Letters

March together

I want to point out some inaccuracies in your paper’s recent coverage of the Dundee Campaign Against Hospital Cuts and Closures. I will try to do this in as fair a way as possible because I have great respect for the work of the CPGB members in the campaign.

Firstly, it was Scottish Militant Labour members working in the NHS who initiated the first health campaign meeting - out of which an open, broad-based organisation was set up. It is not true to report, as your paper did, that ‘the CPGB continues to lead the campaign’. In fact, this is not a claim ever made by any of your Dundee members - either at campaign meetings or public rallies. At these events a variety of political and trade union activists have co-operated in a friendly manner - marching together to oppose NHS cuts. As someone who has chaired most of the meetings, I was not under the impression the CPGB were ‘leading’ the campaign. It is more of a joint effort where the input of all is welcomed - CPGB, SML, SNP, Democratic Left, anarchist or even the occasional stray Labour Party member!

The DCHCC has reached an important stage in its development. We have warned thousands of local people about the crisis in our NHS - forcing consultants to admit that patients in Tayside have died waiting for heart treatment because of a lack of facilities. Our direct action, demonstrations and other actions have given many the opportunity to express their anger.

The main reason why this anger has not yet led to more widespread militant action is that there is a strong degree of confusion created by trade union bureaucrats and Labour politicians. John McAllion MP, Labour Scottish Health spokesperson, recently gave Ninewells Hospital “a clean bill of health”. Yet, consultants say there is a real crisis - including a shortage of acute-care beds.

Unison full-time officials accept that the closure of Dundee Royal Infirmary means a cut in beds and the loss of hundreds of jobs - yet no campaign to save jobs is planned! The Tory press locally, as usual, tells lies about the campaign - claiming we are losing trade union support just as affiliations increase.

Faced with this type of political battle, we need to be tactically astute - as well as determined. The CPGB’s claim that it alone is leading the fight does nothing to build the campaign. A ‘CPGB-front’ would be just as off-putting to potential and actual affiliates as a ‘Militant-front’. The campaign is not a front for any party. I can only speak on behalf of my party - Scottish Militant Labour, and our approach to working with others. It was SML comrades who invited striking postal workers to the DCHCC conference, thereby securing another union affiliation for the campaign.

SML trade union members have argued for and won affiliations from Unison and Usdaw branches and the DCFE Students Union. The only other non-party affiliate, a TGWU branch, was won by an anarchist member of the health campaign.

SML members always stressed the broad and open nature of the campaign. At the occupation of the Trust’s board room, 10 people were arrested - all members of SML, including one pensioner. Rightly we ensured that it was the DCHCC which received publicity - not SML.

If your paper needs to report who ‘leads’ DCHCC - why not say it is led by a group of working class activists from different parties and unions? That would be accurate.

Political leadership of any workers campaign is, of course, very important. If that is what the CPGB wants to provide within DCHCC then you need to re-examine your stance on NHS trusts. Your report of our conference on Saturday November 25 reported that a CPGB resolution was passed “with some amendments”. One of these amendments was that the campaign should not decide on tactics for fighting cuts at the Dundee Royal Infirmary until a further meeting. This amendment left a whole paragraph of the resolution to be decided - including a phrase about ‘democratising the trusts’. This came at the end of the meeting and there was no time to discuss this important issue.

It is unfortunate that we did not - for you then repeated it in your paper as if it was campaign policy. Yet, as I tried to explain at a subsequent meeting (and I think your comrades agreed with me) it is not possible to ‘democratise the trusts’ - they are not simply committees, but are the whole legal arrangement whereby privatisation is brought into the NHS.

The DCHCC was set up to campaign for the abolition of trusts. It is Labour Party policy to keep the trusts but democratise them. To replace them with elected trusts, as Labour proposes, does not remove the market-mechanism which is the essence of the trust system. We should not confuse workers by seeming to line up with Labour on this issue. Instead, we need to focus our attack against privatisation.

