04.07.1996

Militant Labour to ‘Socialist Party’?

What’s in a name?

Militant Labour, it seems, is debating a name change. This news reaches us through comrades in the organisation with sympathy to one degree or another with the message of the Communist Party.

Of course, this is politically important for us all. What an organisation chooses to call itself is not a technical matter. An appellation expresses not simply a group’s understanding of the scientific content of the political message it propagates to the working class. It also manifests its political perspectives for the coming period. Therefore, the fact that ML seems likely to dub itself the ‘Socialist Party’ says a great deal about what it thinks is going to happen in the coming years.

First, that the name ‘Socialist Party’ seems to embody a pessimistic assessment of the prospects for the Socialist Labour Party. Militant appears to believe that the restrictive structures of the SLP effectively rule it out as a pole of attraction for the tens of thousands of activated workers and youth of the future. It is fated to smallness, political irrelevancy and internal sclerosis. Important sections of ML clearly do not judge the SLP to be a serious competitor for hegemony over tomorrow’s ‘socialist’ electoral and activist audience.

This may prove to be a very premature assessment, of course.

Similarly, the adoption of ‘Socialist Party’ would have the beneficial effect of helping to outflank the Socialist Workers Party, an organisation already flummoxed by ML’s electoral successes and their more open approach to political work.

‘Socialist Party’ also of course embodies an implicit rejection of the tradition of the only genuine workers’ party built so far in this country - that of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

ML has expressly ruled out the possibility of a mass revolutionary party being built in today’s Britain. At the beginning of the SLP process, when the situation was characterised by fluidity, communists fought for the new organisation to be a revolutionary party, a reforged communist party. But however much the CP might like it, in the blunt words of Peter Taaffe, “You won’t get it”.

Thus, I am a little puzzled by the need for a new title. To sacrifice the name ML in the situation where you do not expect the opportunity for mass revolutionary growth seems to be throwing away one of the organisation’s most important assets - its hard-earned reputation for struggle and some notable victories, most importantly against the poll tax.

Unless of course the name change signifies ML’s own attempt to itself form the core of a new federal party. Having mechanically ruled out in advance the possibility of a mass revolutionary organisation, such a change of name would actually signpost a shift to the right by the leadership, a move away from ‘Marxism’, even as construed on the leading committee of today’s Militant Labour.

Ian Mahoney