11.03.1999

Scargill calls up Brar

Simon Harvey of the SLP

As we approach the third anniversary of Socialist Labour’s birth, our party could hardly be in a greater state of disarray. Rival factions are at each other’s throats, their leaders are in the process of being expelled and membership continues to plummet disastrously.

As every remaining activist knows, all but a handful of constituency branches have stopped meeting, dues are not being paid and most party units no longer function. The party’s ‘monthly’ paper, Socialist News, last appeared in December. According to the SLP Information Bulletin (February), the delay is “due to workloads elsewhere of those involved in administration/production of the paper”. No16 was promised “in early March”.

The truth is there are simply not enough active comrades left even to write it, let alone bring it out, on time. The two main groups of factional contributors - the Fourth International Supporters Caucus (Fisc) and the Economic and Philosophic Science Review - are now completely out of favour with general secretary Arthur Scargill. Vice-president and editor of EPSR, Royston Bull, whose articles have regularly graced the pages of Socialist News, was kicked out of the party at a complaints committee hearing in February staffed by Scargill himself and three loyalists. The March 20 national executive meeting is due to rubber-stamp his expulsion.

Comrade Bull was found guilty of that monstrous crime - “comment on the affairs of the SLP” - through the pages of the EPSR. Of course he had been doing just that since the party’s inception, but after his election to the vice-presidency at the November 1998 special congress the homophobic contents of his cut-and-paste rag - exposed over a lengthy period by the Weekly Worker - were under the spotlight. Fisc in particular, having previously made no objection to the EPSR’s contents, kicked up merry hell after Bull defeated sitting Fiscite Patrick Sikorski. Despite the fact that Bull had formally stepped down as editor and given an undertaking to “do my utmost to influence future EPSR contents so as to avoid upsetting SLP members” (letter to Scargill, see Weekly Worker March 4), it was not enough to save him from the accusation of “non-compliance with an NEC resolution”.

Likewise the two leading Fiscites, Brian Heron and Carolyn Sikorski, are also most unlikely to feature in Socialist News. Their fate too is in the hands of the March 20 NEC. At the February 13 complaints hearing Heron and Sikorski appeared along with fellow ‘defendant’ Terry Dunn. It was argued by their lawyer, comrade Imran Khan, that the complaints procedure could not legally be followed because no appeals panel had been elected at congress. Scargill retreated, but now intends to get fresh backing from his executive to see off Fisc and co once and for all. After all, the Appeal Four had the temerity to demand a ‘special conference’ with a view to clipping the general secretary’s authoritarian wings. Such insubordination is not tolerated.

Those influenced by Fisc represented the largest faction with a separate, independent agenda from Scargill’s. The Fiscites had theorised the importance of militant trade union leaders in building the ‘party of recomposition’, and were King Arthur’s closest courtiers. But once they started to present the mildest criticism of his crude dictatorship they were ditched - and Roy Bull and his EPSR gang were used for the purpose.

However, Scargill was determined to bring his new vice-president completely under control. He decreed that the EPSR must either close or submit to self-censorship. And when Bull’s ‘assurance’ was deemed unsatisfactory, he too was out on his ear.

The fact that an obscure sect of ex-Trotskyite, apocalyptic Stalinite cranks could attain a degree of prominence was a sure sign that the party was in profound crisis. But now a third faction of more orthodox ultra-Stalinites is hoping that their hour has arrived. As membership continues to haemorrhage, even Harpal Brar’s tiny band of Communist Workers Association followers are able like vultures to pick up positions in what remains of the party. Comrade Brar is editor of Lalkar - in formal terms the bi-monthly journal of the Indian Workers Association (Great Britain). But in actual fact Lalkar is his own factional organ. As well as being an NEC member himself since December 1997, his son was elected by default at the November 1998 special congress via the youth section. Now he has gained another constitutionally important salient.

At the annual general meeting of the national women’s section, held in Manchester on February 27, the Brarite bloc of Ella Rule, Mandy Rose and Iris Cremer was returned unopposed. As latest claimants to the title of Scargill sycophants, the Stalinite trio issued a statement condemning the “vicious attacks” on the party’s national leadership by the former office-holders. The conference was open to every woman member of the party, but it was attended by just 16 people. Fiscites Carolyn Sikorski and Rachel Newton, the former secretary and vice-president of the section, remained on the outside angrily leafleting the delegates in protest at Scargill’s gerrymandering of the voting entitlements, which just about guaranteed that Fisc would be ousted from its former stronghold.

Perhaps the Fiscites half believed Scargill’s ridiculous claims that there were now 57 constituency women’s sections seeking credentials. Had they attempted to mobilise their feminist support, comrade Sikorski et al might even have given the Brarites a run for their money.

Instead they have called what amounts to a rival AGM, also in Manchester, for April 17. In a circular sent out to all their contacts, including local women’s groups, comrades Sikorski and Newton invite all “genuine women’s sections” to attend. In an unaccustomed display of irony the Fiscites extend the invitation to every one of the approximately 500 women members who have ever applied for party membership - the criterion upon which Scargill bases official membership figures.

Comrades Rule, Rose and Cremer say that only their own version of Great Leader “socialism” - complete with mass canteens and laundries - can liberate women. On the other hand, for the Fiscites, “socialist feminism” and “women’s self-organisation”, not the revolutionary unity of female and male workers, is the answer.

It is touch and go whether Fisc will be able to muster a bigger attendance than Scargill could manage for the official AGM. But that is surely of little significance. Comrade Sikorski’s open act of rebellion will surely seal her fate. The NEC will now almost certainly be persuaded that her expulsion must go ahead - with or without an elected appeals panel.

