18.02.1999

Scargill changes tack

Simon Harvey of the SLP

Stay of execution for Appeal Four - women’s section under fire

Two cases pending under the Socialist Labour Party’s complaints procedure are still very much up in the air this week. In a surprising move, Scargill decided to hold his fire at the disciplinary hearing of the Appeal Four on February 13.

Brian Heron, Carolyn Sikorski, Terry Dunn and Helen Drummond had been charged with contravening Scargill’s constitution for daring to circulate their ‘Appeal for a special conference’. Comrade Drummond - once an ardent Scargillite - has already been battered into demoralised despair by the general secretary’s bureaucratic assault and failed to turn up for the hearing. But comrades Heron and Sikorski, two leaders of the Fourth International Supporters Caucus, along with comrade Dunn, arrived together, despite having originally been told to appear at separate times.

After Scargill opened proceedings with a list of the Appeal Four’s heinous crimes, they coolly pointed out that the hearing could not be considered legitimate. For example, the complaints procedure allows the right of appeal for any ‘convicted’ comrade. But the 15-strong appeals panel laid down has not been elected. Faced with these legal niceties (backed up by the SLP’s most well known solicitor, comrade Imran Khan, and the joint author of the party’s constitution, leftwing lawyer Mike Mansfield), Scargill decided to beat a retreat, cutting short the hearing with the intention of seeking fresh backing from the national executive.

The second case pending involves vice-president Roy Bull, the “former editor” of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review, which was banned by the December NEC from commenting on the affairs of the SLP. At the following meeting of the executive in January, Scargill waved a piece of paper which he claimed was Bull’s resignation letter - although he refused to read it, or allow comrades present to read it for themselves. Strangely the vice-president has refused to confirm his ‘resignation’ and the name of Royston Bull still appears on all the party’s letterheads sent out by the general secretary.

One such letter, dated February 5, has been posted to all constituency SLP women’s sections, regarding the annual meeting of the national women’s section, up to now the stronghold of comrade Sikorski and Fisc. Scargill decided he could not tolerate the situation where an SLP component is controlled by oppositionists. So, using his exclusive access to membership records via NUMist, Paul Hardman, he attempted to load the voting entitlements for Scargillite branches so that the section AGM would be flooded and Sikorski and co voted out.

In a circular dated January 13, the national section officers, comrades Sikorski, Liz Screen and Rachel Newton, reported that, in order to do this, Scargill had decreed that the whole voting system would be changed. The few party women organised in sections had previously come together in regions, but now the regional sections were to be disenfranchised in favour of CSLP-based groups, added to which Scargill claimed that over 40 new sections had suddenly materialised.

At the November 1998 special congress comrade Hardman informed the section that its voting entitlement was 72 - the number of paid-up women members of the party. Yet now, according to the credentials being claimed for the women’s AGM, the CSLP section delegates will be entitled to cast votes on behalf of over 100 women who “have signified they wish to be a member of the women’s section”. It appears that just two or three Scargillite sections, or those from the handful of branches controlled by the followers of Stalinite NEC member Harpal Brar, will determine everything. Comrade Brar had previously made his disdain of the women’s section, like the black section abolished by the 1997 congress, more than plain.

The January 13 circular announced the cancellation of the AGM. But Scargill hit back on February 5, stating: “I emphasise that the SLP national executive committee has instructed the national women’s section officers to organise an AGM on Saturday February 27 1999 in Manchester.” He asked all women members who may have received a letter from the national section officers regarding their credentials to “ignore” it. This document, sent out on January 31, stated: “We cannot regard the list we have been sent as proof that there really are 57 new CSLP women’s sections.” It asked local women’s groups to send details of their membership.

Scargill, pretending to be deeply upset by this “offensive” remark, assured the women that everything was above board.

But his bureaucratic bullying has borne fruit. Comrade Screen has broken ranks and is now prepared to do his bidding. But comrades Sikorski and Newton are also on the point of giving up. Outmanoeuvred by Scargill, they have no notion of trying to fight back in the conference hall. The general secretary’s gerrymandering may ensure that they lose the vote, but surely oppositionists and the few remaining democrats are in a strong position to win the argument.

As Scargill tightens his stranglehold on every section of the party, he alienates more and more of his former courtiers, ensuring in the process that he will be left with nothing but a corpse.