20.11.1997

Proctor withdraws

Simon Harvey of the SLP

SLP Welsh secretary Dave Proctor has withdrawn his nomination for party vice president. This move narrows the field for the only contested national officer position down to four. Proctor is a Scargill loyalist and activist in Tower NUM. The remaining candidates are Roy Bull of the homophobic Economic and Philosophic Science Review, Alan Gibson of the Marxist Bulletin, Pat Sikorski from the Fourth Internationalist Supporters Caucus, and John Wilcock.

This development points to a degree of brinkmanship between Scargill and the bloc around Fisc in the lead-up to the congress. It is highly unlikely that either Proctor’s nomination or withdrawal was undertaken without the blessing of our acting general secretary. But it would be definite political suicide for Scargill to support Bull - not that this precludes such a possibility.

With the threat of Scargill's support for Proctor, Fisc has been forced to make concessions Presumably, Scargill still has use for the Fiscites, and their position in the leadership is certainly bolstered by their de facto control of the London Regional Committee.

Nevertheless the kow-towing before king Scargill creates enormous tensions for Fisc. Now that the SLP’s character has crystallised to a far greater degree, these tensions are bound to increase even further. If Fisc is to remain committed to any sort of Trotskyite perspective and remain favourite courtiers, it will require crippling ideological contortions.

Socialist News

The congress edition of Socialist News (No9) is out. The main significance of this issue is the public jockeying for NEC positions.

In all, 14 articles from 12 NEC candidates are in this issue. These come from a range of SLP opinion - Fisc, Marxist Bulletin, NUM/Scargillite, Stalin Society, etc. It is significant that the back page lead article is from Pat Sikorski, with Roy Bull’s transparent - and frantic - rearguard action over charges of homophobia on an inside page. Scargill loyalist and congress organiser Terry Dunn is given the front page.

The paper includes the promised responses to the controversial ‘Don Hoskins’ (aka Royston Bull) article on China, published in No8. There are two contributions to the debate.

The article by Colin Meade, north London Fiscite, is mildly critical of the Hoskins article. Instead of contributing to the real debate, Meade takes a step back and presents a relatively bland report on economic and political developments in China. Nevertheless, Stalin Society supporters will no doubt froth and foam at what they will regrad as Meade’s counterrevolutionary Trotskyite formulations.

The other article is far more critical of ‘Hoskins’. It is penned by SLP Merseyside chair Chris Jones. Comrade Jones accuses Hoskins of the kind of “distortion that has hindered the development of democratic socialism for many years”. He argues that “any form of tyranny means a return to rule over the working class - not socialism”.

This is the first time that Socialist News has dared to carry debate which strikes at the core of conflicts within the party. It will be of some interest to note the reaction of Harpal Brar - Southall SLPer and Stalin Society member. As editor of Lalkar, paper of the Indian Workers Association (GB), he condemned a Weekly Worker article on China which contained similar views to those of comrade Jones as “counterrevolutionary Trotskyist ravings”. I wait with bated breath to read what vitriol he now flings at Socialist News. If he remains quiet on the issue, Brar risks attracting criticism from ‘hard-liners’ within the Stalin Society for blocking with Trotskyites.

Lack of coherence continues to be a feature of Socialist News. While the form of the paper has improved, its content comes across as a hodge-podge of divergent ideas and anodyne throwaway articles. This issue carries articles from a variety of trends - from the self-styled orthodox Trotskyists in the Marxist Bulletin, to Greenham Common campers, right through to the Stalin Society.

Although the SLP has assumed a much more definite political form, its diverse and contradictory nature remains. The political trends are held together by one charismatic individual, and to that extent, the SLP has not developed a genuine party culture. While many on the left are now dismissive of the SLP as a ‘Stalinist clot’, this misses the point. The SLP is a unique formation. Its main strength, Scargill, is also its central weakness. What we have is an Bonapartist organisation whose only accurate characterisation, in one sense, is that it is Scargillite. While prospects for the SLP to cohere as any sort of political alternative to the Labour Party seem remote, it is still far too to early to dismiss the project.

SLP Republicans

I have seen a brief statement which is being circulated by SLP Republicans. It confirms what I wrote in my column last week. It says that they are “a group of party members, some of whom worked on the proposals put forward by the party’s Republican Constitution Working Group, presented at the SLP’s founding conference”. The statement goes on to say:

“Our aim is for the SLP to become the party of militant republicanism. We want the SLP and the working class to be in the forefront of a democratic movement aimed at abolishing the constitutional monarchist system.”

I have been trying to access more information on these republicans with some difficulty. Apparently they have sent their statement to the NEC. I was told to write to the national office if I wanted a copy.