17.04.1997

April aggregate

Party notes

The April members’ aggregate of the Party discussed a number of immediate questions relating to our work in the coming period. Although the meeting tended to be overshadowed by the looming general election and the practical tasks that currently embroil us, it did take a number of decisions that comrades need to take note of.

First, a draft programme for Communist University ’97 was agreed. This programme underlines the determination of our organisation to engage with elements of the revolutionary left who are either in the process of breaking from Labour, or whose positions are characterised by fluidity. The unstated theme of the school this year could therefore be said to be ‘the Party question’.

For example, it is proposed that we invite the likes of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to debate around the question of the immediate practical tasks facing revolutionaries posed by the right drift of Labour - the creation of a new ‘Labour Representation Committee’ or a reforged Communist Party? Other sessions will hopefully include leading figures from the cohering Socialist Labour Party left, from the Socialist Party and prominent left intellectuals such as István Mészáros.

Thus the school should be seen in the context of the Party’s ongoing pursuit of communist rapprochement during this period. Indeed, the aggregate concurred that the time has come for a ‘repackaging’ of this important tactic, for a line to be drawn under our experience so far and for more serious organisations of the revolutionary left to be approached.

With this in mind, the majority view of the meeting was that it would be inappropriate to hold the school in Scotland this year. We would be unlikely to really pull any numbers locally and given geography, we would minimise our chances of getting invited speakers along. Comrades certainly felt that a central London venue would be a problem - given domestic and everyday work pressures on the majority of comrades, there would be a tendency for the school to atomise at the end of the day. Thus, it was suggested to comrades responsible for finding venues that a residential site in the environs of London would be ideal, a compromise that would allow us the advantage of centrality, but still bring the cohesiveness that is an important part of every school.

Next, the aggregate accepted a proposal from the Provisional Central Committee to bring forward this year’s Summer Offensive - formally, it will be launched on May l and in practice at a special meeting on Sunday, May 4. The overall target set in our perspectives document for 1997 - £25,000 for the two-month campaign - was confirmed by the meeting and the individual minimum for members agreed.

Of course, comrades will be getting more detailed internal information in due course, as well as articles in the Weekly Worker explaining the history of the Offensive and its centrality in the fight to build this organisation. However, it is worthwhile emphasising here one aspect of this campaign particularly pertinent to us, given the pressures on us during this period - its feature as an annual purge of the Party.

In this column a number of months ago, I drew attention to a certain

“unravelling around the edges of the Party ... [caused by] the corrosive effects of this hard period on individual communist cadre [and] the fact that much of the Party’s work at the moment rubs us up against the Socialist Labour Party, a social democratic organisation characterised by the traditional British sloppiness and lack of commitment” (Weekly Worker December 19 1996).

Despite our best intentions, these negative features have continued. The Summer Offensive offers us perhaps the best opportunity available to the Party to confront and root them out in a comprehensive purge of our organisation.

In previous years, some more sensitive comrades have objected to the SO being referred to as our annual purge, given the negative connotations this word has acquired in our movement. Primarily however, we are not looking to purge comrades from our ranks, but bad practice and uncommunist methods of work. Thus, we should look to involve far broader ranges of Party supporters and sympathisers in the fund-raising work this year. One of the characteristics of the “deterioration in discipline amongst elements of the membership” (ibid) is our criminal tendency to treat new contacts around the Party far too casually. All should be encouraged to take part in the Offensive at the highest possible level. Summer Offensive ’97 should be used to toughen up our existing comrades and to make new members out of our periphery of supporters and sympathisers.

Mark Fischer
national organiser