26.09.1996

GPC and NEC

SL Kenning looks at latest developments in the Socialist Labour Party

Our General Purposes Committee met on September 20 and the National Executive Committee on the following day. Both meetings were given upbeat reports of the TUC. As detailed by comrade Kenny Craig in the last issue of the Weekly Worker, 195 delegates joined the SLP, including Joe Marino, general secretary of the Bakers’ Union, and Jimmy Nolan, leader of the Liverpool dockers.

The NEC was told that another three general secretaries have or are in the process of embracing the SLP, along with six more councillors. Significantly Oilec has decided to amalgamate with the NUM.

Such unions will finance Socialist News. Adverts for their services can be used to get around restrictions on political funds.

Apparently both Tony Benn and Jim Mortimer have been booked to write for our paper. The former on the European Union, the latter on Blair. Jeremy Corbyn MP is also said to be very sympathetic. However, it was also made clear at the NEC that Socialist News will not carry controversial articles from members.

Equally negative was the NEC vote to lower the upper age limit for the SLP’s youth section from 30 to 25. Effectively this decapitates the organisation, barring as it does some of the most experienced and knowledgeable cadres. Ironically Neil Kinnock made a similar move in the 1980s. To rid himself of Militant and other leftwingers he destroyed the Labour Party Young Socialists by cutting its age limit to 25.

The youth section’s launch meeting, due on November 9, has been cancelled. No new date has been set. Tragically, we will not have a genuine youth section for a long time.

Comrade Scargill says the 14-25 age range was imposed by presidential powers under the constitution - hence there can be no debate on it. He told a touching story about receiving a letter from a 14-year old, complaining that those over 25 are a different generation.

Frankly, I was not convinced. My scepticism increased after I was told by a member of Revolution - Workers Power youth - that they wrote to our NEC on September 16 applying to affiliate to our youth section.

Incidentally does this mean yet another change of line by Workers Power? In the pages of the Weekly Worker its Richard Brenner attacked the CPGB for its enthusiasm for the SLP. The comrade also called for a Labour vote at the forthcoming general election. Does Workers Power now propose to support the SLP’s 100 candidates? I think we deserve a straight answer.

South London

The September 12 meeting of South London SLP was a setback for the alliance of witch hunting Fiscites and machine Labourites. It was agreed that a report be sent to the NEC by comrades Ian Driver, Allan Gibson and Paul Ward. Let me reproduce it in full, adding here and there some extra information.

“1. During the course of the above meeting an agenda item was reached on the branch executive committee. The branch executive moved that the membership of the executive be widened to include current executive members plus others.

“2. Comrade Helen Drummond, branch secretary, pointed out that the current executive was ‘interim’ in nature, inasmuch as it was formed in March of this year when the branch membership was much smaller, and it was therefore necessary to extend the executive to be more reflective of the growing membership.

“3. Comrade Ian Driver [Southwark SLP councillor] thanked the current executive for all its hard work and proposed to the meeting that, rather than extend the current executive, a properly convened AGM of the branch be held, and that any member wishing to stand for the executive could prepare a brief election statement which would be circulated to all members prior to the AGM.

“4. The chair of the meeting (Tony Goss) stated that according to the agenda timetable there were two minutes of debating time left [the meeting began about 25 minutes late because Goss had not arrived]. There were many comrades indicating that they wished to speak on the proposals in front of the meeting. A comrade asked the chair if the debate could be extended, as it was obviously of great interest to members. The chair replied that he had made a ruling that there be no further debate over and above the allotted time.

“5. Comrade Adrian challenged the chair’s ruling. This was seconded by comrade Driver. A vote was taken [13 to three] and the necessary two-thirds majority was achieved to reject the chair’s ruling.

“6. The chair then proceeded to loudly and aggressively abuse and swear at those present [“Fuck off, you shit - we all know who you are”]. In an effort to restore calm it was pointed out to the chair that this was not a vote of confidence in him, but merely a rejection of his ruling. He was asked to remain in the chair, but declined and left the meeting room again loudly abusing and swearing.

“7. The meeting then proceeded to elect comrade Ian Driver as acting chair and agreed that it would continue with the business in hand.

“8. A full discussion then took place and the following was agreed.

“a. That an AGM of the South London branch of the SLP to be held within the next eight weeks and that statements from candidates be circulated to all members prior to the AGM (16 for, eight against, three abstentions).

“b. That a special meeting of the South London branch be held on Wednesday October 3 at 7.30pm to discuss the future work and perspectives of the South London branch and the organisation of the South London branch (15 for, three against, five abstentions).

“9. Immediately prior to the vote being taken, Tony Goss returned to the meeting with Helen, who had left the meeting during the course of the debate. On completion of the vote Tony was asked if he would resume chairing the meeting. He refused and again began shouting a [sic] swearing and then physically threatened comrade Adrian. Members of the meeting had to intervene to prevent what may have been an assault on comrade Adrian taking place. Tony then left the meeting with Helen and six other comrades [“Go back to the CPGB,” Helen Drummond snapped].

