Letters

Rapprochement hiatus

The rapprochement process launched by our organisation two years ago has reached something of a hiatus. The initial phase of the process was something more of a testing ground - the ‘organisations’ we were dealing with were hardly up to the tasks of communist rapprochement. These organisations have either turned to dust, such as the International Socialist Group, preferring the armchair to the rigours of communist organisation, or retreated to their various sectarian fantasy worlds. The Trotskyist Unity ‘Group’ is a case in point.

I for one was never very comfortable with this stage of rapprochement, feeling that these small grouplets tended to give the process an air of eccentricity rather than that of a serious project, which it undoubtedly is.

The next phase of rapprochement will be oriented towards far more seriously minded organisations - the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party and revolutionaries in the Socialist Labour Party. It is with such a stage in mind that I wonder why Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic ‘Group’ continues to push for further declarations between the Provisional Central Committee and his ‘group’.

It is obvious to anyone involved with our organisation at any serious level that the RDG exists in name alone. In practice it remains as a convenient foil tor one individual to avoid the inevitable.

In no way can the RDG be judged as a serious organisation. It simply does not come up to scratch. It is unable to mobilise its ‘membership’, it does not publish and it has less than zero impact on the organisation of which it purports to be an external faction (the SWP).

The final straw for me - and, believe me, those who accept the leadership of the PCC have been patient - was at the recent launch of the CPGB’s 14th Summer Offensive, when Dave Craig of the RDG failed to make a pledge to our annual fund-raising drive, claiming he would have to consult with ‘RDG comrades’ first.

This is simply ridiculous. The RDG, to be most generous, is nothing more than a personal network of individuals with some shared history and a similar programmatic outlook. In a reforged Communist Party they would exist as nothing more than a network of likeminded thinkers - a temporary faction at most.

Given the people with whom Dave Craig regularly has political debate and the paper in which he regularly publishes, it is obvious that his real comrades, in a political sense, are members of the CPGB.

I do not favour any further joint statements with the RDG, unless it is a joint statement from the PCC and Dave Craig on his ‘resignation’ from the ‘organisation’, or a statement with the RDG of an organisational merger. Anything else is treating the rapprochement process with a complete lack of seriousness.

Martin Blum
London

Sectarian zigzags

In the election campaign the Workers Power group was in favour of voting only Labour (except in Cardiff Central), while Socialist Labour Action, a group of WP sympathisers in the SLP, was for voting SLP and, where there was no SLP candidate, Labour but not for the Socialist Party.

The Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International was in favour of working alongside workers who wanted to vote for their traditional mass reformist party while also keeping in step with the new socialist parties which were trying to create a left alternative against Blair’s new Thatcherism. WP’s method was based on a completely propagandistic passivity. They are in favour of voting Labour, but they do not want to work inside the Labour Party. They want to promote work inside the SLP, but they were opposed to working alongside SLP activists in their campaign.

WP has not produced any leaflets aimed at the 300,000 Labour members. It took no part in the left Labour campaigns against the abolition of clause four, for the defence of the union links or against the election of Blair.

Over the last year WP has expended a lot of energy around the SLP. When it was launched, WP openly welcomed Scargill’s initiative and appeared to want to join that party. WP could have been the main left force inside the SLP. With absolute certainty it could have had many resolutions passed at the congress and stood many of its members in the election to the National Executive Committee. It could have become a pole of attraction inside the SLP, while keeping a special team of comrades to publish its paper regularly, as the CPGB publishes the Weekly Worker.

A revolutionary organisation with a correct and consistent position could have had a very great influence amongst the different socialists who are trying to create an alternative to Blair. Lenin fought for left splits from social democracy to adopt a communist programme and constitution, while at the same time calling for a united front policy towards reformism. We should put the same arguments to the SLP and the SP and demand that they break with the elements of old Labourism in their programme. The SLP manifesto wants a British capitalist state outside the EU with a welfare and protectionist system. The SP manifesto does not fight to get Britain out of Ireland and suggests that socialism could start to be introduced through Scottish or Welsh parliaments. The SLP and the SP have a sectarian attitude towards Labour because they do not differ enough programmatically from it.

WP rapidly changed its initial positive response and by last winter had characterised the SLP as an ossified Stalinist sect. However, its paper showed some sympathies when the SLP obtained more than one third of the votes in an east London by-election. In the middle of these zigzags many WP cadres and leaders decided to resign publicly from WP and joined the SLP.

