18.06.1998
Quiet down below
Party notes
As Scottish Militant Labour members gather for this Saturday’s meeting of the Scottish Socialist Alliance in Glasgow, news reaches us that the Pakistan section of the Committee for a Workers International - the Socialist Party’s international group of co-thinkers - has caught a mutated form of the ‘Scottish disease’. Regular readers of the Weekly Worker will remember that Farooq Tariq of the CWI’s Pakistan organisation was the only international luminary to offer “full support to Scottish comrades” in their drive to liquidate into a nationalist-inclined Scottish Socialist Party (Members Bulletin No28,April 1998). Now this group - a relatively successful component of the CWI - is proposing measures that distance it from the international executive committee and weaken the hold of the SP over it. Also, we understand that the Pakistan organisation is now being wooed by other forces, with Australia’s Democratic Socialist Party at the front of the pack.
The guiding ethos of leading comrades from Pakistan appears to be to give Peter Taaffe a pain in the arse, rather than consistency of principle. It is hard to tell yet what the precise content of the Pakistan position is, but one thing is certain. Comrade Taaffe’s organisation is facing a genuine crisis of fragmentation. Even if the group manages to survive this difficult phase relatively intact, its project has suffered real - perhaps fatal - damage.
Yet, it is difficult to see evidence of seriousness of the problems besetting SP in the response of most of its members. Ostensibly, the SP executive committee and the leadership of Scottish Militant Labour are embroiled in a very important battle. The SP’s Members Bulletin is full of exchanges between the two organisations as SML prepares to liquidate itself into the left of Scottish nationalism and the SP leadership attempts to salvage something from the wreckage.
It is quite remarkable then how little this battle seems to be troubling most members of the two organisations. At the moment, the struggle is between the respective ECs. The membership are passive spectators - if they are taking much notice at all. The number of rank and file comrades contributing to this life-or-death battle has been minuscule. The vast bulk of the exchange has been between the leaderships in London and Glasgow and the various fraternal international organisations that have been solicited for opinions. As for its reflection in the pages of The Socialist, Socialism Today or Scottish Socialist Voice, this has been non-existent.
Given this, it really makes me smile to recall Taaffe’s thoughts on why his organisation should dump the harsh phrase ‘democratic centralism’ to protect the delicate sensibilities of the “new generation”. In the light of the collapse of Stalinism, this fresh layer rejected anything that “smacked of ‘authoritarianism’ and which gave the appearance of being undemocratic” and were characterised by being ready “to discuss ideas” (Members Bulletin No28, April 1998). Not that they would have many “ideas” to get their thinking gear around if they had to rely on the open publications of SML or SP, of course …
As the battle rumbles on above, the apathy below presents Taaffe with a problem. Given that he is confined to dealing with the leadership - who seem 100% set on the dissolution of the organisation in its present form - his options in this struggle are very limited. If he launches a hard campaign in Scotland and attempts to split SML, it is clear he will not be left with many people. Thus, at the moment, his tactic appears to be the same as any punch-drunk old bruiser past his prime: absorb as much initial punishment as your opponent wants to dish out, hoping he tires of hitting you in later rounds. At least then you have the chance to scrape a draw on points, if not an outright victory. Taaffe seems more concerned to retain some sort of relationship with whatever left nationalist formation evolves in Scotland than the fight for principle. The characteristic methodology of a narrow bureaucrat, in other words.
If he has the politics to fight SML’s drift in the wake of Scottish nationalism, he has so far kept them to himself. The SP EC has been at pains to keep any discussion of substantive principle out of their dealings with the leadership of SML. If forces exist within SP and SML willing to fight against the nationalist infection of the movement, their first task must be to dump the trashy method of comrade Taaffe. The man is an opinion poll-chaser. He is the archetypal opportunist in that
“his typical and characteristic trait is that he yields to the mood of the moment, he is unable to resist what is fashionable, he is politically short-sighted and spineless” (VI Lenin CW Vol 11, Moscow 1977, p239).
Thus, his method cripples him. The most recent opinion poll in The Scotsman finds 52% of Scots in favour of independence. As I previously noted in the Weekly Worker, the “sickening truth” is that if the same survey were conducted on the left of the workers’ movement it would reveal “an overwhelming majority for independence” too (April 23).
Those forces that would argue for unity would start from a minority position - a stance that appears to terrify comrade Taaffe. But principle comes first - the majority comes later.
Mark Fischer
national organiser