09.07.1998
Tyranny of the clock
London Socialist Alliance
Of some of our comrades on the left are to believed, we should only ever have the briefest of meetings with soundbite contributions, so that ‘ordinary workers’ are not put off.
This reactionary, almost Blairite, approach was vividly illustrated last Sunday at the London Socialist Alliance general meeting, when a majority supported a procedural motion proposed by Julie Donovan, representing the Socialist Party, limiting proceedings to two hours. Claiming that some comrades at the meeting had to visit contacts (ie, herself) and that some women (!) present needed to get home to look after their families, the comrade insisted that this important LSA general meeting had to be over by lunch.
In Manchester, John Nicholson stage-managed another time-limited exercise in May in order to purge the CPGB. In doing so, he suppressed inclusive democracy, an act which will send the Greater Manchester Socialist Alliance into a sectish backwater, destroying its capacity to rally socialists and revolutionaries. A key element of Nicholson’s anti-communist shenanigans was to choke off debate, censoring contributions through the use of the clock.
What a different approach from the Scottish Socialist Alliance June meeting in Glasgow (11am-5pm) or the forthcoming National Network (10am-4pm) let alone our revolutionary predecessors. Lenin and the nascent Bolsheviks spent two months discussing the RSDLP’s refoundation in 1903, at a time when no more than a few thousand people worldwide would even have known of their existence (and that includes police spies). Do our LSA friends believe the Bolsheviks succeeded in ‘putting off’ ordinary workers? Or that their small size should have meant meeting for only half an hour over a pub? A suspicion arises that some comrades in the LSA have such a deep inferiority complex about their lack of theory and the ability of the working class to master existing culture in order to liberate itself that they fear debate, preferring instead to immerse themselves in blind activism. Yet these comrades claim the Bolsheviks’ legacy as their own.
In reality their approach is insulting to workers. After all, workers spend upwards of eight hours a day in factory, office, or shop just to earn the means to live. Are we as revolutionaries, then, to be so patronising toward workers that we believe them incapable or permanently unwilling to spend whatever time it takes to prepare for something as momentous as their class’s own self-liberation? If that is the case, our cause must be hopeless. Or perhaps, for all their protestations to the contrary, these comrades have a different project - the imposition of ‘socialism’ administered from above.
During the Russian revolutions of 1917, ‘ordinary workers’ abandoned ‘ordinary’ life and participated in rolling, continuous political discussions. The revolutionary situation unleashed pent-up frustrations and gave an outlet for working class expression, producing a multitude of literally endless discussions. There were not enough hours in the day.
In more recent times too, the drive for self-liberation has gained the upper hand over domestic and workaday cares. Thirty years ago, during the May 1968 events in Paris, students’ discussions were in permanent session. The Sorbonne ‘soviet’ is rightly famous.
And in Britain from the mid-60s a technique imported from the USA – the ‘teach-in’ – was brought into play against intransigent university authorities and as part of the anti-Vietnam war protest movement. No one bothered much about sleep, let alone Sunday lunch: discussions ranged over the whole gamut of concerns, challenging capitalism from socialist, communist, and anarchist perspectives, without let-up. Taking inspiration from the Paris events, students occupied university administration buildings throughout Britain in early summer 1968. Whether talking about ‘local’ issues of student representation or examining the meaning and application of ‘revolutionary foci’, whether supporting the Viet Cong or analysing the means to world revolution, nobody dreamt of curtailing discussions.
In actual fact, of course, many of those who demanded the curtailment of the LSA general meeting had no urgent need to leave, since they were seen continuing post-meeting discussions in groups near the meeting hall well into the afternoon - eating ice-creams in the park or downing pints in the pub. These comrades had the time, but not the inclination to thrash out our differences. And some of them had the gall to guffaw when a CPGB comrade made exactly this point, suggesting with no hyperbole intended that differences should be tackled, even if it meant spending “weeks” doing so. Clearly some of our LSA comrades need to relearn our movement’s own history. Except, of course, Sunday’s ‘amalgamated’ bloc appear to have more in common with state socialism than revolutionary democracy.
The fragmentation and decay of many left groups, not least the SP, carries on apace, and threatens to bring down the Socialist Alliance porject with them. Today we live in and endure a period of reaction. The ‘red 1990s’ existed only in Peter Taaffe’s head. Scottish Militant Labour is liquidating itself and the Scottish Socialist Alliance as part of its headlong dive into nationalism. Its Scottish Socialist Party is destined to become the ‘radical’ rump of the SNP. Communists condemn the wanton destruction of the SSA and the damage this inflicts on the unity of the working class in Britain.
The London Socialist Alliance has the potential to demonstrate how socialists can work together in a united way. But unless comrades realise that differences cannot be brushed under the carpet (nor should they be if we are to behave as revolutionaries), then it will not be a living, breathing, healthy organism. We need time to agree our methods of work, tackling our differences in an unrestrained, but principled manner.
If unity is to be real and not some diplomatic feint, it must come both through joint work and the continuous questioning and re-examination of ideas.
Tom Ball