Letters

Labour cretinism

There are many groups on the left calling for a critical vote for the Labour Party. However, of all the organisations not actually inside Labour, the Workers Power group is probably the one which is advocating the most confused and rightwing electoral tactic.

The Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International recognises that most organised workers have the illusion that if Labour gets rid of the Tories, they could be in a better position to fight back. We want to be with them and push the party, which they regard as their own, into power. However, we also have to take into account that Labour is standing on a completely Conservative programme which, instead of offering any new social reforms, is promising to maintain all the Tories’ measures against the workers.

Despite the low level of class struggle some significant socialist parties with relative influence are developing against Labour. The Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party are playing an important role in demonstrations. The latter has been able to build mass support in places like Coventry, Scotland, etc. The Socialist Labour Party obtained five percent in two parliamentary by-elections and higher percentages in some local elections. We also need to approach those milieus.

Nevertheless, Workers Power is against any kind of critical vote for left candidates standing against Labour. In their special electoral issue (April) they said that they will not vote for Scargill, Nellist, Sheridan or any socialist candidates outside the Labour Party.

For them the SLP and the SP “represent nothing” and they want Labour to win as many seats as possible from the Tories. Nellist was a ‘Trotskyist’ MP for Coventry, who previously obtained around 40% of the votes. Nevertheless, WP, who have an active branch in that city, told people not to vote for Militant Labour (now the SP), but for Labour.

We are very critical of both the SLP and the SP. However, both currents have broken from Labour after being in that party for decades, and they represent a layer of the working class and youth who are trying to create a socialist alternative to Blair’s neo-Toryism.

In Newport Arthur Scargill is standing against Alan Howarth, a former Tory MP who fought against the miners’ strike and is now New Labour’s candidate. Nevertheless, WP has published a special leaflet for South West Cardiff, which openly calls on workers to vote for Alan Howarth, not Arthur Scargill. Howarth supported all Thatcher’s privatisations and anti-union laws and was involved in an organisation which specialised in closing companies and smashing strikes and demonstrations.

Around 20 Labour Party members in the area have resigned and said that they will campaign for Scargill. When supporters of this bourgeois workers’ party are trying to oppose Howarth, we have to be with them.

The Workers Power leaflet asks: “But isn’t Alan Howarth a Tory? Didn’t he actively help close down the pits?” They answer, “Yes”! Nevertheless, because “Scargill’s programme offers no coherent alternative to Labour”, they are calling on workers not to break with the bourgeois politicians entering New Labour.

Scargill has a left reformist manifesto. However, he also represents some kind of limited class struggle militancy against the bosses. Revolutionaries are obliged to march together with all Labourite workers who are trying to break with imposed rightwing bourgeois, anti-working class candidates and to give critical support to Scargill.

In an electoral battle between the leader of the biggest post-war strike in Britain and a capitalist from the Thatcher team which organised the attacks on the miners’ strike, WP choose to publicly campaign in favour of Howarth.

For Workers Power (April) voting for Labour has become not just a tactical issue, but a strategic one:

“The main task of the working class in this election is to kick the Tories out. The election is a class struggle between a party of the unions and an outright party of capitalists.”

We are in favour of kicking out the Tories, but we also have to warn the workers that New Labour will maintain and defend Toryism. It is completely one-sided to present the British class struggle between workers and bosses as an electoral war between Tory Blair and Major. Labour is a bourgeois workers’ party, but in this dialectic relation the bourgeois element is becoming the predominant one. Blair is committed to finally destroying anything remaining of Labour’s working class character.

Paradoxically, despite the fact that WP will vote Labour in every constituency bar one and although every issue of Workers Power proclaims in its ‘Where we stand’ column they are “for the building of a revolutionary tendency in the Labour Party”, they do not do any work inside it. They did not participate actively in the campaigns against the abolition of clause four or for keeping the union links. Their complete abstentionism in Labour’s internal struggle is counterposed by an extremist tailing of Labour from the outside.

When the SLP was launched, WP stated that they “welcome Arthur Scargill’s call for discussions on the left to consider the establishment of an SLP”, and committed themselves to building a “revolutionary SLP”. (Workers Power December 1995). Later WP’s youth organisation, Revolution, applied to join the SLP. In 1996 a lot of comrades who were formerly in WP joined the SLP.

WP is putting a lot of energy into giving advice to these former members. However, WP is telling SLP members that they should not give any kind of support to any SLP candidate - except one. In Cardiff Central, “Workers Power wholeheartedly supports Terry Burns” as the only candidate standing on a revolutionary programme - a programme drafted by Socialist Labour Action.

