30.07.1998
Trapped in the past
Around the left
We recently commented in this column on the divisions developing inside the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (‘Principled minority’, July 16). These divisions have centred around the British-Irish Agreement in Northern Ireland - should socialists have advocated ‘yes’, ‘no’ or a boycott? A minority, led by Mark Osborn and Sean Matgamna, adopted the principled position of boycotting the May 22 referendum.
However, my previous article appears to out of date already. It seems the ‘boycottist’ minority is in the process of becoming the majority, which should make the next edition of Workers’ Liberty very interesting. Meanwhile, the battle on this issue within AWL is continuing to wage - without inhibition or diplomatic politeness. This can be seen in the AWL’s Discussion bulletin No139 (July). On reading the Discussion bulletin two things become obvious. The arguments of the ‘yes’ camp are characterised by the most painful formalism and conservatism. On the other hand, the views of the anti-‘yes’ grouping, while groping semi-blindly towards principled Leninist politics, are riddled by inconsistency - which stems essentially from its inability, at least for the time being, to shake off the Socialist Organiser/AWL methodology of one-very-small-step-at-time gradualism.
Pat Murphy criticises the then minority, who insisted “at first that the decisive thing was not the agreement itself but our posture on such matters. Our posture is that ‘we are the party of irreconcilable opposition’”. However, argues Murphy, as the debate progressed, the minority became bolder: “Faced with a discussion in which comrades pointed out, amongst other things, that we only recently advocated a double ‘yes’ vote in the referendum for a Scottish assembly with tax-raising powers, there was then a change of emphasis ... The decisive issue now was the agreement itself. It is a rotten deal” ... totally unlike the Scottish referendum, for instance. Murphy presents the viewpoints of the minority as thus:
“Scottish autonomy was a different case entirely and how could some comrades be so foolish as to think otherwise? We could advocate ‘yes’ there and take no responsibility whatsoever for the detail, express no confidence whatever in the bourgeois parties to deliver.”
So what are the positive reasons for saying ‘yes’ to the agreement? Murphy, of course, trots out the usual defence: “Essentially the agreement is a limited extension of democracy, a bourgeois democratic reform. It has all the weaknesses and limits of any such reform.” But, for all that, it is
“a reform that reflects real felt needs in the population … It isn’t a simple matter of always being ‘with the class’ or ‘going through the experience with them’: it is a matter of how we relate to democratic demands and bourgeois democratic politics.”
Usefully, Pat Murphy goes on to sum up the mind-set of his grouping: “Our attitude to a popular vote on an assembly in these circumstances is comparable to the line we took in Scotland (though the ‘national question’ in Scotland is not the same). Within limits the creation of an elected assembly in Northern Ireland with links to the parliament in Dublin and guarantees against communal domination built in constitutes a partial democratisation of Northern Ireland (and indeed British) society … For the first time in history Northern Ireland has an elected assembly supported by both communities. To this extent it is possible to make a socialist case for supporting its existence.”
Naturally, this ties in neatly with the AWL’s general programmatic approach to Ireland. Comrade Murphy writes:
“We believe the only consistently democratic answer to the underlying conflict is a federal Ireland with voluntary agreed confederal links to Britain. Advocating a ‘yes’ vote in the May referendum makes sense as part of a simultaneous fight for that perspective.”
It is interesting to note that Murphy concludes his case with the following worrying suspicion:
“There is a danger, implied in some of this discussion, that [federalism] is just a comforting fig-leaf behind which lurks the same old bankrupt ultimatum: no solution but revolution. If that is so, we are little different from the SWP, the Socialist Party, etc in the undeveloped way in which they approach the national question”
In reply, Mark Osborn attacks the “lesser-evilism” of Pat Murphy et al. The comrade does not mince his words, writing: “Not only are these views not Marxist; they have not even really reached the level of politics”. Comrade Osborn then goes for the jugular:
“To be useful, ‘lesser-evilism’ has to ask: what does the lesser evil positively stand for? How does the lesser evil stand with regard to the development of the working class as a political class for itself? Or we are left with ‘don’t vote Nazi’ in the East End, and ‘vote Liberal’ in the south west of England. Or we end up voting Democrat in the US, because we have not assessed the lesser evil to the Republicans politically, from our own class standpoint.”
