29.01.2004
Labour and Respect
Mary Godwin reports from the latest CPGB aggregate
An aggregate of CPGB members held on Saturday January 24 voted overwhelmingly to accept the theses on the Labour Party printed below. Comrades also discussed the prospects for the Respect coalition founding convention, which was held the following day. The discussions are linked, in that both concern the future direction of Party work.
Comrade John Bridge introduced the debate on the Labour Party theses. Labour has always served two masters: the trade union bureaucracy which set it up, and the imperialist ruling class - in the Blair era mainly the latter. But its history, finances and voting structure reflect its trade union roots, and in recent years the left has revived in the trade unions. Labour remains a bourgeois workers' party. The Socialist Party in England and Wales explicitly denies this. So does the Scottish Socialist Party. Comrade Bridge emphasised that he does not think the left could ever 'reclaim' the Labour Party for socialism - it was never in its entire history a vehicle for socialism. But like the trade unions, the Socialist Alliance, Scottish Socialist Party and Respect, the Labour Party is a legitimate area of intervention for communists. We certainly need to understand its internal politics far better.
Only the last sentence of thesis number 17 proved controversial in the debate. Comrade Lee Rock said it is absolutely untrue that our fight for a Communist Party is "inseparable" from work in the Labour Party. Our key task is not Labour Party entryism, and if it was we do not have the forces for it. Mike Macnair agreed that we do not have the resources to set up our own paper inside the Labour Party - we would have to collaborate with socialists already there. Anyone selling the Weekly Worker would be expelled. Marcus Ström reminded comrades that social change in Britain will come about fundamentally through the millions who vote Labour, not through the left. He suggested that our intervention should initially be mainly literary, rather than beavering away in ward Labour Parties. Comrade Stan Keable argued that writing about something from the outside is not as effective as being part of it, and is not our tradition.
While agreeing that the Labour Party remains a bourgeois workers' party, comrade Ian Donovan said there is a qualitative difference between previous reformist Labour governments and the current government, which was elected on an overtly anti-working class and pro-war programme. It would never be correct to call for a vote for Blair. However, elements at the base of the Labour Party are starting to rebel against the delabourisation of Labour, which makes for an interesting situation.
All comrades agreed that we should keep our options open in the current fluid political climate, which means working in many spheres. As comrade Donovan put it, our perspectives are not clear because the situation is not clear. Comrade Macnair suggested that if the political cycle in Britain continues, the place to be is in the Labour Party, to try to influence its left wing when the Blairites are replaced in office by the Tories. But if the two-party cycle has been broken in this unusual period of Blairism and the left reaction to it, then Respect should be the focus of our work.
Opening the debate on the Respect Coalition, comrade Ström outlined the factors which led up to it - principally the failure of the Socialist Alliance. It is an attempt by the Socialist Workers Party to cohere something political from the huge anti-war movement which sprung up in 2003. Some say that this means Respect is emerging from a success, unlike previous attempts to build an alternative to the Labour Party which resulted from failures - the Socialist Labour Party from the defeat of the miners' Great Strike 20 years ago, and the Socialist Alliance from the expulsion of the Militant Tendency from the Labour Party and the removal of clause four from its programme. Comrade Ström made the point that Respect also emerged from a defeat for the left - the virtual closing down of the SA during the anti-war upsurge.
It is impossible to predict what will happen up to June 10. But it is correct for us to join Respect, to fight inside it for democratic and socialist policies, and to report in the Weekly Worker on successes and failures. And if Respect becomes a block on working class advance or a retrogressive retreat into non-class popularism we should report on that too, said comrade Ström.
Comrade John Bridge described Respect as a crude attempt to transfer the success of the anti-war movement to the electoral field. The attempt to gain votes by endlessly diluting political principles cannot succeed, and will destabilise the SWP. When small groups encounter success, this can often be a prelude to their collapse if they are not armed with a correct Marxist programme. He agreed that we should work inside Respect, because our main political opponents, the SWP, are there, along with a (much reduced) range of other working class militants. As with the Labour Party, we shall seek not only to comment but to gather in the organised human material necessary to forge the revolutionary Communist Party the working class needs.
At the end of the meeting comrade Manny Neira put forward a short motion on democratic centralism, calling for decisions of the Provisional Central Committee to be formally approved by aggregates as a matter of routine. In view of the lack of time for sufficient discussion this was not put to the vote.
Mary Godwin
New PCC
Elections to the Provisional Central Committee, the Party's leadership body, took place during the aggregate. The existing full members were re-elected, and Tina Becker, after two years as a candidate member without voting rights, was also elected as a full member of the PCC. Ian Donovan and Peter Manson, editor of the Weekly Worker, were also elected as full members.