14.03.2002

Politically correct

The speed and efficiency with which technical matters were dealt with at the March 11 organising committee meeting of Hackney Socialist Alliance was impressive. The only controversial issue that the committee had to attend to concerned the proposed amendments from Janine Booth (Alliance for Workers' Liberty) to our election leaflet. In essence Janine was concerned that the words 'working class' were generally absent from our literature. This did not worry me too much because it is in the nature of short leaflets that many correct points cannot be incorporated. What did concern me, however, was the reasoning of Clare Fermont of the Socialist Workers Party. Namely that, although it is "politically correct" to mention certain things that are electorally unpopular, such as our support for asylum-seekers, it is unhelpful to use some words because people do not share our understanding of them - eg, middle class people who want to vote for socialism, but are put off by the term 'working class'. Surely we are a working class organisation with a working class agenda, and any form of 'socialism' that is not based on the working class is idealist dreaming. Cannot many so-called middle class people be won over to side with our struggle if we are honest about what we stand for? Sticking to principle is more important than garnering middle class votes for their own sake. How many voters will believe our protestations of political integrity if they think we are not being altogether frank about our real beliefs and intentions? The leaflet correctly mentions our involvement in campaigns outside the council chamber in defence of workers' jobs and services, but there is not so much as a hint that the aim of our election campaign ought not to be to make local government more efficient, but to mobilise workers to fight in their own interests. I left the meeting feeling that the SWP sees the SA as just one of its paste table fronts - the one that pulls in votes in elections - while the anti-war front gains support from pacifists, anti-globalisation looks to influencing anarchists etc, etc. Taken together, these fronts may produce recruits for the SWP, but they lead to political incoherence and disarm the working class. Phil Kent