WeeklyWorker

27.03.1997

Champions of pessimism

Should revolutionaries fight Labourism in the ballot box?

In the run-up to the May 1 general election there has been a marked reluctance in some quarters of the Socialist Labour Party to fight Blair’s Labour Party in its natural habitat - the ballot box. Implicitly what is proposed instead is the defeatist call to vote for New Labour’s candidates: ie, those whom Arthur Scargill has rightly castigated as “standing on behalf of a party that supports the free market and capitalism” and thus undeserving of any “support” from “socialists” (Socialist News March-April 1997).

That prospective parliamentary candidate Stan Keable and the whole of the Brent East Constituency SLP was voided in true Walworth Road style for daring to suggest a contest with Ken Livingstone testifies to Scargill’s theoretical confusion and political instability. That there is no right of appeal against the voiding - announced in, of all places, the Morning Star - only shows how authoritarian, unsure and fearful Scargill has become. Obviously his break with Labourism is flawed, contradictory and perhaps merely superficial. However, the necessity of building a working class alternative to the Labour Party remains.

The ‘vote Labour, but ...’ siren call stems from two interlinked ideological weaknesses, long characteristic of pro-Labour Trotskyism. Firstly, the tailist dogma that it is incumbent on revolutionaries to reflect or articulate the average consciousness of workers. Secondly, within the SLP the same school of thought dishonestly seeks to defend pro-Labourism with shopkeeper-like references to limited resources (it should be noted that the Socialist Workers Power uses exactly the same excuse to explain away its steadfast refusal to stand candidates).

Let us deal with these arguments each in turn.

“Amongst” the working class “there is”, writes Bernie McAdam of Birmingham SLP, “a widespread belief that Labour is their alternative to the Tories”. Citing the undeniable fact that millions think Labour is preferable to the Tories - they do not imagine it will bring socialism - and above all the “union link”, comrade McAdam argues we ought to help put Labour into office so as to “test them in practice” (Socialist Labour Action No1, November 1996). The ‘appeal’ by 24 SLP members in the South West likewise wants the “return of a New Labour government” because, they say, the “re-election of the Tories would be a disaster for the working class” (surely a slave class that merely chooses the butcher will be disastrously attacked by whatever bourgeois party is in office - a revolutionary class takes on all-comers and, as a by-product of its struggle, gains all manner of concessions).

Pro-Labour Trotskyism usually justifies itself by a scholastic misreading of Lenin’s ‘Leftwing’ communism. In 1920 Labour had never formed a government. Moreover, just two years before, the famous ‘socialist’ clause four was adopted in order to maintain Labour’s mass base in the combative and left-moving working class movement of the day. To overcome the socialist illusions workers had in Labour’s tops, Lenin proposed to the communists in Britain, that they “give these gentlemen a certain amount of parliamentary support ... as the rope supports the hanged man” (VI Lenin CW Vol 31, Moscow 1977, p88).

Lenin’s tactics are historically specific - it should hardly need saying. Even in their time they were fiercely contested by other important communist thinkers (on balance I consider Lenin correct). Nevertheless there was no intention of establishing a strategic principle, let alone some universal absolute. The 4th Congress of Comintern - Lenin’s last - referred to Britain as “an exception” (A Alder [ed] Theses, resolutions and manifestos of the first four congresses of the Third International London 1980, p404).

Self-evidentially in terms of programme and pretensions the Labour Party of the 1990s is not the Labour Party of the 1920s. Nor is the working class. Conditions have dramatically changed and new conditions demand new tactics. That does not mean Lenin’s 1920 “rope supports the hanged man” tactics will never again be applicable in respect to the Labour Party. Just that with Blairism and the absence of mass socialist consciousness - of any description - they are not valid now.

The pro-Labour Trotskyites turn Lenin’s tactics into their opposite - a passive and timeless formulation binding for every general election from 1920 to 1997. As a result of such rigid dogmatism the pro-Labour Trotskyites actually oppose those workers who having shed certain illusions in the Labour Party, are moving to the left. This inversion explains why Workers Power, for example, unashamedly backed Blair’s imposed candidate against the SLP’s Brenda Nixon in the Hemsworth by-election in February 1996.

