14.08.1997

Workers must lead

Mary Ward of the CPGB replies to Phil Stott of Scottish Militant Labour (see Weekly Worker July 31). The debate on the referendum in Scotland which took place at Communist University ’97 is an ongoing one between our organisations

Nobody should underestimate Scottish Militant Labour as a force in Scotland. It has built up some real roots in the working class, particularly in Glasgow and Dundee. Already this week we have heard people allude to Tommy Sheridan’s vote in the election.

Through the Scottish Socialist Alliance SML has acted in a way that has facilitated the involvement of other minority trends, rather than taking advantage of its numerical dominance.

Phil was right to say that this debate has been going on for a long time. It is almost a year exactly since the question of how we should respond to what Phil himself dubbed as the “rigged referendum” was raised.

We were convinced even then that this would be a crucial and historic issue for people in Scotland. That has proven to be the case now that we can see it set amongst the range of constitutional changes that Blair is planning - Scotland, Wales, the House of Lords, PR, a change in the number of Scottish MPs, etc.

I do not believe that these are gains being won by a movement from below. They are being given from above in order to stabilise the British bourgeoisie and to establish the rule of a new Labour Party, a party of the centre. Indeed we have seen moves towards this in recent days with the emergence of a Lib-Lab pact. Not at a time when Labour needs the Liberals in order to sustain a majority in the House of Commons, but when it has a majority of 178. There is no need for Labour to bring the Liberals on board unless it is part of a much broader and deeper strategy.

We raised the idea of the need for an active boycott, rather than tailing the establishment in calling for a double ‘yes’ vote, with Phil in Dundee immediately after returning from last year’s Communist University.

The debate goes far beyond the tactic itself. It has become a tactical exposition of SML’s method, a crystallisation of the debate over revolution or reform. Our stance has raised a great many questions regarding the nature of SML, as well as developing a potentially serious split in that organisation regarding its involvement in Scotland Forward.

The CPGB is now set against the stream of consensus politics in Scotland. Phil has criticised us before for taking this stance, supposedly in order simply to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the left. Nothing could be further from the truth - we are fighting to win the mass of opinion to our politics. Both our organisations believe the democratic aspirations of the people in Scotland go far beyond what is on offer.

Of course there are contradictions involved - it would not be real life if there were not. So whereas we know the extent of the democratic aspirations, at this time there is no movement from below. Phil is quite right to point to the passivity at the moment. The rebellions of Scotland United have been stemmed, first through the Scottish Constitutional Convention, then through the election of a Labour government and now through Scotland Forward itself. All of these have taken some of the fight out of the movement. Yet Phil eloquently described to us the real aspirations of the mass of people: how you can feel this interest in politics in the air, how everyone is talking about the democratic question. So, although the movement has been stemmed for the moment, politics in Scotland is precisely not defined by passivity, as we saw with the movement against the council cuts.

It is interesting to note how Tommy Sheridan in Scottish Socialist Voice was able to call for political strikes against cuts, but SML cannot do the same on the question of the make-up of the UK state. Instead it dovetails behind the mobilisation of Scotland Forward, supports Blair’s attempt to re-cement the UK state and lends legitimacy to the reconstitution of the bourgeois monarchy. Although Phil is right to say that this move was forced on Blair because of discontent from below, and it certainly has its risks, Blair has now made the project of diffusing discontent by uniting around a reconstituted state his own.

Even in the absence of a mass movement he feels the need to dress up this talking shop in terms befitting something out of Braveheart: It will be ‘Wallace day when Scotland takes its rightful place as a nation amongst equals’. Blair fears the political apathy of his own creation and will fight to ensure a mandate for his sop. Any rebellion can be quickly put down with the rejoinder, ‘You voted for it: this is what the mass of the Scottish people want.’

Phil spoke as if the active boycott campaign was flowing against the democratic aspirations which according to him are expressed in the ‘yes, yes’ campaign. But clearly the referendum and the ‘yes, yes’ campaign is about selling the working class short, whereas the boycott campaign is fighting to achieve those aspirations. The aspirations of the masses, as Phil indicated, are about self-determination; the ‘yes, yes’ campaign is about beheading the movement for those aspirations.

Blair is trying to diffuse discontent over the democratic question in Scotland and we are trying to turn it into action, even if we feel we do not have enough strength at the moment to generate such action. Because SML does not think it has that strength it has dropped the call for a parliament with full powers and gone along with Blair’s lowering of expectations. This of course relates to the fact that we have not got a Communist Party at the moment - the Socialist Party, SML, Socialist Workers Party, none of these are the leadership of the class.

The class, in facing up to this struggle for self-determination, is not therefore in a position to deliver what is needed. But we are struggling to form the class. In this situation different left organisations are essentially presenting different views, but arguing for the way forward, arguing for the methods necessary for the working class to take a lead. The active boycott is arguing for working class methods of struggle against a parliamentary road. We would take part in any parliament formed of course, and campaign for MPs or MSPs, but precisely in order to mobilise working class struggle, not in order to mobilise votes to elect in socialism.

This referendum is a political opportunity similar to a general election campaign, when everybody in Scotland is going to get involved. Surely SML would not want to mobilise working class action for a ‘yes, yes’ vote, in the form of strikes or walkouts to reinforce the vote. We cannot test our strength by voting ‘yes, yes’. We cannot see our triumph in terms of the masses mobilised or the strengthening of revolutionary organisation. A massive ‘yes, yes’, whether ostensibly revolutionary votes or not, will be a victory for Mandelson, Blair and New Labour. The question is whether you are trying to mobilise struggle or trying to calm it down.

SML has said that it will continue to put forward sharp criticisms of Labour’s proposals while supporting a double ‘yes’ vote. It is a bit like ‘Vote Labour, but ...’, ‘Vote Labour, but build the fighting socialist alternative’ or ‘Vote Labour with no illusions’.

