05.11.1998

Some Scottish enlightenment

The Communist Tendency replies to Mark Fischer

I don’t know how much longer it will take before Mark Fischer finishes off his weekly column with a few verses from Rule Britannia, but before his ingrained British Marxism takes him to further depths, perhaps your readers would like to be better informed of the political situation in Scotland. For although the Weekly Worker borders on the indulgent when it comes to printing articles by individual Trotskyists (but please continue, nevertheless) when it comes to organised tendencies in Scotland (other than SML) the CPGB-Provisional Central Committee goes out of its way to keep its readership in England uninformed and ignores or suppresses political challenges to its politics.

Mark has a problem when he attacks the new Scottish Socialist Party as a “centrist-reformist-nationalist bloc” without any evidence of “a communist pole of the contradiction ... expressed in the party’s formation, its structure or founding principles”. If this description applies to the new SSP, it applies even more so to the Scargill Labour Party, which the CPGB-PCC so enthusiastically embraced, and continued to encourage people to remain members of, even after the most flagrant violation of elementary democratic norms at its last congress.

Now Mark is aware of this contradiction. However, his attempt to resolve it is extremely lame. We can agree that the declaration of the SSP is a step backwards for revolutionary politics, but it certainly has not reached the depths of political degeneration shown in the SLP so well chronicled each week by Simon Harvey. Mark resorts to a sleight-of-hand technique, in trying to paint the SLP in the best possible colours - but even so he fails. He points out that the SLP “was a break to the left from Labour by a small layer of militant workers led by one of the most important trade union leaders of this century ... There is no comparison with the formation of the SSP.” Well, if we are going back to the time of the declaration of the SLP, the comparison should be with the formation of the Scottish Socialist Alliance, not the SSP. Mark is quite right to say there is no comparison, but it is the Scargill Labour Party which is found wanting in comparison.

During the 1984-5 miners strike, Scargill shone out in comparison with any other union general secretary (and most other union officials). However, by the time of the SLP’s declaration, Scargill’s politics had very much degenerated. We can therefore rejig Mark’s political characterisation of the SSP to fit the SLP more accurately - ‘reformist, centrist and nationalist’. The reformists are represented by Scargill and a coterie of broad left trade union officials. The centrist minority - and decidedly right-moving centrists at that - are represented by the ‘secret’ Trotskyist and Stalinist factions. All this is tied together by a very British nationalism with a common acceptance of the ‘British road to socialism’ and some fairly blatant chauvinist political positions, including support for immigration laws.

Now exactly where was the expression of communism in the “party’s formation, its structure or founding principles” of the SLP? Despite Scargill having his ‘interim’ constitution drawn up by a QC, neither the self-declared communists nor ‘revolutionary’ democrats forced an open challenge to this obviously anti-democratic imposition at the SLP’s founding meeting. Compared even with the old Labour Party, the SLP’s democratic procedures were found wanting.

However, if Mark can summon up the political honesty to recognise all this, he will still be left with one fallback position of defence. The SLP may well be an anti-communist, bureaucratic sham of a party led by a would-be labour dictator - but, by god, it’s British!

So how does this compare with the foundation of the Scottish Socialist Alliance? The real impetus for the SSA undoubtedly had its roots in the massive wave of class struggle shown in the anti-poll tax revolt. The first anti-poll tax group was initiated in Edinburgh by an alliance of Scottish socialists, republicans and anarchists. The ‘Brit left’ initially held back. However, Militant found those of its working class supporters not tied up in the Labour Party and trade union machine champing at the bit.

So right-centrist Militant was being pushed left, on the back of a great working class victory, round about the time when left reformist Scargill was moving right in the face of defeats. The flushing of SML out of Labour also saw the beginnings of a considerable change in Militant practice from their previous dogmatic sectarianism to a more open, less sectarian willingness to engage in debate and united actions with others outside Labour. This was the spirit they brought to the founding conference of the SSA, where tendency rights were recognised at all levels.

We can take this comparative examination of the course of class struggle further to help explain the relative strength of the SSA in Scotland, compared to the SLP in ‘Britain’. The SSA took the lead in the very successful ‘Save Our Schools’ campaign in Glasgow, marked by militant tactics such as school and council chamber occupations. It also played a prominent part in the Glacier workers’ victory, which was also won by an occupation.

