20.06.1996

Winning our comrades

News has come to the Weekly Worker of the resignation from the SLP of Tony Savas. We had hoped to print his resignation letter, but as yet have been unable to obtain this.

We want to print this document and report this event not in order to malign either the SLP or Tony Savas. Tony is a long-term friend of this organisation and we take his revolutionary career and developments in the SLP seriously. All such decisions and developments need to be discussed out in the open amongst all SLP members so that mistakes can be corrected and a revolutionary party built on a firm theoretical and comradely basis. His resignation letter is therefore nobody’s personal property, but the property of the whole of the SLP membership

It seems that only certain members of the SLP have been informed of Tony Savas’s resignation. This is important to all members since Tony Savas initially threw himself into the work of building the SLP, forming the youth wing of the SLP and standing for the NEC elections, gaining 12 votes.

Therefore, it is of concern that he should so quickly do an about-face and leave the SLP. Tony in fact left the Socialist Workers Party in order to join the SLP and has now rejoined the SWP.

We think that both his comrades in the SLP and the SWP should urge him to take themselves and their organisations seriously. Both groups contain revolutionaries committed to building a party capable of taking the class forward to socialism. The organisation of revolutionaries is not a technical matter.

As revolutionary leaders, it is beholden on us to win our comrades - whatever organisation we are in - to the tasks necessary to overthrow capitalism. That is why the CPGB has always insisted that new members do not leave other organisations (nor should they leave our own) without battling out differences in order to win the majority. To win the class to revolution we must be able to win our comrades, who have already dedicated themselves to that battle, to the necessary way forward.

We understand that the main disagreement Tony had with the SLP was the position taken over immigration controls at the conference. This is a key disagreement in the SLP which split the conference down the middle and alienated many that fought for a position against all immigration controls. This battle is not over and Tony Savas has done revolutionaries in the SLP a disservice by leaving the battleground.

Initially, it has to be said, he did his comrades in the SWP a disservice by leaving, rather than staying in the SWP in order to win them over. This is no doubt difficult in the SWP since there is little facility for open debate. Nevertheless the formation of the SLP and the SWP’s isolationist stance did raise questions for many SWP members. Even if you lose the debate, if it is important enough to leave an organisation for, it must be a debate that needs to be fought at all opportunities with your comrades.

Similar discussions have been going on in many different revolutionary organisations, with individuals dropping away to join the SLP. What a difference it would have made to the SLP conference if these individuals had been able to win even a section of their organisations to follow their lead.

Perfect organisations are not born: they are made by comrades like Tony Savas through patient argument, disciplined work and building trust.

Tony Savas is undoubtedly not alone. Many revolutionaries have been disillusioned by the outcome of the SLP conference. We would urge them to join with others who are not content to see the class forces that have been drawn into the SLP led in a reformist direction, and struggle to win them to the programme necessary to “abolish capitalism”.

Our paper restates its commitment to carrying all the debates that must take place in the SLP and the workers’ movement if we are to unite our experience and uncover the truth about the road to victory. We would hope Tony Savas would take this opportunity to explain his actions to the SLP membership and to win others to the tasks necessary to forge the revolutionary party our class needs.

Lee-Anne Bates