21.11.1996

SLP branch reports

Manchester

The Socialist Labour Party will not call upon the working class to vote Labour in any constituency in the forthcoming general election. “New Labour and the Tories are no different!” This was the clear statement of the completeness of the SLP’s break with the Labour Party, made by Arthur Scargill at Manchester’s SLP public rally on November 15. Comrade Scargill was responding to jibes from Socialist Workers Party members in the audience, who said that the SLP was a step in the wrong direction because of its “electoralism”. He called the SWP line “hypocritical”. It condemned all participation by a socialist party in parliamentary elections on the one hand, but called on the working class to vote in those elections and to vote for the anti-working class New Labour Party. He repeated the statement, made at other recent public meetings, that the SLP was an extra-parliamentary party, supporting direct action, and all working class struggles. It would nevertheless be contesting as many elections as its resources would permit.

Spelling out policies on unemployment, nationalisation, health and education, comrade Scargill again stated that the SLP favoured British withdrawal from the European Union, a “capitalist club”. And once again it was that statement which was least favourably received by this audience, attracting only a ripple of applause.

Curiously, Scargill had commenced his speech on the subject of the SLP’s constitution. It was not “Arthur Scargill’s constitution”, he said. He claimed it had been adopted by the SLP’s membership at the party’s inaugural conference on May 4 1996.

This statement is not about a matter of purely historical importance. If it were true, then proposals to amend the constitution at future congresses would require a two thirds majority card vote. Contrarily, amendments to a draft constitution, prior to the proposal of the whole document for adoption, would require only a simple majority. It is deeply worrying that the SLP president can make such false statements in front of so many party members who were present at the inaugural congress. SLP comrades should pursue this matter through their branches.

An excellent first speech was made by a l4-year old youth section recruit, Tom Partridge. His assertion that working class youth faced an increasing campaign of criminalisation, when they were not in fact criminals, but victims of a capitalist society, was warmly received.

After the break with the Labour Party, the next crucial step for the working class is to break with Labourism. This was the unarticulated, but clear message of a speech by SLP member and CWU Merseyside Regional Secretary, John Ireland. He made clear his members’ disgust at the pro-management role in the post office dispute of Tony Blair MP (anagram: I’m Tory Plan B). John then made an equally blistering attack on the sell-out deal being made by the CWU leadership. In particular, he lambasted general secretary Alan Johnson, on a salary of £50,000 (po-faced response from Arthur), who ignores union conference resolutions opposing teamworking in pursuit of his own ‘social partnership’ betrayal. The proposed settlement does not even protect union members victimised during the dispute.

John made it clear that members in his region would not require another balloting charade to walk out in support of any of their colleagues who are victimised.

Some 300 attended this meeting, demonstrating again the potential of the SLP to become a mass party, and an important gain for the working class. But it also showed the fetters that are being placed on the party’s growth - in both quantitative and, more crucially, qualitative terms - by a bureaucratic defensiveness in the leadership. The sleight of hand on the constitution was one instance. Another came after the meeting when an SLP comrade was heavily ‘leaned on’ by national executive member John Hendy, flanked by comrades Scargill and Sikorski, for distributing a Manchester SLP Revolutionary Caucus leaflet, giving derails of future meetings and the Revolutionary Platform position statement.

Manchester revolutionary caucus

The Revolutionary Caucus of the SLP in Greater Manchester meets regularly to discuss the political issues which are important to the development of the party. We hold the view that the working class must organise in a revolutionary way to be able to overthrow capitalism.

Manchester RC supports the position of the national Revolutionary Platform.

Once a month we have open educational meetings on specific issues, to which all SLP members are welcome. They are held in the Marble Arch pub on Rochdale Road, Manchester, at 8pm. The programme of educationals is listed below. Please feel welcome to come along.

Tuesday December 10Labourism in the working class

Labourism is not simply an adherence to the Labour Party; it is an ideology which keeps the working class tied to capitalism. Although it is currently the majority political outlook of the working class in Britain, it is thoroughly reformist and opportunist. As long as Labourism dominates the working class movement, the working class can never free itself.

Tuesday January 7 China and imperialist crisis

The struggle for the People’s Republic of China spanned a generation and a continent. Its formation was a triumph of 20th century anti-imperialism. Much however, is currently being made by imperialism of investment opportunities in the Peoples Republic. What then of socialism in China? How does it fare now that the Soviet Union has gone?

