23.03.2000

Pat Strong of the Socialist Party

Final divorce in Scotland Crisis in CWI will leave it a rump

Following the recent haemorrhaging of our South African section (see Weekly Worker March 16), a closed document released by the Phil Stott faction in the Scottish Socialist Party marks yet another stage in the disintegration of the Peter Taaffe-led Committee for a Workers International (see inside, pp4-5).

The document, entitled 'SSP conference review and conclusions', is a stinging attack on the SSP majority, signed by Taaffeite loyalists Phil Stott, Sinead Daly, Alan Manley, Jim McFarlane, Bruce Wallace and Mark Walker. It seeks to draw a clear 'red' line between their small grouping, which they insist is committed to "a cohesive, revolutionary organisation based on the principle of democratic centralism", and the McCombes-Curran-Sheridan axis, which "seeks to abandon the building of an independent revolutionary organisation". Both factions were previously part of the now liquidated Scottish Militant Labour and remain affiliated to the International Socialist Movement - the CWI in Scotland.

The opening paragraph sets the tone for the rest of the text. The comrades speak of "the fundamentally wrong position the majority of the leadership have taken during the debate about how we organise within the SSP. During the discussion which led up to the CWI conference on February 6 2000 we repeatedly warned that if the comrades pressed ahead with the attempt to turn our organisation into a loose Marxist grouping it would have serious repercussions for our work within the broad SSP. Sadly these warnings have gone unheeded and the continuing disintegration of our revolutionary organisation is the result."

The sentiments expressed in this document do not come out of the blue. Many of us have wondered how long it would be before our general secretary could no longer tolerate the brazen flouting of CWI 'discipline' by the majority in Scotland. The CWI, like the Socialist Party itself, is rapidly disintegrating. Thus over the recent period we have seen UDI in Scotland, the loss of Liverpool, autonomy for Dave Nellist in Coventry, including freedom to pursue his Socialist Alliance project, and revolt in London over the LSA. Alongside that, an exodus in South Africa, schisms in France, as well as the expulsions of the Pakistan section and the US former minority. Comrade Taaffe and his CWI lieutenant Tony Saunois are, I am told, prepared to recognise comrade Stott's Dundee faction as the official section - much to the delight of comrades McCombes, Curran, Sheridan, etc. We have seen the same process elsewhere. Overall membership of the CWI has slumped from some 11,000 at the beginning of the last decade to the 4,000 claimed today.

One SP comrade, a closet sympathiser of the McCombes minority, has been predicting for over a year now that McCombes and his band will be expelled - although of course the majority may well decide to pre-empt such a move by formally leaving the ISM. It looks likely then that comrade Stott's loyalist statement is the latest salvo in a kind of push-me, pull me war of attrition.

Sadly, the familiar charges of duplicity and underhand manoeuvrings that seem inevitably to accompany these frequent internal schisms make an appearance: "The comrades ... organised a meeting of the international visitors on the Sunday. Peter [Hadden] and Niall [Mulholland] reported that as representatives of the CWI they were not informed and only found out from the comrade from the Left Bloc in Portugal. Only after the meeting had gone on for a period did the comrades come back to tell Peter and Niall of the meeting. On the Sunday morning, as all the international visitors were addressing the conference, it became clear that the CWI were not on the list to speak. Only a last-minute intervention by a comrade from Dundee ensured that the CWI were allowed to address the conference. It is also noticeable that the Scottish Socialist Voice is carrying interviews with all the international visitors except those of the CWI."

So pretty much the standard fare for yet another civil war. But what about the politics? Surely we should support comrades who stand for a "cohesive revolutionary organisation based on the principle of democratic centralism"? Unfortunately things are not that simple. Of course there is a great deal of truth in many of the charges levelled against the McCombes leadership. There is, for instance, a clear dilution of anything remotely resembling a revolutionary programme. Also there can be no doubt by now that the leadership is liquidating any remaining semblance of factional organisation. The ISM is, to all intents and purposes, being quietly left behind by the majority.

