Letters
Self-liberation
Allan Armstrong (Weekly Worker June 27) argues that the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination should be a genuine united front where platforms and tactics can be fully discussed. Quite right. The campaign aims to be just that. We plan to provide a forum of discussion and debate around the national question with a conference in August and a series of public meetings over the summer.
However, I do not agree that our emphasis on self-determination is wrong. Allan is for a separate Scottish workers’ republic. I, as a member of the CPGB, am for a federal republic which is fought for by workers throughout Britain and does not mean the separation of the Scottish, English and Welsh. However, neither of these views should form the basis of the boycott campaign.
The aim of the campaign is to articulate as militantly as possible the aspirations of the masses to have genuine self-determination. We as revolutionaries aim to fight for that in such a way as to put the working class at the forefront of the fight for democracy. The national question in Scotland is an issue that goes to the heart of the British state and should be taken up by the masses.
I agree that the question of a republic is central to the campaign. It is implied within the concept of a parliament with full powers. It cannot be a sovereign parliament if it is still subject to the monarchy. We are arguing for people to take things into their own hands - clearly not as subjects of Queen Elizabeth.
To put republic before self-determination gets us nowhere. Many in Scotland Forward are for a republic. But they will support Blair in making cosmetic changes that mean nothing. They want to reform their way to a republic. Most if not all members of Scottish Militant Labour would say they are for a republic. But by supporting the ‘yes, yes’ campaign they are also trying to reform their way to it. Again this takes working class self-emancipation not one step forward.
We are fighting for a republic in a revolutionary manner. That cannot be achieved by deciding in advance that a separate republic or a federal republic are the only options. It must be up to the mass of the people to decide. By us deciding in advance we are foisting our own schemes on to the working class. Certainly we will be aiming to win our ideas, but this is not done through imposing them. That is not what self-liberation is about.
The Committee for Genuine Self-Determination aims to unite all those who refuse to be bought off. But we also want to involve others in the debate, especially those who have not yet made up their minds. It will include those who do not see themselves as revolutionaries, but as nationalists. In the context of aspirations among the masses for real change we fight for independent working class politics. That is the principle.
Anne Murphy
Scotland
SLP and democracy
The Campaign for a Democratic Socialist Labour Party is much needed, as the NEC has increasingly shown itself rather more interested in the most outrageously anti-democratic and bureaucratic behaviour whereby individual party members and whole constituency branches have been voided and witch hunted for that most heinous of crimes within the labour movement - that of seeking to discuss political issues on a socialist basis.
Following the general election, Arthur Scargill and the rest of the NEC are re-embarking on the sort of paranoid, desperate tactics that one big bureaucrat would have been proud of.
Clearly, Scargill and his bureaucratic accomplices now regard arguing for democracy within the SLP, discussing revolutionary socialist ideas (the SLP actually stands for the abolition of capitalism) and favouring an appeals commission against expulsions as being “in violation of the party’s constitution”!
Unfortunately, the NEC’s ‘Message to members’ leaflet put the wind up some party activists who, rather than face down the organisational methods of Stalinism, were cowered. Individuals who did this, including independently-minded leftists and supporters of the so-called SLP Marxist Bulletin (who themselves handed out their own politically compromised leaflet and then dutifully returned to the nearby McDonald’s), do not appear to have learned the lessons of the past.
When the Labour Party was witch hunting active socialists from its ranks in the 1980s, those grouped around the old Militant Tendency and Socialist Organiser continually appeased the Kinnockite witch hunters - and were booted out of the Labour Party just the same.
Clearly, whilst suicidal and adventurist tactics are to be avoided, there comes a time when those claiming to be fighting for genuine socialist politics - inside a party that openly proclaims the need to abolish this pernicious system of capitalism - have to stand up and fight. And when Scargill and company demonstrate an increasing contempt for the best traditions of the labour movement - ie, democratic debate and constructive socialist argument - the time for keeping one’s head down (if there ever was one) is well and truly over. The NEC does not own some leasehold over the struggle for socialist ideas.
Consequently, all talk of “violating the party constitution” must be rejected (not least as the SLP constitution has been crudely imposed from above), because the real “violation” is the NEC’s steadfast opposition to the struggle for, and dissemination of, socialist ideas within a supposedly socialist party.
At the June 14 meeting itself, the CDSLP limited itself to a general organisational fight for a democratic constitution for the SLP after full and frank discussion around a general series of proposals.
It proved necessary to pass a resolution which highlighted the need to avoid mentioning the past political affiliations and leftwing political sympathies individual SLP members may have, at a time when the magnitude of bureaucratic intolerance at NEC level has reached epidemic proportions. This would not have been necessary had supporters of the Socialist Labour Action bulletin not chosen to include in their leaflet references to one comrade’s supposed political affiliations.
