18.12.1997

Three men, 3,000 votes

Delegates at the December 13-14 congress of the Socialist Labour Party in London's Conway Hall were stunned to learn that they were powerless to change the party’s policies or constitution. The block vote of a single trade union affiliate swamped those of 114 Constituency SLPs

There was uproar at the SLP’s 2nd congress last Saturday when the full realisation of their impotence dawned on the delegates.

The huge size of the block came to light when the results of several card votes were announced. One after another, motions from local parties to amend the constitution were defeated by around 3,000 votes, while the NEC’s proposals were carried by about the same margin. For example, the proposal to increase membership fees was carried by 3,579 votes to 173, while the leadership’s proposal for lapsing an individual’s membership after 13 weeks of non-payment received 3,264 votes to 266 against.

However, when it came to the result of the constitutional amendment from Harpal Brar’s Ealing Southall constituency to abolish the party’s black section, fewer than 1,000 votes in total appeared to have been cast. There were 311 votes in favour and 640 against. Immediately a representative from the North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners’ Association stood up to protest that his section’s vote had clearly not been recorded despite having been placed in the ballot box - he was certain of this as the three delegates from this one affiliate wielded a block vote of 3,000.

Vice-presidential candidate Alan Gibson then rose to move the suspension of standing orders so that the distribution of votes could be debated. He proposed that this block vote be discounted. Another delegate said: “What is the point of the rest of us debating and voting at all? Why don’t we just ask them [the Miners’ Association delegates] what they think?”

Comrade Gibson’s proposal was ruled out of order, as Arthur Scargill’s imposed constitution provides for exactly this form of voting. But for a while there was pandemonium in the hall, and a handful of Welsh delegates walked out, resigning their membership. Many other delegates decided they had had enough at the end of Saturday’s session and failed to return the following day.

Cardiff Central general election candidate Terry Burns strode angrily to the rostrum, but was prevented from speaking by a couple of self-appointed stewards from the homophobic Economic and Philosophic Science Review, who pulled away the microphone. Comrade Scargill’s answer to this potential rebellion was to launch into a bitter attack on his left and democratic opponents. Having lambasted as divisive and reprehensible all the attempts from constituency parties to change ‘his’ constitution, he shamelessly resorted to demagogy: “The women outside from Hillingdon deserve better than that.”

He blamed the ordinary membership for their own powerlessness, condemning the “stupidity” of isolated individual members who had not formed Constituency SLPs and therefore had no voting rights. He claimed that over 1,000 party members were not organised: ie, they had not come together in the only way the party permits - in geographical branches based on parliamentary voting boundaries.

In fact the 114 CSLPs present at the conference represented on paper fewer than 1,000 members and therefore carried fewer than 1,000 votes. So even on Scargill’s much exaggerated membership figures (he claimed around five and a half thousand, but this evidently included the unspoken union affiliations), the entire local membership could never hope to outvote one Scargill-loyal miners’ association, whose passive membership is most likely oblivious to the SLP.

Defending the voting system, the general secretary claimed that if the old union block vote had still been in operation in the Labour Party, “Tony Blair couldn’t have forced through the attacks on single parents or got rid of clause four”. This is flying in the face of reality. The Labour Party’s union vote has historically been used to bolster the rightwing leadership, and when the left did manage to attract some union votes and win victories at conference, Labour governments simply ignored such decisions. Nevertheless John Hayball from Kingston proclaimed: “We should rejoice that the unions [sic] have taken over our party.”

The North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners’ Association (referred to by some as the Lancashire NUM) is in fact a retired miners’ welfare society. There are no working pits remaining in the area. In addition to the NWCCMA, the SLP enjoys the affiliation of one small union branch of 30 or 40 members. Another sizeable block was cast by the national black section with 75 votes.

This arbitrary figure - up to now at the disposal of Fisc allies Roshan Dadoo and Imran Khan - has apparently been arrived at by counting the number of applicants for membership who have expressed an interest in the section. However, these comrades will not be exercising such power at next year’s conference. When the NWCCMA’s lost vote came to light, comrade Scargill announced that the vote would have to be retaken. With the ex-miners deciding to back Harpal Brar’s constitutional amendment to abolish the black section, this time the motion easily achieved the required two-thirds majority (3,297 for; 506 against).

Scargill had taken out a 3,000-vote insurance premium against the danger of defeat at the hands of his membership. For the most part it had proved unnecessary, with the leadership winning the day on every issue, even when there was no card vote. Scargill’s personal intervention was always enough to carry the day on a show of hands when the NEC line appeared in question. The only vote lost by the NEC ‘majority’ was over the black sections. For whatever reason, the three ex-miners voted against the NEC recommendation for the first and only time.

The alliance between Scargill and the Fourth International Supporters Caucus grouping of Pat Sikorski, Carolyn Sikorski and Brian Heron was thrown into crisis, as the entire Fisc bloc declared they could no longer serve on the executive of a party without a black section. Fortunately for them backroom negotiations secured an agreement, and the next day Heron announced their capitulation in emotional terms. The Fisc candidates agreed to take up their positions after all: being recipients themselves of the 3,000 block vote, they had been re-elected.

Alan Fox