Quite correct. But the righteous indignation of Osborn (and Sean Matgamna, etc) does have a hollow ring to it. As far as we are aware, these comrades have always called for a Labour vote. They continue to do so. And the justification for their auto-Labourism boils down to nothing much more than ... lesser-evilism. At least Labour aren’t the Tories. Things might get a little better under Labour. We must always ‘be with the class’. When it comes to voting Labour, are the arguments of comrades Osborn and Matgamna that different from the lesser-evilism preached by Pat Murphy?
It also has to be pointed out that comparison made by the former majority between the Scottish and Irish referendums is quite logical ... from their own gradualist perspective. It is comrade Osborn who is on dodgy ground here. How about this for a lesser-evil approach:
“It might be useful to discuss the analogy between the agreement in Ireland and the question of a Scottish parliament. The Scots are not an oppressed people. However, there is friction between the Scottish people and the English. The Scots are a distinct group on a distinct territory: there is not an intermeshed population, English and Scots, competing in the way that Catholics and Protestants do in Northern Ireland. The Scottish parliament does give the Scottish people a bit more control over their lives. It will also be a mechanism for the Scots to work out their own future relationship to England. And what is the worst thing that can happen because of this reform? We argue against independence and lose; the Scots vote for candidates who are pro-independence; there is a rise in Scottish nationalism? And? So the Scots take their independence - preferable to trying to stop them against their will, and in the longer term a likely antidote to nationalism. In Northern Ireland matters are entirely different” (my emphasis).
Far from backing Blair’s sop parliament as a ‘small advance’, the principled position was - as in Ireland - to call for a boycott. Scotland needs a parliament with full powers, capable of exercising the right to self-determination, not a body set up precisely to prevent it.
One of Mark Osborn’s co-thinkers, Tom Rigby, presents the Discussion bulletin with a handy question-and-answer session. He states: “But we often ask people to vote for things we don’t agree with. For instance, we call for a Labour vote, but we don’t endorse its programme. Why can’t we do the same with the deal?” Comrade Rigby answers his own question in the following manner:
“We no longer call for a Labour vote in quite the same way as we used to. We have had to adjust our slogans to recognise the way Blair is trying to change the party and the extent to which he has already succeeded. But nevertheless let us go back in the time machine when ‘Vote Labour and fight’ was an adequate summary of our position. The slogan expressed an entire orientation - it recognised the Labour Party as a distorted expression of working class independence, while simultaneously underlining the bourgeois nature of its policies and programme and the need for a working class fightback against Labour in office. The tension in the slogan was simply a reflection of the tensions in reality and the highly qualified nature of our support for Labour. The slogan was expressive of a dialectical contradiction. To oppose the contents of the deal, and then argue for people to vote for it, is not dialectical, but flatly self-contradictory. It is the equivalent of saying, ‘The deal is crap: back the deal’.”
We can see from comrade Rigby’s answer that the Labour Party acts like a theoretical black hole for AWL members, sucking everyone into the ‘lesser evil’ void - even those who are raising the banner of revolt against lesser-evilism. To no longer call for a Labour vote in “quite the same way” as before is still to support New Labour. It seems that AWL comrades are trapped in the past. They should really try to escape to the future.
Ironically, comrade Osborn has violently castigated those in the ‘yes’ camp for retreating into abstract-fantasy politics over the May 22 referendum - “The question on the ballot was: do we back the peace agreement cobbled together by British and US imperialism, the Irish ruling class and the more mainstream communalist politicians in the North? Yes or no to this question, not the ones you’ve invented” (Workers’ Liberty June). Yet when it comes to the Labour Party the Osbornites and the Matgamnarians put on their specially designed red-tinted glasses and slip back into “grade A fantasy” (Mark Osborn).
Don Preston