13.03.1997

March aggregate

Party notes

The Communist Party’s March members’ aggregate debated developments in key areas of the Party’s work - Scotland and the Socialist Labour Party.

Before unanimously adopting the ‘Thesis on the national question in Scotland’ submitted by one leading comrade (see back page), the meeting had a frank and lively exchange on our work in Scotland, and weaknesses in it identified by the Party majority.

First, our organisation in Scotland was criticised for a wrong political method. In the context of the important shifts in Scottish Militant Labour, the burgeoning mass movement around the national question, we seem overly concerned with tenuous agreements with small, irrelevant grouplets on the fringes of the movement.

The aggregate emphasised that the impetus of the boycott campaign we have initiated must not be made contingent on these types of negotiations. The campaign has the potential for mass appeal and that is the understanding that should frame our work around it.

Second, the aggregate stressed that the call for a boycott of Labour’s rigged referendum must be the cutting edge of our intervention. The toothless option that will be put to the Scottish people by Blair is already quite explicit. It is not an abstraction, but a fact of political life. Therefore, the idea that we should at this stage be at pains to emphasise the ‘positive’ by campaigning for an option on the referendum paper that does embody the right to self-determination is wrong. We must say now that we will boycott Blair’s insulting sop to the national movement.

Thirdly, a potential difference over the question of Scottish ‘nationhood’ was posed, but not explored, given the unavoidable absence of a leading comrade from Scotland. This comrade ‘floated’ rather than concretely proposed an amendment to point 6 of the ‘Thesis’, replacing the phrase “mythical nationhood” with “mythologised nationhood”.

As pointed out by comrades, this altered the meaning of the passage to its exact opposite. Such an idea - that seems to suggest that the new Scottish nationalism sprang from a Scottish nationhood with long historical roots, coated by layers of mythology - would need far more debate and discussion in our ranks. It did not even make an explicit appearance at our recent school in Scotland which - as I reported (Weekly Worker January 30) - appeared to concur on the “myth of Scottish historical nationhood and the formation of the contemporary Scottish nationality as a conscious social artefact during the 19th century”.

While we did not have the opportunity to discuss this apparent difference at length in the aggregate, it would be a useful debate to carry into the pages of our paper.

The political situation in Scotland remains dynamic and exciting and the work of our comrades has positioned us well to make tremendous progress.

Given this, we wrote in the Party Perspectives document for this year that “as an organisation we should look to direct resources [to Scotland] as a springboard for real potential growth ...” Consequently, the Provisional Central Committee has allocated a leading member from Centre to live and work in Scotland, to help the ongoing intervention of our comrades there.

We are issuing the call to comrades to support this work. We need to substantially refurbish our office there, to produce a wide range of publicity materials and ensure comrades can be sustained as full-timers.

Comrades will be asked in the coming weeks for donations of their money, materials - such as office equipment - and time. As always however, don’t wait to be asked, comrades.

The aggregate also discussed recent developments in the SLP. It was underlined that despite the witch hunt, the growing sense of demoralisation in its ranks and lack of backbone of the left, the SLP remains a very important arena for the intervention of the Party.

Any slide to desertion of the fight should be vigorously fought by us. The SLP left needs unity against the witch hunt, a fact that so far seems to have escaped it. Our role must be to actively promote that unity, drawing on historical parallels such as the National Left Wing Movement.

Lastly, the aggregate briefly discussed the Communist University ’97, although by then little more could be done other than take an indicative vote on the suggested venue in Scotland. It was emphasised that a draft agenda must be produced as soon as possible for work around this year’s event to really get going. Comrades will have more information on this very soon.

Mark Fischer,
national organiser