23.03.2000

Taaffe crisis

In this issue, we publish two internal Socialist Party documents which - in their different ways - underline yet again the crisis that grips Peter Taaffe's organisation.

The statement from the pro-Taaffe group around Phil Stott in the Scottish Socialist Party confirms our analysis of the sharp political differences in the organisation (Weekly Worker March 2). This small, Dundee-based rump is clearly attempting a rearguard fight against the slow death through neglect imposed on the Committee for a Workers International in Scotland by the majority. The Dundee rump, however, simply do not have the politics to defeat it. The erstwhile franchise holders of this particular Trotskyist 'international' in Scotland - Frances Curran, Tommy Sheridan, Alan McCoombs et al - now look upon the body at best as an irrelevance to their petty nationalist project - at worst a positive embarrassment. We predict a definitive parting of ways in the not too distant future.

The Harry Paterson document, included as a supplement with this issue, marks a break in the general trend of the recent oppositions within the Socialist Party and its various sect clones internationally. The groups that went on to become organisations such as the Merseyside Socialists and the misnamed Socialist Democracy Group were certainly able to highlight some of the crasser rigidities in the bureaucratic centralist regime of Taaffe and co. Yet their solutions were essentially rightist and liquidationist.

To our knowledge, this is the first time in the recent history of SP/Militant that the banner of a genuinely revolutionary revolt has been raised. The Paterson document is a principled critique of the programmatic degeneration of his organisation and he makes a perfectly correct call for the fight for democratic centralism as the key political task facing revolutionaries in the SP and beyond. Despite some crudities, his contribution represents a strong challenge to the Taaffe leadership.

This presumably explains why this document has been banned in the SP and its author recently (narrowly) expelled on trumped up disloyalty charges.

Readers will be already aware of Harry Paterson, of course. In the Weekly Worker of February 24, I reported several cases of SPers baiting our comrades with the man's name. Clearly, inside Taaffe's group, his ideas were being rubbished by association with our organisation. We have even been sent a series of 'Harry Hill' postcards addressed to Pat Strong, the dissident SPer who writes for the Weekly Worker. The cryptic message implied in the choice of these cards was of course that Pat Strong was another 'Harry' - Harry Paterson. This series of one-joke jabs came from one Julian Cresswell of Lewisham SP, a comrade who asked angrily, "Why not submit your gripes, criticisms, cutting Bolshevik analysis to [the SP's Members Bulletin]" rather than the 'external' Weekly Worker?

In fact, the author was explicitly prohibited from circulating the document internally by leadership fiat. At first, comrade Paterson had been told that a Members Bulletin was being held over to include it. He was even verbally informed that Peter Taaffe himself was looking forward to taking it apart polemically, as he apparently believes himself to be a bit of an expert on democratic centralism (in much the same way that Les Dawson believed he could play the piano). When the apparatchiks finally got hold of copies, however, they reneged on these promises. Comrade Paterson was informed that this "scandalous" document was banned from the MB and that he personally was forbidden to even distribute it privately in the ranks of the organisation.

Of course, this response of the frightened bureaucratic clique at the centre of the SP machine came too late. Comrade Paterson had already - quite innocently - circulated his document around the country for comments and criticisms from his SP comrades. Stupidly, by defining it as an underground, illegal publication, the SP leadership ensured that it would be even more widely distributed. We were actually sent our copy by an ex-member of the SP in Coventry, who informs us that it was passed to him by a current member. Apparently, many SP comrades got the document in an anonymous mailing from Scotland and leading figures in that fraught area for Taaffe are refusing to confirm or deny having received or read the document.

We are told that comrade Paterson's already cramped and restricted rights according to the SP's constitution were flagrantly disregarded. For example, he was denied the right to have any of the disciplinary charges against him in writing. The SP's appeals committee refused to take a submission from him until the matter had been dealt with in his branch - clearly an attempt to limit the political 'damage' to Nottingham. The minutes of the EC where his case was discussed were denied to him. The list of infringements of the man's basic rights as a member of a working class organisation go on and on.

This ham-fisted attempt to silence left critics was prompted by a spate of resignations in Nottingham branch, with at least one comrade jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire by signing up with the local Socialist Workers Party branch. Harry Paterson himself is apparently pursuing his appeal against expulsion through the official channels of the party, but is none too hopeful of success. We commented in the Weekly Worker (February 24) that Harry Paterson "should talk to us", given the crude abuse thrown at him as a "fellow traveller of the Weekly Worker". We wish him luck in his attempts to overturn his outrageous expulsion. This should not stop him - or any other member of the SP who wishes to debate or criticise the ideas in his document - from writing in this paper.

The fight for clarity in the workers' movement cannot be contingent on the bureaucratic caprices of Peter Taaffe and his discredited leadership circle.