14.08.1997

Socialist Labour and left advance

Addressing Communist University ’97, SLP councillor and democracy campaigner Ian Driver outlined the party’s prospects and assessed future developments on the left

I joined the SLP some 14 or 15 months ago with some really great expectations - I think a lot of people shared those expectations. It was a leftward break from the Labour Party, a new, quite unique development on the left.

I had a bellyful of 15 years in the Labour Party and I thought the SLP was going to be the regroupment of socialists, communists, revolutionaries that I wanted to see. An all-inclusive regroupment that would include people from the left of reformism to revolutionary politics. I want to see such an organisation still. I think it will have a useful transitional role to play in British politics and could rapidly gain a mass base.

Sadly it did not take long for me personally to become quite disillusioned with what was happening inside the SLP - the lack of debate, the lack of democracy. It very quickly dawned upon me that what I thought was going to be an exciting development was actually turning into something of a tragedy.

But, having said that, there are two sides to the coin. Although what has happened - the witch hunt, the bureaucratic leadership, the authoritarianism - is a tragedy and a setback, I believe developments within the SLP (and elsewhere within the British labour movement) are actually going to be quite optimistic over the next few years.

I think we will see some positive developments coming out of the struggles going on in the SLP. What we have at the moment however, and what I will concentrate on first, is the question of the witch hunt and how to fight it.

I think it is quite obvious for anybody who has had any dealings with the SLP that Arthur Scargill and the people around him had a quite clear conception at a very early stage of what they wanted the SLP to be. They wanted a Labour Party mark II - a left reformist organisation.

Scargill believed that two years down the road there would be quite a lot of disaffection with the Labour Party and the Blairite leadership. He pitched the organisation to fill that niche. He is probably right to expect that when the honeymoon is over with Blair a lot of disaffected members of New Labour, a lot of trade union bureaucrats are going to come to an organisation like the SLP.

The problem for Scargill obviously was that to create a left reformist organisation that would attract those people the last thing he wanted was an organisation that included amongst his members revolutionaries and leftwing socialists.

Of course you need foot soldiers to get out there and do the organising and to get the party on the map. For a short period Scargill could tolerate people with revolutionary socialist views. But the point has been reached now where he wants to ‘clean up’ the party, to get rid of people who question the need for a Labour Party mark II and want to create something more revolutionary.

So we have the witch hunt, the denial of democratic rights, the right of people to speak about politics and policies. That is why we have seen people being voided (a fancy name for expulsion in my book). That is why we have seen the horrific clampdown on anybody who wants to talk about democratising the party.

I think the scenes at Conway Hall on July 12 were absolutely amazing, when members of the national executive committee were ordered by Scargill to come down to the launch meeting of the Campaign for a Democratic SLP and start waving around a leaflet, which effectively told anyone who attended they would be expelled.

I have never been in an organisation where you are prohibited from fighting with like-minded people to change the constitution - I have done it in trade unions; I did it in the Labour Party. You can still do it in New Labour: for goodness sake, all this fuss about changes in the Labour Party conference - people are coming together to try to democratise the Labour Party.

Only recently you had Roy Hattersley, a leading rightwinger 10 years ago, criticising the Blair regime for its lack of democracy in The Guardian. Nobody is talking about expelling him. But in the SLP, where we have some genuine concerns about the disciplinary procedures and the right of members to get together to discuss changing the constitution and policies of the party, you get this document. What is even more amazing is that it is a constitution which has not even been voted on yet.

Coupled to that are the debates we have never had. We have never had a debate about Europe. We never had a proper debate about how we were going to contest the general election. Policies seem to be written in stone and Scargill is saying quite clearly that anybody who attempts to change either policies or the constitution is behaving unconstitutionally and “will be dealt with accordingly”.

We have also had a number of incidents of violence directed against leftwingers, as well as a quite rabid homophobic campaign by a grouplet inside the SLP. But nothing is done about the people causing violence. Nothing is done about the homophobes. Because they are backing the national executive of course.

It was correct to form the SLP, but it is a tragedy that now you have a rotten, corrupt vehicle, which may attract a few people from the Labour Party, but I suspect will never grow very large because of its undemocratic practices.

That brings us to the key question of how we fight the witch hunt and how we fight the lack of democracy and the authoritarianism. I don’t think that people should walk away from the SLP. I still believe that there is some potential there. The clock is ticking against the party, but there remains a window of opportunity to try and turn things around: that is, the period between now and the party congress in December.

Sadly there is a division amongst those people who do want to fight, who do want to take on the bureaucracy. What has developed over the last few months, I would say, is a tactical difference. You have a group of people, mainly around the Campaign for a Democratic SLP, who believe that the best way to deal with the witch hunt, the best way to deal with the authoritarianism of the leadership, is to stand up and fight them head to head. That is a view I tend to subscribe to myself. In a regime like this the best way to fight is to get up and expose what is going on. And the Weekly Worker has done a wonderful job in that respect. In my view that is what the Campaign for a Democratic SLP is all about - leading the charge and taking on the bureaucrats head to head.

