27.11.1997
Far too much
Around the left
Marxists take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. But in no way is this an excuse for passivity or pessimism - quite the opposite. We aim to make history, not let history roll over us. This is the difference between a revolutionary scientific (or ‘proactive’) method, as opposed to a quasi-astrological one, where everything must wait for the necessary conditions to spontaneously appear.
Regrettably, this is how most of the left have viewed the Socialist Labour Party. Rather than seeing it as a golden opportunity for revolutionaries to try to shape developments, they have instead consulted their dusty charts and solemnly proclaimed, ‘The time is not right’. Of course, if as a result of the effects of others something was created, they would be the first banging down the door in order to get involved. Marvellous. However, there is the lurking suspicion that the left’s hesitancy is due far more to its congenital Labourism than to any genuine scepticism.
One group which seems to prefer Mystic Meg to Marx is Socialist Outlook. For it, the SLP was “launched at the wrong time, in the wrong way and with the wrong kind of politics and organisation”, and as the December conference approaches it is in the throes of “what is probably a terminal crisis” (November).
Formally speaking, these observations are not entirely incorrect. Far better if an SLP-type split had occurred earlier, when sections of the working class were more militant and combative - for example, during the miners’ Great Strike. The current SLP regime certainly has the “wrong kind of politics”. In our ideal, textbook world it would be developing a democratic centralist/Leninist structure - and culture - not an anarcho-bureaucratic centralist/Scargillite one.
For all that the SLP represented an enormously significant left break from Labour and deserved the utmost support and encouragement from serious revolutionaries. Even now it still offers great potentialities. Its future development is open-ended.
But SO sees none of this. The SLP was predestined to fail, according to SO. Indeed, the article by comrade Dave Hudson is entitled, ‘Lessons for left in SLP failure: crisis in the court of King Arthur’. Naturally, SO was‘wise’ before the event. It
“criticsed the premature launch of the SLP just prior to the general election. We made the point that the working class and its vanguard would turn out in their millions to vote Labour to get rid of the hated Tory government; any candidates standing to the left of Labour would get badly squeezed. We argued that socialists should maintain a united front approach against the Tories, ensuring a hearing in the working class for our criticisms of New Labour.”
The web site must be clogged up with workers eager to access SO - and other Trotskyist - propaganda. Now, what was all that about May 1 representing a massive blow against the bosses, benefit cuts, privatisation, student fees, etc?
Comrade Hudson’s article takes great delight in quoting at length from the resignation letter of comrade Ian Driver, a Southwark councillor and former SLP member. In his letter, comrade Driver catalogues the many crimes of the Scargillite leadership. In the words of SO, comrade Driver found
“a regime that revealed itself to be worse than the Labour Party. In fact it had more in common with the old Stalinist parties, or with the monstrous caricature that was the WRP ... In an interview with the Weekly Worker (October 2), Ian says that he thinks the left in the SLP, organised around the Revolutionary Platform and the Campaign for a Democratic SLP, is fighting a losing battle. It seems they may leave after the conference because of continued attacks on their democratic rights. He also believes that there is no future for the SLP as it presently exists and the party will collapse within a year.”
It is more productive, thinks comrade Hudson, to be holed up like hobbits inside Blair’s Labour Party, where at least there are no “disreputable elements” who have “publicly espoused homophobic views” or “Stalinist politics” - references to Roy Bull’s Economic and Philosophic Science Review and the recent article in Socialist News by ‘Don Hoskins’ (aka Roy Bull) on China.
The comrade’s alternative strategy is to issue an urgent appeal to the legions of revolutionaries currently inside the Labour Party:
“For the first time since the war, the conditions are being created for major splits within the workers’ movement. It is essential that the left in the Labour Party and the unions ends its sleepwalking. If a new party of the working class is to develop, it is essential that it is politically prepared ... SO believes such a party will only emerge out of big working class battles with the Labour government. But the existence of a broad vanguard of the class which is politically prepared for such an eventuality and able to give leadership can ensure its success.
“We would enthusiastically build such a party and argue within its democratic structure for the adoption at a future conference of a more fully developed revolutionary programme.”
SO, like most of the left, is waiting for the ‘perfect’ left break from Labour. The hard struggle of engaging in the very ‘imperfect’, but real SLP split has proven to be far too much for them.
Don Preston