22.07.1999

Crisis around the LRCI

John Stone of the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International examines the contradictions in Workers Power’s attitude to New Labour and the Balkans war

In its ‘Ten years of the LRCI’, Workers Power (July 1999) presented a balance sheet of its League for a Revolutionary Communist International, and included the statement that events in 1991-94 “condemned the LRCI to three years of ceaseless internal struggle”.

In 1994-95, Workers Power claims, this conflict was resolved when the majority of the largest youth group (Austria), and later on the majority of the New Zealand section and all the Latin American comrades were pushed out of the League:

“These losses were in part offset by the remarkable growth of our French section, recruiting young comrades and becoming the second strongest section ... At the same time we entered into and organised a series of discussions with an important leftward-moving Trotskyist organisation in Argentina, the PTS.”

However, what WP has completely concealed is the fact that in 1999 around a third of the French section was expelled. The minority had challenged the LRCI’s sectarian attitude towards the so-called Trotskyist electoral bloc (which achieved 5.5% in the EU elections) and also its method of attempting to recruit dissidents from that bloc. And now the PTS is openly attacking the LRCI as capitulating to Nato. None of these debates or developments have been reported at all in Workers Power, something that constitutes a lack of respect for its readers and a manipulative way of resolving differences behind the back of the class. Through this article we hope to inform Workers Power’s readers and the left as a whole what is happening inside this international tendency.

The two issues that have produced this latest crisis (electoral tactics and the Balkans wars) also formed part of the debate during the struggle before 1995. At that time the left opposition inside the LRCI (constituted by the Latin American and New Zealand sections) were in favour of defending the Serbs against Nato bombing and advocated critical electoral vote for some far left candidates in France and Britain; while the LRCI leadership was advocating the defeat of the Serbs attacked by imperialism and campaigned for the reformists against the French Lutte Ouvrière and British socialist candidates like Dave Nellist or Tommy Sheridan.

In 1999 the LRCI inexplicably changed its positions, calling for military defence of Serbia against Nato, and for a vote for the LO-LCR alliance in France, and for Sheridan and Nellist. However, it did so in a very inconsistent way. WP’s behaviour was erratic and unprincipled, reflecting the pressure of a faction fight in France and a bitter exchange with the Argentinean PTS.

Throughout its almost 25 years of existence WP’s electoral ‘method’ has consisted of demanding a vote for the Labour Party in Britain and for mass bourgeois workers’ parties in the rest of the world. It advocated that line even in circumstances where far left candidates competing against the reformists attracted significant workers’ support. For WP revolutionaries must always stand alongside workers who vote for reformists and oppose any vote for centrist candidates, because the latter would apparently imply some form of political support.

In 1994 in a local election in Coventry Dave Nellist achieved more than 40% and only lost to New Labour by a very small margin. WP campaigned for the Blairites. In the 1997 general election WP called on workers not to vote for the SLP, Sheridan, Nellist or other SP candidates, but only to support Labour.

In 1995 France had been headed by socialist president François Mitterand since 1981. He had launched attack after attack against immigrants, youth and workers, and sent French troops to several African countries and Bosnia. After 14 years it was logical to conclude that there were hundreds of thousands of advanced workers who would support an electoral class alternative against the government. If revolutionaries failed to form a working class opposition, racists or other bourgeois forces might well capitalise on discontent. However, the LRCI called for a vote for the communist and the socialist parties, and not for LO-LCR. That meant opposing the 1.6 million workers who voted for the only candidates that called themselves revolutionaries and Trotskyists and asking them to back the parties of the presidency that had been attacking them for 14 years. There is an argument that in the second round Marxists were obliged to vote for the reformist candidates of the workers’ movement against the right, if this was the only choice, but in the first round the French system allows voters to support candidates that are closest to their political opinions.

The LRCI method is opportunist towards reformism and sectarian in relation to the far left. For thousands of Trotskyists and militant activists LRCI policies in France and Britain were a provocation.

