03.06.1999
Entryism, Scargill and the left
Extracts from a secret paper on the Socialist Labour Party presented by Harpal Brar at a 1998 May Day Brussels international seminar of Stalinites, hosted by the Workers Party of Belgium
The decision of Arthur Scargill, the president of the NUM, taken a decade after the defeat of the miners, to break from Labour and form the Socialist Labour Party, is of immense historical significance. It is therefore necessary to look at the reasons for his decision to form the SLP to see if the SLP, notwithstanding its undoubted weaknesses, can really become the organisation required by the British working class for overthrowing capitalism, which is the declared aim of the SLP.
Why did Arthur Scargill break his life-long association with the Labour Party? The answer is to be found in a document entitled Future strategy for the left, written in the aftermath of the Labour Party’s 1995 decision to ditch clause four of its constitution. Throughout this document Scargill peddled the illusion that the Labour Party was formed for the “eradication of capitalism, the establishment of socialism and common ownership”, that it had hitherto always been possible to reverse rightwing policies, and that only since Blair’s accession to the leadership and the changes in the Labour Party’s constitution had it become impossible to fight for socialism within the Labour Party. This is the fatal flaw which throughout this document ran like a scarlet thread and derogated from the correct, and really courageous, step that Scargill had taken in breaking with Labour and forming the SLP.
The error Scargill shared (increasingly less and less so) with the Trotskyist and revisionist ‘left’ was the belief that the Labour Party was a mass party of the British working class with the potential to unify the British proletariat in its struggle for social emancipation, and be an instrument of socialism. We, however, have demonstrated that “Labour never has been, is not now, and will never in the future be, a party of the British proletariat” (see preface, H Brar Social democracy, the enemy within 1995).
We were delighted that at long last life had compelled comrade Scargill to arrive at the same conclusion that we had arrived at long ago. On this, the most courageous decision of his life, we offered him and his comrades our sincerest congratulations. We added, however, that it was not enough to break with Labour organisationally: one also had to break with it ideologically. For comrade Scargill to break with Labour and yet maintain illusions in social democracy - the politics of social democratism - as was only too evident from his Future strategy - was to persist in errors which, if uncorrected, could not but do irreparable damage to the cause of the working class.
Whatever the weaknesses of Scargill’s position, he had gone further than the Trotskyist poseurs and revisionist liquidators in exposing the Labour Party as a capitalist party. Yet for Scargill, everything was fine in the old Labour Party, while things have gone badly wrong with New Labour. But even at the risk of being suspected of supporting him, one has to admit that Tony Blair has introduced a modicum of honesty into Labour politics by so amending its constitution as to bring it into concordance with Labour’s practice ever since its birth. In doing so he has exposed the fraud of Labour’s socialist credentials and compelled honest people to re-examine their position vis-à-vis the Labour Party. This is what divides Arthur Scargill from the demented fraternity of Trotskyists, revisionists and Labour ‘lefts’.
Scargill took his bible (Labour’s constitution) seriously and he believed in it. When the chapter on Genesis (clause four in this case) was expunged from it, his faith was broken and he could no longer stay a member of this church (the Labour Party). He broke away in revolt in order to re-establish the church in its pristine originality. He left to “start to build a Socialist Labour Party that represents the principles, values, hopes and dreams which gave birth nearly a century ago to what has, sadly, now [only now!] become New Labour”.
That the Labour Party was never socialist is beside the point. What is important is that Scargill has shown a degree of consistency, honesty and political courage which are completely absent among the totally degenerate pseudo-Marxists who are still mindlessly chanting, ‘Kick the Tories out by electing a rightwing Blair government’ under pressure to implement socialist policies. It is as though people were campaigning for a tribe of cannibals to be elected to office for the purpose of instituting strict vegetarianism.
When dealing with the question of unemployment, the SLP document lapses into reformist and Keynesian illusions of the worst type. Here is how Future strategy put the matter:
“Labour has always had a commitment to full employment - but the party now says: ‘No-one pretends we can solve unemployment overnight’ - a clear warning that unemployment will continue under a Labour Government.
“But a Labour Government could solve unemployment - even within a capitalist society - overnight, provided it introduced a four-day working week with no loss of pay, banned all non-essential overtime, and introduced voluntary retirement on full pay at age 55 - measures which are fundamental to the regeneration of Britain, but which are anathema to private enterprise and capitalism” (p4).