Alan McCombes, the editor of Scottish Socialist Voice, gives a very succinct critique of the limitations of the parliament:

“It will have no powers over the environment, trade unions, monopolies, telecommunications, employment legislation, business registration, human rights discrimination, broadcasting and other spheres of government.”

On the constitutional question Blair has made it clear from the start that it will have no power whatsoever. At the time we wondered whether it was a gaffe when Blair came to Scotland to tell us that sovereignty will remain with him. Now it is clear that he was deliberately lowering expectations.

SML, having pushed the SSA into support for Scotland Forward, it has now immediately backtracked on that position. Far from it being the boycott campaign which is doing nothing up until the referendum, it is actually the Alliance, and SML in particular, which is doing nothing.

 It seems that SML quickly decided that joining was perhaps not such a good idea after all. Faced with the reality and the consequence of supporting a double ‘yes’ vote, whose logic does mean that you join with Scotland Forward, SML members have either stayed away or gone to the meetings keeping their heads well down. They have been completely subsumed under the rhetoric of this ‘yes, yes’ organisation, with SML’s alternative vision for Scotland nowhere in sight. Nobody knows that within Scotland Forward there is SML struggling for a strong Scottish parliament. We are given the distinct impression that SML members are wishing the run-up to the referendum away, with the view that any fight cannot begin until September 12. By taking that position, in actuality they are leaving the working class in the hands of the establishment until the eve of the millennium, until 1999 and the elections to the first parliament. Having voted for it, how can SML then mobilise people against the UK state constitution and for genuine self-determination while it waits for the parliament to be delivered?

SML calls the parliament an emasculated semi-parliament. But it is not offering any alternative, unable as it is to see beyond this ‘one small step at a time’ approach. Phil does not consider himself a reformist, but it is a reformist method.

Of course revolutionaries want reforms, but the way you fight for reforms is by using militant struggle which threatens revolution, and if you are successful you achieve it. When the bourgeoisie give concessions it is because they are afraid of losing everything. When you are thrown a sop, you do not say, ‘Thank you very much’; you say, ‘Fuck off - that’s not enough’: that is how you mobilise struggle. It is interesting that SML took precisely this intransigent approach against the poll tax. When the Tories offered sops, working class politicians such as Tommy Sheridan said, ‘No way - we want the whole hog’. But SML does not seem to have learnt the very positive lessons from this struggle, or maybe it just takes a different approach because this is a Labour sop - after all it did call for a vote for Labour against the Tories, where the SSA was not standing in the general election.

There are no fixed ladders from here towards socialism. Phil seems to imply that we just have to keep taking any steps that are offered, and in 10 years or 100 years we will arrive safely at socialism. Steps forward to socialism are about the self-activity of the class, which makes the job of communists to give working class self-activity conscious direction.

The Chartists had a revolutionary method of fighting for the vote. But when in 1870 the working class were given the vote by the Tories, its aim was to prevent revolutionary struggle. In this case parliamentary democracy was used against the struggle for socialism.

That is what worries me about the position SML have got themselves into. It thinks it can work in Scotland Forward and remain the same. I do not believe that will be the case. In the course of the next few weeks we will all be changed by the campaign, but SML through its commitment to Scotland Forward will not be able to come out of it the same organisation.

The CPGB has sponsored the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination, calling for an active boycott of the referendum, for a parliament with full powers and the right to a parliament which can decide its relationship with the rest of Britain.

It was interesting that Phil talked about his view of how politics will open up in Scotland in the coming period, because recently I have not seen much of SML’s perspective for a socialist federation. I do not know if that is still on SML’s agenda, if it is just on the back burner, and I wonder when the time will be right to put forward that perspective. It does appear that SML has taken a nationalist turn, but if that is not what has happened then there is a dishonesty and an opportunism in its approach.

We have made it clear that we are for a federal republic, but that the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination which we founded is open to anyone who wants to fight against this rigged referendum. Ultimately it will be put to the people of Scotland to decide the relationship with the rest of Britain.

The only choice which is on offer today is the status quo or a toothless talking shop. When socialists come out with what appears to be common sense, such as Phil’s ‘one step at a time’ approach, it frightens me. Because as revolutionaries we have got to see beyond this so-called common sense, against the formal logic idea that if you go along this road socialism will be at the end of it.

We are being asked to consent to being ruled in an undemocratic way under the constitutional monarchy. Anybody who questions what is on offer is vilified as a unionist, or a Tory, or a wrecker. We are none of these and have had the courage to stand up and say we can fight in another way. A referendum can be a vehicle for expressing democratic rights, but it can also be a dictator’s device. By only putting one option on the ballot paper, Labour hopes to end the debate about how Scotland should be governed. Scotland Forward stops debate. We have been literally kicked out of its meetings when we have tried to raise the constitutional question.

This issue must be the property of the working class, we must take the struggle for democracy into our own hands. This boycott campaign is not about people sitting on their bums watching TV: it has totally the opposite aim of actually mobilising people and taking the fight for democracy onto the streets.

We all recognise the aspirations of the people go much further than Labour’s sop: the important thing is what you actually do with those aspirations. Do you follow, and lead sections of the working class down a road which sells them a Labour sop parliament, or do you actively engage with the working class (in a difficult time) and try to lead them to fighting for what is necessary? It is the difference between what is possible and what is necessary.

To answer Phil, I do not know what will happen in the future. I do not pretend that there is a mass movement there ready and waiting, but our job is to link with the real aspirations of the people - which are for genuine self-determination, not Blair’s parish council - and give that a conscious revolutionary lead. One thing is certain: if you do nothing, you will get nothing. That is the difference between us and SML.