As far as the organisation of young workers is concerned it's been the weakest point of talabour movement of this country, its refusal face to the organisation kers. So the tradition of a youth organisait is weak in this country.
What you did have was the Socialist Sunday ool movement which was pre-First World and then there was the attraction youngsters in the immediate period after the first war into the revolutionarv movement. into the ILP (Independent Labour Party) and the Labour Party with the leftward swing that took place in 1919.
But there was no youngsters doing youth work. from outside, from the young communist internationai, that the pace was set for the building in this country of a revolutionary youth organisation.
In 1920/21 the youth first came together internationally. In Britain in the early '20s there was the Young Workers' League, tionary youth organisation heavily influenced by the British Socialist Party - itself the largest constituent element in the founding of the British Communist Party — which merged with another communist youth movement to form the Young Communist League (YCL) in about 1921.
From about September 1920 you had the start of a big recession and crisis following the boom for about 18 months after the first war.
of young work.
to an adult worker solid organisation of it was realv a revolulabour.
Cululate Mcalci workers. That recession placed the burden on the young workers as far as organisation and their standards of living were concerned — there was no 'Unemployment to a young worker is something more than You had the cutting out of apprenticeships and the tightening up of conditions on them so that young workers were separated from their workmates really. If a young worker came out on strike and he was apprenticed to a firm it was legally recognised that his indentures (contract) were broken. He could have done two years of craft training but be reduced for ever-more to the ranks of the unskilled worker.
A lad left school at 14 and went straight into industry into the mines, engineering, whatever job he could get. If he became unemployed he became part of a giant reserve of unskilled I knew some youngsters in the Rhondda valley who left school at 14 and I knew them when they got married at 22 and they had never been to work. This was not the exception it was That is an example intensity of exploitation of young 'The "Upstairs, Downstairs" labour force was supplied from the valleys in South Wales.' And for young women in South Wales leaving school at 14 there was the recruitment of girl this with their class.
your ordinary autonomy to stir things young workers to organise licuiscives In addition to organising as revolutionaries it's necessary for young workers to think in terms of directing their efforts into the trade union movement just as efforts were made by the YCL in the 1920s to get influence in the unions to get conferences of young workers 'If you're not romantic when your young, what are you, you re notning, are you The young have got so much to lose. They are living in a precarious situation with the hotting up of the imperialists' war ambitions, with the American youth confronting the draft, and country registering the youth for national service cannot be ruled out.
The revolutionary youth will be interested in the growth of the anti-nuclear movement too. Another thing that seems to me to be vital about the organisation today of revolutionary youth is for them to be intimately connected There is a tendency to break away from lifestyle when you become a revolutionary. This is the greatest fallacy as far as the young worker is concerned.
Because the issues that confront the youth are so grave today it's necessary to have a viable youth organisation that has the organisational up and create an impact.?