“10. Nineteen comrades remained in the meeting. A full discussion was then held on the events at the meeting. It was regretted that the meeting should have degenerated in such a fashion and it was the wish of those remaining that comrades who had left the meeting would return to the branch as they had all made important contributions to our work. It was however the unanimous view of the meeting that Tony Goss’s behaviour was totally unacceptable and that there is absolutely no place whatsoever in the socialist movement for physical or verbal threats and intimidation against comrades.

“11. It was proposed that Tony be reported to the NEC for the purposes of a disciplinary enquiry. This proposal was lost with three voting in favour, 15 against and one abstention.

“12. It was agreed that:

“a. The branch condemn the unacceptable behaviour of Tony Goss and he offer a full apology to the branch at the next meeting (unanimously agreed).

“b. The branch executive members remaining at the meeting (comrades Gibson, Ward and Driver) provide the SLP NEC with a full report of the evenings [sic] events and that this report be circulated to all members of the South London branch (unanimously agreed).

“b. [sic] That the branch executive members remaining at the meeting implement the democratic decisions of the branch meeting re the organisation of the meeting on October 2 and the organisation of an AGM within eight weeks (unanimously agreed).

“13. The meeting then closed.”

Who is Tony Goss? During his time as a Southwark Labour councillor in the 1980s many accusations were levelled against him. Here are a few examples. In 1986 he was implicated in the Nye Bevan Lodge scandal by a confidential report. Elderly residents of the Southwark-run home - used by Labour councillors, Goss included, as a late night drinking den - suffered abuse by staff. The Labour council did a cover-up. Goss was later caught doing an illegal council house swap with another Labour councillor. Then there was the loss/theft of several thousand pounds from the Southwark Labour club. Goss was implicated.

In 1987 Goss was finally expelled from the Labour Party after a 12 month national executive enquiry. The charge - threatening and intimidating behaviour and assaults upon Labour Party members. Once out of the Labour Party, Goss formed his own ‘Independent Labour Party’ along with a few cronies. He edited Labour Lion, a pro-Millwall football club fanzine, which campaigned against the travellers’ site in Peckham.

North London

The witch hunt has claimed its first victim in North London SLP. There is another deeply worrying aspect to this story. The branch executive was informed by general secretary Patrick Sikorski at its meeting of September 4 - he turned up in person - that it could not object to the NEC’s edict null-and-voiding the membership of comrade John Bridge.

As the branch is not a constituency organisation, it purportedly has no constitutional standing. Therefore, like voided members, none of our existing branches have any rights.

The NEC itself of course does not conform to the constitution. Where are the trade union, youth, black and women’s section reps? Yet by threatening branches with the Scargill constitution - modelled as it is on the old Labour Party - opposition can be cowed by legalisms or simply ruled out of order.

Despite its so-called constitutional non-existence, the North London SLP meeting of September 11 was transformed into a show trial. Carolyn Sikorski, playing Vyshinsky, led the prosecution. Her job was made rather easy by the enforced absence of the accused. According to comrade Sikorski, CPGB supporters had joined the SLP in large numbers - surely an altogether good thing, though it is against the Scargill constitution with its anti-communist bans and proscriptions.

The issue split the branch down the middle. On the one side machine Labourites, Fiscites and the Stalin Society. On the other Labourite democrats and assorted revolutionaries. Debate raged for some one and a half hours. When it came to a close the branch voted 27 to none calling upon the NEC to institute an appeals procedure. There was only one abstention - a member of the Stalin Society.

Such a vote might appear to be a resounding victory for democracy in the SLP. It is not.

The witch hunters have no problem with anodyne calls for the NEC to set up an appeals committee. If staffed by well chosen appointees, it would simply legitimise political cleansing.

We urgently need to change Scargill’s Labour Party mark II constitution (the version being imposed is dated January 30 1996 and is even more Bonapartist than the December 10 1995 draft). A federal SLP should be open to all working class political trends, as well as trade unions. That was the case in the original Labour Party. It was Ramsay MacDonald, Philip Snowden and other ‘modernisers’ who successfully stopped Communist Party affiliation and began the expulsion of individual communists in the mid-1920s.

No SLP conference has voted for a constitution. Till one does what is concrete ought to be our starting point, not the imaginary constituency branches, wards, affiliates and sections of the Scargill constitution. Instead of being dictated by a chimera that has nothing to with the SLP as it is organised on the ground, discipline and other such matters should first and foremost be the responsibility of existing branches. That is where members are, where they are known and where they are tested.

Unquestionably we must have an elected and recallable appeals committee. In the meantime let us put an end to witch hunting, voiding and the lack of rights for our real members, our real committees and our real branches.