Dear comrades,

  We send our best wishes for your congress.

 The times are threatening. The rise of Donald Trump in the USA, with his buffoonish, quasi-fascist "America First" bombast, and his sinister sidekicks like John Bolton, is only the most dangerous of a number of cases where right-wing populist-nationalist forces have been able to seize the political initiative in the wake of the 2008 crash and the subsequent economic depression.

 Erdogan in Turkey, Modi in India, the Northern League in Italy, Orban in Hungary; and the 2016 Brexit vote in Britain showed that the same sort of politics have strength in Britain, despite the disarray for now of both Ukip and the Tories.

 In Israel, Netanyahu's aggressively right-wing coalition retains control despite all its difficulties. Among the Palestinian people, the political initiative is now held by the most regressive wing of Hamas. It has chosen to consolidate its political base by launching embittered and desperate activists into deadly conflict with recklessly murderous Israeli troops on slogans of revenge and impasse. It has chosen to rally people on the obviously unrealistic aspiration to conquer and subjugate all of pre-1948 Palestine, allowing "not an inch of land" to the Israeli Jewish people and refuse to recognise "the Israeli entity".

 For years now Syria has been a cockpit for interventions, some ineffectual, some all-too-effective, by outside powers: Iran, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, the USA. The militarisation of the struggle has marginalised the secular and democratic trends strong at the beginning of the revolt against Assad in 2011, and generated a rise of sectarian political-Islamist forces.

 Too many would-be leftists have responded by positioning themselves as critical supporters  of whatever forces are or appear to be anti-US, and thus can be construed by wishful thinking as anti-imperialist.

 In fact the only way forward is through the rebuilding and re-education of working-class movements across the world, on democratic, internationalist, and socialist policies which will enable them to generate, in all the current regressive conflicts, a Third Camp of progress.

 That is the task which we in Workers' Liberty set ourselves; and we believe you too see your efforts on similar lines. We look forward to working together in future.

 With comradely greetings,

 Martin Thomas, for Workers' Liberty