10.12.1998

Dirty war of demoralisation

John Stone of the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International discusses the dispute between Workers Action and Workers Fight

The British Workers International League (WIL), one of the most leftwing of Trotskyists groups, has dissolved. While most of the WIL’s former members are now outside any group, two of its offsprings (Workers Action and Workers Fight) are now engaged in a bitter dispute.

 This article will examine the political achievements of the WIL and the reasons for its collapse, and argue that these, and the problems that the two different groups are facing today, are consequences of the legacy of Healyism in particular, and post-war ‘orthodox’ Trotskyism in general.

In 1985 under the pressure of the collapse of the left before Thatcher’s neo-liberal offensive, the British WRP fell apart and the comrades who later set up the WIL supported the wrong side in the split. They backed Gerry Healy’s minority. In 1987 they created a new group, the WIL, which was very much influenced by left orthodox Trotskyist currents like Workers Power, the International Trotskyist Committee and comrades like Al Richardson.

They rejected their former view that the anti-‘Pabloite’ International Committee was the most progressive side in the breakdown of the Fourth International in 1953-54.

After the creation of the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI) in September 1989, Workers Power and the WIL engaged in fusion talks. Unfortunately the process was aborted. WP initially tried to push for a quick unification without previous serious discussions and joint actions. This provoked an early rupture.

Workers Power had developed an orthodox Trotskyist position. However, WP’s orthodoxy proved to be shallow. In the early 1990s under pressure from the transition in the workers’ states, WP adopted an optimistic view of the world period. They viewed the transition in the east initially as the beginning of a political revolution. This led to a retreat from revolutionary defencism. WP started to consider Stalinism as the main enemy, so that it was necessary to make united fronts with bourgeois democrats and nationalists against it.

The LRCI ceased to be an orthodox Trotskyist group as it revised its programmatic positions and organisational structure.

The WIL adopted a much more orthodox position on the nature of the world situation and the character of the transition from degenerate workers’ states to bourgeois states. While WP typified the international period as a revolutionary one and for eight years continued to describe all the countries east of Germany as moribund workers’ states, the WIL arrived at the conclusion that in Eastern Europe the states that were promoting capitalism were incipient bourgeois states. This meant that the period was one of an international strategic defeat for workers at the hand of bourgeois reactionary forces.

The WIL had a contradictory position. On the one hand it managed to adopt a more realistic analysis of the period based on the counterrevolutionary overthrow of the former workers’ states. However, it never broke completely with Healy’s Stalinopho-bia. So while the WIL saw correctly that the bourgeois counterrevolution had the initiative and that it was the greatest danger in the east, they did not adopt a consistent revolutionary defencist view.

In its last years the WIL openly rejected Marx’s and Engels’ conception on the national question. They adopted Rosdolski’s revision on the Marxist position regarding historic and non-historic peoples. This is not an academic debate. In fact, in a period in which liberal-democrats are on the offensive, the Rosdolski-WIL thesis was that national self-determination was a principle that was universal in the phase of early capitalism, and against Stalinism.

Against Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, who always subordinated national rights to class questions, the WIL adaptation to nationalism led them to unconditionally support every national movement even when it was led by a proto-bourgeoisie against a degenerated workers’ state.

The WIL formed a new international current: the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (LTT). It included groups in different continents and from very different traditions. The German and Belgian LTT were inside the Usec and the Parity Commission with Lambert and Moreno; the South African CWG were associated with the International Committee; the Ceylonese WV were part of the Sammarakody/VO grouping; the Canadian LTG were a new split from the Spartacists; and the Jamaican CWG were a group of comrades against the PNP. The Swedish AFS are young comrades that were in the Usec.

In 1996, when we founded the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI), the WIL sent us a very short letter in which they said that they wanted to discuss with us in order to create a united tendency that would have sections in all continents. We believed that the WIL and LTT had some progressive positions and that it might be possible to overcome their limitations. (Most of the LTT groupings, before fusing with the WIL, were discussing with the LRCI, but the arrogant sectarianism of WP’s ruling clique avoided any possible rapprochement.)

