17.07.1997

Party aggregate endorses shift

Party notes

The CPGB’s July aggregate was primarily concerned with two wide-ranging reports on the Party’s work - the first around the Socialist Labour Party and the second on Scotland.

The meeting endorsed a shift in the emphasis of our SLP work. This project has undergone a definite change. We fought from the outset for revolutionary politics, then for at least the space to argue for revolutionary politics in this new formation. With the Scargill letter - which effectively bans even talk of campaigning against the bureaucratic constitution being imposed from above on the party (see Weekly Worker July 3) - the SLP witch hunt has undergone a qualitative development.

Of course, in one sense some of our critics are quite right - we have ‘brought all of this on ourselves’. Quite frankly, if battling for democracy and openness in the workers’ movement constitutes a provocation to some political forces, an incitement to purge, then so be it. Clearly, many of the immanent tendencies in Scargill’s organisation (plus in his own political persona) - its crass bureaucratism, its philistine ‘Britishness’, its contempt for initiative from below - have been brought out by the intervention of communists. Even this is a service to the movement in its own way. We have nothing to apologise for.

Scargill is re-inventing himself as his opposite. From a great workers’ leader, he is refashioning himself as a tin-pot despot in an organisation characterised by a cowed membership on one side and on the other by politico-paths like the Stalin Society, people who [text corrupted in archive file] active and aware layers of the class - thin though that layer currently is - has suffered a real degradation.

The SLP remains an organisation with a chance; but there is nothing inevitable that says that seismic shifts in the political or industrial activity of the class will automatically detonate an SLP membership explosion. So far, Scargill has only succeeded in creating a small bureaucratic sect, dominated by an autocratic political philistine making up policy on the hoof. In many ways, it already represents an historic opportunity thrown away.

Thus, the SLP left has a real problem. Some elements - for example, the Marxist Bulletin/ex-International Bolshevik Tendency - tell us that they plan to go even further underground in response to Scargill’s threats to the entire left. This simply underlines the petty sectarian project of this grouplet. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the general interests of the class and its forward movement, everything to do with a subterranean ‘ones and twos’ recruitment drive by an organisation that has consistently put its own narrow sect interests first. Asked for his best scenario’ outcome from the SLP experience, one (mildly drunk) MBer once told us: “Oh, a viable group of about 30, I suppose.” The working class holds its breath ...

Whatever the particular projects of the strands of the SLP left (the MB/ex-IBT are simply a particularly nasty variant), the ground is coming up to meet them fast, we believe. We underline - we will continue to fight uncompromisingly for democracy in the SLP, to expose any and every manifestation of bureaucratic intrigue, terrorism and diktat. It must be said again however: the space in which we conduct this fight is rapidly contracting. This is a fact that not simply those comrades influenced by the Weekly Worker must take note of, but all sections of the SLP left.

In this context, we encourage the SLP left and those comrades we influence to work more closely with the various Socialist Alliances where they exist and possibly to initiate them where they do not. This does not represent a fundamental shift in the work of our organisation. We have already recognised the importance of the SAs as a forum for the fight for working class unity, particularly in Scotland. Now we shall fight for the (ongoing) higher experience of the SLP - both positive and negative - to be taken into the SA movement.

A comprehensive report from Scotland was given to the meeting and substantially endorsed. The only note of controversy was around a small dispute between a leading comrade in Scotland and the Weekly Worker editorial team which rumbles on (see Weekly Worker July 3 and July 10). In my opinion, now that most of the issues around this particular incident have been clarified and the principles involved mostly agreed upon, the argument is revealed as little more than a storm in a teacup and should be left where it is. Practice will reveal the extent of any remaining differences.

The meeting also received a brief report on the Summer Offensive. While characterising this year’s as a success with near £20,000 raised, the proposal to extend the campaign until the end of July was accepted by comrades. Readers and supporters will see more material on this very soon.

Mark Fischer
national organiser