20.08.1998

Congress farce

Simon Harvey of the SLP

As politics return to normal after the summer silly season, we see that August has been business as usual for the Socialist Labour Party. If the last congress was a tragic waste of the possibilities that the SLP had opened for the British left, then congress 1998 is gearing up to be a complete farce.

If you have just returned from your holidays hoping to put forward a motion on whatever your SLP hobby-horse happens to be, you are already too late. The closing date for motions to congress was August 8. Most Constituency SLPs received notification of this from general secretary Arthur Scargill on August 4.

For my money, this is no Machiavellian attempt to prevent the left of the SLP attempting a coup at the party’s November 14 third congress. Most have walked out or been purged. No, this is more the hallmark of a ham-fisted bureaucracy. It treats the entire membership of the party - loyalist or dissident - with complete contempt. And anyway why should Scargill worry about the CSLPs mounting any challenge? - he still has 3,000 votes from the North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners Association. Readers will recall that he sprung the NWCCMA block vote on the 1997 congress.

In 1998 it seems there will be very little to vote on, as the overwhelming majority of CSLPs will have missed the deadline for submitting motions. Unless of course cliques within the party had forewarning, or late submissions are put through on Arthur’s nod.

Can Terry Dunn move support for victimised RMT activist Steve Hedley? Will Fisc be able to pursue its attempt to reinstate black sections? Will Harpal Brar have his motion praising Indian nuclear weapons? And what about poor old Roy Bull and some didactic motion on capitalist crisis?

Knives out for EPSR

Speaking of Roy Bull, news reaches my ears that the Fourth International Supporters Caucus in Manchester, ably organised by ‘clever’ Trevor Wongsam, has contacted the Weekly Worker through an intermediary in search of back issues of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review.

Why would enlightened ‘new realists’ such as Fisc be seeking the words of wisdom of rampaging Roy? Have they been won to his position on homosexuality as a bourgeois “perversion”? Or does this move to collect the froth and venom of comrade Bull have more to do with what Brian Heron has been overheard describing as a ‘clean-out’ of the EPSR?

Having purged just about all the ‘ultra-lefts’ in the SLP, the witch hunters now seem to be falling out among themselves. How long will it before Fisc starts looking for back issues of the Stalinite Lalkar, edited by NEC member Harpal Brar?

Brar supports nukes

I heard comrade Brar speak at the CPGB’s Communist University. A most thorough defence of Stalin he gave. I bought a copy of Lalkar, the publication of his ‘other’ organisation, the Indian Workers Association (GB). It seems that the IWA has got itself in a bit of a pickle over the recent nuclear tests conducted by the Indian and Pakistani governments.

The IWA executive, and Harpal Brar, hailed the tests as having “punched a gaping hole in the imperialists’ attempts to monopolise these weapons of mass destruction” (Lalkar July-August 1998). Embarrassingly for the IWA, however, its president released a contradictory statement opposing “the nuclear adventurism started by the BJP government in India”. He added the general secretary’s name to this statement, without his permission and contrary to his views and the agreed position. To make matters worse, the Morning Star “in its characteristic quest for truth”, as Harpal Brar aptly puts it, published only the unofficial condemnation, and not the original official release or the general secretary’s subsequent disowner.

It seems that factionalism is causing the IWA some problems. This is not the first time that an agreed IWA position has been overturned after the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has intervened. Comrade Brar reveals that the CPI(M) directed its supporters in Britain to reverse their decision to back IWA entry into the SLP. That would have upset the CPI(M)’s diplomatic relations with New Labour.

On this occasion CPI(M) supporters have had their arms twisted to condemn the tests. Apparently the CPI(M) could support the previous Congress government’s nuclear programme, but not the Hindu-nationalist BJP’s logical next step.

I will not go into comrade Brar’s reactionary support for the rightwing ‘anti-imperialist’ Indian bourgeoisie. It boils down to whether you think their possession of nuclear weapons is progressive or not. Harpal Brar thinks it is.

In that case, I wonder how comrade Brar’s speech went down outside Aldermaston atomic research centre on August 9, at a demonstration held to commemorate Nagasaki Day. The comrade was scheduled to share a platform with Greenham Common activist and SLP member Katrina Howse. How will comrade Howse react to the knowledge that a leader of her party - actively promoted by Arthur Scargill - supports the Indian ruling class’s nuclear policy?

Scargill split

I see that our dear comrade leader’s marriage has ended. Arthur and Anne are both on the NEC of the party - against the wishes of the general secretary. Comrades may remember that Anne Scargill’s name did not appear on the NEC recommended list at the 1996 congress. She was however elected, apparently because many delegates thought that anyone called Scargill must be worth voting for. In 1997 she was re-elected, topping the constituency section poll.

I wish them both well with their new lives and hope that their separation will not see Anne pushed out of politics.

London aggregate

There will be a London SLP delegates meeting on September 15 at 7pm, in Conway Hall.