29.05.1997

Recipe for disorganisation

SLP branch reports

An attempt to discuss the voiding of the Vauxhall Constituency Socialist Labour Party was talked off the agenda by NEC member Brian Heron at a London SLP branch officers’ meeting last weekend.

A voided member of the disbanded branch handed out copies of the Vauxhall CSLP letters to the NEC outside the meeting and branch representatives asked for the item to be placed on the agenda. However, we are told that comrade Heron took up the last 20 minutes of the two-hour meeting with his own summary of the discussion of the previous item - the London general election results.

The main item for discussion was comrade Heron’s proposal for the establishment of an interim London regional party and committee. There will be a London delegate meeting on Saturday June 28, elected on the basis of one delegate for every 10 members. Comrade Patrick Sikorski, former general secretary and now unelected vice-president, is understood to have insisted at the meeting that only those members organised in a CSLP in the constituency where they live could be represented. Members living in a constituency where there is no branch could not be attached to a neighbouring CSLP.

Comrade Sikorski said that a CSLP could be formed with a minimum of three members (which would be entitled to one delegate to the London party meeting). Those who do not organise themselves in this way and those who happen to be the only member in a given constituency are to remain unrepresented, it seems.

Comrade Heron informed the meeting that there are “500 to 600” members in London, but the proportion of members not organised in CSLPs is unknown. At first he proposed to contact those members through an announcement in Socialist News,as the party “could not afford” the £125 needed for a general mail-out.

This cavalier attitude to organisation was apparently criticised by several members present and finally comrade Heron agreed that there would be a general mail-out with the purpose of organising all members into CSLPs. The membership list would be organised centrally and CSLP Lists would be allocated to branch officers.

The meeting was informed that no resolutions on policy matters would be allowed at the June 28 London conference, although political discussion would be permitted.

It appears that the national conference scheduled for October is to be organised in similar haphazard fashion, as the date has not yet been finalised. The venue for the three-day event has not yet been booked.

In the discussion on the general election comrade Sikorski stated plainly that it was party policy not to oppose ‘left’ Labour MPs this time (he included Tony Banks, Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott in the ‘left’ category). To stand against them would have been “sectarian”. This is of course one of the many ‘policies’ which have appeared out of the blue without any discussion. In fact Arthur Scargill has previously told us that nobody standing on New Labour’s platform could be supported. When London’s Brent East branch decided to stand Stan Keable against Ken Livingstone, no mention was made of this ‘policy’. At the very end of the election campaign such a ‘policy’ was implied in the form of a rather odd letter to the Wembley Observer from West London SLP member Steve Cowan (see Weekly Worker May1).

Fisc supporters at the meeting spoke in favour of establishing advice surgeries. Brian Heron said that to be a mass party you had to make yourself practically useful (ie, through helping a tenant in dispute with their landlord).

It seems unlikely that the SLP will be able to take on the role of social workers if it cannot even “afford” to contact its members.