29.05.1997

Anti-Labour lash-up disintegrates

The following letter was sent to Fight Racism Fight Imperialism in March. It has not been published, nor replied to. The publishers of FRFI, the Revolutionary Communist Group, appear to have left the IWCA, an essentially anarchistic grouping formed in 1995, of whom little has been heard of since

It was interesting to see FRFI’s position on the forthcoming election (FRFI April) - ‘Don’t vote - organise’. The Revolutionary Communist Group has a long and honourable record of opposition to the Labour Party, opposition that began before such a position became widespread.

It is therefore with regret that we have heard of your decision to withdraw from the Independent Working Class Association. That there has been no formal notification of this decision from you is in itself surprising, given your participation in the IWCA since its inception. It is difficult therefore to take up any arguments you have against it without knowing what they are. Nevertheless we would ask you to reconsider this decision and we are writing to FRFI so that your readers may be made aware of this change of attitude and debate the issues it raises.

The IWCA founding document was printed in FRFI (December/January 1995/6). It was - and remains - a genuine attempt to break with many of the practices and views of the British left. It was explicitly anti-Labour Party and sought to unite all leftist forces around this view. But it went further: it argued that the left had failed to reach out to the working class and to work within working class communities to encourage self-organisation. It set this task in the context of a Labour Party which had abandoned all pretence of addressing the needs of the working class, a ‘conservative left’ which miserably tailed the Labour Party and a radical right which would not be slow to exploit the political vacuum created in working class areas hard hit by the crisis.

The RCG accepted this view and endorsed the IWCA, saying: “The strength of the IWCA document is that it ... consciously seeks to break with a past that has abysmally failed” (ibid). The IWCA spent many months discussing and debating its standpoint in an effort to include all those forces who wished to participate. Despite this - often painfully laborious - process several of the initial sponsors withdrew. Usually, as the RCG is now doing, they failed to say why they were leaving. Perhaps the task being set for the IWCA was too difficult for them to contemplate, requiring as it did a break with the habitual practices of the British left. For it required a break with sectarian practices in which the building of one organisation was placed above the needs of the working class movement. It required a break with the sectarian outlook which judged the success of its work by how many papers it had sold or other leftists defeated in an argument, and instead judged its success by whether it could build roots amongst that section of the working class which was most politically isolated and disenfranchised. Finding out and responding to their concerns, encouraging them to organise around these concerns and, in the process, building roots for a socialist movement - these are the keys for serious socialists.

This is hardly a new outlook for socialists. It is rather a rediscovery of what was clear to Marx and Engels and remains clear to revolutionaries in most parts of the world. Engels wrote in 1896 of political organisations of his day: “It is very characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race and their peculiar development that ... the people who more or less have the correct theory as to the dogmatic side of it become a mere sect because they cannot conceive that living theory of action, of working with the working class at every possible stage of its development, otherwise than as a collection of dogmas ... recited like a conjurer’s formula or a catholic prayer.” It seems that, in this regard at least, not much has changed in the past 100 years.

The left movement in Britain has never been so weak and never been so isolated from these social forces which can accomplish change. There are three possible reactions to this: first, to decide that all is lost and retreat into that cynicism and pessimism that has gripped many former leftists; two, to carry on as before in the peculiar belief that what has hitherto failed to work will miraculously do so now; three, attempt to connect socialist views with the working class by actually working with working class communities about the matters which concern them. The IWCA is an attempt at the third of these. If the RCG has differences, then it should fight for its views within the IWCA and allow them to be discussed. For it is a fact that for the whole of its period of participation it did not raise any serious differences of opinion with either the political project or its method of being carried out. If it had differences, why did it not raise them? If it did not have differences, why did it leave? If it has left, why does it not now publicly state its reasons for doing so?

The only time disagreement arose with the RCG was when during a long day of leafleting in the East End FRFI comrades were asked not to sell their paper. This was discussed at the next meeting and it was made clear that this was a tactical position. All those present accepted that it was inappropriate for the IWCA to simply appear as yet another group of leftist paper sellers and that those involved had to exercise some self-restraint in these matters. The IWCA leaflet being given out that day had been agreed by a meeting at which the RCG was present. The leaflet represented an attempt to reach out to people who were fed up with local Labour councils and warned of what Labour would do in government. That was the aim of the event rather than a paper sale by various left groups. Surely you can see that when and where you sell your paper is a tactical question - sometimes people must be approached in a more cautious and limited way. Is a sad fact that the left does not have a constituency - it must build it by demonstrating its commitment to working class communities. In FRFI’s endorsement of the IWCA you said: “Dogmatic left slogans and conceptions have not been a means of approaching the working class, but a substitute for doing so. Had the activities of the left succeeded in getting a single gain for the working class, its reputation might now be something other than that of dinosaurs and eccentrics.” Has your view now changed?

It is not enough merely to say, ‘Don’t vote - organise’. We also have to roll up our sleeves and assist that process of organising and “translate the deep alienation felt in sections of the working class into active political opposition to this system”.

Doreen Webster
IWCA