There is a down side, elections are costly exercises and this has to be borne in mind, it is no good embarking on unrealistic election campaigns if they will leave the party broke.
However the Communist Party's limited electoral ventures have made gains that cannot be quantified financially, in terms of a balance sheet they show a financial loss, but they reach many tens of thousands of people and not only offer hope but a programme to raise themselves up.
It emboldens people, gives them the confidence to challenge the cuts that are being felt particularily hard in Wales.
Three quarters of a century since the days of Little Moscow, it still gives people confidence to know that the Communist Party is still there fighting alongside them, that their fight is our fight.
I think we win them all.
We must remember.. Wales and Britain is not in a revolutionary situation, we cannot pack our guns tonight and take to the Beacons or the Cambrians like a band of Guevarists, not yet anyway.
We must deal with the real here and now. A limited foray into the world of electoral politics cannot do our party nor the movement any harm.
If you do not believe me then ask Lenin (see Left Wing Communism).
So, comrades and friends, lets make the most of this opportunity and commit ourselves both financially and practically to the Communists election campaign.
Vote for a socialist programme, vote communist!
Yours in Comradeship
Nigel Maskell