14.11.1996
Power of confusion
Workers Power’s impressionistic and eclectic method leads it to adopt contradictory positions, argues John Stone of the LCMRCI
The attitude towards the Socialist Labour Party is becoming an acid test for several left groups in Britain. One of the organisations which is absolutely incapable of having a consistent line on this central issue is the Workers Power group. We have shown their constant zigzags in the pages of the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International’s Internationalist Bulletin and in the Weekly Worker. To answer those criticisms WP organised a joint debate with the CPGB and Labour Left Briefing. Despite the fact that WP had more contributors to the debate than the other two groups together, it could not demonstrate any level of congruity. It showed it has fallen even deeper into its own contradictions.
Despite our disagreements with the CPGB and LLB, we have to recognise that these currents have a coherent line. LLB says that the great majority of the working class and its vanguard is around the Labour Party, which obligates revolutionaries to assist the struggle of its left wing against Blair’s assault and that the SLP abandoned that fight, thus helping the rightwing ‘modernisers’. The CPGB thinks that it is only possible to vote for Labour candidates if they agree with some particular demands; and that it is indispensable to intervene in the SLP with the aim of trying to avoid the creation of a Labour Party mark II and in order to advance revolutionary rapprochement.
On the contrary, WP is advocating a vote for Labour in all constituencies. In every issue of its paper there is a ‘Where we stand’ column in which it writes: “We are for the building of a revolutionary tendency in the Labour Party.” To be consistent they should have some comrades working inside it. Nevertheless, Workers Power could not explain at the meeting why for many years it has abandoned any kind of work inside Labour and has not participated at all in any of the Labour left campaigns - against the election of Blair, the abolition of clause four or the attacks on the union links.
If it did not want to work within the Labour left, it could have played a very important role in the creation of the SLP and in building a revolutionary tendency inside it. WP has dozens of cadres experienced over more than 20 years. Undoubtedly they could have become the main pole to attract and orient the hundreds of subjective revolutionaries inside the SLP.
In December 1995 WP welcomed Arthur Scargill’s call for discussions on the left to consider the establishment of an SLP and committed itself to building a “revolutionary SLP”. In February and March 1996 Workers Power denounced the SLP as “Stalinist”, bureaucratic” and a “reformist sect”. Some weeks later, Workers Power was impressed by the first SLP congress. It decided that the SLP was not a consolidated counterrevolutionary party and that it was possible to fight for its soul. In mid-1996 ‘Revolution’, its youth group, applied for affiliation to the SLP. In its August issue Workers Power acknowledged the importance of the Revolutionary Platform and suggested to those SLP members they are trying to influence that they work with the RP because inside the SLP “the left need a faction of their own”.
This was a progressive step because WP had previously advised their friends inside the SLP to boycott the RP conference.
In the debate on August 30 Paul Morris, WP’s main speaker, put forward yet another position. He characterised the SLP as a Stalinist party. Stalinism is a heavily bureaucratised and counterrevolutionary force which is incapable of being reoriented towards revolution. The fact that Scargill and other SLP members were, many years or decades ago, inside Stalinist parties, means that it is incapable of being a communist party mark II. The SLP is a party in transition and has inside it many variants of centrist ‘Trotskyism’, Labourite left reformists, Stalinists, ex-Stalinists, Castroites, state capitalists and fighting militants.
The important thing is the direction it is going. It has broken with Blair’s neo-liberal Labour and it is advocating the expropriation of the privatised companies, the cancellation of the ‘third world’ foreign debt, etc. It is not possible to describe the SLP as a Stalinist party for its internal regime alone. All reformist parties conduct witch hunts and put up many obstacles to internal democracy and to revolutionary intervention. Nevertheless, inside the SLP it is possible for different tendencies to organise together, which is impossible within most left sects - and WP is no exception.
To typify the SLP as Stalinist is in complete opposition to what was said in the last edition of WP’s journal Trotskyist International. There the SLP was characterised as a party in transition whose soul is possible to win for the revolution.
When Mark Fischer from the CPGB showed up these contradictions and refuted the claim that the SLP was a Stalinist sect, WP could not answer. Keith Harvey accused the CPGB of liquidating its paper and organisation into the SLP. This was a classical Harvey slander which was easily answered by the very existence of a weekly paper which is often very critical of the SLP.
These contradictions are creating many problems among WP supporters. Many of its experienced cadres announced that they had resigned from their former group to join the SLP. The big contradiction is that WP itself is opposing any vote for Scargill or for any SLP candidate, while inside the SLP the former WP members are advocating that the SLP should stand as many candidates as it can.
Let us give a vivid example. Since its creation the SLP has stood in around 15 local elections in which it got no less than five percent and as much as 40% of the vote. In its August issue Workers Power shows some enthusiasm because “in a recent by-election in Knowsley the SLP polled around 38% of the vote”, which was 15 times higher than the Tories. While the SLPers from the WP tradition were campaigning for a vote for the SLP, Workers Power is recommending that workers do not waste their votes on a ‘reformist sect’ and continue backing the Labourites. They applied the same method in Coventry when WP supported the Blairites who won very few votes against Dave Nellist (Militant Labour), who obtained around 40%.
WP’s attitude towards their former supporters who are entering the SLP is completely opportunist. On the one hand this is not revolutionary entryism, yet on the other hand it is not making any political struggle against ‘deserters’.
