23.11.2000

Socialist Party in England and Wales

Rebel signal This protest letter has been sent to the Socialist Party executive committee and, as a courtesy, to Harry Paterson, who emailed it to the Weekly Worker

Dear comrades

I feel I must write expressing my regret at the recent expulsion of comrade Harry Paterson from the Socialist Party on November 11. The signals this sends off can only do harm to the developing of a revolutionary socialist party in the UK and internationally.

Since the collapse of Stalinism a decade or so ago, the organisation pointed out that any organisation smelling of bureaucratic gerrymandering would repel fresh layers and would certainly be incapable of building a movement capable of changing the world. We rightly condemned the exclusive nature of the SLP from the outset. Likewise we have recently criticised our comrades in Scotland for the undemocratic restrictions imposed on the SWP in negotiations about that organisation's possible membership of the SSP.

In the case of Harry Paterson we see a comrade expelled not for actions against revolutionary morality: we see not a wife-beater, a racist or a scab, but a dedicated comrade expressing differences over policy and pointing towards a different way forward for revolutionary forms of organisation, which retains the tight organisation plus the vital ingredient of frank and high-level debate, crucially open and in front of the class. This does not mean publishing the contents of Peter Taaffe's diary on the internet, nor the addresses of the national committee; simply the contest of ideas and the way ahead. This after all is what the document says it is: 'For democratic centralism', the method of the Bolsheviks.

The Socialist Alliance movement has provided me the opportunity of meeting comrades from a variety of traditions and backgrounds and indeed CWI comrades from other parts of the country. It is in this way that I met Harry face to face after reading his document.

I must say that although I would have differences with the man over nuance and phraseology, I feel the ideas he outlines are certainly worthy of debate - as we have debated with the Scottish comrades, as we debated with the ex-Merseyside comrades and the Bulaitis/Hearse comrades before them. When a comrade of Harry's stature and experience (he is an ex-Labour councillor and a trade union convenor in the textile industry) puts something forward we should debate the ideas honestly and leave the muck raking and secondary issues to one side. We should be fighting to retain such people, certainly not kicking them out because they make some comrades uncomfortable.

The world is a fast changing place and the need for constant discussion of ideas as widely as possible is necessary if we are ever to be in a serious position to give the class a lead in the struggle to overcome the rule of profit and win the world to organisation on the basis of our own human rationality. Our rulers understand this. It is a position of strength that they operate under the cloak of democracy: their debate is freely available in the pages of The Economist, The Daily Telegraph and The Times.

Our press is of course more modest, but must be no less exhilarating in its exchanges, not only on how to analyse the world, but also how to change it.

Yours for socialism
Lawrie Coombs
Teesside SP