15.02.1996

Party school

Party notes

Events are moving quickly with the Socialist Labour Party. Our comrades around the country are now working with a wide range of people and organisations in a variety of different forms of political alliance and joint organisation.

Inevitably, this brings problems as well as opportunities. Our comrades enter the fray with a definite platform, a clear perspective to fight for - we are struggling to reforge a communist party through this process. Yet this is a communist intervention into a fluid situation where spontaneously formed left social democratic ideas are initially much stronger. Our comrades have to swim against this ideological tide, while at the same tide seeking to be part of the movement, the conscious element within it.

The Party school on February 24 - ‘The SLP and the intervention of communists’ - is therefore an important event for us. The key comrades who have been active in the Party’s work around the SLP initiative will attend the school to clarify their views and debate the way forward.

The day is divided into three sessions. The first - ‘Past’, led by comrade John Bridge - deals with our understanding of the origins of British social democracy. We will examine critically the tactics of revolutionaries towards the Labour Party, including the stance taken by the Social Democratic Federation - an important organisation in the formation of our Party in 1920 - on the Labour Representation Committee. Also, we will look in this session at the experience of the National Left Wing Movement of the 1920s, a model of Party work in the Labour Party rarely examined today.

The first afternoon session is entitled ‘Present’. Comrade Lee-Anne Bates will be looking at the response of the big battalions of the left to the SLP and what it tells us about their theoretical and political weaknesses. For instance, there is Militant Labour’s position that the ‘pre-determined form’ of any workers’ party in Britain must be a federally structured, affiliate body - like the Communist Refoundation (Italy) or the Workers Party of Brazil.

Comrade Bates will show how the political weaknesses of the left illustrate its partial break with Labourism, its distance from a truly revolutionary programme.

The last session of the day - led by myself - will look to the ‘Future’. In this, we attempt to dissect some of the more basic methodological questions that are posed by our work in this very important field. Are communist politics the art of the possible, or the fight for what is necessary? Are we being utopian when we struggle for a revolutionary party to be forged through this process? Should we accept the ‘inevitable’ - that the impetus around the SLP can only end in a left social democratic barrier to communism, not a bridgehead to the party?

Comrades should be aware that space at the school is limited and priority must be given to comrades who are directly active in this work. If you are interested in attending, please let us know as soon as possible.

Mark Fischer