Vauxhall in south London is one of the biggest and most leftwing SLP branches. It was voided by Scargill, but has called on the rest of the left in Vauxhall to join a united front electoral campaign for Ian Driver, the candidate. WP is sitting on the sidelines, or - more properly - on the terrain of the New Labour candidate, against the SLP.

Some comrades from Socialist Labour Action are openly saying that the SLP is a Stalinist party that has become impossible to change and that it is time to find a new revolutionary organisation. They are openly sympathising with Workers Power. We ask them, are you prepared to work with a sectarian and Labour cretinist organisation, which is probably the only group on the left to have specially produced a leaflet advocating a vote for a Tory bourgeois politician against Scargill, and that is backing every Blairite against SLP candidates (with the exception of Cardiff Central, but including leftwing branches like Vauxhall)?

John Stone
LCMRCI

Do your own thing

The debate concerning relations between Class War and the Anarcho-Communist Federation needs clarifying and some of the facts need to emerge from behind the cloud of personal hostility and name-calling threatening to obscure it. I have been to a number of the ACF national delegates meetings where the position of Class War was discussed and can therefore make the following ‘strong’ statements:

1. The ACF has never sought nor encouraged the ‘liquidation’ of Class War and its merger with the ACF - quite the reverse. We deeply regret any weakening of Class War as a national organisation of class struggle while at the same time respecting the right of Class War as an organisation and individual members to adopt whatever form of organisation thought best to carry forward the class struggle.

2. Individual members have approached the ACF to propose a merger process - as an organisation we have always rejected these overtures and proposals lock, stock and barrel and referred the individuals back to Class War and their own comrades.

3. At the same time the ACF, as it has always done, holds out a fraternal and sisterly hand to all individuals and groups who share our perspectives and analysis and approach the class struggle from the point of view of libertarian communism. As a federation of individuals and groups we recognise the difficulty of fighting in isolation and therefore welcome the continued participation of members or ex-members of Class War in the networks and campaigns of class struggle we ourselves are active in.

4. We believe very strongly that the anarchist movement needs organisations and groups of all kinds, especially those like Class War which seek to radicalise and mobilise the working class, and organisations like ourselves that seek to broaden and deepen understanding of the class struggle amongst radicalised elements - we may disagree about tactics, perspectives and timing, but here in the ACF we wholly reject monolithic, elitist or vanguardist structures, preferring instead cooperation, solidarity and mutual aid with all groups working towards revolution.

5. Finally, the ACF dismisses artificial structures and federations as the irrelevant straightjacket they are. We actively participate in international networks and offer international solidarity to those libertarian communists who will work with us (no small number). We see no point in trying to squeeze anarchists into a single organisation, however loose or unstructured, when the needs of the class struggle and the condition of our times demands something radically different.

Let Class War decide for itself how it is to proceed without interference, malicious or well-meaning. So long as the movement is strengthened (short-term or long-term) by whatever comes about, the ACF will welcome it. We will also try to combat those who view developments in the movement as an opportunity for posturing and mischief-making - people whose self-importance unfortunately gets in the way of the real tasks ahead.

Jerry Spencer (personal capacity)
ACF

Angry and sad

Weekly Worker readers may find interesting the fact that the Socialist Labour Party has imposed parliamentary candidates without the knowledge of local branches.

I received a telephone call on April 4 from an employee of BBC Essex radio station. She asked me if I could supply the phone number of Brendan Kelly, whom she described as the SLP candidate for Harlow.

I was surprised, to say the least. I was the secretary/treasurer of Harlow Constituency SLP and had never heard of Brendan Kelly. He is not a member of Harlow CSLP and we had not decided to contest the Harlow Constituency.

I was told that BBC Essex had been telephoned by Bob Crow about a month ago and he had informed them that Brendan Kelly was the SLP candidate for Harlow. Crow is a member of the NEC of the SLP and is also assistant general secretary of the RMT, the rail union.

Clause 8 of the SLP constitution states that CSLP shall be responsible for selecting candidates to contest parliamentary elections. However, this rule does not seem to apply in the case of Harlow. I have heard of similar cases in other CSLPs.

Mr Crow’s actions are not only violations of the SLP constitution, they are also extremely personally offensive. To be treated in such a fashion after expending considerable effort in building the SLP locally makes me both angry and sad. It is one of the factors that have led to my resignation from the SLP.

I advise readers to have nothing to do with the bureaucratic, arrogant, incompetent, self-deluded and disrespectful leadership of the SLP.

John Wake
(former) secretary/treasurer, Harlow SLP