23.10.1997

Phantom Socialist Labour

Following Sikh/Muslim intercommunal violence recently in west London, progressives and leftists held a march for unity in Southall on Sunday October 12 which was attended by over 400 participants. Placards from the SWP mingled with banners from the Hounslow Domestic Violence Project, the Indian Workers’ Association (Southall), and the Southall Monitoring Group. Marchers were also protesting at the marginalisation of Southall youth by statutory agencies and local community ‘leaders’, at unemployment, low wages, racist violence and immigration controls. The demonstration was timely, given that the queen’s bungled visit to Amritsar was partially intended to cement Sikh identity in Blair’s new ‘tolerant’ Britain

Despite the Socialist Labour Party’s name appearing on leaflets as a sponsor, there were no SLP banners on the Southall march. This was curious, to say the least, especially since organisers had expected Arthur Scargill to speak, and failing him, Harpal Brar, local activist and Ealing Southall Constituency SLP general election candidate.

In the event, Arthur Scargill did not turn up. Nor did Harpal Brar speak from the platform. However, comrade Brar did take part in the march. But instead of organising a local Socialist Labour Party contingent (this would certainly have been possible, given his organising abilities and his successful general election campaign), comrade Brar chose instead to participate under the banner of the Association of Indian Communists, largely mobilised by himself.

The AIC contingent contented itself with some mild barracking of one of the Labour MPs speaking at the rally, John McDonnell, but had mostly gone by the time the local MP, Piara Khabra spoke. And this despite the fact that Khabra had opposed the march initially in the local press, wanting to gain favour with established local community leaders.

Harpal Brar was recruited to the SLP in a flurry just before the general election and immediately imposed as candidate for Ealing Southall. He is editor of Lalkar, organ of the Indian Workers’ Association (GB) and a vehicle for his thoroughly Stalinite views, and is a leading light in the AIC, which he helped found. Clearly, neither is going to be abandoned, despite being in clear contradiction with sections of Scargill’s so-called SLP ‘constitution’. This prohibits membership or support of organisations with their own “programme, principles and policies, distinctive and separate propaganda”. The SLP leadership has used these causes selectively against left comrades in order to void them.

Obviously, comrade Brar’s usefulness to the SLP leadership is as described previously in the Weekly Worker: one of a motley phalanx of witch hunters ready to do down any left opponent and hound them out of the party. And the current quid pro quo: Harpal Brar’s name appears as a candidate for the SLP national executive committee at its December congress.

The result of these elections will have a large bearing on whether the SLP is going to be taken seriously or is seen as a freak show put on by such comrades, wearing or taking off their SLP garments as it suits them.

Tom Ball