We started a process of discussions and we elaborated around 10 joint resolutions. Nearly all of these documents were produced by us and one of the current members of WF. Twice we had international public meetings. The LCMRCI and the LTT were capable of forging a serious pole of attraction that could have created a framework of political discussion and revolutionary regroupment. The USA Workers Voice group and the Brazilian Internationalist Bolshevik League wanted to participate.

However, these possibilities were damaged by some negative pressures from inside the WIL. On the one hand, there were many demoralised comrades who were pushing the group to become a passive and fatalistic club. On the other hand, there were some comrades that were pushing the WIL towards the open rejection of some positions from Marx and Trotsky.

In the mid-1990s the WIL put a lot of effort into building its own faction inside the British Usec section (Socialist Outlook). However, instead of winning comrades from that milieu towards Trotskyism or its traditional positions, the WIL was being influenced and changed by that milieu. In 1995 the pro-WIL faction made an unprincipled bloc with SO’s rightwing faction in order to win the leadership. This manoeuvre created a very serious problem inside the WIL. The comrades who later were to found Workers Fight originally started to question the WIL’s orientation.

The adaptation to SO led the WIL to very Labourite perspectives. The WIL’s congress (February 1997) adopted a resolution that referred only to work inside the Labour Party. At that time we said that it was correct to give a critical vote to Labour and build a faction inside it. But we also said that revolutionaries should understand that due to Blair’s right turn, many activists were trying to develop movements outside a very rightwing reformist party which had very little internal life. We argued strongly that an orientation should be made also towards Socialist Labour, the Socialist Alliances and other movements on the left of Labour.

In the 1997 general election the WIL called for a vote for Labour, Scargill, Sheridan and Nellist. However, they were against voting for the remaining 80 socialist candidates (even in places where SLP candidates got more votes than Scargill). Later, the same comrades that were against any serious tactical orientation towards the SLP called for a fusion with the SLP’s Socialist Perspectives. After their 1997 congress the WIL simply ignored all its previous agreements in favour of joint discussions, aggregates and statements with the LCMRCI. They never gave any explanation and they never bothered to reply to any of our letters.

During 1997 all the internal contradictions inside the WIL developed to the point where they resulted in the dissolution of the organisation. The groups Workers Action and Workers Fight appeared later.

However, neither of these groups contained a majority of the WIL’s previous membership. Most of these comrades no longer belong to any organisation. One of the most talented WIL leaders, comrade Bob Pitt, is producing What Next?, a journal which also carries internal discussions amongst the LTT. Another very important WIL leading cadre, Ian H, left the WIL with other older comrades, attacking its turn towards the Usec.

The majority of the international Leninist Trotskyist Tendency does not back either Workers Action (WA) or Workers Fight (WF). The German, Belgium and South African comrades are critical of both groups. The South Africans, which is the largest LTT section, consider that WA is moving away from Trotsky and towards the right and that WF is producing a trade union paper which is not a party organ nor a united front bulletin. The Canadian group has dissolved. The Jamaican CWG was not accepted as a section. The Ceylonese WV are not very integrated. The Swedish group has critically backed WA.

The WIL split happened in a non-serious way. The first issues of Workers Action and Workers Fight did not give a clear account of the reasons for the rupture and still the political motives are unclear. However, following the articles that these comrades published in their own press and in What Next? it is possible to see their different political evolutions.

WA is not interested at all in discussing with any of the groups which participated in the WIL’s February congress. They are not interested in building an international liaison committee for refounding a Trotskyist international. In What Next? No8 a WA comrade said that they want to regroup with non-Trotskyist organisations and not necessarily on a Trotskyist basis.

While WP is so blind that it sees revolutionary advances in a period of social counterrevolutions, WA is going the other way. They are adopting a fatalistic and pessimistic approach to history.

In summary, the comrades from WA are becoming the sort of free-thinking pro-Labourites around the Usec who are always trying to ‘discover’ new mistakes in Marx, Lenin or Trotsky and new advances made by western Marxists. In fact, what they are doing is adapting the positions of old Mensheviks or centrists.

The main motive that pushed the WIL’s left wing to create WF was its battle against the majority’s adaptation towards the Usec and its constant appeals to revise the classics. WF proclaimed that they were going to defend the transitional programme and the necessity of a regroupment with all the left-oriented Trotskyist forces.

