23.11.2000

SSP leader calls for a split

The statement, 'Appeal for an amicable divorce', by leading Scottish Socialist Party member Catriona Grant provides yet another example of the centrifugal tensions operating mercilessly on Peter Taaffe's once monolithic Committee for a Workers' International.

The statement, 'Appeal for an amicable divorce', by leading Scottish Socialist Party member Catriona Grant provides yet another example of the centrifugal tensions operating mercilessly on Peter Taaffe's once monolithic Committee for a Workers' International.

Without full democracy such a sorry outcome was inevitable for an 'international' founded on the sectarian principle of ideological agreement. A parting of the ways between the CWI and its Scottish section, the International Socialist Movement, has long been predicted in the pages of the Weekly Worker and it can now only be a matter of time before the final split.

The most likely scenario is that the majority of the ISM will be expelled and the disorientated rump led by Phil Stott installed as the Scottish CWI 'franchise holders'. That was how Taaffe dealt with his dissident Pakistani section.

For the moment, however, it looks as if the general secretary of the Socialist Party in England and Wales and his pliant CWI leadership majority are content to snipe and conduct a war of attrition with the ISM majority, who constitute the overwhelming bulk of the SSP's incumbent steering committee and full-time organisers.

This underhand method has a number of advantages for the beleaguered Taaffe and his brittle organisation. Firstly, the political fallout from expelling comrades of the standing of Tommy Sheridan would have been considerable. The troublesome former US minority are still complaining long and hard about their own treatment at the hands of the Taaffe bureaucracy and they have been grandly seeking to pull in the rebel Scots into their rival, dissident 'international'. Indeed John Throne, leading member of the expelled US minority, visited the Scots earlier this year with the express intention of recruiting them en masse to his oppositionist international grouping.

Those in charge of the SSP have, of course, much bigger ambitions. Why go from the little world of Taaffe to the satellite existence of Throne? The SSP tops are thinking of ministries in an SNP government! Reformo-nationalism not reformo-sectism is their desired future.

While the ISM majority consistently defies the international executive committee and international secretariat, the CWI apparatchiks have been unable to ignore the growth and prestige of the SSP, with its elected member of the Scottish parliament, Tommy Sheridan.

The irony of course is that after capitulating to Scottish nationalism Taaffe finds himself victim to his own opportunist method. It was Taaffe who gave the go-ahead to a separate Scottish organisation and backed its demand for an "independent socialist Scotland". This latest development is simply the logical outcome of his own, utterly flawed, politics.

The comrade had best brace himself. There will be more Catriona Grants to come. This can be asserted with some certainty. Of course comrade Grant makes clear in her statement that her resignation from the CWI - if that is what it is - is a personal decision, but she appeals to her comrades to follow suit. Whether this trickle becomes a flood of individual resignations or the ISM officially sues for divorce from the CWI is difficult to predict.

The comrade's statement is to be regretted for one important reason. She enjoys a well earned reputation for personal and political integrity and has, as is well known, been tireless in her commitment to the building of her organisation. While it is truly disgraceful that the anti-democratic and bureaucratic practices of the Taaffeites - not only in Scotland, but also in England and Wales, especially over the London Socialist Alliance - have pushed the comrade into this course of action, it is worrying that her statement lacks politics.

Too many good cadre have been lost from the CWI over recent years and the leadership is now set on a completely disastrous course, putting the anarchist principle of federation and autonomy above the rapprochement of the revolutionary left. Linked to this, almost without exception CWI dissidents have ended up on a rightist trajectory.

The opportunity to wage a principled fight for genuine democratic centralism and thus a coherent revolutionary programme is being thrown away in an individual gesture by comrade Grant. She complains that our "voice cannot be heard". She could always do what I have done - use the Weekly Worker. And then there is the possibility of a serious faction fight. The ISM is in a position of undoubted strength in regard to Taaffe. An open rebellion conducted on the basis of opposition to Taaffe's bureaucratic reformism and his wrecking activity in the Socialist Alliances could provide a powerful impetus to CWI dissidents and, closer to home, demoralised SPers in England and Wales.

Sadly Sheridan, McCombes, Curran, etc have no more of a grasp of genuine Leninist organisation than Taaffe, Sell and Mullins. If the ISM majority follow the example of their fellow comrade they will find themselves, as Catriona herself admits, without an 'international'. No bad thing, given the fraudulent nature of Taaffe's and all other such 'internationals'.

Nevertheless, the danger is that good SSPers like comrade Grant will swap a false 'international' for genuine, full-blown nationalism.

Pat Strong

Appeal for an amicable divorce

November 1 2000

1. The condition of joining a revolutionary organisation surely is based on many things: hopefully the understanding of the commitment to revolutionary ideas, a commitment to building the organisation - this all must be done freely and without pressure. No one can be press-ganged into joining such an organisation or forced to stay; indeed such an act would be contradictory and futile.

2. But what happens if you belong to a revolutionary organisation and the commitment to that organisation is still there; you have a joint history, you have made personal and financial sacrifices to commit to the organisation; but you find that politically you have taken a separate journey?

