28.10.1999

Faithful few gather

Simon Harvey of the SLP

The 3rd Congress of the Socialist Labour Party will take place next weekend, November 6-7, in London’s Conway Hall. In view of the “postponement” of the 1998 annual congress, and its replacement by a one-day meeting where no membership motions were allowed, it will be the first full gathering of our party’s sovereign body since December 1997.

At the November 1998 special congress in Manchester each Constituency SLP was entitled to send one comrade. Just under 100 CSLP delegates attended, representing around 450 paid up members. This was in sharp contrast to official claims - made by president Frank Cave at the congress - of an individual membership figure of 2,265 in 345 parliamentary constituencies.

Since then there has been a further catastrophic loss, as scores more have left in disgust. Those influenced by the Fourth International Supporters Caucus of Patrick Sikorski, Brian Heron and Carolyn Sikorski have either been ‘lapsed’ for non-payment of dues, announced their resignation or, in most cases, simply walked away. Similarly most - but, reflecting a schism in its ranks, not all - supporters of Royston Bull’s Economic and Philosophic Science Review have now abandoned the SLP, Bull himself having also been ‘lapsed’. The EPSR editor replaced Pat Sikorski as vice-president at the special congress, an event which threw the party into crisis and led to bitter feuding between the two factions. Within a few weeks general secretary Arthur Scargill decided to ditch the lot.

The haemorrhaging in membership has left Scargill with a problem in 1999: how to conceal the organisation’s sad decline, while continuing to claim ever-increasing growth. The solution? This year each CSLP, irrespective of size, is entitled to three delegates. In fact, in many constituencies where we still have members, there is no functioning branch, so individuals will be representing only themselves. Just about every remaining half-active member who wishes to attend will be able to do so as a delegate. As a result there will be at least the appearance of a functioning party - although comrades who remember the bustling scenes in the large meeting hall at the same venue two years ago will no doubt be struck by the contrast this time.

Non-SLP members are invited to apply to observe the proceedings for £5.

Blocked out

For the last two years the national leadership has attempted to cover up the plummeting membership figures not only by counting as current members all those who have ever applied to join, but by lumping them together with affiliated organisations, which last year claimed to speak for 3,775 people. Apart from the phantom North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners Association, which accounts for 3,000 of these ‘members’ (and incidentally 3,000 votes at congress), a handful of union branches have also affiliated. Typically in these cases, the decision to sever links with New Labour and join the SLP is taken by a poorly attended branch membership or committee meeting, with most union members unaware of the SLP’s existence.

It will be interesting to see how this issue is handled next weekend. For example, will Scargill admit that Sheffield Ucatt, whose block votes helped to secure comrade Bull’s election in 1998, has now been forced to disaffiliate after the union leadership intervened earlier this year?

The individual membership loss is pretty consistent everywhere. In Scotland the SLP had to ‘import’ party names from south of the border for May’s elections to the Edinburgh parliament. Even in Yorkshire, considered by many to be Socialist Labour’s heartland, many branches have folded completely. For instance 18 months ago there were 19 members in Bradford. Today there is no organisation in the city.

Well before the Fisc-EPSR fiasco disillusionment had set in. In Bradford members were shocked when a candidate was parachuted in for the May 1997 general election in the shape of Abdul Khan, who claimed to represent the Kashmiri Workers Party in Britain. He was foisted on the Bradford West constituency without any consultation with the local branch. In fact ‘comrade’ Khan had previously been a Conservative Party member. The 1,551 votes he won for the SLP came overwhelmingly from his personal supporters. Today he has disappeared from the scene. For Bradford comrades, as for so many others, Scargill’s use of the NWCCMA 3,000-vote sledgehammer in 1997 and his sponsorship of Bull in 1998 were the two final nails in the SLP’s coffin.

Party theorist

In London - not only the capital but the city with the densest population and highest working class concentration - a membership numbering hundreds in 1997 has dwindled to a couple of dozen. Even the token leadership elected last month has been unable to hold itself together under ultra-Stalinite president Harpal Brar. Soft Trotskyite Steve Cowan, a former Labour councillor, has resigned as regional secretary after the briefest tenure. He is replaced on an acting basis by John Hayball, who was elected vice-president just six weeks ago.