Opportunism, not fear of the anti-communist witch hunt, keeps supporters of Socialist Labour Action silent on this unforgivable folly. Significantly there has been no criticism of Workers Power and others advocating a Labour vote against the SLP in the pages of Socialist Labour Action.

Understandably within the SLP the pro-Labour position is rather problematic. Therefore localist stratagems are invented. Pete Ashley, branch secretary of South West Wales, is not untypical.

He protests that his branch “was virtually forced to stand a candidate in Pontypridd” by the SLP’s National Executive Committee. Kim Howells, the sitting MP, would seem to be “an excellent target”. Nevertheless comrade Ashley tries to avoid a contest with this “particularly vile specimen of Blairism” by pleading lack of resources - this despite the claim that Scargill offered a £500 “bribe” if the branch “agreed to stand” (Socialist Labour Action No2 February 1997).

Comrade Ashley is quite correct when he - bravely - objects to the bureaucratic methods Scargill employs. He is also right to highlight the inherent dangers of having funds neither controlled nor accounted for by the SLP as a whole. Money which is mysteriously donated and secretly doshed out at the whim of an unelected acting general secretary breeds corruption and toadyism (London SLP election agent Tony Goss being a case in point). However comrade Ashley is wrong to suggest that standing candidates where the SLP has “no base” is “useless”. Goldsmith’s Referendum Party, Plaid Cymru and Scargill himself recognise the advantage of fielding sufficient candidates to guarantee nationwide publicity and thereby win a nationwide following.

The revolutionary left has no problem with selling their papers outside Sainsburys whether or not they possess a local base. The idea of not trying to engage with people because of the lack of grassroots support would be dismissed as a self-defeating absurdity. Yet, when it comes to the parliament of the bourgeoisie, it suddenly becomes obligatory to have a pre-existing organisation and network. This is indeed a “symptom of parliamentary cretinism”.

Comrade Ashley also worries about the “squandering of resources” represented by Scargill’s determination to stand 100 candidates (67 have been confirmed, as I write these lines). Frankly the comrade displays the narrow minded mentality of the shopkeeper. He presumably reckons there exists a pot of money, a fixed hoard, that ought to be spent on “real campaigning, local leaflets and bulletins”, etc.

Of course the fact of the matter is that Scargill has been able to secure large donations from various rich popsters and lawyers precisely because he boldly set his sights on fielding 100 candidates. High goals generate high levels of commitment.

Comrade Ashley’s arid localist whinging will generate nothing, even locally.

The Communist Party of Great Britain has long argued for the building of a mass leftwing alternative to the Labour Party. That is why we welcomed Scargill’s perspective of 100 candidates and why we are doing our utmost to ensure that this ambitious aim is realised.

Naturally the CPGB will support those candidates in the SLP and the Scottish Socialist Alliance who defend our Communist manifesto (to be published in early April). We also unhesitatingly urge workers to give critical support for all other leftwing candidates - Socialist Party, Scottish Socialist Alliance and SLP. Whatever the reformist shortcomings of their official manifestos, they mark a break with the Labour Party - albeit awkwardly, unevenly and incompletely. Within these political formations we have the raw material communists need to begin the building of a real proletarian alternative to Labour and the inhuman capitalist system it serves.

Does this line mean boycott and abstention in the 500 or so constituencies where there is no leftwing alternative to the Labour candidate? Certainly not. The Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB puts forward this minimum election platform:

If Labour candidates are willing to publicly campaign on this set of demands - which are in no way revolutionary - we say workers ought to consider supporting them. If however they refuse, such candidates are unworthy of any support. If they defend Blair’s New Labour manifesto they must be actively opposed and exposed. As we have said before and will continue to repeat, that includes Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Alan Simpson, Jeremy Corbyn, Dennis Skinner and other members of the Socialist Campaign Group.

There can be no alternative to Blair’s New Labour unless we are willing to challenge its leftwing representatives in the ballot box.

Jack Conrad