19.06.1997

SLP militants unbowed by intimidation

Socialist Labour democracy campaign launched

Despite the anti-democracy ‘picket line’ by the SLP’s NEC the launch meeting of the Campaign for a Democratic SLP went ahead on June I4 at Conway Hall in London.

Arthur Scargill’s statement (see front page) produced confusion among some of the members intending to attend the meeting. Some comrades stayed away and others turned back at the doorstep. Despite this, there was a good attendance. More than that, there was a wide range of political forces, including three SLP parliamentary candidates: Terry Burns, Ian Driver and Stan Keable. Given the intimidation, the witch hunts and the sectarian divisions that exist among comrades on the left of the SLP, the meeting was a modest success.

The anti-democracy ‘picket line’ did not solely comprise NEC members. As well as Paul Hardman and Terry Dunn, there was Adrian Greenman - an active supporter of the homophobic Economic Philosophic Science Review - he also handed out copies of the NEC statement. Added to this was Alan Gibson of the Marxist Bulletin handing out a statement titled ‘Don’t support this anti-SLP lash up!’, alleging that the June 14 meeting was “effectively a call to split and form another organisation”. This brazenly dovetails with the witch hunting claim by Scargill.

Obviously this is completely preposterous. It is tantamount to the Marxist Bulletin comrades calling for those at the meeting to be treated as being outside the party.

Two people hostile to campaigning for democracy in the party wanted to attend the meeting. The first, the EPSR’s Adrian Greenman, was asked to leave. He did so, only to return claiming violence had been threatened against him. The meeting gave him leave to state his case and another comrade gave evidence of his witch hunting credentials in the Vauxhall branch and his organisational affiliations. The meeting voted to have him removed.

The other was Bernard Gibbons, associated with Brian Heron, Pat Sikorski and the Fourth International Supporters Caucus. However, when shown the Scargill statement, he beat a retreat.

The meeting debated three key points - a publication, strategy towards the SLP conference and resolutions at conference.

There was unanimity on the need for a publication of some sort, but division over its character. The minority argued for an internal democracy bulletin, focused solely on technical and informative matters. The majority argued for an open publication of SLP members campaigning for democracy and debating issues of the broader workers’ movement. The focus of this publication should be developments in the SLP in relation to the movement as a whole, it was argued. There was no suggestion that the campaign should establish an organisation separate from the SLP.

My personal opinion is that such a publication is vital at this stage, given that critical debate does not exist in the pages of Socialist News.It was a commonly held view that a new SLP publication for democracy would not be needed if avenues for debate and discussion existed in Socialist News.

In broad terms, the debate over attitudes towards strategy up to conference focused on whether our main target should be SLP policy or the imposed Scargill constitution.

It seemed an irony that the majority, who favoured a publication which debated issues of socialism in the broader movement, should be in favour of SLP branches concentrating our fire on resolutions to change the imposed constitution at conference. Some in attendance thought that it should be the other way round - moving resolutions on policy at conference, yet a narrow publication, campaigning solely for democracy. There were others still who thought we should be consistently narrow in our focus, both in the publication and in our resolutions.

The majority argued that while a broad and open publication was the best way to develop our ideas in order to inform our activity, we need to carefully target that activity. Undoubtedly, there are many policy issues which need changing - for example, on Europe and immigration controls. However, the campaign for democracy must aim for unity among those who do not share unity on such programmatic issues.

Scargill will want the October conference to be as much like a rally as possible. The bureaucracy will be able to ‘lose’ resolutions from CSLPs, declare CSLPs unconstitutionally formed and, on the day, will undoubtedly talk unfavoured items off the agenda.

It was the feeling of the meeting that the key to winning democracy in the SLP is in relation to those clauses of the constitution which bar supporters of other organisations and/or publications joining and where the federal structure of the party applies only to ‘bona fide’ trade unions and to the women’s, black and youth sections.

There will no doubt be resolutions placed before conference concerning all sorts of policy issues. And, no doubt, those who are merely attempting to recreate their sect inside the SLP will want to put forward their particular programmatic hobby horse. However, the best resolution to unite the campaign for democracy and actually win concerns the clauses in the constitution which the NEC has been using to witch hunt members. The clauses which the meeting decided to fight to change were the very ones mentioned in Scargill’s statement declaring the meeting ‘illegal’.

The meeting passed a resolution calling on comrades not to publicise individual names in association with the campaign without their permission. Also, a resolution on the composition of the editorial board was passed. Five people were elected and supporting CSLPs are eligible to send one representative.

There are those in the SLP who, while wishing to campaign for democracy, think an open and militant campaign is wrong and that through clever tactics, backroom deals with the regime, special wordings in leaflets and ultra-loyalty to the leadership they can achieve more success. These comrades believe that it is wrong for non-members - ie the working class - to know of the outrageous and blatant breaches of democracy in the SLP. They believe it is wrong for SLP members to produce a publicly available journal which debates developments in the SLP in relation to the workers’ movement as a whole. These comrades are sadly mistaken.

Those who only made it as far as McDonalds will not save themselves by being clever now. By bowing to what can only be considered outrageous moves by comrade Scargill, you only strengthen the witch hunters’ resolve. Those ‘McDonaldites’ who may save their skin this time are only weakening themselves in the long run.

The current actions of Scargill, far from displaying strength, demonstrate weakness bordering on desperation. The Scargill statement makes it quite clear that SLP members cannot organise to try to change a so-called constitution which has never been voted on by the members. Keeping your head down now, thinking you can mount an effective campaign later, is political suicide.

It is by standing together that we can win. It is quite an irony that if all those forces had attended who consider themselves democrats, the minority and majority at the meeting on June 14 might have been different. Knowing the opinions of many of those comrades, the majority on the day might have been a minority. What is encouraging is that those who were in the minority at the meeting are prepared to go along with the decisions.

I can only consider it a nasty projection of the authors’ method when the Marxist Bulletin comments on the resolution for an open publication: “Whether this resolution passes or fails, does anyone seriously expect the minority will go along with the decision of the majority by participating, or not, in the production of this journal?”

Simon Harvey