14.11.1996

Care and maintenance

Party notes

The Communist Party’s November aggregate began the important discussion of the organisation’s perspectives for the coming year. Over the next month, a draft document will be written, drawing on the discussions at this meeting and other Party forums. This will then be further debated, amended and voted on by the Party membership. It will provide both an assessment of the context of contemporary politics and an organisational plan for our work throughout 1997.

Many of the detailed objectives we made for 1996 in last year’s Perspectives were not achieved. Partly, this is simply a matter of bad organisational practice, and it was emphasised that continued, painstaking effort is needed to overcome this amateurism. However, the key question which overshadowed the priorities set at the beginning of 1996 was the birth and subsequent development of the Socialist Labour Party.

Our organisation’s intimate involvement with the SLP contradicted some of the letter of Perspectives ’96, if not the spirit. While many of the particular goals of Perspectives ’96 have not been realised, the main themes it identified have been strikingly confirmed.

First, the period of reaction continues. The victory of imperialism is fragile and rent with contradictions. Yet the collapse of the USSR and the eastern European states - whatever their fundamental nature - has been a major ideological blow against the working class.

Second, in the domestic political sphere, the Labour Party is a government in waiting rather than simply an opposition party. Blair’s success in reshaping the party is not the result of any dynamic vision or drive. Far from it. It draws strength from the reactionary context of world and British politics, from the palpable exhaustion of the Tory Party programme to arrest Britain’s long-term decline and from the political disappearance of the working class as any sort of organised alternative in society.

The election of Labour under Blair will of course be an important change, but we are unlikely to see qualitatively new developments in the short term. Thus, while our organisation must remain alive to any opportunities, life will probably not provide us with a chance for a real breakthrough in the coming 12 months. We can and should grow - it was suggested that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that we could treble the size of our membership - but the watchwords of our organisation should be continuity and preservation.

We do not expect huge numbers to rally to our banner in near future. Yet our organisation is well positioned strategically to grow, as the developments we have seen - as yet only in outline form - take clearer shape. In this context, the integrity of our organisation - in the form of our press, our finances, our structures and above all our cadre - is key. As the comrade introducing the report on Perspectives ’97 put it, we must “look after our people” during the coming 12 months.

It must be underlined that this in no way implies a slackening off of the pace of work, a lowering of required financial or other commitments. However, we recognise that the political continuity of our communist collective is embodied in the people we have now, not in hypothetical recruits lining up just over the brow of the next hill.

Of course, our political organisation is a fighting collective, designed for combat. It is not a mutual support network for society’s dissidents. Nevertheless, this collective needs some care and maintenance during this difficult, but increasingly fluid, period.

Thus, particular emphasis was laid on three themes - recruitment, the long overdue reform of Party finances and education. Comrades should bear these in mind in discussions around Perspective ’97 and in the formulation of amendments to the draft shortly to be produced from Centre.

Mark Fischer
national organiser