11.06.1998

United Campaign

Simon Harvey of the SLP

The oh-so-sincere whingeing continues from some sections of the Blair-loyal union bureaucracy around union recognition and the sub-minimum wage recommendation. Their hollow protests make it ever more clear that Morris, Monks and their ilk are completely unwillingly and utterly incapable of challenging the anti-working class policies of this Labour government.

However, as they play out their charade, space is opening up for the emergence of forces which are willing to fight for more than Gordon Brown says New Labour can afford. Whether we see a reborn rank and file workers’ movement or the re-emergence of a left trade union bureaucracy is an open-ended matter.

Obviously the leadership of the SLP had an eye on the latter with the timely launch of the Reclaim our Rights campaign to “repeal the anti-trade union laws”. However, ROR is being formed on the basis of relatively inclusive principles - unlike the SLP. Needless to say that inclusivity is not about building a cross-sectional rank and file movement. Even so, the campaign warrants support in so far as it can be a catalyst to building a militant movement in the trade unions.

There are developments to report around ROR. It has given birth to the United Campaign to Repeal the Anti-Trade Union Laws. Not exactly sexy, but there you go. The United Campaign “incorporates” ROR and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s Free Trade Unions Campaign. Further evidence of a deal between the SLP and AWL. This is “in cooperation” with the CWU campaign and the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions. That real life has forced the LCDTU to cooperate is good and perhaps reflects recent leadership changes within the so-called Communist Party of Britain.

Despite its apparent broad, non-sectarian scope, the current framework for the United Campaign excludes affiliation from any existing militant minority group in the unions like the Campaign for a Fighting Democratic Unison or the Socialist Caucus of the PCS union (formerly the CPSA). At the delegate recall conference of ROR on April 18, Arthur Scargill defended their exclusion, claiming that the campaign should not involve itself with the “internal affairs” of unions.

Another development likely to impact upon the shaping of the United Campaign comes from the SWP. Its leadership now all but admits the fact that its membership will not magically grow under Blair as a result of the supposed ‘crisis of expectations’ (30,000 was the target for the first year). That reality is forcing changes upon Britain’s largest left sect. The SWP is already set to contest elections for the first time since the 1970s. Now it appears that it is positioning itself to join the United Campaign. This can only be a positive thing - not least because it opens up the SWP.

The SWP has organised a series of rallies under the banner of ‘Full union rights now’. My initial instincts were that, true to form, the SWP was attempting to set up a rival campaign in order to seal off and inoculate its membership from other left ideas. However, speakers at its rallies include the NUJ president and general secretary. The NUJ is nationally affiliated to the United Campaign. Bob Crow, SLP NEC member and the chair of the United Campaign, is a listed speaker at the Manchester rally on June 11.

This indicates the SWP is likely to come on board the United Campaign, albeit through an artificially created front. The United Campaign explicitly excludes affiliation from political parties. Yet, behind the scenes, the forces of the SWP and the AWL are playing their traditional role - rallying behind the left wing of the trade union bureaucracy.

Le Pen fan

Ringing around after last month’s local elections, I spoke to comrade Dave Barber of Lewisham SLP, one of our candidates for the Ladywell ward. Like many others, he was relatively pleased with the 200 votes (around 10%) he won on May 7.

Comrade Barber told me the SLP was preferable to the old ‘official’ CPGB, of which he was a member since demobilisation in 1945, because our party is prepared to fight Labour. However, he explained that he does have differences.

One of these, he said, was over the question of immigration. Expecting him to make a call for open borders instead of our current policy of opposing only ‘racist’ immigration laws, I was taken aback when he expressed the opposite viewpoint.

Comrade Barber told me: “We can’t win our own people through having a policy of having everyone move in. The country is too small.” The comrade pointed to France, where Le Pen’s National Front has made electoral gains through having a “sane immigration policy”. He added: “Le Pen only has one sword in his armoury, but what a mighty sword that is.” He assured me he was not a “racialist”. He merely believed that people should stay in “their own” country.

Calls for a “sane immigration policy” were also the basis of the opportunist and cynically dishonest arguments used by Brian Heron (Fourth International Supporters Caucus and London SLP president) at the SLP’s founding conference in 1996.

Of course, as any party of the working class is born and grows, all manner of people with all sorts of unusual and even downright reactionary ideas will join. That one candidate has racist views which are out of step with not only socialist thought, but mainstream bourgeois society, is not really the main question.

The point is that the SLP has a closed culture of avoiding differences and pursuing dull ‘common sense’ campaigns. Such a culture allows backward ideas such as those held by Barber to survive, if not flourish.

His anti-immigrant ideas clearly existed while he was an ‘official communist’. The old CPGB’s culture was also anti-debate and its reliance on the national socialist British road to socialism could only reinforce such reactionary views. That the SLP’s programme is a variant of the BRS can only compound the problem.

This ‘dumbing down’ approach is clearly seen in our party paper, Socialist News. Bland articles and reports and a lack of open debate is the order of the day. Any opposition articles, even if uncontroversial, are excluded.

One ludicrous example has recently been drawn to my attention. Chris Erswell of Sale and Wythenshawe CSLP submitted an article reporting the election of SLP member Dave Toomer to the national executive of the National Union of Journalists. Good news, you would think. Pretty safe too. But no, it was excluded on the grounds of not being newsworthy enough.

The fact that comrade Erswell has been an open agitator for SLP democracy and revolutionary politics would not have anything to do with it, would it? And what about comrade Toomer? He is an ex-Militant member. Just can’t trust those Trots, can you, Arthur?

But a culture that allows an admirer of Le Pen to represent the SLP in an election - that’s just fine.