22.08.1996

SLP confusion and contortion

J Johnson of the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International replies to Richard Brenner of Workers Power (Weekly Worker May 30), and gives his views on WP’s attitude to the SLP. The LCMRCI is a recent split from the WP international organisation

The creation of the Socialist Labour Party represents the most important leftwing split from Labour in more than 60 years. As yet, there are no MPs, national unions or regional committees in the SLP. Most of the Labour left remains in the official party and considers Scargill’s move as a premature rupture from a movement of millions of workers with illusions in Labour.

The SLP has a left reformist programme and a bureaucratic constitution that forbids the affiliation of any left organisation. Despite the fact that the SLP has less members than Militant Labour or the Socialist Workers Party, it has an important audience in the unions and is led by a national workers’ figure, miners’ leader Arthur Scargill. It is becoming a pole of attraction for thousands of activists. Hundreds of subjective revolutionaries and trade union militants have joined the SLP with the aim of breaking with reformism and creating a revolutionary party. That is why it is important to address this milieu.

A revolutionary organisation has to have a pedagogic approach to that milieu. A group like Workers Power should have comrades working in Labour and in the SLP fighting inside these and other working class organisations for a united front policy against the bosses and for a revolutionary programme.

Nevertheless, WP has the most inconsistent policy. In December 1995 a Workers Power editorial statement argued that “thousands of trade unionists ... need a strong, well organised socialist voice and an organisation to organise and lead their resistance. That is why WP welcome Arthur Scargill’s call for discussions on the left to consider the establishment of an SLP.” WP committed itself to building a “revolutionary SLP”.

Nevertheless, a few weeks later it made a complete U-turn. Workers Power (March 1996) characterised the SLP as “Britain’s newest reformist sect”. It said that in the Hemsworth by-election, instead of advocating a vote for the SLP, which got five percent it was absolutely correct to vote for Labour, who received 70%.

According to the League for a Revolutionary Communist International’s electoral principles, communists should critically vote for mass working class parties despite their bourgeois policies. Nevertheless, when there are leftwing candidates with a sizable base in the working class, attracting the support of the most militant workers, communists should critically participate in their electoral campaigns.

The LRCI did not call for a vote for Lutte Ouvriere in France (which gained 1.6 million votes; 5.3%) or for ML in the last local elections in Coventry (40%). Instead, the LRCI voted for the Blairites or the neo-liberal ‘socialists’ who had been in power for 14 years, attacking the youth, immigrants, workers and the oppressed peoples of Iraq, Rwanda, Chad, Zaire, etc. In Peru it advocated a vote for the United Left, a tiny popular front which received less than 0.5% of the votes and who supported the dictatorship’s repression against thousands of political prisoners. WP policies are based on sectarian attitudes towards significant centrist or left reformist forces, combined with tailing neo-liberal reformist candidates.

We agree with WP that we should advocate a vote for a mass working class party according to its social roots rather than its positions. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore significant layers of the class who are trying to break with reformism and are supporting centrists and leftwing candidates. That is why it is possible to advocate a vote for the SLP, ML or any important left workers’ candidates if they stand to the left of Labour and have considerable support amongst the most militant and class conscious workers.

The WP method is completely mechanical. In the polemic with the CPGB, Richard Brenner wrote: “A revolutionary party would therefore call for a vote for Labour in all constituencies where it is unable to stand” (Weekly Worker May 30). This is a mechanical argument to justify adaptation to reformism. WP is advocating a permanent vote for Labour, unless and until it stands its own candidates. It denies the possibility of voting for the SLP, ML or any non-WP supporter anywhere.

In the past WP made a mistake in Scotland when it advocated a vote for Labour while ML did very well. Later WP criticised its error and said that retrospectively it would have been correct to have advocated a vote for ML. Now a leading WP member is excluding that possibility.

Despite WP’s 2l years of existence (more than the Bolsheviks when they took power), it has never stood candidates. The LRCI has never promoted fronts for standing in bourgeois elections. It could be argued that WP is a small group and that few votes would just mean the loss of an electoral deposit. In local elections there are no fees. A small group could stand candidates as an organisation or in alliance with other left forces. Even just tens or hundreds of votes in local elections could be a step forward because it could create a periphery and an audience inside the class. If a significant layer of the class supports the SLP or ML in the elections, it would be important to participate in that experience to establish links and to fight for a revolutionary programme.

LRCI comrades in Peru are the only ones with any experience of standing candidates. Our comrades participated in the creation of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Front (FOCEP) which received 12% of the votes in 1978. In 1980 the founders of Poder Obrero created a revolutionary front which obtained 1,000 votes in a proletarian suburb in Lima. Former LRCI members founded the only far left electoral front that stood candidates in local elections during the Fujimori dictatorship. Workers’ Democracy obtained more than one percent of the votes in a local election with a programme that demanded that the workers’ council should replace the mayor and for armed worker guards against the dictatorship’s police. These experiences attracted new people and created links with the local population.

