17.04.1997

Openness to defeat witch hunt

SL Kenning looks at latest developments in the Socialist Labour Party

Sunday April 13 saw an important meeting of Socialist Labour Party democrats in Central London. Called by Vauxhall Constituency SLP some 40 comrades came together to discuss and answer Arthur Scargill’s ongoing witch hunt. Despite significant differences of political opinion and tradition there was a militant determination to build a united fight for democracy in the SLP.

The meeting was introduced by Ian Driver, Vauxhall parliamentary candidate and Peckham councillor. The comrade began with an impassioned and heartfelt attack on the arbitrary and bureaucratic internal regime in the SLP. He demanded an end to the witch hunt and solidarity with all voided members and branches. The SLP is not the property of one man but the membership. Without a democratic appeals procedure the SLP is in danger of being destroyed as a vehicle for socialism, he said.

After an interesting, though far too brief, exchange of views and experiences the meeting overwhelmingly agreed to support comrade Driver’s petition to the National Executive Committee and the June 7 Campaign for a Democratic SLP conference. A seven-point resolution proposed by Kirstie Paton, Vauxhall branch secretary, on expulsions was also passed (one point blaming Scargill for “discrediting the SLP” fell). It reads as follows.

This conference:

1. Opposes the witch hunt. The NEC and the general secretary have launched a witch hunt against socialists in the party through bureaucratic expulsions of members and closing of branches.
2. Will defy these expulsions by recognising all comrades expelled/voided by the NEC and all branches dissolved by the NEC.
3. Recognises the Vauxhall CSLP, Brent CSLP.
4. Recognises the candidates in Brent East and Cardiff Central.
5. Declares that Arthur Scargill and the NEC are in breach of working class democracy and the constitution.
6. Demands the party organises an emergency SLP congress to discuss the attacks on democracy in the SLP.
7. Will issue a public statement exposing the NEC witch hunt of socialists in the party and [support? - SLK] the campaign for democracy launched by party members.

John Bridge, voided Camden secretary, successfully proposed an additional eighth, clause calling for an “open publication” to campaign for democracy in the SLP and socialism in the broad workers’ movement. This amendment proved rather controversial. A heterogeneous minority came together against the principle of openness.

One obviously sincere trade union activist feared that openness will always damage the workers’ movement because of the ubiquitous bourgeois media. Our enemies cynically use the left’s criticisms as raw material to serve their nefarious purposes. She cited the effect that the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian had on her workmates the day after comrade Paton boldly challenged Scargill at the SLP’s manifesto launch press conference.

We all experienced the same thing from non-members. Is Scargill a left reformist version of Stalin? Why has Scargill turned on the left? Why has Vauxhall SLP been voided? However, instead of confidently and patiently explaining the situation and presenting the case for workers to join the SLP on the side of the opposition, the comrade felt undermined.

Let us be clear - silence plays into the hands of Scargill’s witch hunt and demoralises the masses. We cannot avoid a hard battle within the SLP. It is mere wishful thinking to imagine that ‘internal peace’ can reign. The choice is not between ‘internal peace’ and ‘inner-party struggle’. The real choice is this: either concealed forms of inner-party struggle from which the mass of workers cannot learn; or open, principled struggle by the democratic trend against Scargill and his Fisc, Bullite and Stalin Society allies.

All ‘dirty linen’ must be washed in public. Naturally there are those who will mock us and rejoice that the SLP is riven with civil war. No doubt some elements within the opposition - not excluding ourselves - will do mistaken or misjudged things. Nevertheless we must never sacrifice the bitter truth for the sake of a sweet lie. The SLP’s serious illness could be the growing pains of what still can become a mass party. And there can be no mass party, no party of the class, without full clarity on the differences, without informing the masses about which leaders and which groups in the party are pursuing this or that line. Without such transparency a workers’ party worthy of the name cannot be built ... and we are building it.

Personal ego and ambition, past standing, factional dogma and the desire for petty revenge - all these things are utterly trivial in comparison with the task of winning the masses to understand the need to take sides between those whose socialism is bureaucratic, national and reformist and those whose socialism is democratic, revolutionary and internationalist. To use one of Lenin’s very apt dictums: “Publicity is a sword that heals the wound it itself makes.”

There is another, altogether more trivial, objection. Given the undeniable existence of different groups, trends and views amongst the SLP opposition, one comrade insisted that an “open publication” would simply display incoherence and thereby sow confusion in the working class. From the same quarter came the ludicrous charge that the majority was determined on a split and that an “open publication” more or less guaranteed it.

