04.03.1999

Bull expelled

With the vice-president gone and his EPSR in the dog house, the Appeal faction makes a final bid for Scargill’s favours

In an amazing change of fortune Royston Bull, elected as SLP vice-president just over three months ago, is to be expelled from the party. Hauled before a disciplinary committee under the terms of the ‘complaints procedure’, the editor of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review was last month ‘convicted’ by general secretary Arthur Scargill and three stooges of “non-compliance with an NEC resolution”.

According to the letter of the complaints procedure, it is up to the NEC itself to implement or overturn the decision, but Scargill has not even bothered to wait for the March 20 executive meeting (the February NEC was cancelled) before giving Bull the boot. There is of course no way that the NEC will refuse to back the Great Leader, and Bull himself obviously believes the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The February 23 EPSR announces his expulsion as a fact.

The party was thrown into disarray at last November’s special congress, when Scargill decided to ditch his former courtiers of the Fourth International Supporters Caucus and throw his weight behind an EPSR-Stalinite-loyalist slate for NEC elections. Bull easily defeated the incumbent Fiscite, Patrick Sikorski, for the vice-presidency, while the ‘Campaign to support Scargill and the national leadership of the Socialist Labour Party’ swept the board for the executive members elected by constituency branches. Carolyn Sikorski, who was returned unopposed by the women’s section, was Fisc’s only survivor.

But Bull’s very success was to provoke his own downfall. The homophobic views carried in the EPSR were now under the spotlight, as the Fiscites, stung by their defeat, launched a rebellion. London regional president, Brian Heron, another ex-NEC Fiscite, won his committee to strike action - refusing to contest the European elections in the capital, unless Scargill took steps to have the democratically elected vice-president removed from office.

The entire leadership, including the Fiscites, had previously kept quiet about the homophobic EPSR’s contents, and turned a blind eye to its flagrant breaching of Scargill’s Labour Party-style constitution. Clause II (4) prohibits “individuals and organisations ... which have their own programme, principles and policies, distinctive and separate propaganda” from party membership. The Bullites had been more than useful to the Scargill-Fisc alliance in fingering communists and witch-hunting democrats.

However, Fisc was less than happy with Scargill’s cancellation of last November’s full annual congress and its replacement by the Manchester special congress, where no membership motions were allowed. Pat Sikorski had issued a set of proposals aimed at clipping Scargill’s wings, and Fisc, backed up by former Scargill loyalists Terry Dunn and Helen Drummond, started to circulate their ‘Appeal for a special conference’ last autumn. It was this which led Scargill, furious at such insubordination, to dump Fisc in the run-up to the special congress. The EPSR had to be brought fully on board to ensure his victory in the NEC elections, and Bull was the only other candidate for vice-presidency apart from Pat Sikorski.

But the general secretary was determined to re-establish complete control, and to put both rival factions firmly in their place. At the very end of the first meeting of the new NEC on December 12, Scargill suddenly proposed three motions (see Weekly Worker January 14). The first, directed against the Fiscites and the Appeal faction, demanded that they “withdraw the ‘Appeal’, cease their activities immediately and undertake to abide by the party’s constitution” - despite the fact that his constitution actually lays down the right of the members to “request” a special congress.

The second motion instructed the Bullites either to close down the EPSR or

“give an undertaking that it will not comment on the affairs of the SLP or carry contributions that may lead members to conclude that the EPSR is attacking and discriminating against women or sections within our society because of sexual orientation/preference and/or religion, etc”.

Finally the NEC was asked to empower the general secretary to “bring proceedings” against either faction, should he consider that they had refused “to comply with these policy decisions”. All three motions were overwhelmingly passed.

Bull reports that “the undertaking was duly sent”, and reproduces his assurance to Scargill in the EPSR (February 23):

“I can confirm what I already indicated at the December 12 NEC meeting that I can limit my personal involvement with the EPSR journal while an active member of the SLP, and also do my utmost to influence future EPSR contents so as to avoid upsetting SLP members.

“The EPS Review in 20 years’ publication has never had the deliberate intention of ‘attacking and discriminating against women or sections within our society because of sexual orientation/preference and/or religion, etc’, to quote your letter - and has not the slightest wish to be seen in that light now.”

Bull states that this was “totally ignored by Scargill”, who furiously complained that the very next issue of the EPSR (December 15) following the December 12 NEC was again guilty of that heinous crime - “comment on the affairs of the SLP”. That edition, which Bull claims had already been in preparation with “less involvement than usual” from himself, ranted against Fisc’s “reactionary Trotskyite fake ‘leftism’” in relation to a comment made by comrade Heron at a London committee meeting. No matter how poor old Roy twists and turns, there is no way Scargill would not view that as a comment on ‘his’ party.

Bull then tried to ward off Scargill’s attacks by offering to resign the vice-presidency in exchange for dropping disciplinary action - but to no avail.

The February issue of the SLP Information Bulletin arrived on branch secretaries’ doormats only last week. In it Scargill notes briefly that “in view of a potential conflict of interest, and in the wider interests of the SLP, Royston offered to resign as vice-president, an offer which was accepted”. In fact this resignation was “accepted” by Scargill alone, since he refused to even read Bull’s offer-to-resign letter to the January NEC, let alone permit any discussion of its contents. SLP comrades are now able to study it in the current edition of the Weekly Worker (see p5). But Scargill adds that Bull “had been unable to give a satisfactory response” to the December NEC motion, and so “the general secretary informed the NEC that he had lodged a complaint against Royston Bull within the party’s complaints procedure”.

