30.01.1997

Scotland school

Party notes

The Communist Party organised an education school in Scotland over the weekend of January 25/26. This was brought together to develop the Party’s collective understanding of the issues that have been thrown up by the growing national movement and our work in the Scottish Socialist Alliance.

Specifically, three main questions were posed. First, the school looked at the idea that the break-up of Britain along national lines could in some way represent a progressive development. In this context, sessions looked at the myth of Scottish historical nationhood and the formation of the contemporary Scottish nationality as a conscious social artefact during the 19th century. Under the same broad heading, another session dissected the slogan of a ‘Scottish workers republic’ and how it was counterposed in present-day politics to our call for a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales (although the school concurred that under different political conditions, the slogan can have validity).

Secondly, the historical link between Ireland and Scotland was examined and its contemporary manifestation in present-day Scotland considered. The important split in the working class - catholic versus protestant, orange versus green - was discussed in some depth with a number of comrades expressing surprise at the continuing potency of the ‘sectarian divide’. The replication of this poisonous split within the workers’ movement itself was pointed to and it was noted how the SSA and Scottish Militant Labour hide from the question. Opportunistically, these organisations fear opening up divisions internally and potentially alienating a section of their working class base.

Yet overcoming this crippling division in the working class is a key task in Scotland. This cannot be achieved by avoiding the question of Ireland or piously hoping - as many Trotskyites do - that low level, ‘bread and butter’ economic issues will heal the breach.

Lastly, comrades discussed the forms of organisation of a proletarian party, its centralism and the nature of the autonomy of its constituent parts. Concretely, this has gained great relevance with the centrifugal pressures on Militant Labour, one of our main opponents both in Scotland and the rest of the country.

ML’s decision to opt for what it calls ‘autonomy’ (in reality, the creation of an independent organisation) in Scotland was looked at. Internally the organisation writes that this move was prompted by “the objective situation in Scotland itself, or “the development of national consciousness means that the form of organisation appropriate to the rest of Britain is no longer appropriate to Scotland” (Members Bulletin 16). ML suggest that this “growth of a clear and distinct national consciousness must be recognised, above all by the revolutionary organisation” (ibid).

The idea that sectional divisions in the proletariat must find expression “above all” in the revolutionary Party is an idea inimical to Marxism. In fact, these spontaneously generated fissures must “above all” find least expression within a workers’ organisation: they should be consciously fought.

ML’s opportunism is located at a programmatic rather than organisational level, however. The tendency of the organisation to fragment is an expression of the reformist sectionalism of its basic politics. Deep immersion in the Labour Party for many decades and a myopic refusal to countenance any politics not narrowly concerned with what it defined as “the labour movement” gave this organisation cohesion and disguised this fundamental weakness. Splitting from Labour has precipitated a crisis of programme for ML, a crisis that finds current-day reflection in the powerful disintegrative pressures on it.

In contrast, the Bolshevik principle of ‘one state, one party’ informs our approach to revolutionary organisation. This means that in contrast to ML we are actually able to have autonomy for our constituent parts - the formulation was put forward for “the maximum degree of autonomy achievable, within a framework of the maximum degree of centralisation achievable”. Thus, unlike others, initiative and a wide degree of local autonomy for us do not express different programmatic appetites.

The school was judged a qualified success by participants, although the ongoing problem of insufficient preparation was felt by most comrades. Given the very different conditions our organisation straddles between Scotland and the rest of the country, schools and other events such as this are vital to us. In our perspectives document for 1997, we wrote that we must “constantly find bridges between our fight in Scotland and the rest of the country. It must run in parallel.”

Strains inevitably appear as our organisation fights to build itself as an organic part of genuine movements of advanced layers of the class. These must be consciously fought through deepening our theoretical understanding of the problems posed and how our organisation must intervene to resolve them in the interests of the working class.

Mark Fischer
national organiser