11.02.1999

Economists fall out

Around the left

Some argue that hypocrisy is an essential part of the human condition. Naturally, communists do not subscribe to such a pessimistic viewpoint. But when you examine some left publications you begin to understand how such a gloomy perspective can arise.

A prime candidate is the “democratic, pluralist, multi-party, feminist, ecologist, anti-militarist and internationalist” Socialist Outlook - or as it is affectionately known in some quarters, Socialist ‘sink the euro - save the pound’ Outlook. It cannot be denied that this Fourth Internationalist organisation - whose distant origins lie in the International Marxist Group of Tariq Ali - has a less than perfect record when it comes to the struggle for democracy and ‘pluralism’. Indeed, in the specific case of the London Socialist Alliance, SO aligned itself with the anti-communist witch hunters in their bid to exclude the ‘ultra-left’ CPGB and its supporters.

To this end SO happily engaged in petty bureaucratic games and local government-style political correctness to curtail discussion and democratic debate - including stomach-churning displays of moralistic feminism. SO has also constituted itself on the extreme nationalist wing of the Scottish Socialist Party, positively advocating independence and denouncing in tones of baffled outrage the CPGB which argues for working class unity.

However, in the latest issue of its monthly journal, SO believes this time it is on the receiving end of behind-the-scenes double-dealing. The object of exclusion rather than the agent of exclusion - and it does not feel nice. Under the dramatic headline, “This is no way to build left unity!”, SO lashes out against the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty for its “blatant hijack” of a “broad campaign network” - ie, the Welfare State Network. Instead of bureaucratic maneouvres, Socialist Outlook demands “honesty, transparency, democracy and integrity” - in the WSN, that is - and attacks the AWL,

“whose long and grisly track record of failure to work for any length of time and with any consistency with other currents is matched only by its succession of proposals for ‘unity’ and for new ‘broad’ organisations” (February).

So what has gone wrong in the cuddly, broad, hands-across-the-water, all-friends-together WSN? After all, it did seem, according to SO, that the WSN was the one arena where the AWL was prepared to work in a non-sectarian manner. Thus,

“for over four years the WSN managed to operate as an organisation linking activists and campaigns from a wide range of political organisations and backgrounds - including the AWL, Socialist Outlook, Socialist Labour Party, and others who simply wanted to fight back in defence of health and welfare services and benefits. Although there were a number of political - and even some more major programmatic - differences between the various component currents of the WSN, we found in practice that these could easily be contained within a common organisation which remained focused on the unifying issue of welfare state campaign work.”

However, it has all gone horribly wrong. Previously, the WSN had a monthly publication, Action for health and welfare, which was “produced with substantial resources from the AWL, but with a degree of ‘power sharing’, with John Lister from Socialist Outlook elected as joint editor, and initially open access to a wide range of contributors”. Then, last year, the AWL “forced” through the WSN steering committee a decision to move Action for health and welfare from a monthly to a fortnightly publication. “The frequency of publication was clearly intended to meet the needs of the AWL rather than match the pace of any objective events or the rhythms of labour movement activity,” says Socialist Outlook. It continues:

“Fortnightly publication made Action even more reliant on financial, organisational and political input from the AWL, narrowed the range of contributors, and led to the paper being increasingly filled not with the specific campaign-orientated material which had been its early strength, but with general ‘lefty’ political articles on topics unrelated to the welfare state, largely written by AWLers. Many of these extraneous articles were in themselves politically contentious and divisive because they dealt with issues on which there was no basic unifying agreement.”

Personally I found that the introduction of “contentious and divisive” articles made Action for health and welfare almost worth reading.

SO further chronicles the perfidious and devious actions of the AWL. By November 1998, the WSN steering committee in Liverpool was attended by just seven people - five AWL, plus the chair, Alec McFadden (SLP), and SO’s own John Lister. The January steering committee was cancelled at the last minute by AWL, with no new date fixed. Then the bombshell. In the words of SO:

“In mid-January, a new publication, Action for solidarity, plopped through mailboxes of WSN affiliates and subscribers, accompanied by a letter from WSN national organiser Jill Mountford - on WSN headed notepaper, carrying the name of Alec McFadden, who knew nothing of the letter or the new paper - asking people to ‘reaffiliate to the campaign and subscribe to Action’.

The letter went on to stress the alleged continuity between Action for health and welfare and the new (and unilaterally-launched) AWL newspaper: ‘We hope that you continue to support our campaign and Action … You will see that the first issue of 1999 is redesigned. There will be a number of new columns, four extra pages and the paper is now called Action for solidarity. We believe that this best sums up the most fundamental principle of working class organisation’.”

SO writes: “The newspaper and the letter are a transparent political fraud. The renaming and redesign of the paper are unilateral decisions not of the WSN, but of the AWL and its political leadership.” On receiving the “redesigned” Action John Lister immediately resigned from the WSN, denouncing Jill Mountford’s letter as “a sectarian master-stroke” and the AWL for seeking to “annex the resources of the WSN for the latest AWL publication”. In the opinion of SO, the AWL has now “reverted to type, contenting itself once more with a tame, sterile, sectarian front organisation pliable to the whims of AWL guru Sean Matgamna”.

He who lives by the bureaucratic manoeuvre dies by the bureaucratic manouevre. The slightly sorry story detailed above illustrates, yet again, the crying need for genuine openness and democracy - whether it be in the SAs, the WSN or United Socialists.

Don Preston