Letters
Massive step
I was interested to read in the ‘SLP update’ article in last week’s paper (March 14) that concerns are being expressed by members of the steering committee regarding a discussion on the constitution.
How socialists organise together must be the first port of call in the forming of any organisation, especially given the experience of many in the Labour Party and the history of sectarianism across the whole of the left. To say that this cannot be discussed until 1997 smacks of the Labour Party’s own thought police, most recently over MEPs in Europe and over the monarchy.
Discussion is already raging in SLP branch meetings and policy meetings following the first national meeting at the beginning of March. Questions of nationalisation, anti-trade union laws and how to fight them, Ireland and immigration controls - to name but a few - are being thrashed out.
Many members of the SLP have a history in various different left groups and there are many differing opinions on all of these questions. To me it is a massive step forward that we are now discussing these issues together.
There has been a dismissive attitude towards debate in our movement, as if it is a barrier to action. SLP members are already working together, but at the same time debating and discussing all the time.
But a worrying atmosphere is already beginning to emerge in some of these meetings, which I think all members should be aware of and guard against from the very beginning.
Some members of the steering committee seem unable to accept the democracy of meetings. In one policy meeting a majority was overturned as the chair claimed the meeting did not have a right to put amendments to policy documents, while apparently the minority did.
All members of the SLP rightly have a great deal of respect for Scargill and the others who took the brave step out of the Labour Party to begin the task of forging independent working class organisation. Nevertheless it is clear that if we are to be successful the process must widen to allow democratic debate and decision making amongst the whole membership.
Even if we do not agree with views in a meeting it is our duty to defend the right to put them without being branded as an enemy. We may all find ourselves holding unpopular views at one time or another and if we are to forge a strong united comradely organisation all views must be fought out openly. Only in this way can we arrive at the truth and forge a unity in which both the majority and the minority vigorously and in a partisan way carry out agreed actions together.
Heather Watkins
London
Hollow polemic
Bob Smith has sometimes expressed the concern that no one replies to his column.
May I suggest that this may be because there is little theoretical polemic in it for comrades to grasp hold of.
Last week’s column is a particular example (March 14). In discussing the SLP and ‘left and right’ moves Bob Smith seems to have totally missed the kernel of the views of many comrades who were arguing with him in the London seminar. His approach was characterised as mechanical and passive. Comrades said that, rather than simply labelling organisations, our task as communists was to locate movements in organisations, the class or sections of the class, in society as a whole and how they can be taken forward.
To simply pick on one comrade’s opening phrase about ‘how difficult it was to tell left from right’ and then characterise the whole debate in this way is either theoretically bankrupt or dishonest. I do not think Bob Smith is either, but his column can often come across in this way.
His characterisation of the discussion on the Julian Jake ‘Communist press’ column is a case in point. Just for the record, in the interests of clarity and in the hope of encouraging Bob into a more theoretical direction: the problem of the column was raised by myself, not as a result of OP quizzing the editorial team.
Questions of length were totally irrelevant and part of a separate technical question. I was also quite clear that we are happy to have criticism of our organisation in the paper. We think this is healthy. Any regular reader of our paper will know this to be so obvious that the point hardly needs making.
My substantial point, Bob, was that I thought the content of the quote from the little known and rather isolated ILWP organisation was nothing more than a confused and illogical rant. To me it did little to further our common struggle for a non-ideological or, as you say. a multanimous Party. I think the point Julian made was lost in the confusing quote which dominated the piece. There are much more interesting developments on the left in my opinion - that week particularly, an article from Lee Yates on Workers Power.
Nevertheless it was agreed that if Julian Jake is to develop his column he should be allowed to make mistakes in print and be criticised for them. If, as Julian Jake hopes, his column will open the ILWP up to debate this would of course be a positive development.
I think that your particular struggles inside our organisation for a Permanent Party Polemic Committee and for a theoretical programme could be much better advanced by actually engaging in the theoretical debates taking place in the organisation. In practice this will take us further towards a common theoretical understanding and an understanding of what is lacking in the organisation of the Party. I do not think simply pulling quotes out of context as evidence of organisational and political weaknesses will take us much further.
Lee-Anne Bates
Editor
Imperialist trap
Having been involved in politics for some time now - mostly around but never a member of the SWP - I have come into contact with your organisation and read your paper, the Weekly Worker. I am impressed with your politics as a whole, but in particular with your attitude to the IRA and its struggle for self-determination, an issue that I had always had a problem over in the SWP. However, it never stopped me raising and debating the issue whenever possible. Unlike the CPGB there is no room for unbarred discussion within their party (Herts supporters take note).
The central point of this letter is to criticise the Herts supporters’ attitude which they spelt out in their letter (Weekly Worker 132). Their apparent belief that it is OK to walk in and out of the CPGB whenever they have a disagreement on policy is totally unjustifiable. Taking into account that point, and others that have been addressed and put right by comrades in their replies, an important point I believe has been missed.