The Stott minority see this as a capitulation to left reformism induced by the pressures of the comrades working in a non-revolutionary SSP. The irony here though is that in reality the trajectory of the Scottish leadership is merely the logical outcome of the fundamentally opportunist method raised to an art form by none other than Peter Taaffe himself. Tail-ending opinion polls and a willing collapse before the forces of nationalism are simply Taaffe's method with a Scottish accent.

In our organisation, both in the SP and the CWI, there exists 'a wilderness of mirrors'. A strange terrain of Orwellian double-speak where reform is revolution, bureaucratic centralism is democratic centralism, and so on. We see exactly the same processes unfolding that we previously witnessed in Merseyside, Pakistan, etc. Predictably, while the Stott rump dress up their criticisms in revolutionary rhetoric, there is an absence of any genuinely Marxist critique. Thus the main thrust of the loyalist document concerns itself with purely organisational questions.

It comes then as no surprise at all to read that, "There was a very limited intervention at the conference. The comrades from Dundee [Stott's home ground] were the only ones who openly sold the journal (30 copies sold - the bookstall also sold an encouraging amount of CWI material). There was no meeting prior to the conference to plan our intervention, or a drive to attract our own members and potential members of the ISM to the fringe meeting. As a result the meeting was only partially successful with around 30 in attendance and one new comrade approaching us to join. Only Frances (who spoke at the meeting) and Philip Stott attended the meeting from the former CWI executive."

The concerns of the document's authors are all too clear. Building a "revolutionary" organisation is simply a matter of selling journals, recruiting members and so on. The reason for this of course is perfectly understandable. We have for years miseducated our comrades to such a degree that any discontent will almost inevitably propel them in a rightward direction. A rejection of Taaffeism and the bureaucratic methodology that underpins it leads comrades to a rejection of revolutionary politics. One is simple equated with the other. McCombes and co have taken the Taaffe method to its logical conclusion, but at the same time in their desire to break organisationally with him, any avenue is open to exploration. It is this wearily familiar theme tune that now accompanies our internal meltdown. The document unwittingly highlights this:

"We think that there is an attitude in Scotland that the CWI is not worth a candle, it is sectarian and a burden on our work in Scotland." Such an attitude exists not only in Scotland, but throughout what remains of the international organisation. It is precisely this attitude that has resulted in near-total collapse, both here and abroad. Regrettably though, the comrades cannot draw the necessary conclusions.

With this in mind the points made on democratic centralism are particularly revealing: "Democratic centralism is not just an essential ingredient to ensure disciplined and effective intervention into the SSP; it is also the best method of ensuring party democracy. Particularly in acting as a check on the leadership."

Here is bitter, bitter irony indeed! Comrade Taaffe's loyalists hoisted by his very own bureaucratic petard! Of course, were we discussing genuine democratic centralism in relation to a revolutionary organisation, these points would be pretty uncontroversial. But the regime that prevails in the CWI is no such thing. On the contrary, it is an undemocratic, bureaucratic centralism, intended not to facilitate arrival at a coherent, principled revolutionary programme, but rather to ensure the continuation of comrade Taaffe's rule. For years now the leadership's terror of openly and publicly identifying with revolution has resulted in stripping the Marxism from our politics.

So, where do we go from here? As we are all aware, our crisis has seen us stumbling from disaster to disaster without respite. If all that is best from our tradition and history is not to be wasted, it is incumbent on us all to reclaim it in the service of our class. What this practically means for all members of the Socialist Party and CWI is a principled struggle to prise open our internal bodies so that we may openly argue out the best way forward.

I commented last year on the forthcoming one-day conference to debate the Socialist Party constitution. Comrades must ensure that their branches submit well-prepared resolutions to facilitate the widest possible debate. We must call the leadership to account via branch resolutions and contributions to the Members Bulletin every time they simply ignore conference decisions. We must start the fightback now.

We built and led a movement of millions in the fight against the poll tax, but what use are we today to our class? Comrades, in order to serve our class again we must rebuild. Our slogans must be: For a revolutionary programme! For genuine democratic centralism! For a genuinely revolutionary CWI!