20.03.1997

SLP letters

Last week Socialist Labour's NEC received a flood of correspondence from members regarding the democracy of the party

SLP and Labour left

News has come to us that Arthur Scargill has written not only to all the political parties in Brent East but also to the returning officer to inform them that Stan Keable is not a Socialist Labour Party candidate. SLP members should be very clear that this matter should be sorted out by the party and the working class as a whole. We should certainly not look to the bourgeois state to act as arbiters in anything concerning our movement. The Communist Party of Britain adopted the same attitude in 1992, when it threatened to take the CPGB to court for publishing the Daily Worker. Though the CPB no longer used the title for its own newspaper, it still considered it its property. It backed down when the CPGB objected to the use of the bourgeois courts and demanded that the matter be put before the class, suggesting that Arthur Scargill should be amongst those workers’ leaders judging the case.

Here we reprint a letter from Stan Keable to Arthur Scargill regarding Brent East:

To: Arthur Scargill, acting general secretary/treasurer, Socialist Labour Party

General election:

Brent SLP Branch was pleased to see your forthright statements in Socialist News No4 confirming the Party’s implacable hostility to New Labour candidates in every constituency and in every ward in the country.

Socialist Labour “must contest elections wherever finances and resources allow”, you say, and “New Labour is no longer a party that socialists can be members of or support. Every New Labour candidate in the forthcoming general election must accept she or he is standing on behalf of a party that supports the free market and capitalism.”

“Socialist Labour’s purpose,” you say, “is to mobilise a united force to overthrow that enemy [capitalism], and go on to establish a socialist society.”

These sentiments we wholeheartedly endorse. They are in line with the principles on which the SLP was founded and with all the decisions of the party’s National Executive Committee to date, as far as we know.

However, we are baffled by recent reports of statements by you that the SLP would not stand in the general election against such New Labour MPs as Livingstone, Benn, Skinner and Corbyn. Presumably your article means either that these reports were untrue, or that you have changed your mind.

Was there a secret agreement that some or all of these MPs would join Socialist Labour after the general election? Or perhaps you are/were suffering from wishful thinking?

Brent East constituency:

We are awaiting NEC endorsement, or otherwise, of our decision to contest the Brent East constituency. I informed you of this decision in my letter of January 23, but have received no response as yet. I trust the National Executive Committee will discuss the matter at its meeting this coming weekend. In the absence of any communication, of course, we are preparing to go ahead with the contest.

Yours for socialism,
Stan Keable
Branch Secretary, and prospective parliamentary candidate for Brent East
Friday March 14

More on Vauxhall

Correspondence around the SLP South London branch and its ‘voided’ members continues:

Dear Ian Driver
Vauxhall Constituency Socialist Labour Party

Thank you for your faxed letter dated March 6 1997. I am extremely disappointed to receive your letter for a number of reasons.

1. I met you personally and discussed the situation fully and explained that on the basis of your letter and application to be the Socialist Labour Party’s candidate in Vauxhall I had no hesitation in supporting it.
2. I told you of my deep concern at the actions of the branch in Vauxhall in producing its own manifesto which is in direct conflict with that of the SLP - a point with which you agreed, particularly as it was also in conflict with your letter seeking the nomination for the parliamentary candidate.
3. I am not prepared to discuss decisions which relate to other individuals such as Barry Biddulph.
4. I believe it is extremely unwise for you to make statements about what occurred in the foyer of Conway Hall on Tuesday February 25 1997 unless you are aware of all the facts.
5. When you and I met on 25th February 1997 I told you I had written to the Vauxhall CSLP secretary asking for undertakings which were both reasonable and fair and in line with the constitution, a course of action with which you agreed. To date I have not received any reply to those questions.

Yours fraternally,
A Scargill
general secretary

To: Mr Arthur Scargill
general secretary, Socialist Labour Party

Thank you for your letter of March 7. I thought it may be helpful to clarify the situation concerning the so-called manifestos that were discussed by Vauxhall CSLP. These documents were for internal discussion only. They have never been voted on or adopted by the Vauxhall branch. Indeed, the Vauxhall CSLP passed a resolution which stated that the branch would fight the general election on the basis of the national policies of the SLP, a position I fully support, as indicated in my letter of application to be PPC for Vauxhall. I understand that the Vauxhall secretary did in fact write to you recently in answer to the questions you raised about so-called manifestos.

I very much hope that this information will reassure yourself and the NEC and that the branch will not be closed down. As I mentioned in my previous letter to you, the uncertainty over the future of the branch is causing great demoralisation amongst the membership. If this situation continues the Vauxhall general election campaign will be undermined and the SLP will lose a unique opportunity to win new recruits and become a political force in Brixton.

Yours sincerely,
Councillor Ian Driver
SLP PPC Vauxhall
March 14 1997

‘Voided’ member seeks democratic decision making

To Arthur Scargill

At the last meeting of the Vauxhall Constituency SLP, an overwhelming majority of comrades voted to continue to accept me as a member of the party, given the lack of any evidence that I have broken any party rule and the failure to provide me with any right to appeal. The comrades are asking you to provide me with a justification for my expulsion as requested in my open letter to you.

Terry Dunne, a member of the National Executive Committee, attended the meeting, claiming to speak on your behalf. He thought your attempt to kick me out of the party on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations, without the chance to answer any specific charges was fine. Instead of condemning arbitrary undemocratic actions he blamed the victim by alleging I should not have written my recent open letter to you. He asserted the issue of my expulsion was a private matter between myself and you.

The comrades were expected to believe that if I had written a confidential letter, you would have given me an explanation for your action. But if there was no problem providing an explanation why did you not do so in the first place? But this would have meant justifying my expulsion to the members of the SLP. I do not believe you could have justified your action.

