29.05.1997

Fisc snaps up ‘distinctive propaganda’

Indian Workers Association joins the SLP

The entry into the Socialist Labour Party of members of the Indian Workers Association (Great Britain) is a very positive development. Harpal Brar, one of its main leaders and the editor of its paper, Lalkar, stood for the SLP in Ealing Southall in the general election, gaining 2,107 votes (3.86%).

For too long working class organisations based on the immigrant community have centred their politics around the ‘home’ country. Communists and revolutionaries from India and Turkey in particular have had large organisations in Britain, but up to now have not viewed it as their duty to merge their struggles with those of the British working class, helping to forge an internationalist unity based on the need to organise against the state in which you live.

Nevertheless the welcome move by Harpal Brar and his comrades drives a coach and horses through Arthur Scargill’s draft ‘constitution’, which has neither been discussed nor voted on by the party as a whole. Clause II (4) makes clear that “Individuals or organisations other than bone fide trade unions which have their own programme, principles and policies, distinctive and separate propaganda ... shall be ineligible for affiliation to the party.”

Clause II (5) reads: “A member of the party who becomes a member of and/or supports a political organisation other than the party shall automatically be ineligible to become or remain a party member.”

So do members and supporters of the IWA (GB) and its paper have “their own programme, principles and policies, distinctive and separate propaganda”? Or could comrade Brar’s group be described as “a political organisation other than the party”?

You only have to glance through the pages of Lalkar to get the answer. Only one strand of revolutionary politics is ever found within it - and that strand is uncompromisingly Stalinist. I do not use the word in the normal Trotskyist sense, meaning anything connected with the ‘official communist’ movement. Lalkar is Stalinist in the sense that it uncritically upholds every act of JV Stalin himself and denounces all those who dare to express the slightest reservation about his record. The following extract of an interview with Viktor Anpilov, leader of the Russian Communist Workers Party, conducted by comrade Brar himself (almost the entire contents of Lalkar seem to originate with him), gives the flavour:

“HB: Stalin was clever fighting opportunists in the Party. How was it possible so soon after his death for opportunists to gain control of the Party apparatus?

“VA: ... Stalin saw to it that workers participated as much as possible ... Khrushchev, on the other hand, spoke about participation of the workers but actually did everything to prevent the workers from being involved in the administration of state affairs” (May/June 1997).

No opinion which comrade Brar considers to be even mildly critical of this world view ever sees the light of day in his journal. For him non-Stalinists in the revolutionary movement fall into one of two camps: revisionists (eg, the Communist Party of Britain and the New Communist Party) or “despicable counterrevolutionary Trotskyists”. The latter category is a very broad one indeed and encompasses both the Socialist Workers Party and “the bunch claiming to be the CPGB while trying, not very successfully, to infiltrate the SLP” (ibid).

This denunciation of the CPGB did not however prevent comrade Brar from presenting an analysis of the left results in the general election largely lifted from the pages of the Weekly Worker.

In an article on the Labour victory comrade Brar correctly criticises the likes of the SWP and the CPB for on the one hand dubbing the SLP ‘reformist’ and on the other calling for a vote for New Labour, which “does not even pretend to represent the British working class, let alone to be socialist”. Yet he is strangely silent concerning his own opinion of the SLP. He writes that when disillusionment with Labour sets in, the SLP, “provided it gets its own house in order, stands a very good chance of giving leadership” (ibid).

In fact Harpal Brar is a committed ‘Third Period’ Stalinite who unambiguously believes reformism to be the flip side of fascism - ie, so-called social fascism. There is no doubt that Harpal Brar, unless he has had a ‘road to Damascus’ conversion, would consider the vast bulk of the SLP policies to be irredeemably reformist. What then is Brar doing in a ‘social fascist’ party? We will have to leave it to his own particular brand of opportunism to square that circle.

What does Brar mean by “gets its own house in order”? We are not told. But this is the nearest comrade Brar comes to a criticism. It is clear that just as with the USSR up to 1953 no criticism can be tolerated of any aspect of the SLP. And is comrade Scargill to become a Stalin substitute? Brar describes him as “a politician reknown [sic] for his honesty and integrity”. Arthur has many positive characteristics - not least his intransigent dedication to the working class - but unfortunately honesty and integrity have been severely lacking in the process of forming the SLP.

Although the IWA membership of the SLP is clearly in breach of the ‘constitution’, the leadership is doing more than turn a blind eye. The comrades openly sell their journal at SLP events, such as last weekend’s meeting of London branch officers, where NEC members Pat Sikorski and Brian Heron snapped up the latest Lalkar.

Ironic, you may think. Comrades Sikorski and Heron are well known members of the Fourth International Supporters Caucus - “despicable counterrevolutionary Trotskyists” one and all. Yet the relationship between Fisc and Harpal Brar can be mutually beneficial. The IWA will be actively promoted when it comes to election candidacies and internal SLP positions, and in return will have free rein to persecute imagined counterrevolutionaries - the witch hunt awaits.

However, it is surely possible that Scargill has miscalculated. Comrade Brar’s world view is hardly a popular one amongst SLP members and it could be that the IWA’s privileged position (vis-a-vis the ‘constitution’) will come to be resented.

The IWA comrades are entitled to their opinions on the Soviet Union and anything else. But while SLP communists will welcome them as comrades, they will wage a ruthless struggle against their views. If the majority of members came to accept that socialism must be handed down by ‘great leaders’, and the ludicrous notion that “Stalin saw to it that workers participated as much as possible”, there would be no hope at all for the SLP as a vehicle for workers’ own self-emancipation.

Socialism means that workers must control every aspect of their lives - and the workers’ party must reflect this genuine democracy through its own structures and internal relations.

Peter Manson