In France several fractions had started to split from the left of LO and the LCR, accusing them of failing to build a mass revolutionary party. The LRCI tried to discuss with these groups. But the League’s methods began to be called into question by many of its French members. The LRCI sees rapprochement discussions only as a way of recruiting people to its ranks. The only fusion that it accepts are the ones that happen around its policies and under its international leadership.

The LRCI does not allow any public debate and it sees factions and tendencies as a serious illness. They must be dissolved or ultimately forced out of the organisation. All the groups that came to the LRCI with a previous independent existence and tradition (such as those in New Zealand, the USA, Peru or Bolivia) were able to survive this atmosphere. Only groups created as a result of the LRCI’s factional struggle against other organisations (as in Europe) are prone to be absorbed.

The French opposition wanted to allow some public debate inside the section’s paper and to move towards a regroupment with dissident factions from LO and the LCR in which there would be some level of disagreement. On the electoral question the French faction said that voting for reformists while they are rallying working class support in opposition to rightwing bourgeois forces could be a valid tactic. However, when reformists are in office a new tactic has to be developed. In such circumstances revolutionaries should prioritise the building of a militant electoral opposition to them amongst the working class. For that reason the minority challenged the LRCI’s sectarian attitude towards the LO-LCR electoral bloc and posed the possibility of creating a new pole of attraction with its left dissidents.

The faction characterised the League as “sectarian” and “ultra-left”. The LRCI described the faction as opportunists who were adapting to LO-LCR centrism and advocating a confused, multi-factional internal regime. They were not allowed to publish their positions in LRCI publications and were bureaucratically expelled without any mention in Workers Power.

A few months later the LRCI radically and abruptly changed its electoral policy. In June most of the LRCI sections were faced with a common European electoral process. You would think that an international organisation that almost every week produces a resolution on international questions from Rwanda to East Timor would be obliged to adopt a common manifesto regarding the EU elections. However, the LRCI did not do so.

In France it called for a vote against the CP and SP and for LO-LCR candidates, because “a significant faction of the working class electorate is moving from the traditional reformist parties towards supporting candidates of the extreme left” (Pouvoir Ouvrier No55, May-June). Slightly under one million people voted LO-LCR. But four years ago, when LO alone gained 600,000 more votes, the LRCI adopted exactly the opposite line: vote reformist and not far left.

Although the LRCI called for a vote against the CP and SP in France, and in Britain refused for the first time ever to back Labour, while also declining to support the Socialist Labour Party, it was a different story elsewhere: in Germany the LRCI voted PDS (sister organisation of the CP in France and the SLP), while in Sweden it supported both the pro-Nato social democrats and the United Left!

In the UK WP adopted a completely new line. In a very small article, hidden away in Workers Power (June), it wrote: “We call on readers to spoil their ballot papers by writing ‘Nato out of the Balkans - independence for Kosova’.”

It advocated a positive vote in only three of the 12 constituencies. It voted for Sheridan and Nellist, who achieved a smaller percentage of votes than in previous elections when WP voted New Labour against them. It had a very contradictory line of voting for Ken Coates’s Alternative Labour List in East Midlands but against the same force in Yorkshire and Humberside. WP refused to call for a vote for the CPGB (which was the only group presenting candidates with exactly the same demands that WP advised their supporters to write on the ballot paper), or for the SLP, whose position was much more anti-Nato than Coates, who called for a UN military intervention in Yugoslavia.

In 1995 when Nato bombed the Serbs, the LRCI refused to defend them and called on imperialism to send weapons and money to support its muslim and Croat allies who ethnically cleansed one million Serbs. The comrades from the semi-colonies denounced that line and were expelled. Immediately after that the LRCI struck up an opportunist deal with the PTS, a 500-strong Argentinean group, and launched a declaration calling for the creation of a new pole of attraction for international regroupment. Four years later the two organisations have only produced one joint declaration and they failed to produce any statement on the Balkans. In 1995 the LRCI refused to sign a joint resolution on Bosnia because it opposed calling for the defence of the Serbs against Nato.