Even worse, you do not feel the need to justify your action to the members. You treat expulsion of committed comrades as a private matter, as if the party is your private property. Your refusal to inform or consult the members of the party on expulsions shows contempt for the members. You view the members as passive recipients of your decisions in the rotten tradition of Labourism.

I am supposed to accept, without protest, being booted out of the party without any ceremony. Although you have trampled on the elementary democratic rights of myself and the membership I am expected to censor or gag myself and restrict my protest to writing a private letter to you.

Presumably, I have to give an assurance to you that any reply from you will be kept confidential, otherwise you would have had no problem making your reasons for my ‘voiding’ public among the party membership and its supporters.

Let us imagine that the private exchange of letters had taken place. I might have taken the view that your reply repeated unsubstantiated allegations or did not justify expulsion. You might then have replied that you were satisfied that there were grounds for expulsion. Where would we go from there? Only the party membership could resolve the deadlock. You would have had to seek to persuade members that the interests of the party justified my expulsion. You cannot do this, or rather you refuse to do this. The opinions of the membership do not matter to you. The members are treated as Victorian children: they should be seen and not heard.

Karl Liebknecht once explained that as a socialist leader of a genuine mass workers party, he could not dictate to members of the party, otherwise there would be an uproar. A socialist party with the aim of smashing capitalism and establishing socialism can only succeed by inculcating self-confidence and independence in the working class in general and in the party in particular. A party which teaches workers to be servile or passive will go along with capitalism, not overthrow it. This is why Liebknecht said that any labour leader, whatever their position, had to tolerate as he did open criticism and debate on his policies within the party. When no one can answer back, a ‘leader’ can get away with anything.

Hence the problem with bureaucrats and bureaucracy which has done so much damage to socialism and the workers’ movement. Marx based the struggle for socialism on the self-activity of the working class. This means establishing a culture among workers of defiance and standing up to those who try to oppress them.

The comrades of the Vauxhall Constituency have taken the view that an injury to one comrade is an injury to all. They have made it clear to you on a number of occasions that they wish to participate fully and freely in collective decision making. They will not accept the expulsion of a member of the Vauxhall CSLP or any other constituency without good reasons or a democratic disciplinary process. Terry Dunne made unsubstantiated allegations about me. Firstly my activities (unspecified) up and down the country were deemed to be unacceptable to you. And inevitably I was implicitly accused of membership of the CPGB. My politics are incompatible with membership of the CPGB. Indeed, I am well known for my polemics against the CPGB.

But membership of the CPGB is not the issue. Today you want to treat ex-members and supporters of the CPGB as witches; tomorrow it will be some other grouping or caucus within the party who dares to disagree with you or who wants democratic, collective debate and discussion on the policies of the party. Individuals who are bold enough to talk back will be accused of being a member of one tendency or another, even if they are not. In this regime servility and passiveness are a virtue. There can be no mass socialist party built on this bureaucratic basis. The Constituency Party has been threatened with disbandment simply for exercising their democratic right to discuss manifestos for the election.

But witch hunts have a ‘logic’ of their own. If some of the membership refuse to accept bureaucratic orders handed down from above without collective debate and discussion you can only depend on intimidation and threats rather than real authority based on winning hearts and minds.

On the party card of every member, including mine, is the slogan, “Our aims most modest are: we only want the earth”. The aims of myself and other revolutionary comrades are even more humble: we only want the democratic right to participate and formulate the socialist policy, strategy and tactics of the party. Without workers’ democracy there can be no socialism.

Barry Biddulph,
Vauxhall Constituency SLP
March 12 1997

‘Cooperate with all socialist organisations’

Clause IV (17) of Scargill’s draft ‘constitution’ lists the following as one of the SLP’s objects:

“To cooperate with all socialist organisations with a view to promoting objects, aims and policies of the party and to take common action with international socialist organisations in the campaigns to promote a higher standard of social and economic life for people throughout the world.”

We reproduce the text of a letter from SLP general secretary Arthur Scargill to an SLP councillor in Lewisham, south London:

Dear Tony Link

I am in possession of a ‘Joint Press Statement’ issued on January 20 1997 by councillor Ian Page and yourself indicating that you have joined forces to form what is known as ‘The Socialist Group’ on Lewisham council.

Could I remind you that the Socialist Labour Party have made it absolutely clear to Militant Labour (now known as the Socialist Party) that we will not enter into any alliances, pact, agreements or federal structures, etc with their organisation or indeed other organisations.

We were involved with many months of discussion with members of Militant Labour who insisted that they wanted to remain members of their own party thereby retaining the name ‘Militant Labour’ and join Socialist Labour in some kind of alliance or pact.

We made it absolutely clear that if it was good enough for Arthur Scargill after 33 years in the Labour Party to resign and join Socialist Labour, Bob Crow, assistant general secretary RMT, to resign from the Communist Party of Britain and join Socialist Labour and the former editor of Socialist Worker to join our party, then the same principle must apply to all others who wish to be members of our party.

In these circumstances I am writing to ask you not to be involved in a so-called ‘Socialist Group’, bearing in mind it is a breach of the constitution, and the last thing I want to do is become embroiled in a dispute with you about tactics which have been deployed or attempted by members of Militant Labour (the Socialist Party) in various parts of Britain.

The fact that Socialist Labour maintains its independence is its strength and one of the reason why we are now achieving levels of support in local and national elections of around 10% and have become the fourth largest party in Britain.

In these circumstances I would ask you to make: clear to councillor Ian Page that whilst you will support policies advanced by him or anyone else, provided they are in line with Socialist Labour policies, you will not be part of any pact or agreement, and certainly not be part of a ‘Socialist Group’ on Lewisham council with members of another political party.

Yours fraternally
A Scargill
general secretary
February 11 1997