But unfortunately you have another group of people within the SLP who have decided that perhaps there is another way to deal with the attacks of the leadership, by more or less keeping their heads down - ask a few questions, pass a few resolutions, but try to remain within the party. Now I have a difficulty with that position simply because I believe that the SLP is not just answerable to the leadership and ourselves: I think it is answerable to the working class in general. I do not think we can seal ourselves off and not talk to the wider working class movement. And that involves letting everybody know what is going on, that this is an undemocratic outfit, that there are changes that need to be made.

Yet there is a tendency within the SLP (and I was associated with them for a while) that believes that all criticism, all discussion and all debate about the problems within the SLP should be kept inside the party.

But, having said that, they have a problem as well. They sent a petition with 30-odd signatures to Scargill. It had a long preamble about what they saw as all the problems. Scargill replied to them. It was quite a long, nonsensical, meandering letter, but at the end Scargill makes it clear: “This party will not tolerate ‘internecine warfare’ or ‘factionalism’.” Effectively he says to the people who signed the petition, ‘If you disagree with the policies or constitution of the Socialist Labour Party, then get out - bugger off.’

So I do not think that the tactics of staying within the limits of the SLP rules or not provoking your expulsion have got any future either. I would say to these people that they have to re-address their ideas about fighting the witch hunt. What we have to do now is to initiate moves to try to reunify the two wings within and outside of the SLP.

The time has come to try to coordinate the work of those people who have found themselves outside the SLP, who have been expelled or voided for fighting against the witch hunt, for fighting to change the policies and constitution. That group who for no fault of their own have been thrown out, should be linked up with those still inside. I think there should be some point of coordination, maybe an organisation that is made up of representatives from both groups.

I suspect that some of the people still inside the SLP who are taking a cautious approach have got quite a sectarian outlook. They may find an excuse not to get involved in whatever agreement is offered to them. Nevertheless such coordination could have an enormous impact. Those people who are working around the periphery of the SLP, who have been expelled or voided, have got a lot more freedom of action, freedom to express views about the party, than those inside.

The two working together could produce, if you like, a pincer movement to start putting pressure on the bureaucrats, to start winning more people inside the SLP over to the view that the constitution needs changing.

If the SLP is going to be anything, if we are talking about a radical change to a socialist society based on freedom and democracy, then the vehicle by which you can bring that transformation in society about should be equally as free, open and democratic as the society you want to create.

It is highly unlikely that the left will be triumphant in December. Nobody would be surprised if that conference was gerrymandered, was stuffed full of Scargillites. The agenda is going to be manipulated in such a way that the issues of importance will fall off it. There will probably be a very tight schedule, where all the resolutions might not get heard. There will be a lot of game playing, so I think it is very unlikely that the left will win anything at the conference. If we cannot influence the SLP, if we cannot make any changes, the SLP will become a barrier to any further developments on the left.

However, even if the left is beaten on all the important issues that we are going to be raising, the SLP is still going to be a very important area of work. What we should be looking at are the possibilities that would open up if and when the left goes down at the conference. If the bureaucracy is triumphant in December, I believe there will be quite a lot of disaffection inside the SLP and a lot of people writing it off as an organisation. You will see people drifting away. People may quit in an organised fashion as well. What I believe we should be looking at as a next stage is a new regroupment of the left, which would include people from the SLP.

I personally would like to see a federation of leftwing groupings and individuals. There are important areas of orientation for such a grouping. There are already, from what I understand, problems within the Socialist Party. There is a discussion in the SP about democracy, about policies, which really does in many respects parallel what has been going on in the SLP. This may also result in people leaving or being expelled.

People should be considering developments within New Labour as well. I think we are going to see in the very near future some quite significant developments which are going to have an impact on the left in general. With the advent of the SLP people have tended to neglect work around the New Labour left and write it off as a lost cause. We might have some surprises in store in the near future.

Blair’s project is quite clear - he wants to form a permanent government. The only way he can make that work is obviously to move more to the right - we are already seeing developments in that direction. Already the Liberal Democrats have been invited to sit on a Cabinet committee.

Blair’s long-term plan is probably to dissolve the Labour Party, to unite with the Liberal Democrats. And we should not discount the possibility of absorbing within a new organisation the left wing of the Tory Party. That would of course create a problem for the Labour left. What do they do? Where do they go?

I think very soon we will start seeing murmurings within the Labour left. That is why it is important for ourselves - people who have come out of the struggle within the SLP, people who will be coming out of the struggle in the Socialist Party, maybe even the Socialist Workers Party - who knows? - to take advantage of the opportunity to start working with the Labour left. Open rebellions and splits are on the cards maybe within the next two or three years.

If there were to be a great movement in the class the SLP could revive. We cannot discount that possibility. But I think any major development coming from the left of the Labour Party is very likely to bypass the SLP. People like Ken Livingstone and Tony Benn would not want to touch that organisation with a barge pole.

However, our immediate problem is how to win the SLP. Potentially it could still be turned around. Within that struggle also we could still win over a lot of people.

The SLP is very close to death, but the last rites have not been read yet.