14.12.1995

Towards Rapprochement

The RDG recently held a membership aggregate. A packed agenda meant there was insufficient time for a full discussion on rapprochement. The RDG has therefore decided to reconvene in January to deal with this important issue. Below we reproduce the speech our national organiser, Mark Fischer, would have made to this meeting

FIRST of all, many thanks for allowing me this chance to speak to your aggregate. Obviously, this is a recognition of the fact that our organisations are growing together through the process of communist rapprochement.

We have been working quite closely for some time now and the level of our practical cooperation is higher today than any of us would have anticipated when we began. Also, I think we are seeing a growing political convergence around some important programmatic questions. For example, you have been very involved in arguing for the perspective of a federal republic in the pages of our paper: our organisation has now overwhelmingly adopted this demand.

Today, I think we are at a particular turning point.

It is healthy that your aggregate will consider how your perspectives and organisational plans for 1996 can be related to ours. But we believe that more needs to be done. We understand that some of you are reluctant to join the Communist Party at the present juncture. We on the other hand believe it would be the right course for you. Concretely, what we would like to therefore suggest is the idea of ‘representational entry’ - a sort of halfway house that comrades from Open Polemic have already adopted.

Obviously, this is not our preferred option, but by sending just some of your comrades into our organisation, we can perhaps start to overcome the reservations that you may have about full entry into the CPGB.

What are these reservations? As far as we are able to glean, they are twofold.

First, that there is insufficient programmatic agreement to justify unity. I would dispute this. From the (still limited) opportunities we have had to debate with RDG comrades - at our recent cadre school and regular Sunday seminars - I think we are much closer programmatically than some suggest. This, however, is not the point.

Our own recent aggregate passed a resolution committing our organisation to over a year of open discussions and seminars on the question of programme - in terms of both programme in abstract and around a draft produced by one of our comrades. These discussions and the contending positions they generate will be fully covered by the Weekly Worker.

Of course, we are not pretending that you would be entering an organisation that is a programmatic ‘blank slate’. Much of the work we have conducted - theoretical and practical - has been preparatory to our programme. Nevertheless, comrades have the opportunity to shape our fundamental approach and this is best done within our organisation rather than outside it.

Of course, you are also aware that we have full provision for factional rights. Important programmatic positions of the party will not be discussed just once - then decided for ever and a day. Comrades have the opportunity - in the course of ongoing communist work - to fight for minority positions to become the majority in our ranks.

Second, we understand that some RDG comrades may believe that entry into the CPGB would cut them off from potentially healthy forces who - at the moment - regard us as tainted with ‘Stalinism’.

Of course, the organised entry of comrades from traditions such as the RDG will actually help dispel this false idea. But what about these potentially healthy elements - primarily for the RDG in the Socialist Workers Party and its diaspora. How should communists relate to them in the forthcoming period?

We concur wholeheartedly with the RDG that the SWP is one of the main opponents of revolutionary Marxists, that it is one of the main barriers to the task of creating a genuinely revolutionary communist party in Britain. ‘Ideological warfare’ and calls for principled joint work can be an important part of the struggle against it. But the key to positively resolving the contradictions lodged within the SWP and its oppositional periphery must also entail building an alternative in practice as well as theory.

Most importantly, our organisation holds that the Socialist Labour Party perhaps offers a unique opportunity for revolutionary communists to advance the struggle for a reforged communist party. Certainly, its development poses extremely serious questions to the leadership of the SWP - questions that could be the making or the breaking of this important revolutionary group.

Marxists must fight to shape the development of the SLP from the very beginning. In its own way, this is actually an escalation of the struggle against opportunist groupings such as the SWP leadership. The RDG could make its most important contribution as part of a disciplined communist collective fighting for this perspective. Far from being the finish of the struggle against the opportunism of the SWP or the ‘end’ of the RDG’s unique role in the struggle, this would represent its organisation on a qualitatively higher level.