02.05.1996

Scargillism or republicanism

Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of the SWP) writes on the choices facing the Socialist Labour Party

The founding conference of the SLP will be the first occasion rank and file members can gauge what kind of party it may become. Nothing is predetermined and certainly as yet nothing set in stone. We need a sober assessment of the situation and how we can go forward. No euphoria. No illusions. No defeatism. We must base our tactics on what is objectively possible.

Policy documents

Reading the 23 policy documents, it is difficult to see the wood for the trees. But three stand out - the Economy, the Republican Constitution and International, especially Europe. They address the central questions of how the country should be governed, how the economy will be managed and what relations we will have with the rest of the world. Most of the other papers are sub-categories of these.

An important question is how to unite the party - around a leader or around a programme? Republicanism should be given special emphasis, not only as a point of principle, but because it has great potential to unite the membership and the class.

The problem of unity is endemic to the crisis of the left. The SLP has arisen because of the political vacuum to the left of the Labour Party. It is the result of the defeats and fragmentation suffered by the movement in the last decade. This includes the miners’ strike and the virtual destruction of the NUM, the collapse of the Workers Revolutionary Party and CPGB, the witch-hunt against the Militant Tendency and the expulsions from the Socialist Workers Party.

It is also a testament to the failure of the SWP. Had the party been conducting itself correctly, the SLP would hardly have got off the ground. The SWP had a head start to become the dominant organisation which working class militants looked to. But they blew it. Working class militants have no time for the antics of the SWP central committee.

The SLP is not born out of victory. It is a product of past defeats. At present it is a political hotchpotch. A disparate band of individuals, without as yet any common philosophy, programme or experience of struggle. You would not give such an organisation much chance of surviving.

Advanced workers

Despite these obvious handicaps the SLP will still stay alive because enough working class militants know that we need a party. We need a political challenge to New Labour and the Tories. The militants will probably not agree on what kind of party they want. But they will have no patience with anybody perceived to have a sectarian agenda.

Scargillism

Comrade Scargill is probably one of the few people who could act as a national rallying point for such a mixed bag. A reunification of left forces is objectively necessary. That is why so many workers are rallying to the call. That represents the progressive aspect of this process.

But we also know the weakness of Scargill’s politics. He is no revolutionary democratic communist. His politics are a mixture of Labourism, old Stalinism and syndicalism. Here we have the very politics that has failed the British working class movement and brought us to this sad and sorry state. Here is the contradiction - we can only unite around the politics that has failed.

Republican agenda

We need a need a new democratic and republican programme. In contrast to the Labour tradition of MacDonald, Atlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock and Blair, we have a longer democratic and republican tradition to draw on. We have the Levellers, Thomas Paine and the Chartists who fought to change the system rather than adapt themselves to it.

We want a republican party which aims to become a republican government. We must aim to break the mould of British politics and mobilise the working class for this aim. If the failure of the SLP steering committee to circulate the Republican Constitution working group paper is anything to go by, then the Windsors have nothing to worry about in King Arthur’s Party. Lots of ultra-left rhetoric about nationalising everything that moves, whilst avoiding ‘contentious’ issues like the abolition of the monarchy.

There is no possibility of the SLP coming to power or introducing socialism on the basis of the existing constitutional system. The monarchical-Tory constitution has too many in-built defences - the electoral system, the legislative process of Commons, Lords and monarchy, and the role of the crown forces: the bureaucracy, secret police, armed forces, police and judiciary.

We need a revolutionary democratic communist party to lead the fight for a republic, but what are the alternatives?

The ILP option

The SLP could become a new version of the old Independent Labour Party, a sort of leftwing version of Labour. Such a party would be in essence reformist and tied firmly to the parliamentary road and in practice to the constitutional monarchist road. Its republicanism would be very low key. Yet it could hold itself together with plenty of talk about ‘Marxism’ and ‘revolution’.

The communist-Labour option

There is of course a halfway compromise position between an ILP and a revolutionary democratic communist party. The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party at the beginning of this century had Labourite and communist wings (ie, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks). For a certain period of time, they cooperated and fought out their political differences under the umbrella of a single party. This would be a republican party but the reformist and revolutionary wings would have a different attitude to republicanism.

Balance of forces

What the SLP will become will depend on the balance of forces and the struggle between left and right. At present the balance of forces is to the right. The circumstances facing the left, and the central role of comrade Scargill, mean that the SLP is not about to become a revolutionary democratic communist party. The best that can be won for now is a Communist-Labour party which accepts that important differences of principle exist and can be catered for in terms of party democracy. We can agree to cooperate in the interests of a more effective fightback against the Tories and new Labour.

As yet there is no clearly defined SLP right wing. Scargill knows instinctively how to use the contradictions of the situation. If he can find an easy target, he will be able to unite the disparate elements under his leadership. This will be the unity of the witch-hunt, not the unity around a progressive republican programme. This would be a setback for the workers’ movement.

Ultra-leftism and liquidationism

Neither has the SLP left cohered as an effective force. It is early days. To become an effective force we have to fight the twin enemies of liquidationism and ultra-leftism. The Weekly Worker has played a very good role in raising the importance of revolutionary policies for the SLP and exposing various shenanigans. I certainly hope it becomes the paper that the SLP left identifies with.

There is another danger of ultra-leftism and left posturing. It would be madness to challenge the leadership to a final showdown. What we have to do is patiently explain the kind of programme and party we need to advance the interests of the working class in the class struggle.

We have to be absolutely hard against every aspect of ultra-leftism. The Labourites will label us as ultra-lefts, as utopians who are not realistic. We have to be squeaky clean on this one. The communists have to make sure that objectively there is no basis for the charge of ultra-leftism. Let them call us what names they want. We do not care, as long as in objective terms there is not a centimetre of truth in it.

There may be some on the left who want to dabble in leftist phrases, for whom politics is all about the grand gesture, who want to lead with their chins. Such politics is for students, not for workers or serious revolutionaries.

The SLP left cannot become an effective force unless ultra-leftism, whether in programmatic or tactical terms, is routed. It is certainly not beyond comrade Scargill to dabble in it. We must not. If Scargill comes out with 10 revolutionary phrases and declarations of devotion to ‘Marxism-Leninism’, it is not our job to come up with 20. Let the reformists spout revolutionary phrases, we should come up with practical proposals and concrete programmes for action.