In contrast, despite (or, more accurately, because of) the elevated status awarded to left trade union officials in the SLP, their utterly tokenistic ‘opposition’ has produced no real action in the one union they claim strength in - the RMT; their leading members in the important Liverpool dockers’ strike (initiated from below by rank and file dockers) tended to represent the more conservative, trade union routinist and left Labour nostalgic wing of the dispute’s leadership. SLP members in Scotland did not join the vibrant support committees in Edinburgh and Glasgow and, despite being a ‘British’ organisation, it was left to others, including SML, to organise regular tours of dockers and Women on the Waterfront to Scotland. And if we look to Scargill’s NUM itself, what have we seen so far? Well, nothing much really - apart from the phantom votes of the North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners’ Association!

However, when SML initiated Militant’s break from Labour, there was another major political factor which had to be confronted. In Scotland, the anti-poll tax revolt had also brought back the issue of the national question with a vengeance.

The destruction of a central plank of government policy; the enforced resignation of a prime minister and the return of the national question (at the same time as a growing republican challenge in the ‘Six Counties’ after the failure of the Anglo-Irish Agreement) led to a dramatically changed political situation in Scotland. It was precisely the impact of the democratic issue of Scottish self-determination which placed Scottish politics in advance of those in England and Wales, and marked out Glasgow as the cockpit of class struggle in ‘Britain’. This higher level of politics also informed the later economic and social struggles in the city too, which led to victories, when virtually everywhere else our class was going down to defeat after long drawn out struggles.

It was left to a very recent convert, Tony Blair, to devise a wider policy of constitutional reform - devolution all round and a reformed monarchy - capable of meeting ruling class needs in the very much changed political situation since Thatcher originally came to office. He was no less determined for all that. Like that late convert, the Liberal prime minister Gladstone in the 19th century, Blair became an advocate of constitutional reform of the union, to create a new framework for the benefit of British capital.

Along with the majority of the ‘Brit left’, Militant’s Marxism was deeply economist. They could rise to, respond to and offer organisational help to a working class pushing forward on economic and social issues, including, when pushed hard enough, breaking with Labour and by-passing the trade union bureaucracy. But faced with the need since 1988 to provide a courageous political leadership over the political and democratic issue of Scottish self-determination, SML was still trapped by its past.

When confronted with this new political challenge, Militant remembered its half-forgotten devolutionist past from the 1970s. Its underlying economist politics filled some members with doubts. They would prefer continued concentration on ‘real class’ and ‘bread and butter’ issues. But Militant had always supplemented its trade unionism with a political support for Labour. So openly tail-ending the ruling class’s liberal political alternative of devolution was easier for them than, say, for the SWP, which puts an even more economistic emphasis on trade unionism and ‘real class’ issues.

The timing of the founding of the SSA was also significant. Although there were still victorious economic and social struggles, Dewar’s political strategy already had had considerable success in rolling back the embryonic republicanism displayed at the height of the anti-poll tax struggle. For communists and revolutionary democrats, quite clearly, the main political task throughout this period, and particularly in the period of Blair’s plebiscite, was to make this republicanism politically visible again. However, trying to persuade SML members of such a strategy became more difficult, despite them being more open to debate, now that old certainties no longer held. With the political movement in retreat, it was easier for SML leaders to persuade economistically trained members that the only option was that offered by the liberal wing of the ruling class or the SNP.

As a result of SML’s capitulation to New Labour it was left to the two much smaller organised tendencies inside the SSA - the then CPGB-PCC, and the RWT and Edinburgh Republicans - to organise. However, the CPGB-PCC introduced other fatal British Marxist characteristics to their campaign. First was the decision to set up their ‘Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination’ as a ‘Party’ front, not a united front. When the Edinburgh Republicans asked Anne Murphy (sent to Scotland as organiser/‘minder’) for a founding meeting to discuss aims and tactics, we were told these had been predetermined by the CPGB-PCC and were not open to change (Scargill is not alone in insisting on proprietal rights in his organisation).