An SLP government would be confronted with the question of state power; it would be confronted with the question of smashing the bourgeois state machine (the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie) and putting in its place the dictatorship of the proletariat. Measures of the type suggested in Future strategy could not be introduced while capitalism remained intact, and, therefore, the problem of unemployment could not be solved “within a capitalist society”, let alone “overnight”. The SLP claims to be based on “Marxist philosophy” and should therefore address this question of state power (which must not be confused with being in government as a result of an election held under the conditions of bourgeois state power):
“One thing especially was proved by the Paris Commune: viz, that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes’” (K Marx and F Engels, preface to the Communist manifesto).
The SLP recognises the class struggle, but that is not enough; if it really wants to base itself on “Marxist philosophy”, as is its insistence, it must extend this recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. By doing so it will lose its petty bourgeois hangers-on, but also become greatly more capable of serving the interests of the proletariat than at present.
Given that it is no longer possible for British imperialism to “provide anything like adequate” standards of life “for the vast majority of ordinary working people”, as the SLP recognises, political parties have to state plainly on whose side they are - the privileged minority or the vast majority comprising the poorest, the most deprived and the underprivileged. The Labour Party has firmly come down on the side of the privileged minority. The SLP has not yet focused on the problem. If it fails to do so, it will drift towards labour aristocratic opportunism and probable annihilation, as there is no basis for having two social democratic parties. The task of communists is to recognise the split in the working class, to fight against the “bourgeois labour party”, and “to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses”, for “this is the meaning and the whole content of the struggle against opportunism” (VI Lenin Imperialism and the split in socialism).
Will the SLP take such a bold step? Will it give up its baggage of ‘left’ social democratic reformism? Only time will tell. In the meantime, we are presented with the question of what attitude to adopt towards the SLP.
Notwithstanding the political and ideological weaknesses of the SLP, of which we have provided a comradely critique above, it is our considered opinion that communists ought to give the SLP support, and this is for the following reasons.
Its constitution says that it stands for the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by a socialist system (clause four, paragraph 3), for the “common/social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange” (clause four, paragraph 4), the abolition of the House of Lords and the monarchy and the establishment of a republic (clause four, paragraph 10). It preaches defiance of unjust laws such as anti-trade union legislation through direct industrial and other extra-parliamentary struggles; it promises to give voice to those who are disenfranchised and marginalised in our society, becoming a natural home to campaigns for peace and the environment.
It promises to defend the NHS, protect the environment, and abolish private schools. It advocates Britain’s withdrawal from the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the imperialist warmongering Nato. In regard to Britain’s oldest colony, Ireland, the SLP advocates a complete and immediate withdrawal of British troops from the occupied Six Counties so that Ireland may be unified and the Irish people exercise their right of self-determination. The SLP stands for quitting the European Union and advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Finally, the SLP not only denounces New Labour as a capitalist party but also, unlike the cowardly Trotskyite-revisionist fraternity, is prepared to challenge Labour during local and parliamentary elections.
These are reasons enough, despite the serious weaknesses of its ideological and political stances, to give the SLP support.
Recognising that the formation of the SLP is an extremely important development, specially in the fight to loosen the deadly grip of the Labour Party over the masses of the working class, we must do our best to help, to push, the SLP in a Marxist-Leninist direction. In the present conditions in Britain, this can only be done by joining the SLP and fully participating in its further development. Those who are yet not prepared to take this step can at the very least legitimately give electoral support to the SLP. The SLP says openly that it bases itself on “Marxist philosophy”, that it has borrowed its name from the Socialist Labour Party of the legendary Clydeside Bolshevik, John Maclean, that it has taken its logo from the equally legendary Irish communist and national liberation fighter, James Connolly, and that it will “abolish capitalism”. Sceptics should take the SLP at its word.
The Socialist Workers Party, degenerate even by Trotskyist standards, was at sixes and sevens in its criticism of the SLP. Not knowing whether to attack the SLP from a pseudo-left position or from a right opportunist angle, it did both. It attacked the SLP’s “electoralism”, contrasting it to “class struggle” and “struggle outside the Commons”. In an attempt to appear more revolutionary than, and to the left of, the SLP, the Trotskyites of the SWP pontificated:
“A Socialist Labour Party will soon face a choice. In words it is possible to talk about combining serious interventions in elections with struggle outside the Commons. In practice the two pull in opposite directions.”