In that sense they were in general a progressive split. However, the comrades are still influenced by the same WIL methods which they say they are trying to overcome. In summary, WF is to the left of WA and is formulating a necessary, albeit insufficient, response to the passive and post-Trotskyist tendency of WA.

However, in a recent statement comrade Charlie Langford from Workers Action wrote that “the central factor that caused” the dissolution and split of the WIL was the attitude “that [the minority] took to the sexual misconduct case that we had to hear and decide on in July 1997.” Comrade Steve Myers had been accused of the “unfastening of the clothing and the sexual touching of a sleeping woman”. We do not have enough information on that issue to take a position and we are still waiting for WF’s version. However, even if all the accusations of WA against comrade Steve are true, nobody has suggested his expulsion from the organisation or from the workers’ movement. He is not being accused of rape, betraying a strike, or crossing class lines.

When comrade Steve entered the WIL in early 1997 he was a strong supporter of the group’s pro-Labour and anti-LCMRCI wing. We have many disagreements with the comrade and, if the verdict that was adopted by comrades from the WIL’s majority and minority (WA and WF) was correct (something that we do not know), we most probably would have voted with them for a suspension of some months.

However, it is very opportunistic to try to use this case in order to discredit a new group and avoid a political debate. Comrade Steve could be criticised for his positions and his moving in and out of different groups. Nevertheless he has proved to be a very energetic comrade who has built very successful campaigns (solidarity with our Bolivian former comrade Eleuterio Guiterrez, unionisation of supermarket workers, a big rally against Le Pen, Bosnia Aid, etc.). His dedication to the labour movement produced some significant tragedies in his own life.

It is very dishonest of the comrades of WA to try to take the opportunity of a possible mistake to sideline him. They claim that this incident would have paralysed the WIL, so it was necessary to dissolve the organisation and to found a new group. But this is not the way in which an organisation which had been in existence for a decade should liquidate itself. The comrades from Workers Fight correctly denounced this move as an attempt to prevent further political discussions and to exclude them from the new organisation.

Disputes over personal offences and internal discipline should not be used to avoid political discussions. They are completely subordinate to the political and programmatical issues which are in dispute. These personal attacks are also damaging WA’s own image. It is also an expression of its lack of political argument. In our brief relation with the WIL we experienced how they often tried to substitute manoeuvres and personal intrigues for political debate.

On the other hand, WF is also trapped in the same subjective web. They are also using personal abuses and adopting a paranoid attitude. Threatening to use the bourgeois courts is no way to stop WA and, even worse, is discrediting WF. There is no reason to call on the bourgeois legal system and state to intercede in a dispute over alleged sexual abuse amongst people who call themselves revolutionaries.

If WF do not think that the comrade made any mistake and that this is an incident which is being used to discredit WF’s editor, they could appeal to the LTT’s control commission or to a tribunal of the labour movement. However, we think that we should concentrate on the political issues which are under debate.

We are experiencing the death of what was a progressive left-oriented Trotskyist current that came out of the Healyite disintegration. Interestingly, the LRCI, another left-Trotskyist organisation, is also moving to the right. The immediate cause of this regression of both currents is their incapacity to understand the post-1989 social counterrevolutions and their adaptation towards the new democratic-liberal wave. While the LRCI is becoming a cult around Harvey, the LTT is atomising.

More decisive is the tendency of all currents of post-war Trotskyism towards liquidating the vanguard party. This makes the tendency to shift away from revolutionary politics towards petty bourgeois class interests impossible to reverse unless the root causes in method and class composition are understood and corrected. The LTT, like the LRCI, reclaimed some of the elements of orthodox Trotskyism in the 1980s, but these were shallow developments that could not survive counterrevolutionary defeats of the 1980s and 1990s.

WA is moving away from what remains of the programmatic achievements of the WIL. In that process many former LTT comrades are being demoralised and the resistance that some comrades are making is insufficient.

We demand WA stop its dirty war against WF and that WF should abandon its threat to use the bourgeois courts. Both groups should renounce subjective disputes and discuss in front of the class and the vanguard their real political differences so they can be judged in the court of the class struggle.