11.03.1999

Aggregate

Party notes

The March 7 membership aggregate of the Communist Party had a full agenda. The bulk of the first half of the day was taken by reports from cell secretaries. Comrades from the north west presented a comprehensive picture of their work, speaking to a perspectives document on local activities produced to complement the national perspectives. Overall, the north west addendum expresses optimism, highlighting a successful seminar series, consolidated finances and enhanced organisational coherence.

Other cell reports prompted discussion on a variety of aspects of the work of the Party, probably most heatedly on the Weekly Worker. A number of comrades raised again the criticism that the lack of effective commissioning from the editorial team means the practical exclusion of more comrades from writing for the paper.

This vastly overstates the case, in my view. I certainly believe that there is a lack of what might be called strategic, medium- to longer-term editorial control, something I know is recognised by the team themselves. However, day to day, there are no barriers to any comrade putting pen to paper, finger to keyboard and banging something out for our press.

The aggregate concurred that the key weakness of our paper is the big gap between actual and potential circulation. Of course, developing the contents and increasing the number of readers are not unrelated. Criticism was raised of the Weekly Worker team - and accepted by them - that more effort must be expended to plan for the all-round development of our publication. Proposals for the financial autonomy of the paper - which will help to focus minds on these sort of questions - were, after some hesitation from a few comrades, approved.

An item on the European and elections and the development of a new generation of Socialist Alliances was the other discussion. The report opening this item highlighted the crassly undemocratic anomalies of the system of party registration imposed by Blair. This has resulted in organisations like the Socialist Party and CPGB being denied the right to stand under their own names in European elections to avoid voter ‘confusion’ (see this week’s issue of The Socialist - more in the Weekly Worker next week). The report also looked at the fragile state of the developing unity initiatives around the country.

The European elections are the first where practically all the major organisations of the left are seeking - with varying degrees of enthusiasm - opportunities for electoral cooperation and blocs. This is cracking the sectarian shells of many groups. What we are seeing is profound programmatic, political and organisational confusion of the likes of the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.

The internal problems of such organisations account at least in part for attempts to force us out of some of these alliances. This is something we will fight vigorously. We remain able and ready to stand alone if necessary. However, we are clear that this is a drastic step which we will only undertake if excluded. We will take no responsibility for the further fragmentation of the left caused by unprincipled attacks on communists.

A discussion on this year’s Summer Offensive confirmed a new target of £25,000 for the two-month campaign, an adjustment of the over-optimistic £30,000 suggested in our Perspectives ’99 document.

The last item was the election of a new leadership of our Party, the Provisional Central Committee. It was emphasised that the Party membership - represented in regular aggregates - has the right to replace any individual member of the PCC, or the whole team, at any time. Our leadership is constantly recallable.

Although the same team was re-installed, there were minor adjustments to the status of two committee members, suggested by the outgoing PCC and accepted by the comrades. One has been moved from candidate to full member, the other in the opposite direction. It was emphasised that this was not a demotion, still less a ‘punishment’ for misdemeanours of some sort. The comrade concerned is in the throes of academic study at the moment, something agreed with the Party beforehand. Practical involvement with the day-to-day work of the leadership is therefore impossible and under these circumstances, it is correct for the comrade to participate in meetings when possible, but wrong for them to have a vote.

Mark Fischer
national organiser

[Commission date

The commission of inquiry established under the auspices of the London Socialist Alliance to investigate the violent incident between Ian Donovan (editor, Revolution and Truth and chair, LSA) and Eibhlin McDonald of the Spartacist League/Britain has been postponed until Saturday April 3.]