19.04.2000

CATP - a defence

Graham Cee, a candidate on the CATP list for the GLA elections, attempts to justify its stance - from a 'left' perspective

I believe it is time you heard from me on this subject. For all these offers of places on lists and the constant refrains on the need for 'left' unity against Blair, etc., etc., a couple of things seem to have escaped your minds as our comrades in struggle. Namely what about the working class? What about the needs of the class struggle itself? What should the left be uniting about? The answers to these questions would be really obvious to real socialists and trade unionists everywhere, were it not for the deep sectarianism and self-serving separatism practised by our would-be Lenins and wannabe Trotskys of the far left.

The only persons in the London Socialist Alliance to challenge the legitimacy of the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation list are Janine Booth and Greg Tucker who are among a handful of London RMT activists to counterpose the LSA to the CATP list. Like virtually all the CATP list activists I campaigned for Greg as general secretary when he achieved 36% of the vote after being reluctantly persuaded by some of us into challenging Jimmy Knapp.

Despite the fact that Greg did little but talk left when he was on the RMT executive and did little to build either the CATP or an autonomous rank and file body to challenge the rightwing bureaucrats, we supported him and would probably do so again despite our disagreement over these elections.

The CATP comes out of two years of campaigning to get the RMT leadership to carry out conference decisions against privatisation, lobby Prescott's office, calling strike action to successfully stop Acton works being privatised in 1998. Despite comrade Janine being central to the CATP and to the original decision to stand in the first place, she has now broken ranks with most of the left activists on London Underground. As she told me, when she moved the resolution at the RMT's London Transport Regional Council (LTRC), she intended it as a prelude to the LTRC supporting the LSA - in which her organisation, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, has a strong stake.

Comrades Pat Sikorski and Bobby Law interpreted the LTRC decision differently - as an independent tubeworkers challenge to Tony Blair - which became the view of the overwhelming majority of London RMT activists. Bobby Law and Pat Sikorski both have fresh mandates from RMT members in recent internal elections for the positions of London regional officer and LTRC secretary respectively. As many comrades know, the LTRC is effectively the strike organising committee of the RMT's LUL workers.

I joined with Janine and her AWL colleagues in criticising the originally flawed tactics behind the CATP list - which abandoned efforts to relate to internal Labour Party events; and effectively abandoned non-electoral CATP activity. I also supported efforts to widen the CATP platform to coincide with the LSA's five main points - and the general call for a united slate by supporting Martin Donaghue's resolution for CATP/LSA unity. However, we lost the vote.

Although I am a Marxist who is not in any left organisation, I strongly believe in democratic centralism because it derives from the class struggle itself. Workers practice democratic centralism when they form a picket line. There might be occasions when as a socialist you advise against a strike but the majority has decided to go ahead. In the class struggle the majority rules and socialists participate in strikes and political struggles even when they think them ill-advised or short-sighted, while reserving and indeed earning the right to criticise.

There is no such thing as a perfect, pre-ordained road to socialism. Those who never dare to make mistakes in the class struggle, and who from the sidelines criticise those that do, have nothing to teach and everything to learn. This is so because when we are proved right or wrong by experience we can all learn the lessons. But if nobody dares to make a mistake then nothing happens.

However, instead of throwing up my hands and walking away from the CATP when I lost the argument - as Janine and her comrades did - I stayed to fight alongside the left in my union. Instead of breaking links with the CATP I have fought to make the CATP list as representative of tubeworkers and their interests as possible and argued for my politics within the slate. I have successfully argued for this as the position of RMT black advisors - the black members' forum for London Underground. Together we jointly put pressure on to amend the CATP platform to include reference to racist discrimination and violence on LUL. Indeed I also argued that the CATP be an inclusive, all-tubeworkers slate with two women and two representatives of RMT black advisors (myself and Enoh Itijere) with an autonomous presence on the list. I believe Janine has let the CATP down and by her disloyalty and through sectarianism has put the interests of the AWL - and its growth in influence - before those of her immediate comrades in the class struggle on the tube.

How can LSA members justify standing against the CATP's tubeworkers' list? Are socialists not meant to be for the political and organisational independence of the working class? Here is the first well organised group of workers with industrial muscle to challenge Blair electorally and instead of using your resources in the wider class interest to back them, and help them win a future ballot for industrial action, you make the sectarian demand that they back down so that you can 'lead' them with a 'left', party-building vehicle they have had no say in forming nor in developing its programme.

The CATP differs from LSA because it represents a small, but nonetheless real, movement of a section of the working class itself, speaking in its own name on a programme that is derived from its immediate concrete interests and struggles. Yes - from my point of view, a politically inadequate one, given the radical socialist politics of most of the LUL activists behind the CATP, but unlike the LSA the CATP is not based solely on an abstract, though largely supportable set of correct propaganda points (including opposition to privatisation).

Programme is not something merely declared in advance and waved as a magic wand to solve the class struggle in our favour. By definition a real programme is a programme of action that workers agree to advance their interests. If it is left as simply a shopping list of radical propaganda points it is dead and cannot be related directly to workers' experiences. Its necessity arises from the logic of the class struggle itself and is developed in step with the growth of the level of class struggle waged by the workers' movement. This is what is meant by Marxists who talk about a system of transitional demands that take us from the present low level of workers' political consciousness and organisation, closer to the socialist goal of overthrowing capitalism.

