03.07.1997

Scargill rubs it in ...

Party notes

Scargill’s letter to Martin Wicks (see front page) could hardly be more explicit. As we reported in the June 19 issue of this paper, recent developments in the Socialist Labour Party have marked a “qualitative development” of the witch hunt inside this party. We observed that even campaigning for democracy is now effectively outlawed. The letter draws this out and poses an important challenge to the left.

Comrade Wicks and the ‘Swindon group’ within the Socialist Labour Party have been at pains to emphasise the ‘legitimacy’ of their opposition inside the party (see Weekly Worker June 12). Comrades suspected of being influenced by the Weekly Worker have been excluded from meetings or circulation lists by ‘Swindonites’ because their fight was apparently ‘external’ to the SLP. This spurious and deeply opportunist reasoning was used to perpetuate a damaging split on the SLP left, a division that has aided only the witch hunters.

Scargill’s brutal reply to these comrades should at a stroke remove this silly divide - he has done all democrats in the SLP a huge favour in that sense. The unelected general secretary underlines - and develops - the message contained in his leaflet to the June 14 meeting of the Campaign for a Democratic in the SLP (see Weekly Worker June 19). Apparently it is now not simply illegitimate to campaign in any form for a change to the party’s constitution, but the party membership has no right to even challenge policies adopted by the leadership that it disagrees with.

Thus, Scargill contemptuously tells the members that those who “take a different view”, on Europe for example, can “accept the party’s policy or join a pro-European party”. Shut your mouth or bugger off, in other words.

Scargill displays that combination of deceit and overblown bluster common to dictators or would-be dictators everywhere. For example, he rejects as “completely untrue” the self-evidently true assertion from the Swindon comrades that the SLP constitution has never been discussed or voted on. When people join the SLP, Scargill says, they ‘accept’ the constitution.

Of course, this rejoinder from Scargill does not actually contradict the original observation of the Swindon comrades. Scargill’s written statements in the past have been pithy to the point of self-parody and thus contained little room for such absurdities. Frankly, his more recent extended letters and justifications of the witch hunt in his party have been littered with these type of illogicalities and non sequiturs, some bordering on the wacky in my opinion.

This is not surprising. The man clearly is attempting to create a Bonapartist organisation, a tinpot replica of the party regimes of previous ‘labour dictators’ such as Stalin or Lassalle (see my ‘Party notes’, Weekly Worker February 20). Such a project produces its own rather strange justifications and brings forth its own shabby cadre. It is noteworthy in this respect that Scargill lauds a “reconstituted” branch that is “flourishing” and “has the largest sales of Socialist News in Britain”.

He is talking about Stockport branch, of course. As readers will know, this is run by the homophobic Stalin-fan weirdos of the Economic, Philosophic and Science Review. Terry Burns of Cardiff SLP was treated to an EPSR analysis of the defeat of bureaucratic socialism at the June 14 CDSLP meeting (see his open letter, back page). Apparently, the Soviet Union and eastern Europe dissolved because of “too much democracy”. No wonder organisations such as this are finding the atmosphere in the SLP so conducive to them - no chance of “too much democracy” there.

In Scargill’s world, the small matters of the party constitution and its policies are closed. Those that have joined the party have by definition uncritically “accepted” the constitution and all the policies of the party - decided on by a narrow clique - and now do not even have the right to question them. To raise any criticism is to place yourself outside the ranks of the party, to automatically render null and void your SLP membership. Thus he feels justified in peddling the genuine “lie” that “no member has been expelled, suspended or disciplined”. Indeed, Scargill states that this profoundly undemocratic constitution has actually been instrumental in “attracting members” from a wide variety of political backgrounds. Whether the man seriously believes this piece of political madness is a secondary point; he is underlining that for him, the restrictive constitution is perhaps the central political question to which everything else must be subordinated. Opposition to it simply cannot be tolerated.

Where does the SLP left go from here? Essentially, it has three options - capitulate, resign or unite to fight back. Through the pages of this paper, we have constantly argued for the opposition to overcome its divisions, many of which have been rooted in ongoing sectarian divisions belonging to the pre-SLP period. A united opposition could have some chance against the Scargill juggernaut: divided, it is defeated already.

Mark Fischer
national organiser