26.08.1999

Sikorski witch-hunted

Simon Harvey of the SLP

Patrick Sikorski, Socialist Labour’s first general secretary and subsequently SLP vice-president, has finally left Arthur Scargill’s party.

Comrade Sikorski is the last of those associated with the Fourth International Supporters Caucus to abandon Britain’s ‘party of recomposition’. His two co-thinkers, Carolyn Sikorski and Brian Heron, were ‘lapsed’ in April after failing to pay their dues since the beginning of the year, to be followed by all their supporters, who drifted quietly away. The Fiscites were once Scargill’s most loyal courtiers - indeed they had been involved in discussions with him from 1995 and occupied the highest positions on the leadership after the party’s foundation in May 1996.

One of the reasons for comrade Sikorski’s decision to quit was undoubtedly Scargill’s failure to support - if not outright opposition to - his bid to become assistant general secretary of the RMT transport union earlier this year. When comrade Sikorski issued his proposals to clip Scargill’s wings in the shape of an SLP discussion document entitled ‘Renewing our sense of purpose’ last summer, the Scargill-Fisc alliance was abruptly ended. The SLP general secretary saw to it that comrade Sikorski was voted out from the party vice-presidency at the November 1998 special congress and replaced by the buffoon, Royston Bull.

This split was reflected on the outgoing RMT executive. Sikorski, secretary of the London Underground regional council, could rely on the support of Mick Atherton and Bobby Law, two prominent signatories of Fisc’s ‘Appeal for a special conference’, distributed within the SLP a year ago. However, two other SLP members, Jimmy Connolly and Danny Bermingham, were closer to Scargill. When nominations were announced for one of the two assistant general secretary (AGS) posts, RMT militants were dismayed to learn that both comrades Sikorski and Connolly were contesting. The third candidate was the sitting rightwinger, Vernon Hince.

Bob Crow, the other assistant general secretary and an SLP NEC member, tried to act as honest broker, but it seems that comrade Connolly had Scargill’s backing. The single transferable vote system meant that this split on the left, negative though it was, was not completely disastrous, and Sikorski won around 45% after Connolly was eliminated in the first count. This close call for the right wing, and the events surrounding the conduct of the election, were to spark off the subsequent witch-hunting of comrade Sikorski.

When ballot papers were sent out for the first time, they were accompanied by instructions to place ‘1’ alongside the name of members’ preferred candidate. The instructions did not go on to point out that voters could indicate their second and subsequent preferences. As a result many voters expressed only one preference - a factor which clearly favoured the single rightwing candidate, while the left vote was divided.

Amazingly, when this obvious mistake was pointed out, the union leadership under general secretary Jimmy Knapp announced that the election was perfectly valid and should proceed. This decision was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that a parallel election was taking place - Knapp himself was being challenged by comrade Greg Tucker of Socialist Outlook. As the officer ultimately responsible for overseeing the AGS election, Knapp did not want his incompetence to be exposed - and certainly not during his own campaign.

However, following the advice of the Electoral Reform Society, the body charged with conducting the elections, the leadership had no option but to announce fresh balloting - once Knapp was safely returned to office. It appears that a decision was taken at this point to punish comrade Sikorski, who had been threatening legal proceedings. Even while the AGS election rerun was taking place, the leadership was making ‘enquiries’ into an alleged infringement of the rules by comrade Sikorski.

As in so many unions ‘canvassing’ is not permitted. For the union bureaucracies a full exchange of ideas and attempts to persuade the membership why your own ideas ought to be supported are considered ‘undemocratic’ - except for the leadership’s own ideas of course, which are given full prominence in official journals and circulars as a matter of course. Election addresses are distributed, but that represents the limit of officially permitted campaigning. There is of course nothing to stop candidates writing ‘private’ letters to individuals asking for support. When branch secretaries receive these, they often copy them for distribution to their members. That was what occurred in comrade Sikorski’s case.

The executive decided that he be “suspended from holding any office in the union for five years - implementation to be suspended for a three-year period”. In addition it announced the withdrawal of all union benefits for six months. Leading SLPers were split, with Connolly and Bermingham disgracefully backing the right wing. Comrade Crow maintained a discreet silence - after all he had his own re-election (now in the nomination stage) to think about.

Comrade Sikorski and his supporters vehemently protested at this travesty of a procedure. There was no notice of charges, no right to be heard or make representations, no notification of sentence and no right of appeal.

