21.10.1999

Right liquidationism

Socialist Network

A new stage in the degeneration of the Socialist Party was marked by last weekend’s Socialist Network conference attended by a layer of members and disillusioned former SP members.

The meeting, sponsored by the Merseyside Socialists, saw around 85 invited co-thinkers, fellow travellers and sympathisers gathering in Liverpool on October 16. In my opinion it represented the most extreme manifestation yet of the liquidationist cancer slowly eating away at the political heart of the Socialist Party. Its most active agents are undoubtedly comrades Dave Cotterill and Mike Morris. Comrade Morris was the last remaining Liverpool full-timer until the entire Merseyside regional committee was suspended - effectively expelled - last year. Comrade Cotterill had already resigned from Taaffe’s organisation in protest at being asked by the EC for details of his paid employment and whether it related to his political work. The ‘suspended’ comrades went on to form the Merseyside Socialists grouping.

These comrades, including also Cathy Wilson and former Militant parliamentary candidate Lesley Mahmood, together with their local contacts, made up a large part of those attending. In addition three former local leaders from Manchester - Margaret Manning, Moirag Allen and John Killen - came along with a couple of followers. Another ex-SP comrade present was Roy Davies, formerly a leading member in Wales renowned for his support for the ‘Scottish turn’ who has now collapsed into Welsh nationalism.

The Socialist Democracy Group - itself consisting in part of former SP members, had only three comrades in attendance, including John Bulaitis and Duncan Chapple. International support came in the shape of an elderly member of the French Ligue Internationale Trotskyiste who resides in Britain, while a representative of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty appeared to be the only member of an organisation honoured with the status of observer. Some half dozen current SP members were present, although, understandably, none of them wished to have their names publicised.

Billed as a “meeting for socialists that come from a particular tradition to have an open exchange of ideas”, it most emphatically rejected the concepts of Partyism and democratic centralism. Comrade Anne Banister, who chaired the opening session, invited those present “to be as heretical as you like”. In the manner of daytime talk show hosts the world over we were assured that, “You don’t have to be afraid: say anything you like”. Continuing in this vein, Dave Cotterill stressed that there was “no collective opinion on anything” and that it was important for all present to feel comfortable, no matter “how heretical” the contribution.

The day’s events comprised eight workshops, including ‘identity politics’, ‘new technology’ and ‘colonialism and racism’, sandwiched between two longer sessions, the last being a discussion on ‘How should socialists organise today?’ Speaking priority was accorded to “comrades from the Socialist Party tradition”, although most did not take up the opportunity. Indeed it was a remarkably low-key affair with fewer than a dozen people intervening in the main sessions. A Merseyside comrade was heard to comment after the meeting that she considered the event to be highly successful, inasmuch as there had been next to no conflicting opinions - in my view the open clash of ideas provides evidence, on the contrary, of a healthy dynamism and the search for truth.

An almost palpable fear of organising or deciding anything pervaded the proceedings with the almost automatic rider, “If that’s okay with you”, attaching itself to the most harmless of requests. An example of this lethargy (dressed up as enthusiasm for an energetic new beginning) came with comrade Morris’s most tentative of proposals for the establishment of a magazine. Some comrades worried whether this was really appropriate, because, after all, ‘we are not really an organisation, are we?’

Indeed the final session might more accurately have been entitled ‘How socialists should not organise’, since the few contributors to the debate could only approach the subject negatively, in the main restricting their comments to the ‘failed and outdated’ methods of the past. Consequently, the politics on display were a revolting amalgam of anarchism, liberalism, petty bourgeois dilettantism and out, loud and proud liquidationism.

The final proof of the political bankruptcy of “those from the Socialist Party tradition” came in the final session, when Merseyside Socialists comrades replied to an earlier intervention from one of the SP members who spoke. This comrade actually had the brass neck to speak in defence of democratic centralism! Comrade Mike Morris, scenting Taaffeite blood, was quick to heap scorn and derision on to the head of this hapless Marxist. Did he not know that democratic centralism was totally discredited, utterly finished and completely irrelevant to the working class?

Interestingly and encouragingly the SP comrade drew a distinction in response between the bureaucratic centralism of the Socialist Party and genuine democratic centralism. Those present were implored not “to throw the bath out with both the baby and the bathwater”. John Killen finally sought to counter this disgraceful display of Leninism, with a skilful blend of ridicule, mockery and insult.

Other highlights? John Bulaitis: “some have described us as liquidationists. I suppose I am.” You just couldn’t make it up.

Seriously though, this grotesque aberration that passes itself off as working class politics and, nauseatingly, “Marxism for the new millennium” (I kid you not) must be thoroughly and openly exposed and then politically destroyed. We are (or should be) in the business of raising our class to the status of a ruling class. For that we need a correct revolutionary programme from which flows the need for a vanguard party and, yes, it must be a democratic centralist party. Anything else might go down a storm on Merseyside, but it is not Marxist or anything like it.

Finally, what of the Socialist Party? On one level the Liverpool gathering contained very little of political substance, even by the SP’s own opportunist standards. Rather the unifying thread was a reaction against the essentially autocratic and bureaucratised Socialist Party regime, as it goes into meltdown. Unfortunately, however, the opposition is overwhelmingly rightist. Liverpool was merely the latest manifestation of the liquidationism spawned by Taaffe’s own fundamentally opportunist method.

What the Socialist Party needs is a principled left opposition. Given the events outlined above, this now assumes even greater urgency.

Terry Fenton