Do LUL workers have to agree with the LSA programme - or the whole project itself - in order to be representative of their own interests to stop the PPP? Of course not. The answer, comrades, is that the basis for our unity must be on a much more simple, basic level that corresponds to the real level of development of London's labour movement and puts the tubeworkers' fight at centre stage.

In my view the CATP decision is a direct continuation of the attempts to get strike actions off the ground against privatisation. Of course the CATP is no more a mass movement than the LSA is. Quantitatively, the LSA currently has more resources and supporters overall than the CATP - but it does not have any significant number of tubeworkers behind it. The CATP, however, because of its base in the RMT represents a potential to create an important part of a mass anti-privatisation movement - led by workers, not media personalities - that must be realised because our jobs, conditions, health and safety are all on the line during this mayoral election campaign. Qualitatively the formation of the CATP's political challenge to Blair and Prescott is more important than the LSA since it is representing the workers themselves beginning to break with New Labour's stranglehold on the unions.

Once again a group of workers' candidates - this time representatives of one of the most strategically important groups of workers in London's labour movement - have been told to obey the leadership of a union of left sects who do not command the support of the working class as a whole, nor have earned the right in the class struggle to advise tubeworkers in such a way. Do not get me wrong. I welcome the attempt to unite the slates despite my reservations about both lists. Indeed the aim of uniting the left challenge to Blair is fine but the way in which the LSA have chosen to do it is folly. Your arguments amount to little more than - 'Stand down because we are bigger than you'. Your ultimatum to us - 'join us or we will stand against you and split the left vote' - spanks of a kind of arrogant, self-serving leftism that puts ordinary workers off the very politics they should believe in.

The sectarian groups are interested in building their party which they believe are the answer to the lack of leadership in the class - god knows they're right about the lack of leadership. But their self-appointed leadership role spanks of the sectarianism and substitutionism that have dogged Marxist interventions into workers' struggles - a fetishised advocacy of the party. In the absence of the mass movement of the working class 'in-itself-for-itself' - instead of being the vital ingredient within and emerging from it - these 'parties' of the left are put forward as the panacea - as the replacement for the movement which they wish, but have not earned the right to, lead.

There is also the issue of the relationship between the left, the bureaucracy and the rank and file. Most recently our union, the RMT, has got away with failing to challenge the Labour Party's exclusion of our 91% vote for Ken Livingstone from the ballot along with other unions. Our leaders have also successfully got away with demobilising our members' anger and frustration at Blair and Prescott's betrayal over privatisation policy - the PPP. However, LUL workers remain one of the last few undefeated sections of the working class in London who - along with workers in the post office and the fire brigade - have repelled previous attempts to privatise public services and compromise workers' rights and public safety. The RMT leaders have failed to fight the bosses' courts' right to impose the anti-union laws to stop our members taking industrial action. In the end it is industrial action, not votes for a left slate - even a unified one - that will stop privatisation.

We also have to think of what our potential votes represent. The LSA is at best an anti-Blair protest vote with a reformist socialist programme. But as the project is framed electorally there will not be a corresponding unity of the left where it is most needed - on the industrial front in the trade unions - in the form of a united left-led rank and file workers' movement. The very people who have written these appeals for unity - comrades Tucker, Booth and Brennan - have failed to be consistent in helping to organise a united left within and across our unions or to seriously help Unite, which I attempted to organise in 1999.

Comrade Brennan still has not returned my frequent calls after we met at the SWP-organised demo in November after the Paddington crash. It is a bit much to demand unity for an election to what will be, after all, a capitalist-controlled assembly, when there has been precious little cooperation in the class struggle on London Underground.

At best, in our wildest dreams, two or three elected socialists who will have no impact on the government's imposition of PPP. Surely opposition to Blair must be focused around tube privatisation in particular? It is the number one flagship policy of government, the number one issue of concern to Londoners, part of a globalisation strategy of privatising public services, with the number one group of workers in a position to take industrial action to stop it happening. Surely the purpose of real socialists entering or intervening in such an election is to facilitate a successful conclusion in the class struggle, not primarily to get elected.

CATP - a reply

Graham Cee writes: "Like virtually all the CATP list activists I campaigned for Greg as general secretary when he achieved 36% of the vote after being reluctantly persuaded into challenging Jimmy Knapp.

"Despite the fact that Greg did little but talk left when he was on the RMT executive and did little to build either the CATP or an autonomous rank and file body to challenge the rightwing bureaucrats, we supported him and would probably do so again despite our disagreement over these elections."

I am perplexed at how Graham campaigned on my behalf in the general secretary election as he did not join the RMT until six months after the election was over. Since he has been a member of the RMT for little more than six months I am confused at how he is able to so easily dismiss my activity on the RMT executive, which I came off nine months before he joined.

I am afraid the same applies to building the CATP - I was speaking at public meetings to build the CATP long before Graham was showing any interest whatsoever. It is ironic that he accuses me of refusing to build left organisation inside the union, and specifically of not supporting Unite. For the record I was one of the original founders of Unite and wrote many articles for it, distributed it, etc. As to organising the left, if Graham had been around a bit longer he would know that the real obstacle to left organisation has been the RMT comrades inside the SLP who always blocked such a move - the comrades who now form the leadership of the CATP.

After 20 odd years of activity inside the NUR/RMT I find it difficult to take lectures from comrades, however well meaning, who have been in the industry little more than 20 weeks and, I am told in Graham's case, intend to leave the industry shortly.