30.01.1997

Stockport’s EPSR sectarians defeated

The witch hunting homophobes that make up the Economic and Philosophical Science Review have attempted to hijack Stockport SLP branch for their own narrow, sectarian project. The other members in Stockport called a full branch meeting to halt the witch hunting and remove Roy Bull, the EPSR leader, from the chair. To date no reply has been received from the NEC as to the status of Stockport branch and the motions carried at that meeting

Economic and Philosophical Science Review leader and former Stockport Socialist Labour Party branch chair, Royston Bull, will resign from the SLP unless its National Executive Committee expels from membership the Stockport branch secretary, John Pearson. This threat (or promise?) is contained in a voluminous correspondence from Bull to SLP general secretary, Patrick Sikorski, which was revealed to Stockport SLP members last week, at a meeting convened by NEC member Phil Griffin.

Fourteen branch members attended the meeting, twice the number present at a branch meeting on November 28 1996, when Bull and his EPSR followers had ambushed Pearson with a resolution demanding the latter’s expulsion (Weekly Worker December 12 1996). Moving a motion to reaffirm the petition for expulsion, Bull elaborated his three charges - gross provocation against the SLP, disruption of the SLP’s work, and membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The gross provocation was comrade Pearson’s leafleting of a Manchester SLP rally with a Revolutionary Caucus leaflet, in which the contact telephone number was that of a ‘voided’ SLP member. The “disruption” of the SLP’s work was Pearson’s action in writing to the SLP general secretary expressing astonishment at a statement made by Arthur Scargill at a Manchester rally to the effect that the inaugural SLP congress on May 4 1996 had approved the Party’s constitution (Weekly Worker November 21 1996).

Pearson had asked Sikorski for a copy of the minutes of the congress, in order to inform discussion when he raised this matter in the Stockport branch. The charge of CPGB membership remained largely assertive, the only ‘evidence’ offered being that Pearson was, on several occasions, present when Bull met other Manchester SLP comrades whom he alleged were CPGB members, and that Pearson “followed the CPGB’s agenda” in his interventions in Stockport SLP business.

Bull’s motion to reaffirm the expulsion was defeated by eight votes to six, the six being the EPSR supporters. By seven votes to six, a resolution was carried which declared no confidence in Bull as branch chair; which annulled the proceedings of the November 28 meeting; and which adopted an interim disciplinary procedure for use in the branch until a national procedure exists.

By the same majority, it was resolved to request the NEC to order that new branch officer elections be held. Comrade Griffin cautioned that, as he had convened and chaired the meeting, it did not have the same status of a Stockport constituency branch meeting. Rather, it was of an indicative status, and it would inform the report that he was to make to the NEC, whose decision is now awaited.

David Reed