23.09.1999

‘Waste of time’

Taaffe rubbishes anti-Blair lobby

I recommend readers study the latest thoughts from that fount of Marxist insight, Peter Taaffe, the general secretary of the Socialist Party in England and Wales. At a meeting in Leicester on September 13, the comrade is reported as urging that the workers’ movement effectively boycott the Socialist Workers Party-organised lobby of the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth on September 26. Here is what he said:

“As Blair is totally isolated from workers - he has his money from big business - the lobby is a waste of time. It won’t change anything, no matter how big, no matter how well attended, so, although individual comrades will be attending, we are not supporting the lobby” (Weekly Worker September 16).

This is the first public comment on the lobby by a leading member of the SP and will come as a surprise to many of its members. After all, Taaffe is supposed to constitute a factional majority on the party’s national committee - against industrial organiser, Bill Mullins - which favours cooperation with the SWP on elections, trade union work, student campaigning, etc (Weekly Worker September 9). These public comments - which were expanded upon after the meeting with the pettily sectarian, “Why should we do anything that benefits the SWP?” - cloud the internal SP picture. Not surprisingly Bristol SP branch has been agitating for a “full discussion” to be held, “with documents and outline perspectives” giving “our analysis of the SWP” (‘Conference 1999 - resolutions and amendments’).

Taaffe’s ineptness as a leader is a secondary point. What we have here is yet another example of the growing marginalisation of the SP, something which is bound to deeply demoralise its cadre.

A number of regions and branches of the SP have either tacitly supported the SWP lobby, or at least pressurised their Hepscott Road centre to sponsor it. Taaffe’s mealy-mouthed (and thoroughly irrational) outburst places such comrades in a difficult position. Should SPers have been actively opposing the lobby, campaigning against it? And what about the “individual comrades” that Taaffe reports will be attending? Will they be ambling along with the rest of the crowd, or will they be busy with an SP leaflet counterposed to the whole event, supplemented by critical articles in their press pointing out that that the whole thing is a total and utter “waste of time”?

Indeed, if the SP does not do this, surely it can only be acting in pursuit of its own parochial sectarianism, not the wider interests of the movement as a whole. Here is a small mass action organised by what amounts to the largest and most influential revolutionary trend in Britain today. And, according to Taaffe, as it is based on a totally false estimation of the nature of Labour, the SWP is in effect sowing dangerous illusions in Blair’s party, tying militants to the hopeless project of pressurising it to change.

In fact, all working class activists should critically support the September 26 action. In those trade union branches where we have comrades amendments to the resolution proposed by SWPers have been proposed - and defeated.

Taaffe’s comments are foolish on several levels. First, the idea that, “no matter how big, no matter how well attended”, the protest by definition cannot change anything because of the nature of the Labour Party’s funding is quite idiotic. If for example the streets around the conference centre were clogged with a quarter of a million angry militants, it is a pretty safe bet that Labour would sit up and take notice. Although Taaffe’s bluster sounds terribly ‘lefty’, it is in fact a sign of the disorientation of a group that was for decades ensconced deep in the Labour Party, but now does not know what to do or where to go.

Any bourgeois politician, of practically any regime, is sensitive to pressure from below. Thus, the Socialist Party has organised pickets of the Indonesian embassy, not because of its illusions in the nature of the Jakarta regime, but to develop concrete solidarity with the revolution, to help exert international pressure.

History underlines that what has actually won influence over capitalist governments - whether of the Labour or Tory stripe - has been only the power, confidence and levels of organisation of the working class. Throughout most of its life, the SP’s political forerunners posited the foul lie that the Labour Party was in fact the party of the working class in this country, that the proper relation of militants to it was one of critical loyalty. Taaffe seems to imply that, now he has been kicked out, this party has changed its fundamental nature (see below), and it is no longer worthwhile addressing any protests to it at all.

Again, all we have here is Taaffe articulating the narrow factional interests of the SP, not those of the wider movement. In order to justify its independent existence - and to maintain some semblance of dogmatic coherence - Taaffe has had to claim a qualitative change in the nature of Labour. This may or may not be true, but the problem is how the SP has arrived at this position. It is a totally unexplained, pragmatic innovation in the ‘theory’. In the early 1990s hidden polemics between on the one hand the proponents of a ‘Scottish turn’ to open work and on the other the Grant-Sewel tendency, which opposed anything that would endanger the “40 years” of consistent work as a loyal component of Labour, Taaffe et al were at pains to emphasise that they proposed a “detour”, nothing more.

