04.11.1999

Arthur’s coup d’état

Simon Harvey of the SLP

Socialist Labour’s membership is this weekend faced with a proposal to give the last vestige of democratic control over our organisation’s affairs.

Immediately after the business of the 3rd Congress has been completed on Sunday, there will be a special congress with the sole purpose of amending the SLP constitution to make this the final annual gathering in our party’s short history. General Secretary Arthur Scargill looks set to achieve his aim of doing away with the party’s sovereign body and having the national executive committee’s proposal for three-yearly congresses rubber-stamped.

Scargill first aired this change over a year ago at the September 1998 meeting of the NEC, but was outvoted by a clear majority. Even after ridding the executive (and subsequently the party) of followers of the Fourth International Supporters Caucus (Fisc) at last year’s special congress, he had apparently been unable to carry the new NEC wholeheartedly behind this blatantly undemocratic move.

When motions and constitutional amendments for this weekend’s congress were circulated to branches 12 weeks ago, quite remarkably they contained not a single proposal from the NEC itself. This was because it would not agree to Scargill’s demands. Even for those elected on a ‘Campaign to support Scargill and the national leadership of the Socialist Labour Party’ slate, the three-yearly proposal seemed to be a step too far.

Yet Scargill now reports, in a circular to branches received a week ago, that the October NEC “unanimously agreed” the change. Of course similar unanimity was declared last year when the 1998 annual congress was “postponed” and replaced by a special congress, but this masked the schismatic divisions that later came to light. Be that as it may, Scargill has now, by fair means or foul, imposed his will on the NEC. As usual, he dreams up a militant-sounding excuse for this latest intensification of his dictatorship. By reducing the “bureaucratic day-to-day administrative work” the abolition of annual congresses would, he claims, free up the party for more effective action. You see, the SLP must be “a campaigning party, not just an administrative party”.

But NEC agreement came too late for the annual congress. However, a special congress may be called by the NEC at any time. Constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority. But, even if most Constituency SLPs vote against the proposal to remove their rights, it can if necessary be forced through using the 3,000 votes wielded by the delegates of the North West, Cheshire and Cumbria Miners Association. The NWCCMA is a retired miners’ club funded by the National Union of Mineworkers, whose officers include Scargill’s loyal lieutenants, NEC member Paul Hardman and Billy Kelly.

Along with the NWCCMA, Sheffield Ucatt is still affiliated (my statement last week that the national union leadership has forced the branch to disaffiliate was not accurate - Sheffield is still holding out against the wishes of the Ucatt tops). These two organisations determine the seven trade union representatives on the NEC and this year have proposed Chris Herriot of Unison and Ron Sinclair of Ucatt to replace John Hendy and Linda Muir. Comrade Hendy has unsurprisingly decided to call it a day in view of Scargill’s riding roughshod over the constitution he had helped draft with such loving care, while comrade Muir is standing down from the NEC in order to contest the vice-presidency.

She has a three-cornered fight on her hands, being opposed by both Harpal Brar and Imran Khan. Interestingly the NWCCMA has not proposed any of the candidates. In all likelihood comrades Kelly and Hardman intend to abstain, withholding their 3,000 votes, as they did last year in the contest between Fisc’s Patrick Sikorski and Royston Bull, editor of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review. However, in 1998 Sheffield Ucatt backed the winner (Bull) and this year has proposed comrade Muir, who is, incidently, currently seeking nominations to contest the general secretary’s post of Unison - in opposition to the candidate of the united left, Roger Bannister.

Unlike Muir, comrade Brar is also standing for the NEC constituency section, indicating the relative confidence of the two main candidates for the vice-presidency. Comrade Khan is proposed only by Lewes CSLP and, although he can be expected to pick up votes from branches up and down the country, has no chance in view of his past association with Fisc.

President Frank Cave is unopposed, but Scargill himself is challenged by EPSR man Jim Dooher, who is backed by Liverpool Walton alone, while our current leader is proposed by no fewer than 25 CSLPs, along with the NWCCMA and Sheffield Ucatt.

The EPSR of course split over its attitude to the SLP. When comrade Bull was hauled before a disciplinary panel for refusing to close down his cut-and-paste journal, and was finally ‘lapsed’ last April for non-payment of dues, most of his followers fell behind their guru’s new stance of vitriolic hostility towards Scargill. But a minority, including current NEC members Dave Roberts and Sohan (Paul) Singh, continue to view the SLP as a splendid vehicle for advancing their own peculiar form of Stalinism.

As a result the ‘Campaign to support Scargill’ slate for the NEC constituency section is still intact, backed by a hard core of 10 CSLPs. It includes not only comrades Roberts, Singh and Brar, but sitting members Brian Gibson, Bridget Bell and Jim McDaid. Darran Hickery, who is not seeking re-election, looks like being replaced by another Scargill loyalist, Liz Screen. They are opposed by a left-liberal alliance of Imran Khan, John Hayball, Nathan Parkin, Geoff Palmer, Dave Walker and Katrina Howse.

Comrade Brar will have the support of three close followers on the new NEC - Amanda Rose and Ella Rule, representing the national women’s section, and his son, Ranjeet, for the youth section. All three are unopposed.

A total of 55 CSLPs have been involved in the pre-congress nomination and proposal procedure. Only 28 branches proposed motions or constitutional amendments, of which eight were ruled out of order. Amongst the latter are two EPSR rants, demanding amongst other things the “immediate reinstatement of the vice-president” (ie, Bull).

