02.05.1996

Pre-empting conference

Arthur Scargill spoke with authority at an SLP public meeting in Oldham, last Sunday in support of its local election candidate, John Smith. With so much authority indeed that he was able to tell the press what SLP policy was, even before the SLP had decided it. Taking his points directly from the motions to conference as if they had already been passed, he quoted SLP policy on jobs, privatisation, minimum wage, defence, common market and a whole host of other issues which have hardly been debated.

It is clear that the politics of comrade Scargill are based on the need to hold office in Westminster, not for the working class to rule directly. He does not think that the working class can overturn capitalism by revolution. Instead we have to ask parliament to grant socialism to us. An SLP government would withdraw Britain from the common market, renationalise privatised industries, reduce the defence budget by £20 billion a year and cancel Trident to rebuild the NHS, according to Scargill at the meeting. An SLP government - that is, an SLP cabinet with its SLP PM in No 10 - would be an instrument of bourgeois rule, because to embark on that road the SLP would have to first become a Labour Party mark II.

The SLP should be committed to working class rule, not SLP government. This means workplace and community organisations determining production services and government directly. This cannot be legislated for. It cannot be passed by a vote in the Commons or the Lords. The queen would not stand for it and neither would the generals permit it.

Scargill’s authority may well carry the day. But it takes a massive leap of faith to believe that the authority of one comrade is sufficient to give us socialism. That task requires the authority of the working class as a whole, exercised through its own organisations with its own democracy and strength.

At the meeting last Sunday Arthur presumed further upon the democracy of the SLP by announcing that the list of candidates for the general election was already drawn up! This is not working class democracy and it cannot build socialism. Such decisions must be discussed by the members, not imposed on them from above.

Paul Jenkins