For many this sham served as a reminder. The early period of the SLP was marked by the arbitrary expulsion of ‘undesirable’ members. In a practice that became widely known as ‘voiding’, comrades alleged to be “members or supporters” of other organisations had their SLP membership declared null and void at the stroke of a pen. There was no notice of charges, no right to be heard or make representations, no notification of sentence and no right of appeal. The witch-hunter in chief was comrade Pat Sikorski, the SLP’s first general secretary.

When the action of the RMT EC came up for ratification at the June AGM (annual conference), the 50 or so delegates were deeply divided. Speakers in the debate overwhelmingly opposed the sanctions, but the silent majority narrowly voted to back the leadership. In the SLP too a tendency to give the leadership the ‘benefit of the doubt’ and a reluctance to object to curbs on democracy and membership rights allowed Scargill, Sikorski and co to wreck the project through their ham-fisted bureaucracy. In spite of that I still have no hesitation in saying: ‘Defend Pat Sikorski’.

Eccentric musings

The latest Socialist News (No19, August-September) has hit the streets at last. The No18 issue of our ‘monthly’ appeared in May. With the Fiscites and supporters of Roy Bull’s Economic and Philosophic Science Review now completely expurgated, there is even less of interest than previously. Almost the entire contents consist either of local reports or the disjointed musings of the often eccentric contributors.

The two exceptions are the articles from Joe Marino and Arthur Scargill himself. Comrade Marino, an NEC member and general secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, reviews the TUC’s British trade unionism - the millennial challenge. Needless to say, it is easy to tear apart the latest form of ‘new unionism’ and comrade Marino makes some valid points. But he concentrates his fire on the TUC’s call for bigger unions.

He writes: “In this case big is not beautiful ... The truth is that, in general, smaller, specialist unions [like the Bakers Union, obviously] have a deeper penetration of membership - and power.” Sounds like the sectional call of a union bureaucrat to me. Size per se is not the issue. Workers’ unity demands one industry, one union. Only in that way can the trade union “solidarity” comrade Marino craves be effectively organised. All the better if such unions take the lead from a revolutionary working class party.

Comrade Scargill looks back at the SLP’s performance in the EU elections. In what must be a first for our general secretary he actually admits that Socialist Labour’s results were “a disappointment”. Usually Arthur deludes himself into believing that the SLP is marching uninterruptedly onwards, although the statistics he throws at you to back up his claims are always dubious, to say the least. In this case his faulty mathematics leads him to understate the SLP’s moderate achievement (86,749 votes won equal 0.87%, not “0.16%”). It does, however, say a lot about the decline in the party’s fortunes when even Scargill is unable to paint a glowing picture.

Another first is his referring to a left organisation other than the SLP by name. He states: “It has been suggested [by the Weekly Worker amongst others] that in Scotland the factor that reduced our vote was the election on May 6 of a Scottish Socialist Party candidate to the Scottish parliament.” (Note that Scargill cannot bring himself to actually mention the words ‘Tommy Sheridan’). But he rejects this proposition, citing “the drop in our percentage vote in Wales” - where there was no equivalent of the SSP -as compared to the previous month’s Welsh assembly elections.

The only theory Scargill is able to come up with is the much reduced turnout. Apparently this hit the SLP much harder than, for example, the SSP. This was because Socialist Labour failed to turn “our supporters out in the constituencies where we are strongest”. Hardly surprising in view of the fact that the party’s entire structure has all but disappeared.

Scargill notes the relative success of the “anti-Common Market UK Independence Party”, but it does not dawn on him that the results of the UKIP and the SLP might be connected. The SLP’s campaign did not even attempt to fill the political vacuum on the left, concentrating everything on Scargill’s inane call to ‘pull out of Europe’. Why vote for a pale version of the UKIP when you can vote for the real thing?

Nevertheless Scargill manages to end on an optimistic note: “The SLP’s performance was the best by any left party on a nationwide basis since the (old) Labour Party began to make its breakthrough in the 1920s.” So the Labour Party never won more than 0.86% before 1920 then?

Information lacking

With information for members in the shape of membership bulletins and circulars sadly lacking, some comrades might turn to the party’s website - assuming of course they know of its existence.

Set up to promote our EU elections campaign, the website seems to have been abandoned since then. When I checked it the other day I found it had last been updated on July 16. Clicking on the ‘What’s new’ button, I was able to read a single bare sentence: “July 1999 - congress resolutions and nominations close.” The information on the ‘Socialist News’ page, however, is just as meagre: “Issue 19 - orders to SLP national office.” The pages on ‘International’, ‘Trade unions’ and ‘Women for Socialism’ all bore the same message: “Currently under construction.”

Still, the home page does carry a fetching picture of Arthur, and you can still read extracts from the constitution and the EU election manifesto. Not surprisingly our website has had fewer than 900 visits in almost six months.