06.02.1997

Struggle for democracy takes centre stage

Brent Socialist Labour Party has sent out this press release in response to articles in the Morning Star. It is calling on the support of other branches for their right to select their own candidate for the election and against the witch hunt

Row erupts in Scargill's SLP

Stan Keable (prospective SLP parliamentary candidate for Brent East constituency) last night rejected claims from the acting general secretary of the Socialist Labour Party - Arthur Scargill - that he was “not a member of our party” and that the party would not be challenging Ken Livingstone in the next general election (see Scargill’s statement, Moring Star Monday February 3).

Mr Keable said:

“I am a member of the party - my membership number is 1069. I am a committee member of West London Branch and secretary of Brent East Constituency SLP. It is amazing that Arthur claims otherwise. If this report is true, this infringes the rights of all ordinary members of the party. The Brent East Constituency SLP is a properly constituted organisation.

“The party leadership has told CSLPs that they have the right to choose candidates and run their own campaigns - why has Arthur Scargill now decreed that Brent East CSLP is denied its democratic rights?

“There seem to be two possibilities:

“First, there is the fact that I am a communist. I have never hidden this. Unfortunately, there seems to be a growing witch hunt in the SLP against communists, a McCarthyite purge of revolutionaries in an attempt to mould the SLP as a ‘Labour Party - Mark II’. What a tragedy that Arthur Scargill - a man who stood against similar witch hunts in the Labour Party - is perhaps now involved in them himself.

“Second, Livingstone calls himself a ‘left winger’ and demands the support of socialists on that basis. There seems to be an unspoken understanding among some elements of our leadership that the SLP will not stand against those it regards as ‘good left wingers’, despite the fact that they are campaigning for an anti-working class Blair government.

“There is huge confusion in the ranks of the SLP on this. We have been told by leading members to give “no vote” to any Labour candidate. Now Scargill announces that the SLP “never intended to contest and will not be contesting London’s Brent East constituency in the general election,” and that the Constituency Party’s decision to put SLP policy into practice is annulled.

“The SLP leadership cannot be allowed to run rough-shod over the rights of the party membership. This party is not the property of any one leader - no matter what their record in the struggle. The SLP belongs to all working class fighters who want to present a challenge to Blair’s scab party. All working class organisations and political groups should have the right to openly affiliate to the SLP - we need a democratic party, not a bureaucratic sect.

“Despite the intervention of the SLP’s acting general secretary, the SLP in Brent east will be challenging Ken Livingstone’s right to the votes of the working class. I will put the case for socialism against those who put the interests of either Blair’s Labour or their own personal careers before those of the working class”.

In his original documents calling for the creation of the SLP, Scargill bemoaned the witch-hunting of communists in the Labour Party of the 1920s and 30s. Yet one month later, with the help of top lawyers Mike Mansfield and John Hendy, he produced a constitution that explicitly banned the affiliation of “individuals and organisations ... which have their own programme, principles and policies, distinctive and separate propaganda.”

Since then, people identified as “members or supporters of the Communist Party of Great Britain” have been witch hunted in the SLP.

Ironically, the witch hunter generals themselves have been members of a secret faction - the Fourth International Supporters Caucus. Thus, Scargill - a man who calls himself a “Marxist” - is using underground Trotskyists in the SLP leadership to hound those accused of being “members or supporters of the Communist Party”.

There is a growing mood of rebellion amongst the rank-and-file, a sentiment coordinated by the Left Network, a wide grouping in the party campaigning for democracy and the right of other working class organisations to affiliate. The Left Network will be organising an open ‘conference for SLP democracy in June. The SLP is in crisis at the top, with the recent resignation of Pat Sikorski, the general secretary, himself a leading member of the Fourth International Supporters Caucus.

Scargill’s attitude to Livingstone is all the harder to understand given the Labour MP’s active hostility to the SLP. When the party was launched in May of last year, he implied that it was doing the work of MI5 in splitting the anti-Tory vote. Also, Livingstone moved Scargill’s expulsion from the Campaign Group for supporting a rival party to Labour.