Tuesday February 11 Workers and the national question in Britain

All socialists support the right of nations to self-determination, and equally we stand for the unity of the working class. After the general election Scotland looks likely to have a referendum, but the Blair options are clearly meaningless. How then should workers in England fight for the right of Scotland and Wales to secede? And how should workers in Scotland and Wales fight for unity with workers in England?

Tuesday March 4 SLP conference discussions

This meeting will open a series of more regular meetings to have in-depth discussions on the policies and documents going to the May 1997 national conference. Among other issues there will be a discussion on the SLP constitution, which will finally be put to the vote next May. Comrades are also invited to raise the issues which they feel will be important at the conference.

Scunthorpe

In Scunthorpe the SLP has been growing since its formation and now has 32 members, a significant number for what is now a run-down steel town. 9,000 jobs have been lost in the steel industry and 19,000 in mining in the Yorkshire area.

The branch was initiated by members of Independent Socialists who left the Labour Party in 1995 to stand in the elections as socialist candidates, gaining 16% of the vote in a by-election. They subsequently organised themselves as socialists in the area and joined the SLP when it was formed.

The branch will be standing Brian Hopper in Scunthorpe in the general election. It is already active campaigning particularly around homelessness and for affordable housing, and against the record of New Labour. Homelessness is growing into a crisis in Scunthorpe with a 10% increase of repossessions in the first nine months of 1996. Nationally 19,148 mortgage possession actions were taken during the third quarter of 1996. The campaign looks back to the squatting led by communists and other militants 50 years ago under a Labour government.

The branch has also been campaigning around the JSA and collecting money for the Liverpool dockers on paper sales.

Debates around SLP policy have been lively in the branch. One member had been concerned over the policy on Ireland which he saw as support for terrorism and worried what he was supposed to tell people on the doorstep. Pointing out that the British Army, armed to the teeth, had occupied the north of Ireland, after a long debate the majority won the comrade to SLP policy and for support of the IRA against the British Army.

Ken Capstick has been announced as SLP candidate to stand in the Barnsley East by-election. There is a strong ex-NUM membership in the area and the SLP could win a good vote.

Stockport

A setback for the campaign to remove the membership bans and proscriptions from the SLP draft constitution took place when Stockport branch reversed its previous decision to submit a motion to the next party congress proposing their deletion.

Revolutionaries numerically dominate this branch, and the reverse came when these comrades split on the issue. Supporters of the previous resolution continued to argue on the basis of working class unity - the need to include all sections of the class, to be debated and tested within one united party, in order to thrash out the correct way forward for the working class.

They condemned the use of the banning clause, by the SLP leadership, to ‘void’ the membership of two comrades who had been amongst the best fighters building the SLP in the early days of the now disbanded Greater Manchester branch. Such witch hunting was a shameful spectacle, which was no way to overcome left sectarianism.

The major argument used by those revolutionary comrades opposed to a challenge on the bans went as follows. The Party leadership will not accept the challenge. Therefore, to press the matter will set revolutionaries apart from the SLP project itself. For the revolutionary message to be heard, its proponents had to remain within the mainstream of the SLP.

This apparent equation between the SLP’s founding leadership, and the party itself, appeared to be endorsed by one comrade, who stated that his previous support for the removal of bans and proscriptions had been weakened by “the increasingly anti-SLP attitude being expressed by the Weekly Worker”. When challenged, however, he said he was not suggesting that it was impermissible for revolutionaries to challenge for leadership in the SLP, but that the anti-party attitude was reflected in Weekly Worker’s suggestions that, without the organised intervention of revolutionaries, the SLP could become “a Labour Party mark II”. Such an assertion was ridiculous, in this comrade’s view, and displayed a complete failure to grasp the nature of the SLP, which was a classical centrist party.

The same branch meeting decided, in principle, to stand a candidate in the Stockport seat at the general election. The decision whether to go ahead will be taken after an initial canvass of the working class in the constituency, in order to obtain financial pledges for meeting the cost of the election campaign.

There was no opposition to the view that the SLP should seek agreement with other socialist organisations, and the Green Party, on which seats each organisation was to contest. A number of comrades expressed the view that such agreements should extend to reciprocal support in canvassing and other campaign work. They expressed incredulity when one comrade asserted that the bans and proscriptions could be used by the party leadership, when it suited their purposes, to ‘void’ the membership of comrades who undertook electoral work in support of another socialist organisation in a seat where the SLP was not standing.

The branch, and branch members, have been major contributors of material for Socialist News, but none has yet been printed. The branch has called upon the editor and the NEC to revise the editorial policy of not printing any letters, or articles expressing an alternative view to those already printed. It is attempting to gain support from other North West branches for such a change in the paper.