Letters

Inaccurate version

It has just come to my attention that you have wrongly published a resolution from the June Scottish Socialist Alliance annual conference (‘Call for left cooperation’ Weekly Worker June 19).

The version of the resolution that you published contained many negative remarks about the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Labour Party that were not in the motion presented to conference nor the resolution agreed by conference. It is very disappointing, to say the least, that your paper published an inaccurate version of a motion on such a sensitive matter. Your error has already caused the SSA problems in its relations with other socialists.

The version of the resolution that you published has left some socialists with the wrong impression of how the Alliance is trying to relate to others on the left. We have not accused the SLP of “recklessly splitting” nor the SWP of “ultra-leftism”. We did not urge the SLP to “grow up” nor the SWP to “wake up”.

I would ask, in the interests of genuine left cooperation, that you could publish the correct versions of the Alliance conference resolutions as soon as possible.

Allan Green
national secretary, SSA

Offensive connotations

In the Weekly Worker (June 19) you printed what you claimed was my motion to the SSA conference. What you printed was a first draft.

I sent it to you because I felt at the time that it would be in the spirit of cooperation of the dual membership Alliances for all affiliated groups to be given an opportunity to discuss proposals in good time.

In consultation with other Alliance members however, I agreed to certain amendments. It now appears that some members of the SLP have reacted to the draft you printed by mistake in the manner predicted: they interpreted it as provocatively sectarian. While I still don’t think this is necessarily a rational response, the fact that they have responded in this way makes it imperative you put the record straight.

I hope you do not mind my taking this opportunity to state that while I want all genuinely anti-capitalist forces on board, I do not think you are, with complete unanimity, acting in the spirit of the motion which we passed.

When I heard about the SSA National Council meeting which objected to the use of the term ‘national socialist’, I genuinely expected an apology. However well Mark Fischer thinks this term sums up a policy of ‘national reformism’ which the CPGB argues is now a problem, it can in no sense do this better than the term ‘national reformism’ itself. The only ‘advantage’ the former can possibly have over the latter is that it has deeply offensive connotations.

Either the term was chosen as deliberate provocation in order to make constructive dialogue impossible or it was a miscalculation of mind-boggling stupidity. I initially assumed the latter. However, Mark Fischer’s first response in the Weekly Worker (August 14) makes me wonder what exactly you are playing at.

Even if you really thought some members of the Alliance were being over-sensitive, I would have expected your members to have withdrawn a term which, whether you like it or not, is obviously deeply offensive to others.

The SWP and united left

The motion actually passed at the 1997 annual conference of the Scottish Socialist Alliance:

This conference notes with interest that the SWP stood candidates in the Irish general election on Friday June 6. This is a clear indication that its sister organisation in Britain is on the verge of ending the long held position of abandoning the electoral arena to supporters of capitalism.

While welcoming this, we would strongly urge Socialist Worker to reject any temptation to stand candidates against the SSA in Scotland or other socialist organisations in England and Wales. We would also urge the SWP to help us encourage Arthur Scargill’s SLP not to split the anti-capitalist vote north or south of the border. Further we argue for all SWP members and supporters to participate in the SSA through individual membership and affiliation. The SSA strives to negotiate united fronts with all genuine socialists because unity is strength.

Dual membership also gives us the opportunity for constructive dialogue and fraternal debate. This allows us to clarify differences, putting them into perspective, possibly even overcoming some of the most serious. Dual membership is the only viable alternative to a permanent war of sectarian point scoring and deliberate misinterpretation of what the other is arguing. The latter is an indulgence serious socialists never could afford, today less than ever. It weakens us both and the workers’ movement we are a part of. The Blairites, the Tories and the Scottish National Party (not to mention the bosses) benefit from our disunity ...

Tom Delargy
Paisley

Yes, yes

Marxists should advocate a critical ‘yes, yes’ vote in the referendums in Scotland and Wales, despite rejecting the anti-democratic nature of the referendum and the limited character of the bourgeois institutions that are being created. However, we should not be in any popular front with the nationalists. We need to take the opportunity of this process to campaign against the reactionary and centralised nature of the capitalist monarchy, to put forward social and democratic demands and to propagandise for a workers’ republic and a socialist federation.

Most workers want more autonomy for Scotland and Wales because they believe this could stop more privatisation and attacks on education and social benefits. Revolutionaries are against Blair’s model for the Scottish parliament and Welsh assemblies which are bourgeois institutions set up with the aim of reinforcing the capitalist state and system.

