19.02.1998

Party notes

Battle looms

Some of the smaller - and wackier - sects on the British revolutionary left have criticised the mere fact that the Communist Party is prepared to organ­ise in common blocs with organisations such as the Socialist Party or Scottish Militant Labour. The fact that SP/SML have had in effect a pro-imperialist line on the war in Ireland, has even been prepared to share platforms with vicious loyalist sectarians, should mean that they are beyond the pale, we have been assured.

In fact, it is quite clear that our proximity to the SP and SML - organisations we have designated as two of our main opponents on the left - has considerably increased the impact of our polemic on them. This is evident not simply in the public responses of lead­ers of the two organisations, but also in their inter­nal documents.

It is frequently there that we find our criticisms answered - or more precisely, fundamentally dis­torted and then ‘answered’. SML in particular - given our active participation in the Scottish Socialist Al­liance - has found it necessary to insulate its com­rades to a certain extent from the criticisms of communists.

Thus, an important new document, produced by SML leader Alan McCombes as a background paper to a suggested change of line at the organisation’s conference in June, attempts to parry the arguments of the Communist Party - not least those presented in Jack Conrad’s pamphlet Blair’s rigged referen­dum and Scotland’s right to self-determination - against SML’s growing nationalism (we will be look­ing at this semi-internal SML document in more de­tail shortly). Indeed, it is possible to say that a real battle looms amongst the forces of the left in Scot­land (excluding the Socialist Workers Party, which has made itself effectively irrelevant through its boy­cott of the SSA).

The McCombes document - which is almost cer­tain to be adopted - advocates that SML now openly espouse the separation of Scotland from the UK - a Scottish road to socialism, in effect. If adopted, this would constitute SML as the left wing of the Scot­tish National Party. Furthermore, it is proposed that SML win the SSA to the same poisonous shift. Given SML’s numerical weight in the Alliance, the com­rade must be quite confident that this can be swung.

Thus, the forces of the Scottish left are now pre­sented with a stark choice between those who ad­vocated left nationalism and the break-up of Britain and those - not least around the Communist Party - who fight for the revolutionary unity of the working class, concretised in the demand for a federal repub­lic.

Certainly, the tide for the moment flows against us. A large portion of the McCombes document is given over - tediously - to an analysis on various opinion poll ratings showing a growing sentiment for separation, particularly among young Scots. SML’s creeping adaptation to this mood is charac­teristic of the organisation from which it springs, an opportunist method that is surely prising the group apart.

In Scotland and Wales, it attempts to adapt to nationalist movements moving at different paces. Yet in Ireland, the group attempts to reflect the sup­port of loyalist workers - ie, trade unionists - for the union! Without the coherence of a genuine pro­gramme, disintegration beckons.

Precisely because of this method of tailing exist­ing consciousness, the disintegration of SP/SML as a coherent national organisation will not necessar­ily mean oblivion for the fragments. Far from it. A force like SML can grow substantially in the coming period. Nationalist socialism represents a danger we must fight with every means at our disposal.

This task underlines the importance of this week­end’s Party school in Scotland on the federal repub­lic (February 21-22). The purpose of this educational event is to start to equip our comrades with deeper theoretical arguments against the nationalist swell. We thus have actively encouraged the participation of other tendencies with very different perspectives to our own, including SML itself of course. The situ­ation in Scotland - despite a certain hiatus in the aftermath of the general election and Blair’s resound­ing victory in the referendum for a Scottish parlia­ment - remains relatively fluid.

Which direction things go, what the shape of poli­tics in Scotland will harden into, is not - as SML presumes - already predetermined by the latest set of opinion polls. What is decisive is active interven­tion. Our school gives comrades the opportunity to prepare.

Mark Fischer
national organiser