11.02.1999

Royston Bull: facts and Fisc

The ‘former’ Socialist Labour Party vice-president and editor of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review, Royston Bull, responded with his customary indignation (Weekly Worker January 28) to Jack Conrad’s exposé of his politics in the previous week’s paper.

This amused me, particularly as comrade Conrad had been rather soft on Bull. Branding the latter’s approach to homosexuals as “reactionary, unscientific and prejudiced”, the comrade had continued:

“His press carries dark warnings about homosexual cliques. Their predilections for children. Their unnatural vices and practices. But he is not out to unnecessarily persecute or discriminate. That is, if homosexuals shun campaigning, hide their sexuality and join the Scargillite crusade in the sure knowledge that the end of capitalism will remove the sordid breeding ground for the homosexual ‘perversion’” (my emphasis Weekly Worker January 21).

In fact, comrade Conrad has set about Bull and the EPSR with a blunt sword. His purpose in doing so becomes clear, I think, when he turns the polemic onto the Fourth International Supporters Caucus and the ‘Appeal’ faction within the SLP leadership:

“Fisc and the ‘Appeal’ faction have conveniently ‘discovered’ Bull’s homophobia and for their own narrow ends are baying for the only fitting punishment. Instead of winning a rational argument they rely instead on the bigotry fostered by local government-style PC. It does not matter about the past, the facts or freedom of debate. Bull is a homophobe and therefore must burn.”

Whether or not Fisc thinks so, of course the facts matter. And one of the key facts here is that the EPSR most definitely has promoted a manifesto of persecution and discrimination against homosexuals. Just one working class newspaper has consistently exposed the full vileness of the Bullites’ attacks on gays, and that is the Weekly Worker. It is vital that the current debate should be informed by the restatement of all of the facts which have previously been revealed.

In an article sub-titled, “SLP witchhunter calls for discrimination against homosexuals” (Weekly Worker May 15 1997), comrade Ian Mahoney quoted from the EPSR of February 18 1997:

“Paedophilia, pederasty and lesbianism will never not be describable as emotional or sexual malfunctions or a major disruption of natural evolution. Persecution of such abnormalities is a barbaric instinct and will die out under socialism. But differentiation and discrimination on matters where sexual orientation remains a key factor in the outcome (child upbringing; all education; protection of minors; sensible use of resources; health concerns; acceptable public order and workplace conduct; practising and being susceptible to exploitation; counterrevolution-ary agitation, etc.) … is a separate question entirely” (my emphasis).

“ … if malfunctioning sexual orientation persists, then it could only not be a problem if it continued in complete openness: ie, with the known proclivities of male homosexuals, for example (as well as of sick heterosexuals, obviously), universally openly acknowledged and the individuals at risk identified.”

“If society eventually establishes that heterosexual procreation remains the basic natural evolutionary pattern for the species, then cleverly rationalised deviations from this by emotionally-charged male or female homosexuals in a position to strongly influence the education of minors is clearly going to remain a potential problem possibly requiring continued differentiation (or discrimination) within childcare and the teaching professions.”

Is the author of this stuff out to unnecessarily persecute or discriminate? I see little room for doubt. It is pertinent to add, I think, that the context of all of the above filth is Bull’s discussing how homosexuality will need to be handled after the working class socialist revolution. In his reply to Jack Conrad, Bull dwells upon an exposition of the problems which will confront the dictatorship of the proletariat:

“The dictatorship of the proletariat, the only true democratic state, only withers away through the successful strengthening of its dictatorship, or forcible suppression of its adversaries: ie, when world bourgeois class influences (ie, all bourgeois ideological nonsense) have been utterly defeated in the world” (emphasis in original).

What is characteristic about Bull’s treatment of the dictatorship of the proletariat is that the adversaries he appears to be keenest to suppress are, by and large, proletarians. Not the bourgeois class, but “world bourgeois class influences”. And we know the ideas he has on what constitutes the latter category. We have seen above that the EPSR lists “counterrevolutionary agitation” as one of the “matters where sexual orientation remains a key factor”. Gays are counter-revolutionaries, says Bull. And the very occasional reader of the EPSR will have seen enough to have learned that Trotskyists too are dangerous counterrevolutionaries in the crazy world of the Bullites. This is anti-working class divisiveness of the worst kind. This man and his followers should be drummed out of any working class revolutionary party as quickly as their legs will carry them.

To return to the matter of Fisc’s opportunism (my apologies for the tautology). The critique of this phenomenon is not diminished one iota by our reiterating the seriousness of the Bullites’ crime. Bull and the EPSR are not victims of “PC” censorship. Fisc stands all the more condemned because it knew of Bull’s queer-bashing for over a year and a half but deliberately choose to do nothing, whilst continuing to use the EPSR group as auxiliary witch hunters. The Weekly Worker of July 10 1997 reprinted in full my letter to Arthur Scargill detailing the homophobic content of Bull’s rag. The same edition contained my open letter to all SLP branches calling for action on the issue. I sent personal copies of both letters to two leading Fiscites, Brian Heron and Carolyn Sikorski. They did not reply. Fisc were well aware of the letter of complaint sent to Scargill by the London-based Lesbian and Gay Commission of the SLP, on April 29 1997. Fisc became interested in Bull’s queer-bashing only after the latter democratically defeated their man, Patrick Sikorski, in the SLP vice-presidential election of November 1998. Indeed Fisc are not interested in the facts, as comrade Conrad correctly charges. This makes it all the more important that those facts are accurately restated.

In July 1997, I condemned the refusal of Scargill to act against Bull and the EPSR. I would no longer pursue such a demand. At that time the fight for democracy in the SLP was still very much alive. This is no longer the case. Since that date, every last vestige of democratic practice has been extinguished. Branch motions to the 1997 congress that met with Scargill’s displeasure were arbitrarily ruled “out of order”. That congress itself was rendered a travesty by the advent of the 3,000-strong block vote of the North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners Association. The 1998 congress was cancelled by the leadership. Branches have been warned that it is “unconstitutional” to communicate with each other. Four members of the Fisc-supported ‘Appeal’ faction face possible expulsion for gathering members’ signatures calling for the cancelled congress to take place. The overwhelming majority of revolutionaries and democracy campaigners have either been thrown out of the SLP (with Fisc’s approval), or have left.

I most certainly do not desert those who remain. However, I am sure that the issue of the EPSR group’s attacks on homosexuals cannot possibly, as a single issue, be dealt with in any kind of democratic manner within the shell that is today’s Socialist Labour Party. I prefer the approach advocated by comrade Conrad: “to urge SLP members to organise a democratic rebellion, to break politically with Bull and the whole stinking corpse of Scargillism”.

John Pearson