In Britain it could be possible to demand that the SWP (which combines passive propaganda with tailing Blair) create an electoral front with the SLP, ML, the Labour left and other left and anti-racist forces in several areas in which there is a significant layer of activists to the left of Blair. Labour’s rightwing policies will alienate many people. The BNP grew in East London among workers who were disappointed with Labour. If we want to stop the development of fascists like Le Pen it is important not only to build mass actions in the streets but also to stand a militant workers’ alternative in the election as a pole of attraction that can compete with them.

Despite all its constant electoral support for Labour, WP did not participate at all in the different rank and file movements and campaigns against the election of Blair, the abolition of clause four and the attacks on the trade union links.

When we were inside WP, I voted against the national perspectives document adopted at the November 1994 conference. In more than 20 pages WP did not dedicate one page to Labour, the organisation which has the overwhelming support of the working class. Instead, the document dedicated two pages to the SWP and passed a policy of tailing it in a sectarian way. I was in favour of sending comrades into Labour to participate in the campaigns against Blair and his neo-liberal counter-reforms inside the party.

After not doing any kind of work around the “thousands of trade unionists” who “welcomed Scargill’s call for an SLP, WP decided to shift again. It allowed some of its former members to join the SLP. After the SLP founding conference, WP made another U-turn around the SLP. As we saw in March, Workers Power described the SLP as a “reformist sect”. Workers Power (June) gave it a completely different characterisation. It said that the SLP is not a completely reformist party, that it is in the process of definition and that revolutionaries could win that battle:

“The founding conference indicated that the SLP is a party that remains in the process of formation ... with a small but significant minority clearly seeking revolutionary policies and answers, one thing is certain: the struggle for the political soul of the SLP has only just begun.”

One of the problems that WP would have in intervening in the SLP is over elections. Scargill wants to stand 100 candidates in the next general election. Nevertheless, WP is saying that it could not and will not vote for the SLP. What is WP going to say to its supporters both inside and outside the SLP? If it says that the SLP should not stand candidates, it would mean that WP would be against its first national campaign.

We should advocate that the SLP join in united fronts with ML, the SWP, the Socialists Alliances, local antiracists and union organisations, etc, and stand fighting workers’ candidates. We should continue to advocate a vote for Labour but, at the same time, we should participate in every significant left electoral movement.

In his reply to the CPGB, Richard Brenner said that WP could vote for the SLP only “if we find it possible to join [the SLP] as a revolutionary organisation with full rights”. (Weekly Worker May 30) This is not a likely outcome at least until after the next general election. WP will insist on opposing a vote for Scargill and any other SLP candidates anywhere, thus creating a barrier for genuine militants who want to break from Labour to the left.

WP’s method is not only impressionable. It also shows internal conflicts. Rather than keeping a lid on the contradictions like a pressure cooker, the Leninist method is to use the Party press to debate these differences. One of the reasons why WP is hesitant about the SLP is because of its internal regime. Nevertheless, WP’s is little better.

In France the LRCI made a serious mistake in the last presidential elections. In the first round the LRCI advocated a vote for the Communist Party and the Socialist Party and not for Lutte Ouvrière. Mitterand had been in power for l4 years, implementing a fierce anti-worker, colonialist and racist programme. More than one million workers decided to break with reformism and vote for a centrist candidate which was standing for workers’ control and revolution. For the first time in history more than 1.6 million people voted for a self-proclaimed Trotskyist. She obtained two-thirds of the Stalinist votes. Nevertheless, the LRCI marginalised itself from that milieu. To all of these workers that decided to vote for a ‘Trotskyist’ and not for the reformists, the LRCI said, ‘You were wrong: you should have continued voting for the government.’

Brenner said that “a vote for the SLP can only mean one thing - support for its programme” (Weekly Worker May 30). ‘Because we do not support its programme, we could not vote for the SLP. Only if the SLP accepts WP as an affiliate organisation would we consider the SLP as our party and vote for it.’ But how can WP call for a vote for Labour? Does this mean that it supports Labour’s programme?

Brenner’s response is a bureaucratic one. We should not put such an ultimatum to the SLP: Only if you allowed us to enter as a party inside your party would we vote for you. If not, we would continue voting everywhere for the Blairites.’

The SLP bureaucrats do not care about WP. They prefer to recruit the individuals and unions that endorse their reformist policies. WP’s tactics isolates it from the SLP membership, something that can only please the SLP reformists.

In South Africa the LRCI voted for a tiny semi-reformist sect which only obtained 4,000 votes (0.02%). The SLP gained more than five percent in its first electoral campaign and it could achieve higher votes in other places. How can the LRCI leaders explain these contradictions? In South Africa and Peru a vote for tiny organisations is not a vote for their programme, but in Britain a vote for a party that could have a much bigger audience is a vote for the programme?

We do not advocate a vote for the SLP or ML everywhere. We only advocate a vote for non-Labour left candidates when they have real working class support. In places when they do not represent any significant force, we would not endorse them. We do not support their programmes, but we support some of their progressive demands and, what is most important, we try to make united fronts with the best working class fighters.

A revolutionary party should advocate critical support for Labour and that means actively participating inside it. At the same time we need to urge all of the working class leftwing forces that have significant influence among the masses to stand fighting class candidates. WP neither works inside Labour nor advocates a vote for the SLP.