WP has openly stated that it is against entryism into the SLP. If it is trying to ‘plant’ some members inside the SLP, it is doing so contrary to how Trotsky recommended. For Trotsky a revolutionary organisation could adopt entryism into a bigger force with the condition that its militants outside and inside it should hold the same line.
For the SLP the elections are crucial. If the SLP receives a poor vote, that would affect its future. WP’s opposition to any kind of electoral support for SLP candidates is in fact a desire for its liquidation. Nevertheless, the ex-WP SLPers are trying to become the champions of building this new party.
If there is a genuine division inside WP, why is it not being published in any single document? If WP characterises the SLP as a Stalinist bureaucratic sect which it is not even possible to vote for or to which entryist tactics should not apply, it should have fought against any cadre who joined the SLP.
The League for a Revolutionary Communist International, WP’s international organisation, conducted a big campaign and dedicated an entire journal to vilify its left opposition. The New Zealand, Latin American or British dissidents were characterised as “deserters” and many worse insults. Nevertheless, in this case, there has not been one single article inside any LRCI publication which has had the slightest reference to this present division.
We are sure that many ex-WP SLPers resigned from that group and are no longer under its discipline. If these comrades made a genuine departure from WP over a major tactical question, they need to achieve their own independence from WP ‘advice’ and re-examine their positions. They need to publish their differences and show their internal political debate to the class and its vanguard.
One thing that these comrades ought to consider is work with the rest of the left. It is important to create a united left opposition against reformism and bureaucratism inside the SLP and to build the party as a fighting, anti-capitalist, democratic, rank-and-file party. These comrades should work with the Revolutionary Platform.
They also need to have a clear position on the elections. They are advocating a vote for Labour in places where the SLP is not standing. What about our relationship with the left? Where the SLP could stand, we should be in favour of organising conferences of the left, trade union and anti-racist organisations to democratically decide the platform and candidates of the socialist forces. If the SLP intends to have 100 candidates and space in the media it needs to broaden its work and create a socialist bloc against the cuts with other forces. We should be in favour of trying to build bridges towards Militant Labour and the Socialist Workers Party.
Many ex-WP SLPers must be unhappy with the sectarian method that their former group has adopted towards their new party. They must try to break with the remnants of this method through own actions. They should not advocate that the SLP stand candidates against ML. We want to open up the SLP and allow the far left (including WP) to affiliate. Standing Socialist Labour candidates against ML would help the SLP right wing to build a wall against the so-called revolutionary forces.
In summary, WP does not have a clear position on the SLP. It does not need it. Workers Power’s main aim is not to have a clear orientation towards the class, but to manoeuvre with the aim of building an apparatus.
Workers Power and Revolutionary Platform
In its October paper WP decided to influence its former members and readers inside the SLP to promote a united left opposition inside the SLP: “The left need a faction of their own.” That is a progressive change. In the past WP was against that policy. None of the SLP members under Workers Power influence attended the national conference of Revolutionary Platform, which drew around 30 people.
The Workers Power article said that in the SLP there are two rightwing factions (around Fisc and the Morning Star) and that only “one leftwing formation had already emerged”. It dedicated much of the article to criticising the RP, which it now seems to be encouraging.
For WP the RP has a minimum and confused platform: “It is evasive and incomplete. It never defines what it means by revolution.” That is not entirely correct. The RP clearly says that its goals are “the revolutionary struggle for socialism and the establishment of workers’ power” and “for a socialist republic”.
It says:
“No illusions in parliament ... there is no possibility of socialism being achieved through parliament. We need a democratic workers’ state. We are for workers’ control of industry through elected and recallable workplace councils. We must unite with European workers to fight for a united socialist workers’ Europe. A revolutionary republic must withdraw from all imperialist alliances and blocs like Nato. Our international policies must be guided by the world fight for working class revolution and socialism. We are for a workers’ international which unites all workers against the capitalists and which fights for a socialist Europe and a socialist world. For a revolutionary alternative to Labour. We do not need a ‘Labour Party mark II’ or a new Independent Labour Party (ILP). The new party must reject reformism and fight for revolution.”
It is true that RP’s first conference had many limitations. One of the documents which was adopted advocated an eclectic “Communist-Labour party”, and an amendment which wanted withdrawal from the UN, not only Nato, was defeated. Some SLP members who have openly broken with WP came to that first conference while other SLP members sympathetic to WP positions, despite living very near to the meeting place, declined to attend. If these comrades want to come and fight for a platform which should be more explicitly in favour of “workers’ councils and militias”, they are more than welcome.
The big problem that WP has in relation to the SLP left is its positions on elections and on imperialism. In the Revolutionary Platform it was unanimously adopted that “We defend the right of every oppressed people to expel imperialist troops from their own lands.” WP is against it. When Nato launched its worst attack ever, it called on Nato to send arms and soldiers to help its Bosnian allies. Most RP members would not agree with the position of WP for the defence of the unity of Great Britain in a centralist state because they disagree with Blair’s ‘betrayal’ on Scotland and they tend to support critically the right of the Scottish people to have a national assembly.
More central is the question of elections. WP is against voting for the SLP in its first electoral campaign. Today WP is calling for a vote for Blair’s Labour in every constituency, even against Scargill.