But what was the SWP’s position? Their ‘left’ trend got thoroughly exposed when they tore the mask off their own faces by maintaining in their Pre-conference bulletin, 1995, that it would be a “disaster” for the working class not to support the Labour Party at the next election! By the time of the Hemsworth by-election the SWP had changed its mind yet again: it decided to support the SLP candidate, Brenda Nixon, after all. The SWP’s position then changed again to advocate electoral support for the SLP - but only when the latter put up candidates in “safe Labour seats”, not in marginal seats, for that might “split the vote and let the Tories in”.
Yet “Arthur Scargill,” the SWP was saying, “is absolutely right in his assessment of Tony Blair’s New Labour.” The SWP’s “absolute” agreement with Scargill’s assessment of New Labour, however, was entirely subordinate to its overriding concern for Labour’s electoral requirements. So, while agreeing “absolutely” with the SLP’s evaluation, “Socialist Worker will still be urging a Labour vote in most areas at the next election” (January 10 1996).
The entryist Trots of Socialist Outlook greeted Scargill’s initiative with an editorial entitled ‘Wrong formula, wrong time’. While expressing ritual agreement that we need a “qualitatively different kind of party and programme”, the editorial went on to object that “the new party threatens to divert from the fight to organise the left at the base of the unions, and from the necessary challenge to Blair inside the Labour Party itself.”
Well, everyone knows what success the likes of Socialist Outlook had in organising the ‘left’ to challenge Blair, his plans to ditch clause four of Labour’s constitution. Socialist Outlook issued blood-curdling threats and promised to fight to the death against Blair’s attempt allegedly to cause “a profound shift in the politics of the Labour Party” by reversing “the working class nature of the Labour Party” and thus “change its identity”. Nothing came of these noisy threats. Blair got the constitutional changes he wanted and presumably, according to Socialist Outlook’s own logic, reversed “the working-class nature of the Labour Party”. Notwithstanding this, Socialist Outlook continued working studiously for the election of a Labour government to kick the Tories out.
By their opposition to Scargill, the so-called ‘left’ within the Labour Party, too, has been compelled to come out in its true colours - as the fraud it always was. Its leading lights - Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner, Jeremy Corbyn and others - have been thoroughly discredited as people who value their careers as members of parliament a thousand times more than they value the working class. They all devoted themselves to bringing New Labour to power in violation of every single shred of socialist principle they have feigned to uphold. The biggest ‘left’ charlatan of them all - namely, Ken Livingstone - frightened by the danger represented to Labour by the SLP, and being unable to deal with the political and ideological side of the issue, stooped to this disgusting smear against Scargill:
“My guess is that if Arthur had been serious and had pushed on with this project, the Tory Party would have given him a million pounds to get it off the ground because it could take just enough votes from Labour to give the Tories a chance. I’ll bet Stella Rimington went to work on it immediately.”
Well, Scargill has pushed on with his project, without Tory gold or assistance from the intelligence services. What he does have is political honesty and courage, concepts incomprehensible to Livingstone and his ilk, who can never understand considerations other than those of greed, pelf or place.
The revisionists have not lagged far behind in assailing Scargill’s initiative. Through the columns of the Morning Star, leading lights of the Communist Party of Britain claimed that Scargill’s new party would “divert the efforts of many committed socialists into a dead end” (Kenny Coyle, March 4 1996). Coyle, with not a shred of evidence, asserted that Scargill’s call for a new party was based on “an underestimation of the left and the overestimation of Blair’s transformation of the Labour Party”.
His article’s only coherence was its faultless incoherence. While it correctly maintained that the Labour Party “was not originally founded as a socialist party”, and that “in government, regardless of clause four, the Labour Party never seriously challenged the foundations of capitalist society, not even with the great reforms of 1945”, it went on nevertheless to say that the SLP was “wrong to write off the working class character of the Labour Party’s base”.
The trump card for Coyle is Labour’s connections with the trade unions. Here is what he writes:
“Trade unions retain 50% of the Labour Party conference vote and directly elect 12 out of 29 national executive members and have the largest vote in deciding the five seats reserved for women. This makes Labour a party entirely unlike the US Democrats or the Liberal Democrats in Britain. The Labour Party remains a mass working class party with strong ties to the trade unions, many of which remain committed to full employment and the welfare state.”
Lenin responded to this type of false reasoning as follows:
“One of the most common sophisms of Kautsky is his reference to the ‘masses’; we do not want to break away from the masses and mass organisations! But think how Engels approached this question. In the 19th century, the ‘mass organisations’ of the English trade unions were on the side of the bourgeois labour party. Marx and Engels did not conciliate with it on this ground, but exposed it. They did not forget ... that the trade union organisations directly embrace the minority of the proletariat ...” (Imperialism and the split in socialism).