WP did not make a public statement criticising their former members for joining the SLP and the ex-WP members did not criticise their former group. WP said that it would assist their former comrades from outside. Socialist Labour Action was created as a so-called “revolutionary Trotskyist current” inside the SLP and its members did not hide their open sympathies for WP.

However, in areas where SLA comrades were trying to convince workers to vote SLP, WP came to the same workers and called on them to vote New Labour. The fact that SLA does not want to openly distance itself from WP is becoming a central factor which is undermining its influence and could finally destroy it.

With its constant zigzags and with its final sectarian position towards the SLP election campaign, WP is becoming extremely alienated from the SLP left. In South Wales it asked workers in Newport not to vote for the SLP national leader and in Cardiff to back the SLP’s Terry Burns.

Arthur Scargill stood in Newport against Alan Howarth, a merchant banker who had been a Tory minister. He voted for all Thatcher’s attacks against strikes, unions and students.

In the past WP said that it could vote for mass reformist parties, but not for openly bourgeois candidates who were standing on their ticket. Many Newport Labourites resigned from the party because of the nomination of Howarth and supported Scargill. Groups which are working inside Labour, from the Workers International League and Socialist Outlook to Tribune, called on Labour Party members to vote for Scargill. WP was the only far left group to publish a leaflet calling on people to support a candidate who describes himself as an Old Conservative against the leader of the miners’ union and strike.

In Cardiff Central WP said that the SLP was qualitatively different because it had a “revolutionary programme”. In 22 years of existence WP has never stood a candidate and never called for a vote for a “revolutionary candidate”. It always called for a critical vote for workers’ parties. The SLP in Cardiff stood on the national manifesto. It produced and sold a revolutionary platform during the campaign which was based on the SLA programme but with improvements. For example, the Cardiff platform called for the defence of Cuba and it rejected the ridiculous SLA position in favour of a constituent assembly for Europe. This was the best programme of any candidate and other SLP branches were mistaken in not adopting a similar one for their campaigns. Scargill did not void the branch and Cardiff Central obtained 2,230 votes (the best SLP result outside London).

However, the Cardiff platform did not propose the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the main strategy of every revolutionary party. Two pages of its manifesto were based on quotations from Scargill (who WP characterises as a Stalinist impossible to vote for). The Cardiff platform said that one of its main aims is “to convince members and supporters of other socialist and progressive organisations and struggles that the SLP is the way forward”. For WP the SLP is a Stalinist sect which needs to be destroyed.

Terry Burns is a former Militant member who shares many of the positions of his former organisation but now he openly rejects Bolshevik democratic centralism. On two central issues he had a completely opposite view from WP. Burns was against voting Labour and in favour of voting for the rest of the 100 SLP and SP candidates. On the question of the Welsh assembly, WP is strongly against while Burns is in favour.

One year ago WP would have been calling Burns a terrible centrist and its present position an ‘unprincipled propaganda bloc’. In the 1992 general election WP voted for Militant’s Sheridan and Nellist. In 1997 Sheridan had more than 11% of the votes and the Scottish Socialist Alliance obtained 8,000 votes in Glasgow. Sheridan, Nellist and Burns are politically very similar. Despite the fact that the first two had more roots in the population, WP decided to abandon its previous position and to call for a vote for New Labour against all SP candidates.

With its sectarian position WP is incapable of influencing SLP and SP members. It is betraying the SLA comrades, pushing them to break SLP discipline and leave it as soon as possible. WP claims to champion SLP democracy while its own internal regime is very bureaucratic. Comrades who demanded the right to create a tendency were immediately suspended and expelled without the right of appeal.

SLA comrades on the other hand seemed to be able to reconcile campaigning for Stalinist SLP candidates while opposing a vote for the SP or making electoral agreements with it. In Leicester SLA was previously in favour of standing an SLP candidate from the Economic and Philosophical Science Review Stalinist sect against the SP, yet now it campaigns for no vote for such candidates. SLA is not winning anybody inside the SLP, nor are they creating a broader left tendency.

WP has poisoned its relation with the SLP rank and file and oppositionists and undermined the SLA comrades. After their hard work inside the SLP, WP is calling on them to return with any gain to their former group - and some of them will not return. Complete inconsistency is destroying what could have been a very successful tendency in the SLP.

John Stone
LCMRCI