Sadly, despite formally standing against the witch hunt, the SLA supporters effectively played into the hands of the NEC via this idiotic and deeply sectarian behaviour and also, to a lesser extent, by virtue of the fact that they abstained on practically all the united front proposals for joint work against the witch hunt. Typically, when the proposal was moved from the floor reminding comrades of the need to avoid mentioning the names of individual comrades and their respective revolutionary sympathies in publications, the worthies of the SLA duly voted against. Presumably, this flows from the SLA’s insistence on “refusing to hide their politics” (sic). Interestingly, despite all their bluster and bravado, the SLA supporters have not “refused to hide their politics” until fairly recently. It is only recently that one SLA supporter in London has declared how she “solidarises with Workers Power”.
This is because SLA supporters have never really been serious about a principled struggle for revolutionary politics inside the SLP. Now they are simply preparing the ground for their own expulsion, where they will no doubt attempt to proclaim themselves as principled martyrs to the cause. They are in fact no such thing. However, such is the disgraceful nature of an essentially rightwing sectarian approach to politics. Scargill and his motley crew (from NEC clones through to avowed Stalinists around Lalkar and the openly homophobic Economic and Philosophic Science Review) are actually aided by the foolish and unserious antics of the SLA supporters.
The SLP was set up as a leftwing split from the increasingly rightwing and openly anti-working class Labour Party. The coming months will see many trade union conferences where activists can take arguments and proposals for struggles against the treacherous Labour government. The trade union tops must recognise that organised rank and file workers will not continue to allow their bedrock organisations to be emasculated by the pro-capitalist Blairites.
That is why it is correct to attempt to win the new SLP to the politics of revolutionary socialism (ie, the only politics that can really finish off capitalism for good) and avoid the politically crippling prospect of a Labour Party mark II. That is why it is also correct to fight Scargill’s appalling witch hunt in order to facilitate the chance of building a real revolutionary working class socialist party, as opposed to the politically brain-dead Stalinist/reformist rump which the SLP will inevitably become if the Scargillites get their way.
G Usher
Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International
Pragmatic line
On reading a contribution like the letter from Danny Hammill (‘IWCA patronises’ Weekly Worker June 12), I am always torn in deciding whether the author is deliberately misrepresenting the issues or is simply politically half-witted.
Beginning with the first assumption, we see Hammill attack the Independent Working Class Association for barring the Revolutionary Communist Group from offering their paper for sale on an IWCA leafletting on the Isle of Dogs. To back his stance he invents an entire theory which he then attributes to the IWCA. Suffice to say, you won’t find more red herrings on any dock.
From the start, the IWCA’s stated reason for being was the failure of the left and the methods of the left, both inside and outside the Labour Party. Considering paper selling a priority is a symptom of that failure. It simply doesn’t work. It was assumed the RCG understood this. Secondly, if the RCG or indeed the Weekly Worker believe that the working class on the Isle of Dogs are bereft at being denied examples of their rapier-like analysis, they have every opportunity to flog their wares on any other of the 364 days a year. If anyone genuinely believes that in an area where the BNP got in the region of 8,000 votes in May the best way of reaching the working class is to get them to subscribe to the Weekly Worker, or invite them to benefits for Cuba, one can only assume that there is a deep religious element in such a conviction. Certainly there is no practical basis to support such a strategy, which is why the IWCA favours a more pragmatic line.
Having finished a lengthy diatribe against an adversary fashioned largely by himself, the cynic departs to be replaced by the imbecile. Hammill begins: “I must hasten to add that there is nothing unprincipled about setting up advice centres, advice surgeries, etc - far from it, and it would be deeply silly to suggest it was.” Well, yes - particularly when he was the one who introduced the idea. Nowhere else is the concept of dealing with “housing benefits” or “revolutionaries” becoming “glorified Citizens Advice Bureau workers” ever suggested by anyone associated with the IWCA - until Hammill himself came up with the idea. Not that he is cut out for that type of work - too low brow: being required to deal with “localist politicians” and the like. No, his aim is to become a “tribune of the oppressed”. A title befitting a ‘proper’ communist. Danny wants to start at the top.
The only problem between him and his goal, as he candidly admits, is that “we have never been so weak and isolated”. And the way forward? “Selling leftist newspapers at every opportunity ... always quite enjoyed it myself ... What is so wrong with that?” Clearly the reality of increasing isolation and what he identifies as the “overriding priority” are not in his mind in any way connected. Yet it is simple cause and effect: the bigger the emphasis on promoting the party, the deeper the subsequent isolation. Somehow I suspect for the likes of Hammill this is a reality to which he is largely indifferent.
Having considered the matter, and while not an expert, you should, I think, either get professional help - or a proper hobby.
A Shaw
North London