Coyle and people like him are guilty of this ‘forgetfulness’. They ‘forget’, first, that today, out of a workforce of 27 million, only 7.5 million workers - that is, just over a quarter - belong to trade unions. The remaining 19.5 million, which includes the poorest and the lowest paid, do not. These teeming millions have no existence for our Kenny Coyles. Secondly, there is nothing in the record of the trade unions which encourages one to believe that they are more progressive than the Labour Party and might therefore be able to exercise even a mildly healthy influence on the latter.
The trade unions are increasingly dominated by a new labour aristocracy of non-manual, educated, managerial, professional and associated workers. And the unions, instead of collective representation of the workforce, are concentrating on the provision of personal services such as credit cards, private health insurance and cheap holidays, a factor which contributes to declining membership, as the low-paid, who cannot afford these services, see little reason to become, or remain, members of a trade union.
Coyle concluded by saying:
“The Communist Party believes that no matter how unfavourable the current balance of forces, only a patient and determined battle for a left alternative strategy inside the labour movement, as it actually exists, can begin to break the influence of reformism and challenge the economic and political power of the monopolies. In our view, that represents the best future for the left and for socialist advance.”
If this were indeed the case, there is then only one course open to the CPB, and other organisations, such as the New Communist Party, advocating a similar line, and that is to liquidate themselves and join the Labour Party in order to wage “a patient and determined battle for a left alternative” and to “begin to break the influence of reformism and challenge the economic and political power of the monopolies”, for “that represents the best future for the left and for socialist advance”! Scargill has challenged them to explain why they do not do so. Neither the CPB nor the NCP have even attempted to give an answer.
In an editorial in its paper, the New Worker, the NCP, having made the customary ritual reference to Labour’s betrayal of the coal strike of 1984-5, and to the Labour leadership’s “policy of abject class collaboration”, went on to say: “But Scargill is gravely mistaken in thinking that the only answer to Blair and co is to set up a new party of labour in opposition.”
Like the Trotskyite SWP, the NCP, being unsure of whether to attack the SLP from a pseudo-left position or from a right opportunist angle, attacks it from both directions. In reality, however, its objections to the SLP, as those of the SWP, are of a right-opportunist nature and its overwhelming concern is to protect the electoral interests of the Labour Party. Vying with the SWP and the CPB in giving utterance to “obvious incongruities which deserve to be published in an anthology of logical absurdities for junior high school boys” (VI Lenin CW Vol 16, p31), the NCP’s ‘left’ and right opportunist objections to the SLP were stated thus - one following the other:
“It will become a focus for Trotskyite groups. It will plainly be social democratic - albeit of a leftwing orientation. It will probably be anti-communist and it will certainly divide the trade union movement. If the political will and resources exist for the establishment of a new workers’ party with a leftwing programme, then surely those same attributes can be used to change the disastrous, anti-working class policies of the Labour Party today.
“In fact, to speak of the ‘Socialist Labour Party’ is to speak of defeat. It is an acceptance of the view that the right has won its historic contest with the left inside the Labour Party, and that the left is incapable of regrouping with the view of recapturing the party for the working class.”
If the NCP is unwilling to endorse the SLP on the grounds that it “will become a focus for Trotskyist groups”, that it “will probably be anti-communist”, how come that the NCP has no qualms about supporting the Labour Party, which has been and still is a focus for scores of entryist Trotskyite groups, which has always been and is now social democratic, and of a very rightwing orientation, which has been and is now rabidly anti-communist? This does not make sense.
These, however, are not the NCP’s real reasons for opposing the SLP; these are merely ‘left’ phrases to cover the NCP’s right opportunist stance in support of social democracy. The real reasons of the NCP are set out in the very next two sentences in which it states that if the “will and resources exist” to found a new party with a leftwing programme, these can and ought to be used inside the Labour Party “to change the disastrous, anti-working class policies of the Labour Party today”, and that Scargill is being defeatist in speaking about the SLP, for in doing so he is guilty of “an acceptance of the view that the right has won its historic contest ... inside the Labour Party, and that the left is incapable of regrouping with the view of recapturing the party for the working class” - “a defeatist and deeply pessimistic argument”, which the NCP invites us to reject.
