08.11.2001

Scottish Socialist Party

CWI?s Stott resigns

Philip Stott, member of the Scottish Socialist Party executive committee and SSP area organiser for the North East of Scotland, has, after a period of discussion with his comrades in the Committee for a Workers International, decided to resign from his post.

Among his reasons for doing so he cites the approach of the SSP to the war - that the SSP has dissolved itself into the anti-war movement. He says he would not insist that the anti-war coalition should deal with role of imperialism, the role of capitalism in creating war, but that a socialist party should. Neither Scottish Socialist Voice nor the SSP?s pamphlet on the war do that. The SSP should be able to work in a broad coalition without dropping its banner, he says.

According to comrade Stott, the CWI feels that a clear, consistent approach is needed over issues such as the war, which is why Peter Taaffe?s Scottish comrades began to publish their factional paper International Socialist - sold both inside and outwith the SSP. They have also set up International Socialist Resistance, which aims at tapping into the youth and the anti-capitalist movement - the CWI alleges that the SSP leadership has not done this successfully.

So the CWI is quite openly breaching the SSP guidelines - which, for example, frowns on platforms (factions) selling their journals to the public. These guidelines were introduced at the conference earlier this year despite the opposition from the CWI and many others, including the CPGB. The comrades say there is a need to work both inside and outside of the SSP in order to build a Marxist organisation. Comrade Stott told me that there is no intention of dropping out of the SSP and that the CWI will continue to encourage non-members to join the party. ?The building of a Marxist organisation can only benefit the SSP?.

You might think it would be in the CWI?s interest to maintain the influence it exerts on the membership as a whole through having a member on the executive, and in the North East of Scotland through an area organiser. Apparently not. Comrade Stott thinks that his influence on the executive is limited because of the domination of the International Socialist Movement - the former Scottish Militant Labour majority who split with Taaffe last year - and the creation of the Socialist Worker Platform in May this year out of what was the SWP in Scotland. He feels that he would have a much bigger effect in his own branch and working, amongst others, with youth as a full-time CWI organiser.

Clearly the CWI has decided that the building up of its own sect is of far greater importance than working within the SSP to establish the mass workers? party it claims to want.

Sarah McDonald