By all means let’s fight to force the trust bosses to resign - but at the same time we must campaign for the abolition of the trusts. That fight will need to continue even under Labour’s new, elected trusts!

I fully expect the health campaign to continue to build in 1996 - with the ongoing participation of a broad range of activists. Politically we may from time to time disagree on strategy and tactics. I am sure we can resolve these through open debate. At the end of the day the issue of health ties in with every other battle facing the working class - raising the question of how we can march forward together to build a socialist society.

Harvey Duke
On behalf of Dundee District Committee, SML

Party democracy

The recent bureaucratic antics of Arthur Scargill with regard to the formation of the Socialist Labour Party are not unexpected. Indeed it would be an idealist illusion to expect that any attempt to form a genuine workers' party could take place within the political conditions represented by his autocratic attempt to forge a Labour Party mark two.

Nevertheless it is the very bureaucratic opposition of Scargill to the possibility of developing an open and democratic workers' party which shows that his form of antiquated class collaborationist reformism is in contradiction with the requirements of advancing revolutionary politics (for elaboration of this point, see the article by Dave Hyland in the mid-December issue of International Worker).

The question now becomes what initiatives will Militant Labour put forward. They are the most powerful political force involved in the debate about the SLP. This is because of the enduring ideological legacy of the theoretical and political limitations of revolutionary Leninism and Trotskyism which has meant that their opportunist politics have seemed more credible over the last 20 years. Consequently the balance of political forces still favours opportunism and reformism. Hence the debate around the question of a workers' party continues to throw up the constant temptation of an idealist short-cut to the development of a revolutionary party - to either ideologically adapt to Militant Labour and reformism, or alternatively seek ideological consolation in activist party building.

Neither of these solutions - which presuppose the view that the party as the implicit subject of history can control events through the use of clever tactics - can represent the basis of the development of a theoretical and Leninist intellectual culture.

Am I necessarily suggesting that Leninists should not be involved in the debate, and the moves towards the formation of either an SLP or a workers’ party? The answer to this question is not a clear cut yes or no. Rather it is vitally important to raise the question of party democracy, whether it be in relation to the SLP, or workers’ party. For without this structural context the ideological climate cannot be developed in a manner which advances the political struggle for building a revolutionary party.

Indeed it may be appropriate to call for the opening up of Militant Labour to allow for membership of other organisations, and so testing their seriousness concerning their recent emphasis on party democracy. At the same time this question of party democracy cannot be exclusively maintained in national terms - as many of the participants in the SLP and workers' party debate are already suggesting. In this regard it is still necessary to struggle for proletarian internationalism against the opportunist nationalism of both Militant Labour and Scargill.

Phil Sharpe
Trotskyist Unity Group

Leaflet controversy

I write on behalf of Workers International executive committee to ask you to take up with the leadership of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) a matter which concerns all trade unionists and socialists.

On December 2 at the Cosatu 10th anniversary celebrations in Durban, South Africa, Bongani Mkhungo, a member of our executive committee was attacked and held by stewards at the rally. They burned his leaflets and threatened to kill him. Fortunately this happened in front of many people and he was able to get away.

The leaflet which Bongani and other members of WI were distributing was critical of the Cosatu leadership, and supports the 7,000 sacked nurses in the former Transkei.

Bongani Mkhungo was the WI candidate in South Africa’s last elections. He is a well-known workers’ leader in Durban, active in the development of the trade union federation Fosatu and its successor Cosatu.

He was victimised by Dunlops for his trade union activities, and following his sacking was asked by his union to represent them overseas in the campaign for the release of Numsa president Moses Mayekeso, who was imprisoned by the apartheid state. He remained in Britain as a guest of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and worked in Transport House, Liverpool for some months in 1989.

The contents of the leaflet he was distributing may not have pleased some members of the Cosatu leadership, but that is not a reason for their stewards to use violence against him. Every member of a trade union and political party has the right to voice, and to campaign for, their opinion.

We write to ask you to condemn this violence and send letters of protest to the Cosatu leadership.

Dot Gibson
Secretary, Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International