06.11.1997

SLP calls union activist conference

Simon Harvey of the SLP

Our party has been fairly quiet of late. Apart from targeted approaches at the Labour Party conference and the TUC, it seemed that our next high-profile activity would be the council elections next May. Fortunately this is about to change.

A proposal has come from the NEC to hold a broad trade union activist conference on Saturday March 28 1998. Full details are yet to be finalised.

On Saturday October 26 there was a meeting of SLP union activists in London to discuss the proposal. Indicative of the parlous state of membership activity, there were only 22 people in attendance, five of these from the NEC itself. This is despite a paper membership of 500 in London alone. It should be remembered that membership of a relevant trade union is a condition of SLP membership in the Scargill ‘constitution’.

NEC member John Hendy QC gave the report to those at the meeting. The parameters of the conference indicate that it will not be an exclusive SLP event. This is to be warmly welcomed. Though our party will no doubt sponsor it, the impetus will hopefully come from the endorsement of national unions - particularly the RMT, the Bakers’ Union and the NUM. In addition sponsorship will be sought from union branches and high-profile union activists, such as Jimmy Nolan.

It is important that the opportunity of this conference be utilised to the maximum by militants in the trade union movement. The fact that our party leadership has proposed an initiative which has the potential to become a non-sectarian, rank and file organisation of militants is encouraging. It may be that the NEC’s main motive is the less positive one of attempting to recruit to the SLP in a narrow way. Nevertheless, such initiatives, although modest at the moment, can be the catalyst for organisation and activity which cuts across the sectionalism so rife in the movement.

One disappointing aspect of the SLP has been the failure of leading party members to organise direct action support of the Liverpool dockers. Although we have been able to organise regular RMT Advisory Committee meetings, these have tended to remain occupied with the economic details of RMT business. If we are to begin to create a militant minority organised in the unions, it is vital that the party organise a fightback across sectional lines. Having party members in leading positions of the RMT and at the forefront of the long-running dockers’ dispute gives our party an ideal opportunity to turn such economically defensive actions into politically offensive actions - aimed at smashing the anti-trade union laws.

At the meeting on October 26 NEC members were put in the embarrassing position of having to deny that acting general secretary Scargill had proposed a trade union centre as an alternative to the TUC. This is despite a recent front page story in the Weekly Worker (September 25), which reported the response of leading SLP union activists to Scargill’s proposal. Although this has put members of our leadership in an awkward position of rescuing Scargill from this gaffe, it must be welcomed because, quite frankly, splitting from the TUC is one of the more ridiculous ideas to have emerged from our party’s founder-leader in quite some time.

Comrades at the meeting brought up the idea of involving other political organisations in the preparations for the March 28 conference. Unfortunately, the top table was quiet on this proposal. Given the track record of those involved - such as Bob Crow and Pat Sikorski - it is unlikely that their instincts will be to run the conference with real debate and discussion, but more as a rally.

The 1992 Miners’ Support Network national conference in Sheffield was partly organised by those who were to become the Fourth International Supporters Caucus in the SLP, and who were then a faction of Socialist Outlook. The Sikorskis (Pat and Carolyn) and Brian Heron were determined that the event should become a ‘safe’ rally. The meeting had other ideas and the majority favoured holding a broad-ranging discussion from the floor on the way forward for the Network.

Hopefully the comrades will have learned from this and such a rebellion from the floor will be unnecessary. While the successful organisation of this conference may be one way for the Fiscites to save their bacon in the SLP, what is meant by ‘success’ is up for debate.

The conference must be open to all trade unionists. Hopefully it will not be organised in opposition to the Trade Union Left Alliance Conference on November 15, but complement it and broaden its somewhat dubious political basis. For it to become a catalyst of a militant rank and file fightback, it must become the property of those assembled. No doubt, this has some risks. However, sectarianism cannot be combated through cynical manoeuvre from the top which merely replicates it. As well as sponsorship from national trade unions and branches, I look forward to our party seeking sponsorship from the Socialist Party, the Morning Star, the CPGB, the SWP and others.

Bob Crow on monetary union

I noticed in the letters page of The Guardian on October 29 a letter from ‘Trade Unionists Against the Single Currency’. The signatories were the SLP’s Bob Crow (RMT), Jacqui Johnson (Natfhe), Geoff Martin (Unison) and Pete Cooper (CWU). I have no problem with party comrades putting forth their opinions.

On Europe, as on any other subject, party members must have the full right to express their views on any platform. The current NEC policy, while it dovetails with the ‘little Englandism’ expressed by Bob Crow, has not been endorsed by the party as a whole. Our founding conference did not debate our policy on the capitalists’ attempt to form a single European currency.

I for one hold that the NEC-imposed position on Europe is a useless attempt to take us backwards - not forwards, to an all-Europe working class organisation. Our class will face unprecedented attacks from the enemy, as inter-imperialist competition heats up across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Whether our currency has the queen’s head or the faceless imprimatur of the European Union is not our primary concern.

Bob Crow, a former member of the Communist Party of Britain, appears to have brought into the SLP baggage from the Morning Star and the British road to socialism. A fondness for all things British - including its currency, it seems - is not at all useful in our fight against the very attacks the letter identifies. The “damage already being done by preparations for a single currency” (The Guardian October 29) is not a symptom of the capitalists’ fetish for the euro. They are being driven by objective circumstances to form a single trading bloc to rival Japanese and North American imperialism. British capital, whether with the euro or the pound, will be forced to intensify attacks on our class in order to remain competitive within global capitalist markets.

The vicious onslaught led by Thatcher occurred with the pound sterling as British capital’s universal equivalent. No doubt the form of the class war will change under a euro, but not necessarily qualitatively. If anything, British capital will have more flexibility in the face of any fightback by our class if they are organised on a Europe-wide basis. It is not our concern to advise our enemy which currency they use. Whatever the outcome, our class must itself organise on an all-Europe basis to enable us to fight back against, and finally defeat our formidable, yet mortal, enemy.

As well as being involved in Trade Unionists Against the Single Currency, Bob Crow is involved with the Campaign for Free Trade Unions, a group associated with the Welfare State Network. John Hendy is on the committee with him. The October 26 meeting was assured that they sat their only as individuals. Crow, Hendy and Sikorski instructed union activists at the meeting that if they were attending the Trade Union Left Alliance Conference on November 15, they were to do so as “individual observers”.

In the lead-up to congress blocs and formations are developing not only around Europe, but also democracy, the British constitution and a plethora of other issues. In this connection, I notice that a group of self-styled republicans have recently organised themselves in our party. I have not as yet seen their platform but I can not for the life of me understand why bourgeois republicans should want to join a socialist party.