07.12.1995

IWCA confusion

THE original Red Action-initiated attempts to forge an anti-Labour unity were reported in the Weekly Worker (101). These efforts produced a new grouping, the Independent Working Class Association, founded on October 21 1995.

Despite our many disagreements with the original documents, representatives of the CPGB's Provisional Central Committee nevertheless participated. Initially - despite the heterogeneity of the political forces involved - a working agreement was achieved.

However, the IWCA’s first leaflet announcing its existence to the British left consists overwhelmingly of a lengthy text originally drafted by Red Action.

Groups such as the RCG and, more surprisingly, Open Polemic, have stated that this document had been agreed to in toto by their organisations. Alternative texts were not up for discussion.

The PCC has strong disagreements with important positions this leaflet takes and therefore cannot allow its name to be used.

For example, it is wrong to describe the Labour Party as a “middle class” party. The middle class in Britain has no independent political expression as such. Whatever the current composition of Labour Party recruits, its essential nature should never be confused. Labour remains a bourgeois workers party.

There is much more to disagree with in this first IWCA publication: we do not think that the IWCA can be seriously described as a qualitative break with every past organisation; nor that the key orientation of revolutionaries must today be to undifferentiated working class “communities”.

Also, to state that we reject “reform” (rather than reformism) is simply an ultra-left posture.

However, the central confusion of the IWCA lies in how its main protagonists - Red Action - conceive of it as a project.

Is it an initiative for communist unity? If so we believe that the RA comrades are being impatient. Communists should work for unity at the highest possible level. This may require long and detailed political and programmatic clarification.

Characteristic of the IWCA project is a hectoring impatience however. The priorities identified in drawing together the initial meeting were (broadly) the correct ones - a vacuum in society that can be filled either from the left or the right, the need to present a challenge to Labour and the fight to build a genuine party of the class.

Bringing together a viable organisation that can start to provide answers to these questions will not be achieved by pulling hugely diverse organisations together in one meeting room and demanding they unite. Similar deadlines to the rest of the left are no good either. (The IWCA plans to “give the left six months” - after that “all diplomatic relations” should be “cut” with them. I wonder how the new grouping will respond to the Socialist Labour Party mooted by Scargill - will it too be given a take-it-or-leave-it six month ultimatum? This would not be serious politics).

If on the other hand this is a far more broad project for left unity - a bloc for specific campaigns or orientations - why insist on agreement with the politics of one of the participating organisations? Why make these ideas conditions for the membership of the IWCA?

In contrast to the IWCA and its sponsors like RA and the RCG (and some members of OP?), we believe the organisation needed to challenge for the loyalty of the working class is a communist party. We will continue to discuss with comrades of the IWCA and its sponsors to convince them of this basic truth.

Mark Fischer