While his party crumbles before his eyes, Scargill is determined to carry on regardless. In the latest edition of his journal comrade Brar reports the Great Leader’s presence at an SLP weekend school (“to introduce participants to the principles of Marxism”) organised by the East and West Midlands regions on February 14 - the day after the Appeal Four hearing (Lalkar March-April). “As testimony to the importance attached by the Socialist Labour Party to political education, the general secretary, comrade Arthur Scargill, attended the school for the whole of Sunday afternoon,” writes comrade Brar.

Unsurprisingly however, Scargill decided to steer clear of dialectical materialism and the law of value, choosing instead to address his audience on the importance of contesting the forthcoming elections. According to Lalkar, comrades are champing at the bit, insisting on fighting extra seats on top of those that Scargill had demanded.

Last month Scargill was in Wales, where he informed The Western Mail that “his party possesses 500 members in Wales and 6,000 in the UK” (February 17). In that case it is more than strange that a certain Richard Booth is to head the SLP list in Mid and West Wales for the assembly elections. ‘Comrade’ Booth is an eccentric millionaire who inhabits Hay Castle, from where he unfurled a red rose banner in support of New Labour during the 1997 general election campaign. Talk about scraping the barrel.

But back to Marxist education. At the Midlands school Scargill described how new members are continuing to pour into the SLP with every passing day: “There has been a mass exodus from the Labour Party in North East Redcar ... The deputy leader of Falkirk council has resigned from the Labour Party and has become the leader of our party in Scotland.” One wonders by what process this new recruit was able to rise so speedily through the massed ranks of our Scottish comrades.

With the previous day’s hearing still fresh in his mind, Scargill concluded: “Anyone in these circumstances who thinks we should be spending our time having internal discussions about the internal working mechanisms of the party has to be living on another planet.” So there you. While Scargill continues to purge his former courtiers, no one must object. The party as a whole is expected to follow the example of comrade Brar and refrain from “comment on the affairs of the SLP” (at least in public).

In contrast comrade Bull now shows no such reticence:

“What a completely phoney ‘contradiction’ is artificially set up between workers taking the liveliest, healthiest interest in seeing that their party is being put into the best order possible, internally and externally, and then going out to actively campaign on the public front line for the party” (EPSR March 2).

The expelled vice-president continues: “Any fool can see what is happening. The stifling censorship on discussion of what is happening in the party, and the unresolved total mess in administration and organisation has knocked all of the early-on enthusiasm out of vast sections of the party.” What took you so long to notice it, Roy? In only the previous week’s issue (February 23) Ball was quoting from his January letter to Scargill, when he boasted that the EPSR has “never reported or commented on NEC proceedings ever”, and complained that those responsible for leaking details of NEC discussions to the Weekly Worker had not been brought to book. In the same issue he labelled Fisc’s “denunciation of the way the party was being administered and organised” an example of “treacherous Trot activities”.

Perhaps comrade Bull will now join forces with Heron, Sikorski and co in calling for a special congress to resolve this “mess”. There again, perhaps not. Without a blush of shame, Royston adds:

“Deliberately withholding information from workers ‘because it is not good for them’ or ‘because they don’t need to know that’, etc has played a disgraceful role in revisionism’s ultimately disastrous history. Just saying ‘yes, yes, yes’ as a ‘circumspect tactic’ towards a leadership with a debatable grasp of Marxism, to put it mildly, has played a tragic role in labour movement history.”

Leaving aside the actual content of Bull’s so-called ‘Marxism’, it is not often I find myself agreeing with the EPSR so wholeheartedly.

So both the Bullites and Fisc have now abandoned their ‘official optimism’ and are in agreement that the SLP is not in a happy state. I have been saying for some time that, short of a miracle, our party no longer has any possibility of serving the cause of working class emancipation. But that does not mean that either Scargill or the SLP is finished.

The general secretary knows that a couple of good election results in May or June would boost his fortunes. He is prepared to dispense with most of his former political backers, so long as he can still count on one or two financial ones. It goes without saying that the membership is in no shape either to raise the cash or to mount much of a campaign. But the Scargill name will keep the SLP in the public eye - even if it exists only as a Potemkin village.

This was demonstrated last week by a report in The Independent. The paper warns that Scargill “has instructed his SLP allies to push for a merger of the two rail unions. This, he hopes, will be followed by a merger with the NUM and his election as its leader” (March 5). The report states that comrade Pat Sikorski, who is challenging Vernon Hince for the post of RMT assistant general secretary, proposed that merger talks should begin (perhaps the Fiscites could still have their uses after all). The motion put to the RMT executive was defeated by a single vote.

A Downing Street aide was quoted as saying: “We are aware of Scargill’s militant agenda. A fightback has started and hopefully the SLP has reached a high water mark.” While bourgeois commentators are clearly out of touch with the sad reality of party organisation and membership, they occasionally point to a truth in relation to the role just a handful of influential leaders can play. The RMT and Aslef bureaucracy will fight tooth and nail against the idea of a Scargill-led “super-union”. Despite the close vote on the RMT executive and Dave Rix’s recent election as Aslef general secretary, the SLP has not “already seized control”, as The Independent states.

Nevertheless, a wave of militancy on the rails or the London underground, with the press mounting an anti-SLP red scare, could yet lead to a fresh influx of members. But who could Scargill rely on to service the new recruits? Harpal Brar and Ella Rule?