3. Can you continue? Must you continue? Do you attempt to change the politics and culture of the organisation? Or can you leave that organisation amicably?

4. Today within the CWI in Scotland comrades have found themselves in an untenable and intolerable situation. Comrades they are friends with, have campaigned alongside, fought for socialist ideas within the Young Socialists, Labour Party, poll tax campaigns, formed the Scottish Socialist Party, have found that they no longer agree on a fundamental point of principle: the role of the revolutionary party - how it conducts itself within the SSP and to a wider audience.

5. It is not for me to go into the arguments that have wearied other comrades and myself for the past two years, but for me to put forward what do we do. I pin my colours to the post - I am in the majority of the International Socialist Movement - with regret that our organisation has found itself to be in this position. I have argued throughout the debate for the [minority] faction to dissolve itself and for the comrades to try and work together to build a vibrant revolutionary Marxist faction within the Scottish Socialist Party and that we play a full and whole role in the CWI, both in Britain and throughout the world.

6. I now fully accept that the arguments are fundamental and the faction exists for political reasons (history will tell who was correct or not). The minority faction has found the ISM to be uncommitted to democratic centralism and the revolutionary party; they believe the ISM to be a Marxist current within the SSP. The majority accuses the minority of not practising democratic centralism and going against the majority. The minority's retorts are that the majority wants the minority to practise democratic centralism on itself!

7. Relations between the international secretariat and the majority faction can only be described as, at best, poor and, at worst, antagonistic. I am of the opinion that the IS have shown little commitment to heal the rift between themselves and the majority comrades and have stoked and fuelled the fire. Comrades even on a basic level have been ignored, misquoted and seen not to be full members of the CWI.

8. I feel the CWI IEC and IS have lost all 'affection' for the majority comrades and no longer agree that we are 'real' comrades - they have made that very clear. Little attempt to visit or speak with the majority comrades in a grown up and calm fashion has been made. IS comrades keep in regular contact with the minority comrades, including visiting them (in Dundee). However, this same courtesy is not returned to the majority comrades.

9. We have in effect two organisations in the ISM, which suits neither of us. The minority comrades cannot build the revolutionary platform within the SSP they wish to build. They are attempting to win comrades within the ISM to their faction, rather than winning SSP members to a revolutionary programme and thus the CWI. The majority comrades share the same dilemma: recruiting (on a small scale) to the ISM, but bringing new members straight into a faction fight. Neither is satisfactory.

10. Many comrades have war-weariness and are voting with their feet. The arguments have been had: let us make a decision that we can all live with.

11. My own opinion is that the CWI IEC should be brave enough to 'expose' the majority comrades as they believe we are - not being committed to the revolutionary party, the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky and democratic centralism; that we constantly ignore their diktats; and either suspend or expel the majority and recognise the minority faction. This is what they did in Pakistan - why not Scotland?

12. It is not for me to explain the actions of the IEC: they are grown-ups and can explain their own rationale. Perhaps they may be exposed by expelling the comrades who breathed life into the Scottish Socialist Party: Tommy Sheridan, Britain's only socialist representative in parliament, the comrades of Scotland who have shaped the CWI, shown collectively thousands of years of commitment (and pounds), dedication and sacrifice. Comrades who were once proud members of the CWI. No, the IEC take an easier road, of monitoring the situation. The situation cannot be monitored: the situation has broken down, probably irretrievably.

13. I now argue for an amicable divorce. The relationship is already painful: there are few, if any, gains to being in the same organisation when feelings between one another are vented bitterly and publicly. I would argue that the only responsible thing now to do is not to stay and fight our corner - who is listening to us, who has access to the ideas outwith Scotland without the corruption of the argument by the CWI IS? Our voices cannot be heard. The arguments are not about how regularly the ISM branches meet, or how we intervene in the SSP, but political arguments with the CWI and its leadership.

14. I propose that the majority comrades seriously consider leaving the CWI on principled political differences. In doing so the majority and minority comrades are free to follow their revolutionary traditions and build their own platforms within the SSP. The minority comrades can operate within their international, hopefully freely and with political voice. The majority, a revolutionary platform committed to world socialism without an international, our greatest dilemma, but without the burden of argument, polemic and vented anger to and from our leadership. Surely we would all be more content?

15. This statement is purely political. Of course the tone is written from a personal standpoint - for me the political is the personal - but this goes beyond personalities. Leaving the CWI may be for some comrades the most difficult decision they make, but the majority comrades must consider what we gain from being in an international that is ashamed of us, that does not support us, ignores us and contorts what we say and do. We can argue to the bitter end, but I will guarantee only two outcomes: and that is that it will be bitter and it will come to an end.

16. In leaving the CWI I would encourage the comrades to make a statement to the CWI IEC that would be circulated throughout the international on why we are leaving the CWI. My only regret is that the majority comrades were unable, like so many comrades before us, to impact on the leadership of the CWI and have the CWI to be a truly democratic, accountable, vibrant, revolutionary international it deserves to be.

Catriona Grant
SSP Political Committee and South East ISM