All this disgusting rigmarole amounts to is: nobody should rock the social democratic boat, notwithstanding the fact that to the sure knowledge of the NCP, the next Labour government “will [!] inevitably betray the movement”, for its “main priority” will be “to hold office and perpetuate capitalism”. Still the NCP wanted “a sweeping Labour victory at the next [May 1997] general election”. Displaying a peculiar sense of humour, and little realising how these utterances on its part were in the nature of a self-portrayal, the NCP editorial stated:
“Reformism is mirrored by revisionism within the communist movement”, but “we cannot fight reformism with more of the same kind, even if it’s led by the president of the National Union of Mineworkers.” Knowing the NCP’s stance on the question of one’s attitude to the Labour Party, it could only mean that reformism can be fought “with more of the same kind” as long as the fight takes place within the Labour Party but not outside of it!
The editorial concluded with the following mishmash in defence of social democracy to the accompaniment of ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric:
“We want a sweeping Labour victory at the next general election, but we need to fight to end the system of exploitation once and for all. The socialist answer must be heard throughout the labour movement and the fight to build the communist movement begun.”
There is comfort in the above words only for social democracy of the worst type.
In view of the foregoing, it is clear that the Trotskyists and revisionists opposed the formation of the SLP, and continue to oppose the SLP now, because of their overriding concern for the electoral interests of the Labour Party. According to our information, both tendencies have lost quite a few members to the SLP. On this account alone the birth of the SLP was something to celebrate.
The formation of the SLP opened a debate on the question of the socialist alternative to capitalism among wider sections of the working class than has been possible for the last decade. The job of those who call themselves communists (Marxist-Leninists) is to bring to the fore in this debate the importance of revolutionary theory, to insist that “without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”. This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism “goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity”, to emphasise that the “role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory” (VI Lenin What is to be done?).
Our decision to join the SLP, notwithstanding its weaknesses as outlined above, has been proven correct by the 2nd Congress of the SLP. Many of the noisy and fractious Trotskyist groups, who had joined the SLP with the purpose of hijacking it, suffered serious defeat at that congress. Their entryist plans in ruins, they left the SLP, shouting abuse at the “Stalinist” Scargill. Their departure gave added strength to the SLP, cleansed as it was of the filthy scum whose constant endeavour is to sap the vitality and self-confidence of the working class; to keep working class struggle within the boundaries of the capitalist system by slandering the all-encompassing and earth-shattering achievements of socialism.
“The chief endeavour,” said Stalin,
“of the bourgeoisie of all countries and of its reformist hangers-on is to kill in the working class faith in its own strength, faith in the possibility and inevitability of its victory and thus to perpetuate capitalist slavery.”
Trotskyism is one such variety of reformist hangers-on of the bourgeoisie which over a period of nine decades has done all it could to attack the revolutionary positions of Leninism on questions of revolutionary theory and organisation, which, through its denunciation of the achievements of socialism in the former USSR, has assisted international imperialism’s relentless assault on socialism aimed at destroying the faith of the proletariat in its own strength, “faith in the possibility and the inevitability of its victory and thus to perpetuate capitalist slavery”.
Unlike the revisionists and Trotskyists, the SLP honours and cherishes the great achievements of socialism in the USSR. It refuses to denounce that legendary communist, Joseph Stalin. For that reason, deservedly in my view, comrade Scargill has been denounced by the counterrevolutionary Trots and revisionist liquidators as a dictatorial ‘Stalinist’ - a badge that I have told him he ought to wear with honour.
In view of the above, it is the duty of Marxist-Leninists to join the SLP and bring to bear upon its development their knowledge of scientific socialism.
There is a dichotomy in the British working class movement. The SLP contains within itself the most advanced workers, but sadly lacks a thorough grounding in the science of Marxism-Leninism. Marxist-Leninist groups, on the other hand - at least some of them - have this knowledge, but have absolutely no contact with the working class movement. Is it not time that the two elements, so essential for the development of a revolutionary movement anywhere, were joined together?
There will be many, comrades, who will be inclined to pour scorn on our efforts; there will be many who will say that the SLP is not the kind of new party that VI Lenin would have set up. While conceding this, we are of the opinion that we are dealing with a situation to which no textbook of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin gives a direct answer. Nevertheless that answer has to be deduced from the teachings of these great proletarian leaders.
We are firmly of the opinion that it is right, in the present circumstances of the working class movement in Britain, to join the only organisation - the SLP - which contains the possibility of imbuing the advanced workers in Britain with the science of Marxism-Leninism and thus helping to establish a mighty revolutionary mass movement of the British proletariat.