The reason given by comrade Cowan is pressure of work as a Unison official. He excused himself in the same way when he withdrew from the London committee a year ago. A hard-pressed comrade Hayball has been thrown in at the deep end, just as his Kingston-upon-Thames council by-election campaign is reaching its climax. He is trying to snatch a seat in Cambridge ward, where most commentators seem to think the contest is a two-horse race between the Tories and Liberal Democrats. He has been canvassing heroically for the October 28 poll … practically unaided in this daunting task. Clearly neither Cowan nor Hayball are greatly enamoured with comrade Brar.

In the latest Socialist News comrade Hayball - hyperactive in SLP terms - has two articles (October-November). The first reports on the involvement of the Kingston branch (ie, comrade Hayball himself) in the Ricky Reel campaign. But the second reads as an attempt to counter the increasing influence of the likes of the London president. “When I think of Marxism,” writes comrade Hayball, “I do not think immediately of communism and the Soviet Union.” He goes on to refer favourably to a certain Leon Trotsky, who he says foresaw the possibility of the USSR’s collapse.

Trotsky’s main tool was “the science of Marxism”, which for comrade Hayball is, like a close friend, “an ever-present help in times of trouble”. Warming to his theme, our John lists the “three tenets” of Marxism as “the labour theory of value, historical materialism and the Communist manifesto”. He describes how, as a student, he was “greatly attracted to the idealism of the theory”. Hmm.

Comrade Hayball’s new role as party theorist has been facilitated by the absence from the pages of Socialist News of those ardent exponents of “the science of Marxism”, comrades Bull, Hoskins et al of the EPSR. Together with the Fiscites of course, they have now been completely expurgated from the SLP paper. Strangely though, apart from a Cuba interview conducted by Amanda Rose in the August-September issue, the Brarites are unrepresented too.

True, the Brar family have access to other publications. Harpal is editor of Lalkar, officially the organ of the Indian Workers Association, while son Ranjeet runs Spark, paper of Socialist Labour Youth, and daughter Joti is at the helm of Women for Socialism, journal of the SLP women’s section. But why are they so shy when it comes to Socialist News, with its larger circulation? Or has Nell Myers been told to keep them out?

Either way, the absence of factional articles - even if you had to be able to read between the lines - that previously brought at least a little life to its pages has now made the paper a very dull read indeed.

Forlorn call

Socialist News now has very much of an ‘NUMist’ feel to it, with local reports and snippets of opinion from such contributors as Mick Appleyard, Tony Horsfield, Zane Carpenter, Trevor Bolderson and Jim Arnison. No fewer than six articles refer to the National Union of Mineworkers or coal mining.

The paper also contains an interview with Dave ‘Mick’ Rix, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, and one of the SLP’s remaining big names. Unfortunately for the editorial team, the interview was conducted before the Ladbroke Grove disaster, and comrade Myers did not have the gumption to either update it or hold it over. Embarrassingly, comrade Rix refers only to the Southall accident and talks mainly of union demands and union politics. Ladbroke Grove is left to comrade Cave in his tiny, front-page piece. Socialist News is settled into its bimonthly routine and does not even attempt to respond seriously to sudden developments ... even on the rails where it has RMT’s Bob Crow besides Aslef’s Mick Rix.

Page two articles refer to last month’s Wigan and Hamilton South parliamentary by-elections, where the SLP gained around 1.5% in both constituencies. Socialist Labour’s vote in Hamilton South “shows the party’s potential”, according to the anonymous writer, who goes on to list - without comment - the full results: eg, 238 for the SLP and 1,847 for the Scottish Socialist Party.

Comrade Scargill’s own article claims that many Labour Party members were “clearly stunned” by Tony Blair’s remark at the Bournemouth conference that “the class war is over”. I somehow doubt it. But for king Arthur it came as no surprise, in view of “the complete abandonment of socialist principles in 1995”. He repeats his increasingly forlorn call for Labour lefts to follow his example: resign from Blair’s party and join the SLP.

Our general secretary appears to have no inkling of his failure. The initial enthusiasm fot the SLP was soon dampened and eventually completely smothered by his own bureaucratic, anti-democratic actions. The SLP hardly evokes any interest at all less than four years after its birth. For example, there have now been just 1,200 visits to our website since it was set up earlier this year. By my calculation hits are continuing to limp along at around 150 a month - on average only five internet-users from all around the world bother to take a look at the site daily. Hardly surprising, considering its sparse contents. Others on the left - the CPGB for instance - regularly record over 1,500 hits a month.