17.12.1998

United front

Last weekend’s meeting of the Revolutionary Democratic Communist Tendency - a joint aggregate of members of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Revolutionary Democratic Group - called for democrats within the SLP to campaign for a broad united front both within and beyond Socialist Labour.

It was agreed that the new and possibly final crisis in the party following the election of Roy Bull as vice-president needed a principled response. The original motion, submitted by Dave Craig of the RDG, called for the “use of disciplinary procedures against Bull, on grounds that his views on gay and homosexual people contradict the SLP constitution”. Several CPGB comrades strongly opposed what amounted to a demand for Scargill to exercise even more dictatorial powers - ie, to set aside the result of a congress election. It was unanimously agreed to replace this formulation with the need to “continue to expose” Bull’s views.

The CPGB’s John Bridge proposed a further amendment calling on SLP members not only to engage in joint work with other socialist organisations, as comrade Craig’s motion proposed, but actually to join and encourage others to join the Socialist Alliances. The RDG members present voted against this amendment, although nobody from the group spoke in the debate to explain why they were opposed to it - despite the fact that RDG comrades are themselves working with the SAs. Even stranger, one RDG member subsequently voted against the motion as a whole, presumably because comrade Bridge’s amendment now made it unacceptable.

All other comrades present - CPGB and RDG - voted for the motion as amended