19.09.1996

Fisc embraces social democracy

North London Socialist Labour Party held its first Hackney public meeting last Tuesday as part of an effort to set up a branch in the area. The audience of 30 was in the main, predictably enough, the local Hackney left.

Despite that however both Terry Donleavy, SLP councillor, and Carolyn Sikorski, NEC member, made speeches aimed at imaginary ‘raw’ recruits. Donleavy said that he had resigned from the Labour Party because “they had abandoned socialism” and pledged that the SLP “would build a million homes and put the economy back on its feet by increasing productivity in the building industry”.

Questioned on his attitude towards the police, he said he supported the boys in blue as “they do a very hard job for the most part” and need to be paid for in order to combat crime. Not the sort of rhetoric to impress the Hackney left!

Despite the obvious disagreement of SLPer Peter Gates, the chair, Carolyn Sikorski, insisted that everybody “in the SLP agreed on all its policies”. And yet another howler - apparently the party “is a very democratic one”. But also she said that the SLP “is not really interested in political debate” and she herself certainly does not want to be in an organisation where she is “reminded of something she said 19 years ago”. Not surprising, given the opportunism of her own organisation - Fourth International Supporters Caucus - and its disloyal factional history. Not to mention her own witch hunting antics recently.

Questioned on her own hypocrisy - Fisc now organises within the SLP, but denies others the same right - she resorted to bare-faced lies. Fisc, according to her, “has never existed” and she did not even know what the name meant. This despite its presence as an organisation at a conference of United Secretariat of the Fourth International earlier this year, their internal publications, and the fact that just about every other SLP member knows they exist. But Carolyn’s lies came over as more defensive than convincing - nobody believed her.

In trying to escape her ‘far left’ past and become ‘mainstream SLP’ she and her co-thinkers are becoming more like social democrats than revolutionaries every day.

Anne Murphy