Secondly, there appeared to be an opportunist tinge to the proposed campaign. Edinburgh Republicans also thought that the republican nature of the campaign should be highlighted in its name. The CPGB-PCC’s subheading was ‘For a parliament with full powers’. This was originally SML’s slogan and has pushed them in a more SNP constitutional direction. Perhaps it is not surprising then that The Times mistook the CPGB-PCC’s campaign for an ultra-nationalist one!

In the face of CPGB-PCC sectarianism, the Edinburgh Republicans formed the Campaign for a Scottish Republic, which democratically debated its platform, name and tactics. We were able to win the Edinburgh branch of the SSA to republican politics for the majority of the campaigning period, so official Edinburgh SSA republican leaflets were produced and distributed. Independent campaign material was produced too, including stickers for use on the ballot papers. A united campaign would have had more impact, but that door was closed by the CPGB-PCC. We produced a sober political assessment afterwards, in contrast with the histrionics and hype that characterised the Weekly Worker. As a result we were later able to form the Red Republicans and extend our membership to Glasgow and Dundee.

However, there was an even more fatal flaw in the CPGB-PCC’s politics. It does not recognise Scotland as a nation and claims that Scots are merely a minority nationality (ethnic group) within a British nation. This theoretical position is so racist, it gives succour to the most reactionary wing of Scottish nationalism, which has expressed itself in Scottish/Settler Watch and the Scottish Separatist Group (SSG). They also define the people of Scotland in ethnic/cultural terms. The SSG arrived at an identical political recommendation to the CPGB-PCC on the day of the Blair’s plebiscite - stay at home! Following the logic of their theoretical position, the CPGB-PCC should have been arguing that Scots living anywhere in the UK (or ‘Britain’) had the right to vote but not the non-Scots living in Scotland! (The insistence that Scotland is not a nation is even more bizarre, when the Weekly Worker (October 8) awards nation status to Kosova. It is doubtful whether anyone living in Kosova considers themselves part of a Kosovan nation - most think they are Albanian.)

Unfortunately, the balance sheet of CPGB-PCC intervention in Scotland has proven to be negative. This is underlined by the collapse of your political presence here, which cannot be attributed to the personal failings of two comrades. Therefore, when Mark devotes another column designed to further weaken communist and republican politics in Scotland (and hence the rest of the UK) he needs to be brought to task.

Mark and the CPGB-PCC really must take a more critical look at that rusty old weapon which they think will smite all opposition - ‘One state, one party’. We have already offered a critique of this in our reply to Jack Conrad - ‘Fight for the right to Party’, submitted as part of the contribution to communist rapprochement. Significantly it was not printed, nor has it been quoted in the Weekly Worker or other CPGB-PCC publications. Maybe an organisation which believes that our class’s future history will just be a rerun of the Bolshevik experience in 1917 can ignore the lessons of the rest of this century. That the ‘One party, one state’ formulation has so readily been extended in official and Trotskyist ‘communist’ hands to ‘One party, one state, one leader’ must give others pause for thought, especially when it is identical to the political principle of the fascists. Those who so loosely bandy the term ‘national socialist’ should perhaps look closer to home.

Now, undoubtedly the majority decision to change the SSA to the SSP makes the job of organising revolutionary politics harder. The declaration of a party was strenuously opposed by both Red Republicans and the Campaign for a Federal Republic. However, the republicans inside the SSA and now the SSP have been far more successful in defending democratic rights than the CPGB-PCC in the SLP. The SSP still remains better positioned to influence class struggle positively, although the same difficult struggle against economism and nationalism remains - but it does so in ‘Brit left’ organisations too, to an even greater extent.

Worker republicans do not run away from struggle because of setbacks - especially when there is still official provision for a fightback. Therefore the Red Republicans urge all members to stay inside the SSP. We also urge others to join to further build worker republican politics. Mark’s prescription for communists and democratic republicans in the SSP to leave would merely further disorganise revolutionaries in Scotland. It is a calculated wrecking move - a move he did not seem able to contemplate when faced with a much worse regime and poorer prospects in the SLP.

Mark’s Union Jack ‘underpants’ are revealed for all to see.