When the attack in the Docklands was launched, I believe - in fact I am convinced - every measure was taken by the IRA volunteers to avoid civilian injury and fatalities; in fact, it is said the IRA cancels operations because this cannot be guaranteed. British intelligence sources admitted they knew weeks previously that this was a target for the IRA. Ninety minutes’ warning was given before the bomb exploded. In that time only a handful of police were deployed to the scene. People working in the complex were allowed to carry on. Some who walked out were actually told to go back; it was some time later that the complex was evacuated.
The point I am hoping to bring to the attention of the Herts comrades is the fact that it benefits pro-imperialist forces not to act fully, if at all, to IRA warnings - in the hope that if civilians are victims it keeps the racist anti-Irish sentiment alive that some have and it may give to some. Not for one minute do I suggest that comrades from Herts have any fascist feelings, but they do appear to have fallen somewhat into the pro-imperialist trap. If we are to take on the ideology and practice of British imperialism, all these issues must be understood.
Phil Felstead
South Yorkshire
Disgusting views
The former CPGB North Herts branch supporters discussed the PCC and national organiser’s statement regarding our split. We decided that our political differences with the PCC are too great to contemplate any reconsideration of our position towards the CPGB. A public debate would not alter this position and was rejected.
Our decision to split was, in hindsight, even more justified given the vitriolic remarks made against us by some comrades’ in Weekly Worker (March 7). Vitriol apart, the comments by McLoughlin and Jaszynski concerning communist orientation towards national liberation struggles and their terroristic methods should have no place in any organisation that fights for working class unity and socialism.
No amount of ANC litter-bin bombs, Siobhain, will bring the South African working class together. No amount of “remarkably successful” IRA bombs against imperialism, Ted, will bring the Irish working class together either.
Frankly, we consider Siobhain’s and Ted’s views disgusting.
As for the national organiser’s contention that unconditional support for the IRA is indeed a majority Party view, we say: no, we were not aware of this. Please explain, Mark, to all your members, supporters and readers how you know this to be true. We think you are sadly wrong.
Clive Carr
Herts Socialist Alliance
Absolute law
Phil Sharpe of The Trotskyist Unity Group in his letter (February 29) denies the absolute law of the uneven economic and political development of capitalism when he refers to “the supposed absolute nature of the law of uneven development” (my emphasis).
In adopting this undialectical outlook, he attacks Open Polemic’s advocacy of a historically non-specific party. He does this by making an attempt to locate Open Polemic within the historically specific standpoint of Partisan which, as we all know, is opposed to the historically specific standpoint of the TUG. And Partisan, in its turn, attempts to place OP outside the ideology of Marxism-Leninism because OP has not adopted Partisan’s exclusive ‘pro-Stalin’ position.
The comrades typify the sectarian ‘clinging to the past’ endemic in the movement and point up the overriding need for a historically non-specific elaboration of a common theoretical programme for communists.
John Sandy
For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee
Inadequate response
Workers Power (March 1996) had a page in which they said that in the Hemsworth by-elections, instead of advocating the vote for the SLP “reformist sect” which got 5%, it was absolutely correct to vote for Labour who had 70%. They also said that they could not join the Socialist Alliances because they are based on Militant Labour and the “tiny Stalinist sect CPGB”. This contradicts what they wrote only weeks ago. In December a WP editorial statement argued that “thousands of trade unionists ... need a strong, well organised socialist voice and an organisation to organise and lead their resistance. That is why WP welcome Arthur Scargill’s call for discussions on the left to consider the establishment of an SLP.”
According to the League for a Revolutionary Communist International electoral principles, communists should critically vote for the mass working class parties despite their bourgeois policies. Nevertheless, when there are leftwing candidates with mass support it is possible to talk to significant class fighters that have illusions in them by critically participating in their experience and electoral campaign.
In his resignation letter from WP Geoff Smith shows that the LRCI didn’t call for a vote for Lutte Ouvrière in France (which had 1.6 million votes; 5.3%) or for ML in the last local elections in Coventry (when they had around 40% of the votes). Instead, the LRCI voted for the Blairites. WP is not doing any kind of work around the “thousands of trade unionists” who “welcomed Scargill’s call for an SLP”, nor around the Labour Party. Despite all its constant electoral support for Labour, WP didn’t participate at all in the different rank and file movements and campaign against the election of Blair, the abolition of clause four and the attacks on the trade union links.
The CPGB is not a Trotskyist party, but it is an organisation which produced a left split from Stalinism. Its internal regime is far more democratic than WP’s. While the CPGB has open internal discussions and factions, WP is moving towards a Stalinist kind of regime, in which every international faction is crushed and slandered. The abusive terms that WP used against the CPGB show its own inadequacy. They were the only answer that WP gave to the constant invitations offered by the CPGB to have a platform in its meetings and paper to discuss the crisis of the LRCI.
José Villa
London