WeeklyWorker

22.05.1997

Open struggle or unhealthy secrecy?

Last weekend (Saturday May 17), I attended the Manchester meeting building for the June 14 campaign conference for Socialist Labour Party democracy. No doubt partly because it coincided with the cup final, the meeting was not as well attended as I had hoped. Nevertheless, the debate was lively and generally reflected the broad discussion occurring throughout the party amongst what could be described as SLP democrats. As in all such party debates, for everyone except die-hard sectarians unfortunately at large in the SLP, the real differences take time to emerge. Often buried beneath personal ego, huff, bluff and under layers of ingrained historical pasts, they need to be teased out by patient debate, as well as highlighted with polemical fervour.

John Pearson, voided Stockport SLP member, opened the debate. To underline his perspectives for the campaign for a democratic SLP, he moved the resolution adopted previously by the Vauxhall SLP branch defence meeting in London. Four amendments were moved. Two were uncontroversial and accepted and a third was dropped by the proposer. The real debate came around point 8 of the ‘defend Vauxhall CSLP’ resolution, which reads: “This meeting resolves to sponsor an open publication to campaign for democracy in the SLP and for socialism in the working class movement.”

It is debate around this point which is sharpening up in the SLP. Much of what is being said is semantic, and I always find debates around semantics dull.

However, the fact that people are jumping on the words “open publication” does tend to underline views held on debate in working class organisations.

One comrade moved that point 8 on an open publication be altered to read: “This meeting resolves to sponsor a publication campaigning for openness and democracy in the SLP.” ‘What’s the difference?’ you may well ask. The difference between sponsoring an open publication and sponsoring a publication for openness may seem trivially, mind-numbingly semantic, but it represents a difference of political method.

Now there are some, particularly those around the Marxist Bulletin of the SLP, for which an open publication equals a split from the SLP. Openness refers primarily to openness and debate of ideas, not the fact that it may be read outside the SLP. That is a red herring. Certain individuals are confusing the words ‘open’ and ‘public’.

The bureaucratic division between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ political matters is held up as ‘proof of a splitting trajectory on the part of those advocating an open journal for the campaign for democracy. However, you cannot bottle ideas up inside an organisation. You may be able to in a small, hermetically sealed sect (and even that is hard), but inside the SLP, with its amorphous make-up and its links with the class, however tentative and fragile, it is impossible.

And quite right too. Only those wanting to build a sect or those afraid of the validity of their own ideas fear them being debated openly. Openly in the SLP - there’s no dispute about that - but also openly in front of the mass, the politicised elements of the working class. So the main point about an open publication is not whether it has ‘for your eyes only’ stamped on the front - we all know that once you have something in written form it has a nasty habit of leaking out - but whether it is prepared to openly debate ideas.

Comrades from the Marxist Bulletin should know this well When Socialist Labour Action, another journal produced by SLP members, first appeared on the scene, one comrade now closely associated with the Marxist Bulletin informed me that he had written an article for SLA No2 on why we should call for no vote to Labour. Amazingly it did not appear. A ‘mistake’, I was told by Kirstie Paton from SLA. However, the Marxist Bulletin comrade and I knew better. Now he is associated with another publication ‘inside’ the SLP utilising exactly the same method. Rank hypocrisy.

The very fact that Socialist News does not openly debate ideas, the fact that there is no publication of the SLP for open debate of ideas means that journals such as Marxist Bulletin, Socialist Labour Perspectives and Socialist Labour Action emerge. In a healthy party environment, there would be various publications, whether they be sponsored by national leadership, factions, party commissions or unofficial cultural groups. While such developments have their own tensions and contradictions, they are tensions I would welcome. They would tend to be expressions leading to the releasing of tensions, the coming together of ideas, of cementing the party.

What is most annoying to me is the hypocrisy behind the arguments. We should be exposing the politics of the ruling class which relies on ‘leaks’ in their newspapers and other media to promote political debate. In the SLP it is those publishing already who seem to have the biggest problem with the idea of an open journal. The comrades proposing the open publication have never had any perspective other than for it to be a journal of the SLP, run by SLP members. However, as we believe the development of the SLP is important for our class, the debates of the party, the ideas being generated by the party, should be available for digestion and debate in workplaces, homes and schools. Our class must become a politicised class, following debates in their party - whether they be members or not.

Of course there is no suggestion that issues of security or this or that tactical nuance be revealed. There is no idea that non-members actually have a vote on such issues. But what, for heaven’s sake, is wrong with an SLP publication to ‘campaign for socialism in the working class movement’? Isn’t that the whole point? We want workers to become politically active and informed, inside and outside the SLP. We want to win recruits at the highest possible political level. If the real debate is behind the scenes, in secret documents, then we are treating our class with a contempt which is hard to fathom in socialists.

Waving goodbye

I noticed in the last issue of Workers Power an interview with Kirstie Paton, secretary of Vauxhall CSLP and partisan of Socialist Labour Action. In the interview, comrade Paton states that because of the witch hunt SLA has “declared as a public faction of the SLP and one in political sympathy with Workers Power. Workers Power is an organisation which campaigned for a Labour government against all SLP candidates except the one where it suited their own sectarian interests. This is an organisation actively campaigning to maintain union affiliation to the Labour Party. This is an organisation which says the SLP is dead, a barrier to socialism. While stifling bureaucracy poses a grave danger to the SLP, the struggle is not over.

Frankly, SLA is on a splitting trajectory to serve the interests of Workers Power, not the class as a whole. It can only be damaging to the campaign for democracy in the SLP. If SLA want to join Workers Power, I say good luck to them. I urge you to do so now.

Arthur’s party?

From the sublime to the ridiculous. I have heard that in the Stockport constituency (a branch now dominated by the homophobic witch hunters of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review bulletin) the party description on the ballot paper for SLP candidate Geoff Southern was “Socialist Labour Party (Arthur Scargill’s party)”. I hope for Arthur’s sake that this had nothing to do with them receiving the third worst result for the SLP with 255 votes (0.55%).

Simon Harvey

Resolution as amended passed by the north-west meeting for Socialist Labour Party democracy

This meeting:

  1. Opposes the witch hunt. The NEC and general secretary have launched a witch hunt against socialists in the party through bureaucratic expulsions of members and the 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 and Brent SLP.
  4. Recognises the candidacy of Brent East SLP.
  5. Declares that Arthur Scargill and the NEC are in breach of working class democracy and the constitution.
  6. Urges party branches and CSLPs to organise regional party conferences for SLP democracy, to move democracy resolutions to the NEC and to the forthcoming party conference.
  7. Will issue statements exposing the NEC witch hunt of socialists in the party and the campaign for democracy being launched by party members.
  8. Resolves to sponsor an open publication to campaign for democracy in the SLP and socialism in the working class movement.

Further:

This meeting constitutes the campaign for a democratic Socialist Labour Party in north-west England and endorses the national launch conference of the campaign to be held at Conway Hall - 11am, June 14 1997.