Yet despite this the comrade and his co-thinkers quite rightly call for discussion and debate in the SLP, including in Socialist News. Admittedly opinions within the SLP range across a wide spectrum of thought - from old Labour left reformism to some of the most exotic forms of ‘left’ communism. But only frightened mediocrats want to treat the working class as children. Only those whose theory is brittle and anachronistic suppose that the contest between different political opinions necessarily results in chaos. On the contrary, as explained by the ‘dead Russian’ quoted above, to “establish the fullest clarity” we need “frankness and outspokenness in the relations between the various groups, trends and shades in our Party” (VI Lenin CW Vol 7, Moscow 1977, p405). This applies today and it applies to the SLP.

If it is to liberate itself and humanity as a whole, the working class requires the truth. As Marxism stresses, enlightenment comes through a combination of mastering science and self-activity - certainly not pedagogical spoon feeding. Science by definition requires the oxygen of openness and the free exchange and clash of different ideas (see how physicists or biologists fight it out with each other in the pages of Nature).

Ironically, showing the defeatism and a tendency towards hypocrisy, a group of comrades amongst the minority announced at the end of the meeting the first edition of Socialist Labour Marxist Bulletin. Though it is purportedly “published for members of the party”, no one - not least the publishers - has the slightest doubt that it will freely circulate throughout the left. The difference between the position of the majority and the Marxist Bulletin minority of the minority is that we are for a publication that organically develops from and within the structures of the SLP and is open to all those in the SLP fighting for democracy.

The Marxist Bulletin is a typically closed, dull and sectarian project. Clones alone write. No differences amongst the true believers will see the light of day. Here is an unintentional mirror image of Socialist News.

Having formally liquidated themselves, the comrades entered the SLP and ridiculously demanded that the CPGB and every other left organisation do exactly the same. For a while ultra-loyalism was the ruling stratagem. Hence, though it has never been debated nor voted upon, the Scargill ‘constitution’ was the ‘constitution’ everyone has to obey. Gary Henson, for example, still enforces the voiding of John Bridge by refusing to invite him to Hampstead and Highgate Constituency SLP meetings - as was done by Camden branch. His pitiable excuse for reversing previous practice is that comrade Bridge’s name does not appear on the official membership roll.

Now the comrades have gathered two or three recruits - mainly if not all old associates. Oh what a triumph! Oh what prospects! By ostentatiously listing themselves as the editorial collective, comrades Anton Angelo, Ian Dudley, Gary Henson, Christoph Lenk, Geoff Palmer, Nathan Parkin, Gill Plimmer and Russell Starr are deliberately setting themselves up for voiding and martyrdom (either that or they are stupid - and that I do not believe). Thanks to the blind, remorseless logic of the Scargill witch hunt, the public reconstitution of their feeble sect is nigh.

Amongst the April 13 majority too there are those intent on a split. In my estimation Socialist Labour Action was established solely to rescue former Workers Power members for Workers Power. Comrade Paton has done a splendid job - but not for the working class.

Within the SLP Socialist Labour Action takes what appears on the surface to be an intransigent position. However loud protests against imposed candidates and the absence of any discussion on electoral tactics hide another agenda. In reality Socialist Labour Action acts as a pro-Labour Party fifth column.

Workers Power, it should be pointed out, backs a lone SLP candidate - Terry Burns in Cardiff Central. (Encouragingly comrades in Cardiff report a lively response to their revolutionary SLP election literature - incidentally I would like to put on record my agreement with the Cardiff and Brent East decision to draw up their own manifestos in defiance of Scargill’s imposed and undemocratic constitution.) Everywhere else however Workers Power supports a vote for Tony Blair’s pro-capitalist party.

Socialist Labour Action maintains a dishonest but significant silence on this abject fawning before New Labour and the treacherous refusal to back SLP, Scottish Socialist Alliance and Socialist Party candidates, who taken together represent a significant left break with the Labour Party. Shame on you, comrades.

As with the Marxist Bulletin, Socialist Labour Action fails to grasp the principle of openness. Scargill is freely criticised - true. Nevertheless, when it comes to their own ranks, differences are hidden or suppressed. Clearly this is the method of a cult, a sect, continued into the SLP.

Tiny splits from the SLP can do nothing for the great cause of the working class. The fight for socialism requires a real mass workers’ party. Sectarian dishonesty and exclusiveness must be finally discarded. A united and open campaign is needed against the witch hunt. Through such a sound and invigorating method we can and must recruit wide layers in the class to join the SLP as conscious partisans of inner-party democracy and revolutionary socialism.