16.01.1997

One lump

Party notes

Comrades will be amused by a letter in the latest issue of Workers Power (January 1997). One ‘Disgruntled of Scotland’ takes the organisation to task for its mealy-mouthed admission (December 1996) that its previous position on the demand for a Scottish assembly was “wrong”. Elsewhere in this issue, Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of the SWP) illustrates the remaining inadequacies in the Scottish position of WP. The issue I focus on is the question of democratic centralism.

‘Disgruntled’ suggests - reasonably enough - that as a supporter of WP’s previous line, “I feel I deserve a more thoroughgoing explanation of where you and I went wrong.” While the issue may have been “fully debated” amongst the membership of the organisation at the recent conference, as a revolutionary organisation claiming to provide leadership to advanced elements of the class, “your responsibilities extend much wider”. These obligations “include your readers and supporters and the class as a whole”.

Replying to this letter, WP suggest that, “boiled down”, the key gripe of ‘Disgruntled’ is that the paper did not explain “why our previous position on the Scottish assembly ... was wrong”. Thus it sketches the development of its thought on this question - an evolution largely conditioned by the vagaries of various bourgeois opinion polls, it must be said.

Surely the real question here is not what the majority of WP now think is the correct line on Scotland, but actually how it was arrived at. The announcement of the line change came in a report of a recent conference. We presume that this conference had minorities and majorities; we assume it debated, argued, got stroppy with itself, won and lost votes. In other words, unless WP is composed of political dolts with ‘etch-a-sketch’ consciousness, there are today people inside the organisation who actually agree with the old position.

Surely it is by openly reporting these entirely healthy and expected differences, a revolutionary organisation discharges its ‘wider responsibilities’ to educate, inform and politically engage the class?

As a very formal Trotskyist organisation, WP inevitably disagrees. However, this particular episode on Scotland has made it look a little foolish. In the very same issue as the line correction, Colin Lloyd polemicises against the Socialist Workers Party’s new ‘mass turn’. In the course of developing his argument, comrade Lloyd suggests that it is a Leninist ‘principle’ that members of the party “agree” with its programme.

WP’s understanding of ‘programmatic questions’ is very wide and detailed indeed and would certainly encompass issues such as the current line on the demand for a Scottish assembly. I attended a recent meeting hosted by a number of small Trotskyist organisations (see ‘Revolutionary regroupment’ letter in Weekly Worker December 19) where a leading WP member underlined this. Waving around the December issue of his paper, he suggested that the programme was what was written in the official organ, what a party’s cadre said and did. Programme, like god, was in the details, he seemed to imply.

Thus, we can safely assume, everyone in WP agrees with the new line on Scotland, otherwise they are not meeting membership criteria. There is no change there of course, as everyone in WP agreed with the previous line on Scotland.

It makes you wonder how they realised last month it was actually “wrong” - spontaneously, we presume. And all together, in one lump.