In 1999 the LRCI inexplicably changed its position, but in a highly contradictory way. It called simultaneously for the defence of Serbia against Nato and for the support of the pro-Nato KLA against the Serbs! On the one hand for the LRCI the KLA “have the right to acquire arms and supplies from whoever is willing to give them - including imperialist and islamic governments. They also have the right to take any military advantage they can from the Nato bombing” (‘War in the Balkans’, April 1999); “Apache helicopters to hit Serb artillery or an actual incursion by Nato ground troops into southern or western Kosova to set up ‘safe havens’ into which to herd the refugees - none of these in themselves would alter our basic support for Kosova resistance to Serb attacks” (LRCI statement, May 16).

On the other hand in the same document the LRCI proposed an antagonistic position: “Workers worldwide would support Serbian resistance to an imperialist attack, whether this was solely an aerial attack or (which is highly unlikely) one involving US-EU ground forces. We oppose all Nato bombing and use of cruise missiles, whether in Kosova or in Serbia proper. We recognise the right of the Serbs to shoot down the Nato planes and missiles. We support national defence against any Nato attack on the territory of Serbia or Montenegro.” “If Milosevic and the Serb forces in Kosova resisted the Nato drive, then revolutionaries would have to give their critical support to their military struggle against imperialism.”

On the one hand it called for military defence of Yugoslavia against Nato, not only in Serbia and Montenegro, but also in Kosova. On the other hand it refused to call for the arming of Yugoslavia or for its military victory over imperialism. It called on imperialism to send weaponry to the KLA and announced its support for the KLA even if Nato invaded Kosova. It advised the KLA to take its chances through collaboration with Nato to beat the Serbs whom Nato was bombing.

We believe that the Kosovars have the right of self-determination, but in the context of a imperialist attack against a non-imperialist country revolutionaries have to subordinate this principle to that of defending an oppressed nation (Yugoslavia) against the world’s bosses. For that reason we called on Albanian, Serbian and all workers throughout the Balkans to unite in order to expel Nato arms in hands.

The PTS reacted furiously to the LRCI’s statements. In its last three papers the PTS published articles condemning WP for “departing from a class and international point of view regarding the national question”, “frankly talking crazy nonsense”, “losing the aim of the proletarian revolution” and “dangerously sliding into the warmongering camp of some imperialist sectors” (La Verdad Obrera No49, May 26).

The PTS critique of Workers Power is centred around the KLA. The PTS is in favour of backing Kosovar self-determination and the right to armed self-defence against Serbia. However, it rejects the LRCI’s characterisation that the KLA is an “independent” progressive guerrilla force which needs to be supported and armed: “How is it possible to define as an ‘independent’ force somebody who is backing Nato’s bombardments and calling the Albanian Kosovar masses to trust in the imperialist powers as their defenders against the bloody ethnic cleansing of Milosevic?” “It is not a surprise that a Kosovar refugee reprimanded WP in London for not withdrawing the slogan against Nato bombings” (ibid).

“‘Critical support’ for the KLA - a fanatical advocate of Nato’s intervention which it criticised for ‘not acting more resolutely’ - led to the creation of illusions that a progressive solution of the war could come from a social or political force other than the working class. In supporting the KLA’s openly pro-imperialist policies and petty bourgeois nationalist leadership they are slipping dangerously into the same militarist camp as Blair’s government” (La Verdad Obrera No50, June 12).

The PTS position is also contradictory because it called for the defeat of Nato but not for victory for the state that was at war with it. Let us repeat to this party for the umpteenth time the question we have been asking over the last four years: why do you continue to talk of fusion with the League which you so strongly condemn?

The PTS-LRCI pact is unprincipled. It is used by both groups to show their supporters that they have comrades in the other continent. Harvey, who acted so autocratically in expelling the Latin American comrades, has used this relationship to try to give the impression that his ‘international’ is not based only in imperialist countries.

The LRCI is racked by the most bizarre contradictions and U-turns. It has never bothered to explain the ease with which it moved so radically and unexpectedly from one position to another or how it manages to argue for different positions within the same articles. But for the fact that it continually resorts to manoeuvre and refuses to allow public debate internal crises would have blown it apart.

We call on healthy militants within the LRCI to challenge these zigzags and to return to the methods once advocated by Dave Hughes.