Scargill further informs the SLP membership that two of the Appeal Four (comrades Dunn and Drummond) “had not responded” to the “NEC’s request”, while the other two (comrades Heron and Carolyn Sikorski) “have refused to comply with it. Consequently, the general secretary has lodged a complaint with the party’s complaints procedure against the [unnamed] initiators of the ‘Appeal’.”

To our readers all this is very much yesterday’s news of course. As we know, the hearings against both factions took place in February. But the Appeal Four (or rather the three that remain, since comrade Drummond has given up in despair), backed up by comrade Imran Khan acting as their lawyer, challenged the validity of the proceedings, on the grounds that there was no panel in place to hear any appeal against the complaints committee’s findings. The procedure lays down that the appeal panel must be elected by annual congress, but this had not occurred. Scargill retreated in disarray when faced with these legalistic niceties, promising to take the question back to the NEC on March 20.

Comrade Bull did not think of this line of defence himself. As he reports in the EPSR, the complaints committee had already found against him at an earlier hearing. Following the Appeal faction’s challenge, the validity of his own expulsion is surely also in doubt. But the former vice-president has well and truly burnt his bridges with the February 23 edition. He lambastes Scargill’s “most disgraceful lies”, slams his “meaningless gibberish” and “imbecility”, and calls the complaints committee’s “ridiculous hearing” a “demagogic bureaucrat’s delight”.

Bull can hardly contain his fury at the Appeal Four’s “bourgeois constitutionalism”. On the one hand, the “duly elected vice-president has been expelled for refusing to quit his publishing job in furtherance of the struggle for Marxist-Leninist science”, while, on the other, “these Trots are still swanning around inside the SLP”, continuing their “disruptive, treacherous Trot activities, which themselves are to go scot free”.

Meanwhile Fisc and its Appeal faction allies have launched what could turn out to be a last desperate counterattack. In the names of the West Ham, Lewisham East and Deptford CSLPs, comrades Ann Brook, Terry Dunn and John Mulrenan have put their names to a statement (see p4) - in direct contravention of Scargill’s edict, rubber-stamped at the December NEC, that “no individual member of the party and no group of individuals within the party is allowed to circulate any appeal, document, letter...”

The comrades are proposing a “compromise”, whereby “all charges (and potential counter-charges) relating to the matter of the Appeal for a Special Congress are dropped”; and the NEC itself convenes a special one-day congress in July. But do the comrades really expect Scargill to respond positively to any of this, particularly their final proposal - that “a special commission be established by the NEC composed half of supporters of the Appeal and half of opponents (if they wish) to agree an agenda and do the work to organise the special congress”? I rather think they fully expect the general secretary to dismiss with contempt any notion that unelected individuals, some of whom he is in the process of expelling, should be given such responsibilities.

Scargill is not about to welcome back Fisc and co into the fold now that Bull is out on his ear. There is no room within ‘his’ party for those who dare to challenge the labour king’s authority in even the mildest way. This can easily be demonstrated by last weekend’s women’s section AGM in Manchester. Through his exclusive access to the party membership figures, Scargill gerrymandered the voting entitlement to ensure that Carolyn Sikorski and fellow Fiscite Rachel Newton were ousted by loyalists.

Neither the EPSR nor Fisc has one iota of principle. The Bullites think it is perfectly all right for Scargill to have voided communists and democrats, and would no doubt be more then pleased to see him kick out the Fisc “Trots”. It is only now that Royston himself has been shown the door that he announces that “all the eventual weakness of centrist politics” have come to the fore “earlier than anticipated” (EPSR February 23).

For the EPSR a centrist party is all that can be achieved. What is more, the sheer force of the inevitable and imminent collapse of capitalism will, according to EPSR “Marxist science”, lead to the development of spontaneous socialist consciousness amongst the working class, finding its expression in an SLP-type organisation, which will be propelled into power. Bull expects and perhaps desires an authoritarian, Scargillite national socialist government, as his letter to the Weekly Worker made clear last week (February 25).

In this scenario the revolutionary party, not to mention the working class itself, play bit parts. But who said the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ would be fun? And the Bullites will be rewarded with key ministries in Arthur’s administration. At least according to their fantasies - until they were brought back down to earth last month.

Like the Bullites, Fisc hoped to be in Scargill’s team. Both factions share a view of bureaucratic socialism where the masses play a ‘walk on, walk off’ role at the bidding of the Great Leader. This is replicated in a similar top-down structure for the SLP. The nature of the working class party is, for these comrades, no business of the working class. Both factions say that it a breach of confidence, if not high treason, to disclose the details of internal party discussions, differences and disagreements to the membership - while actually secretly using every avenue to undermine other factional centres.

So Fisc welcomes Bull’s expulsion. The fact that the vice-president has been expelled simply for expressing a point of view is of no concern. The Fisc-inspired Brook-Mulrenan-Dunn document makes no mention of Scargill’s outrageous action against Bull. It proclaims support for an “open, democratic” SLP, “full of respect for every comrade’s experience and opinion ...” But then adds, “... if they dropped membership of any other party”.

The SLP may be on its last legs. But that does not excuse us from acting in a principled manner. Remaining SLP democrats must condemn Scargill’s disgraceful authoritarian attacks on all factions.

Simon Harvey