Scottish Militant Labour is flirting with reformism by demanding a national parliament with a socialist majority which could achieve socialist transformation. But revolutionaries cannot ignore the national grievances of Scottish and Welsh workers and advocate a ‘no’ vote or a boycott. The achieving of these limited reforms could give confidence to the workers to fight for the abolition of the monarchy and the house of lords, for the complete withdrawal of the British state and army from the Six Counties, Gibraltar, Malvinas and all the colonies, and for the restitution of the Great London Council and more power to the local councils. The victory of a ‘no’ vote would condemn Britain to remain as the most centralised, archaic western European state. The expansion of local democracy would not bring socialism. However, it would offer more possibilities to the left for anti-bourgeois propaganda, agitation and mobilisation.

The aim of class conscious workers has to be to break the workers from their bosses, and for the unity of the proletariat against the capitalists. Workers’ organisations should create their own campaign for a ‘yes’ vote in a separate and opposite way to that of the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and the bourgeoisie.

The boycott tactic is advocated by revolutionaries in a revolutionary crisis. The Bolsheviks advocated the boycott to the anti-democratic Duma in the time around the 1905 revolution, because tens of thousands of Russian workers wanted to use direct action to challenge the limited and fake parliament. However, after the revolutionary period Lenin said it was a mistake to advocate a boycott because workers were participating in that election and it was a crime to abandon them to the hands of the democratic petty bourgeoisie.

In Scotland or Wales there is no move amongst the workers or students towards direct action, which tries to violently stop the referendum. An organisation that advocates a boycott in this referendum would become very isolated in Scotland and Wales. Most workers would think that they were helping the Conservative and unionists to maintain the centralised monarchy. The only gain would be to win the attention of a few radicalised leftwing activists.

The RDG and CPGB boycott tactic is not based on what is happening inside working class consciousness but is based on the nature of the institutions that the bourgeois state is calling for. If a more democratic bourgeois institution was on offer they would be in favour.

But it is perhaps the Workers Power group which has the most eclectic position. Using its empirical method, WP’s international organisation proposes a ‘yes, yes’ vote in Scotland but a ‘no’ in Wales. The reason is because only in the first case is it clear enough that the majority want such an option. If the Welsh majority was similar to that in Scotland, they would tail that too.

Workers Power is rejecting any kind of national elected institution for Wales. They are against the extension of local bourgeois democracy.

H Rhonda and M Hill
Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International

Bruised egos

SML professes to be revolutionary and to champion the unity of the working class, while evidence to the contrary becomes daily easier to find. The latest edition of Scottish Socialist Voice (August 14) - the front page of which makes full use of nationalist iconography and sports the government’s ‘forward’ slogan - describes the ‘no, no’ campaign as “a rogues’ gallery of fat cat businessmen, alcohol-befuddled aristocrats and discarded Tory politicians”. But why SML should favour one collection of bourgeois lowlife above another is not explained, since the description equally fits the allies of SML in Scotland Forward.

In the Weekly Worker (August 7) Phil Stott wrote: “Tony Blair would have dropped all commitment to devolution if he could have got away with it. This is not a policy of the bourgeoisie.” Bollocks! Just look at all the bankers and businessmen lining up to be part of the show. Phil has to say this to convince his own members to hold the line. Although I agree with almost all of Mary Ward’s response in the Weekly Worker (August 14), I think she gives entirely the wrong impression when she writes: “Phil is right to say this move was forced on Blair because of discontent from below” (my emphasis). Some move was forced on the Labour Party, just as it was forced on the CPGB and SML. But this move is a carefully planned ambush of the democratic aspirations of the Scottish people by the bourgeoisie’s more perceptive unionists, and SML trots merrily into the trap. But, given SML’s shifting perspective on the national question, one wonders who in SML is being duped.

In this light the current furore among SML comrades appears somewhat like a smokescreen. Sharp polemic and juicy formulations have succeeded in rattling the leaders of this organisation. We poke sticks at their opportunism and their outrageous nationalism, and they scream ‘ouch!’ More thinking comrades in SML will discuss the politics of the issue, and hopefully question the direction of their own organisation.

To all those comrades who have allowed their soft egos to be bruised on behalf of the infinitely less sensitive Tommy Sheridan I say: grow up. This is serious politics where we discuss the method of the liberation of humanity. It is not a cosy game of footsie in the SSA, but the battle of communism against Labourism and nationalism.

Mike Smith
Manchester