11.07.1996

Right wrecks Manchester

On June 27 Manchester branch of the SLP met for the last time. It was not a happy meeting, since the right wingers shut it down after only half an hour, rather than risk losing a vote over the exclusion of Steve Smethurst (see Weekly Worker July 4). A few days later the national executive committee had ordered the branch’s liquidation. Within a week the rightwing-dominated branch committee had dissolved itself and the whole branch along with it. There was no discussion in the branch. There was no branch motion to restructure. There was no recommendation to the members. Just the thinly veiled fist (or is that Fisc!) of the NEC.

In the June 27 meeting, the right had faced the members’ refusal to be bulldozed into accepting its dictatorial line. Members wanted to discuss Steve’s exclusion. The chair insisted that they could not. In the interests of the witch hunt the right preferred to close down not only the meeting, but the branch itself.

As we have seen time and again, the right cannot carry through their anti-democratic misdeeds openly. The liquidation of a branch, however, is a little bit difficult to hide! The pretext to cover the politics is a re-structure into smaller local branches. Now, such a restructure could be a progressive move when branches are large enough to sustain it, when a Manchester delegate body exists to coordinate and oversee it, when the time is ripe, and with the full discussion and agreement of the branch.

It is important that SLP members understand that this is not what has happened. As one comrade remarked: At the AGM the branch elected the committee. At only the second meeting of the committee it dissolved itself, and liquidated the branch which elected it too!

At the final branch committee meeting three out of seven members objected to the measure and two resigned in protest. Days later the chair, whose casting vote carried the re-structure through, resigned. Presumably out of disgust at the antics to which he himself had been party. He resigned not only from the committee, by then dissolved, but from the SLP entirely!

There is currently no Manchester SLP. But those rightists of the ex-committee who remain still meet and organise as an unaccountable group. They have wheeled and dealed to keep personal possession of the Manchester assets: its bank account, its membership list and presumably its printing press too. All under the careful eye of the NEC and its agents.

Ordinary members, including leading activists, are threatening to resign. They say they have seen too much of this stuff before.

It is important that these comrades stay in the party. We must not be driven out, or driven underground. Sectarianism should have no place in the workers’ movement. On July 9 the Manchester SLP Revolutionary Caucus met and resolved to continue to build the SLP in the local branches, to the extent that it can. The Caucus is now the only Manchester-wide members’ body of the SLP. There is, therefore, a great need for the local branches, when they are established, to meet in a Manchester area delegate structure.

Manchester is in turmoil and the picture from around the rest of the country remains unclear. A possible restructure in Yorkshire has not yet been confirmed. If it is going on, this is hopefully under less unhappy circumstances than those visited upon Manchester.

Rory Liddle