The excluded motion from Coventry North West also calls for the establishment of an SLP theoretical journal based on the “central positions” of the EPSR and Lalkar (officially the organ of the Indian Workers Association, edited by comrade Brar). The role of the proposed new publication would be to “unleash a resolute polemical confrontation against all the defeatist, anti-communist confusion” put out by, amongst others, the SWP, Socialist Party and Weekly Worker.

Tooting CSLP is less keen on Lalkar, but stresses the key role of the EPSR - “run by the staunchest SLP supporters” - in “political education”. Both motions are deemed unacceptable by the NEC, because “it is impossible to call for the reinstatement of a vice-president who ceased to be a member of the Socialist Labour Party”, and because they call for “a journal not under the control of the party” to become “an organ for promoting the party”.

Also excluded are two other bizarre motions. Brigg and Goole calls mysteriously for the employment of “the democratic centralist method” in party elections, as opposed to “the OMOV so beloved of our enemies”. We will never know what the comrades mean, as Scargill has ruled that the motion cannot be allowed, since it has “the aim of instructing the NEC to produce a completely new system of voting” without attempting to amend the constitution. Finally an identical motion from three Merseyside CSLPs is simply declared to be “contrary to the SLP’s constitution”. It reads: “That the executive of the SLP initiate an amalgamation of all socialist parties currently registered within the party.” Pardon?

Among the other motions that do make it onto the congress agenda is a call from Barnsley West and Penistone for a show trial of Blair, Cook and Robertson (by whom?) because of their role in Nato’s air assault on Yugoslavia. But Ealing and Southall’s amendment wants to combine pacifism at home with support for terror abroad: “Nato troops should leave Kosovo”. But in the absence of any mention of the Kosovar Albanians, the call “to allow the Yugoslav people to determine their own internal affairs” is actually a coded invitation for Milosevic to restart his brutal programme of ethnic cleansing.

The motion from Hackney North and Stoke Newington on ‘Britain and Europe’ reads like a compromise reached between comrades of opposing views. It starts promisingly by noting, “Whether in or out of their European Union, the capitalist class will attack the rights and the living standards of the working class and oppressed throughout Britain.” Absolutely right. But in diametric contradiction to this statement, the motion calls for a “campaign for withdrawal from the European Union, while equally opposing a capitalist Britain standing alone”. Talk about confusion. But Scargill will be quite happy to go along with it, as demonstrated by an amendment from the Scargillite Bristol East CSLP, which leaves the Hackney text intact, while congratulating the NEC on standing a full list of candidates in the EU elections, and on “an excellent SLP TV broadcast”.

Amazingly, I find myself in almost total agreement with a motion from an EPSR branch - possibly because it is commendably, but uncharacteristically, brief. Wansdyke CSLP condemns import controls as “a reactionary imposition on the workers’ movement, playing into the hands of the ruling class”. Another motion I have no hesitation in supporting is Huddersfield’s call for “a comradely dialogue with others on the left”. From a position of loyalty to Scargill it suggests: “Agreements could be reached in local, assembly and general elections for socialists not to stand against each other.”

Bootle is “appalled at the decision to disband the Merseyside regional party” taken earlier this year. The branch blames the closure, precipitated by Scargill himself, for the “poor vote for the SLP in the recent [EU] elections, when the BNP achieved a higher percentage vote”. In fact the SLP’s return in the North West region (just over one percent) was the third highest in the country. It is correct to oppose Scargill’s bureaucratic control politics, but with the present virtual absence of working class self-activity his antics have next to no effect on electoral support.

Two motions ask for Socialist News to be published more regularly, while Birkenhead believes that the key is to get the paper into “the hands of the non-voting public”. The trump card of Lewes CSLP, coordinator of the left-liberal opposition, is the demand for a regular internal discussion bulletin, providing a forum for “the open exchange of debate and ideas”. Comrades from nearby Brighton Pavilion, by contrast, think that a better idea would be an SLP “think-tank”.

A long motion from Colne Valley commends the advisability of “uniting people from different traditions” and tolerating a “diversity of views”. This also means “avoiding sectarian ideas and methods in our dealings with fellow socialists ... both inside and outside the party”. The Wansdyke EPSR comrades attempt to ‘correct’ this motion with the help of an equally lengthy amendment, extolling the virtues of “Marxist science” and “recognising the achievements of the workers’ states, past and present”. The amendment praises the SLP for “striking together” with others in events such as anti-Nato demonstrations and the Reclaim Our Rights campaign, but condemns any electoral alliances with the same forces as “opportunist”. It does, however, call for the “active encouragement of polemical exchange within the columns of Socialist News”.

Erewash CSLP attempts to amend a seemingly unconnected motion on Socialist Labour’s work relating to local authorities with the “request that all members of this party be recommended to withdraw trade union political levy from the New Labour Party”. Such a move by a couple of hundred individuals would be worse than useless. The aim must be to break from Labour in an organised, positive way. Why cut yourself off from the furore within the AEEU, for instance, over the union’s refusal to ballot the membership over Labour’s candidate for London mayor?

These motions - along with other more mundane, less controversial proposals - demonstrate clearly that even within the declining force that is the SLP there is a desire to debate, fight for one’s view and influence the course of our movement.

In order to further cement his rule as labour dictator Scargill wants to stifle any trace of independent initiative. It is absolutely guaranteed that he will drive away yet more members in the process.