“There is no proposal to abandon a long-term orientation towards the Labour Party and a long-term tactic of entry,” the Militant editorial board majority stated. “We will have to continue to orientate towards the party and, in the future, when there are developments within the party, the emphasis will once again switch to work within the Labour Party” (For the Scottish turn: against dogmatic methods in thought and action September 1991). Indeed, the Taaffeite majority replied with some anger to charges from the Grant-Sewel minority that it was redefining the nature of Labour to justify an ultra-left adventure. This is worth quoting at some length:

“According to the minority, [the open turn shows] that we have written off the Labour Party as the traditional party of the working class and will be putting ourselves on the same level as the sects. This, allegedly, is the theoretical root of our ‘false tactics’ … In the long term, especially in Britain where there exists an unbreakable link between the Labour Party and the trade unions, entryism will remain a central plank in our strategy … The Labour leaders also favour state funding for political parties, and would undoubtedly attempt to introduce this in the event of a Labour government … How far they will be able to move in this direction remains to be seen. Moreover, even if the right wing were able to sever the close TU-LP links at local and national level, thus moving the Labour Party nearer to the position of many European socialist parties, this would not in itself end the traditional ties between the Labour Party and the trade unions” (ibid pp12-13).

All of which must be pretty embarrassing reading for the likes of Taaffe nowadays. Of course, changing your mind, drawing out the logic of your initial positions, is no bad thing in and of itself. These changes must be openly accounted for, however. Taaffe should explain why under today’s conditions - where the link between Labour and the trade unions remains intact - he cannot now even countenance taking part in a demo outside a Labour Party conference, let alone a return to deep entry work.

Further, it is clear that - whatever the opportunist slant of their propaganda - the organisers of this lobby are not under the impression that they are trailing down to Bournemouth in order the change Tony Blair’s mind through a little bit of quiet persuasion. The role of socialists who believe that they have a principled line of march is not to stand aside in a huff from such relatively substantial actions, but to involve themselves, pointing out the limitations and mistakes of the movement.

In general, we organise such actions in the workers’ movement not as an expression of some benign dialogue with the establishment, but as a manifestation of our strength ranged against theirs. The turnout on the day will be a concrete measure of this, of course. Moreover, the campaign to build it is itself an important component part of the process of actually enhancing that fighting strength, not simply a passive reflection of it.

This weekend, thousands of socialists, communists and other militants will march through Bournemouth. This imparts a concrete sense of collective strength and organisation. A successful event can bolster confidence, an ingredient that is glaringly absent today. The campaign to build this concrete action forges links between militants, and can deepen the shallow roots of revolutionary organisations in the working class. As a Comintern resolution on the method of work puts it,

“when demonstrations … are underway, it must always be remembered that the organisational experience gained in these campaigns will steadily and surely lead to increasingly firm links with the broad masses” (Theses, resolutions and manifestos of the first four congresses of the Third International London 1983, p250).

Week after week, The Socialist reports the widespread use by SP branches of petitions to local Labour and Tory authorities, SP-organised or supported lobbies of councils and a whole host of other actions. These too would also be viewed as “a waste of time”, if the sectarian spirit of Taaffe’s anti-SWP snarls were generalised. Taaffe’s comment - “Why should we do anything that benefits the SWP?” - is a piece of foul sectarianism.

For example, why should anyone apart from the SP have called for a vote for Lesley Mahmood, Tommy Sheridan and the Scottish Socialist Party or any other Militant Labour/Socialist Party candidate over the last 10 years or so? (Our organisation has made its political criticisms clear, but often supported SP actions and campaigns which we judge to be some sort of step forward for the wider movement.) Taaffe’s method is a recipe for paralysis.

Would a large and militant demonstration outside this year’s Labour Party conference positively or negatively affect the militant recomposition of the workers’ movement? If the answer is the former, then it is incumbent on working class organisations to support it.

Mark Fischer