07.05.1996

Balance of forces

Summer Offensive launch

Already a magnificent total of £19,065 has been pledged towards the 13th Summer Offensive of the Communist Party of Great Britain by its members and supporters attending the special launch meeting last weekend. Those present included friends and comrades from the Socialist Labour Party, Revolutionary Democratic Group, several unattached individuals, as well as comrades from Ireland, Turkey, Australia, Iraq and the London branch of Italy’s Communist Refoundation.

The CPGB’s annual fundraising drive, comrade Jack Conrad told the meeting, is part of the struggle to equip our class with what it needs to “build a society across the planet worthy of the name, ‘human’.”

In this context the target of £25,000 - with an agreed Party minimum - is a modest one. Yet every year the SO acts as a purge on our organisation. We do not welcome the fact that comrades leave, but we must learn the lesson of fighting for what is necessary and thus strengthening the Party.

This year has been no exception. Unfortunately, comrade Conrad informed the meeting, comrades from Open Polemic had withdrawn from membership (see page 8).

“Nevertheless we will bend over backwards to take forward this rapprochement process,” he said.

“This precious idea of rapprochement must be guarded as ‘the apple of our eye’. It has started to spread into the SLP, the Scottish Socialist Alliance, Militant Labour, the Socialist Workers Party - rapprochement is not just our property.” That is why OP’s actions, without consultation with others involved, had been irresponsible.

Turning to the general situation, comrade Conrad described how politics has moved to the right. The new consensus had produced its opposition - the SLP. In this period of demoralisation and defeat, workers were clutching onto this new hope, willing it to work. So the mood was very much like that of many militant miners during the Great Strike: they subordinated themselves to Arthur Scargill, embracing ‘Scargillism’.

However, had just one or two other revolutionary groups decided to come into the SLP, instead of contenting themselves with observing and prejudging the outcome, then the left would clearly have won representation on the newly elected executive - perhaps even a majority.

The situation in the SLP was still very fluid, although less so than before the conference. An opportunity had been lost.

The CPGB was the only organisation which had openly called for all partisans of the working class to join the new party. As a result, some judged to be supporters of the Weekly Worker had been banned from attending, but the left was correct not to make this an issue at the time. “We are not for a sect, apart from the class. At this stage it would have been a dereliction of our duty to protest. Given the SLP’s balance of forces, we would have been denounced by Scargill and not understood by a large section of the conference. We would have been seen by the media as heroes of the bourgeoisie, not of the working class.

“Communists should work in the SLP - they must gain respect through their work and self-sacrifice.” That way the members would see that the fight for our democratic rights is their fight.

An RDG supporter said that the SLP contained the beginnings of a revolutionary tendency. The battle against liquidationism had to be fought, and this could best be done through the use of the Weekly Worker, which had played “an excellent role”. But he also criticised what he described as the CPGB’s “over the top” attitude. It was necessary to guard against adventurism too.

A former supporter of the International Bolshevik Tendency, a group which has dissolved itself in order that its members could take up SLP membership, agreed that the CPGB’s stand had been “adventurist”. “Maintaining a separate organisation cuts you off from militants,” he claimed. The classic case was the SWP: it joins every campaign going, dominates it and then disappears.

“The situation is not like the Communist Party’s tactics towards the Labour Party in the early 1920s. Today the CPGB is not big enough and has no intrinsic authority.” The dissolution of the IBT was designed not to give the SLP leadership the excuse to erect a barrier against revolutionary politics.

CPGB comrades pointed out that the bans were really directed against revolutionary politics, not particular groups as such. You could be sure that the SLP’s official paper would not give space to revolutionaries, if the present line of the leadership is maintained. This was in contrast to the Weekly Worker, which was more than willing to publish their ideas, including those of the ex-IBT comrades. Trotsky himself had stressed ‘Party, paper’. There were also strong denials that the CPGB was pulling a stunt, or staging a “raiding party.”

Other CPGB members pointed out how the Weekly Worker had played an important role in ensuring that the Republican Constitution document, which sections of the leadership had wanted suppressed, was in fact circulated. “Publication through organisation is our only tool,” said one comrade.

The ex-IBT supporter explained how he thought his comrades’ actions had been principled, whereas those of Fisc were not. “Fisc wants to turn the SLP into a blunt instrument, without programme or revolutionary consciousness. That is the politics of the Pabloist International Secretariat.” It was possible to get through the revolutionary programme in “digestible pieces”, he said. The SLP membership would not take kindly to people belonging to “hostile” organisations. The members say, ‘Come on in’, but they do not want the SLP rules broken.

Replying to the debate, comrade Conrad said that it was important for the CPGB to correct its mistakes and learn from our past experience. We must also learn lessons from Trotskyism - both positive and negative.

So often Trotskyists had lost sight of the centrality of Party through their entryist tactics, he said. Often they had simply reproduced a mirror image of Stalinism within their organisations - the IBT’s parent body, the Spartacist League, was a prime example of that. But revolutions are not made by a tiny minority - they are made by the class.

He asked the former IBT comrade how as an individual he now expected to clarify his ideas. Surely an open press was fundamental. “Let Fisc use its ‘police’: we will use the weapon of communism - openness. Publish your views in our paper - we will learn from you.”

Comrade Conrad concluded by saying that Scargill had done a great service to the working class in breaking with Labour to form the SLP. “But now the Socialist Labour Party is the property of the working class. And the Weekly Worker will help to make these discussions the property of the world’s working class.”

Alan Fox