01.03.2007
Left decline and May 3 elections
Last weekend's CPGB aggregate debated our approach to the forthcoming elections, the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign and the redrafting of our Draft programme. Mary Godwin reports
The February 25 aggregate of CPGB members voted by an overwhelming majority to accept the following motion from the Provisional Central Committee:
"The framework of our political line for the Scottish, Welsh and local elections in May 2007 will remain the framework adopted for the 2005 general election. That is, we call for a vote for working class candidates who support the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and oppose any aggression, including sanctions, against Iran.
"Where there is more than one such candidate, all other circumstances being equal, we should call for a vote for the candidate who is the sitting representative or leading candidate.
"We will develop propaganda for this approach through articles in the Weekly Worker in the run-up to the elections."
Before presenting the motion, comrade Mike Macnair gave a brief account of the PCC's discussions. He said in the current situation it is difficult to formulate a line on the May 3 elections to the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly and local authorities across the country. Historically, since the 1990s, when not standing candidates of our own, we have been members of and/or given critical support to a number of left initiatives - the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance, Scottish Socialist Party and latterly Respect.
By the 2005 general election Respect was revealed as a popular frontist project comprising sections of the left and the bourgeoisie and characterised by the fudging of class lines, with the right wing having the determining say. Our line at that general election was to support candidates who were clearly and unambiguously in favour of both an immediate withdrawal of UK forces from Iraq and independent working class politics. These included some Respect candidates, all those representing the SSP and Socialist Party and four from the Labour Party.
Since that election the character of Respect has worsened further and, with regard to Scotland, both wings of the now split SSP have moved to a more unambiguously straightforward nationalist position.
Auto-Labourism
We have never followed the standard Trotskyist/'official communist' approach of auto-Labourism, said comrade Macnair: that is, automatically advocating, however critically, a vote for the Labour Party along the lines of 'Vote Labour, but prepare to fight'. Our support for Labour candidates has always been conditional - on an individual's public backing for a set of minimum demands, for example. We believe that a minority left challenge capable of garnering 5% to 15% of the vote is worthwhile. If the left does not challenge Labour it is accepting the traditional division of the workers' movement, including Labour Party control of the trade unions. High politics cannot be left to the Labour Party aristocracy.
Today, however, much of the left has made a complete about-turn and switched to auto-anti-Labourism - the most extreme example being the Socialist Party, which now claims that Labour has become an entirely bourgeois party, the link to the working class through the unions being no more than cosmetic. For us Labour remains a bourgeois workers' party, even if it is now dominated as never before by its bourgeois pole.
It is clear that in order to challenge Labourism effectively the left needs to unite, but the left has in fact been weakened by giving support to trends with very defective politics, such as the British nationalist/Stalinist politics of the SLP or the Scottish nationalist/reformist politics of the SSP, not to mention the dire popular frontism of Respect.
With this further shift away from principled class politics and, equally significantly, away from anything resembling a unifying trajectory, it is impossible to call for support for any left organisation without all sorts of caveats - none of them are partyist.
Comrade Macnair analysed the current state of left organisations. Respect thoroughly epitomises the Socialist Workers Party's opportunism and fundamental lack of partyism, as shown by its assiduous cultivation of 'community leaders', such as Yasir Idris (interviewed in Weekly Worker February 8), who have virtually no politics apart from furthering local, petty bourgeois interests. In Scotland, the SSP is now a pure left nationalist sect, Solidarity a coalition of sects. The SLP is now a tiny Scargillite rump.
Hence the focus turns to the Labour Party and to giving critical support to candidates who stand for class independence and outright opposition to the Iraq war. Support for the war in any form or to any degree disqualifies them in our view. This approach amounts to critical support for Labour Party candidates who advocate troops out now, in effect candidates who support John McDonnell. Where minority parties are concerned, the same conditions (troops out now and independent working class politics) are applicable.
Where there is a choice of supportable candidates, we should back the one with better prospects of getting significant results. Obviously, we cannot do this piecemeal where local elections are concerned, as we lack knowledge of the candidates. Our support will take the form of propaganda rather than material backing or work on the ground and will not involve orientation towards any specific group or campaign.
Left decline
Comrade Macnair concluded by saying that the left has continued to decline politically and none of the contesting groups are furthering the struggle for a united revolutionary party even indirectly. He said his is a negative, but accurate assessment of the state of the left and of the workers' movement.
The motion as passed includes two amendments which were accepted by the PCC. The words, "all other circumstances being equal", were added on the suggestion of Nick Rogers in order to allow flexibility. The words "and oppose any aggression, including sanctions, against Iran" were added at the insistence of a number of comrades who spoke in the debate leading up to the vote.
Comrade Macnair said he had not originally included reference to Iran in the motion because all politicians, with the exception of a few Zionists, would claim to oppose an attack on Iran. But he was convinced by the debate. Comrade Rogers said aggression against Iran includes not just a military attack, but also sanctions. Comrade Richards said, as the party has already decided to make Iran a central focus of our work, we should demand of election candidates that they declare their attitude to sanctions before offering them our support and so use the elections to bring Iran to people's attention. Anne Mc Shane also advocated using the elections to build the Hands off the People of Iran campaign.
Comrades discussed the situation in Scotland, where the SSP split means our strategy produces a different tactical outcome than it did in 2005. Weekly Worker editor Peter Manson said that in calling for a referendum on independence immediately the SSP is attempting to be more nationalist than the Scottish Nationalist Party itself. The SNP has a real prospect of power and so wants to defer the referendum until it has a chance of getting the result it wants: that is, at the end of its term of office. Comrade Rogers believed that the SSP was always nationalist, but before the split its nationalism was hidden by the economism of its day-to-day practice. He said the split was unprincipled, the majority were justified in being aggrieved by Tommy Sheridan's behaviour, whose supporters should have fought within the SSP. He said in Glasgow we should critically support the SSP list headed by Rosie Kane, rather than the Solidarity list led by Tommy Sheridan to emphasise our condemnation of the split.
The PCC discussion on elections was in response to a query by a group of Welsh comrades about the CPGB approach to the coming elections, and comrade Bob Davies thanked the PCC for clarifying its position. He described the situation in Wales. Both the Communist Party of Britain and the Socialist Party have already said they will stand in all seats in Wales, and comrade Davies favours critical support for the Socialist Party, since the CPB tails the Labour Party, he said. Respect was due to hold a launch meeting on February 27. Forward Wales seems to be defunct.
One of the candidates for Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood, advocates secularism, troops out of Iraq, and politicians receiving a workers' wage, and comrade Davies tentatively suggested calling for a critical vote for her. Another comrade from Wales, Cameron Richards, answered that, as Plaid Cymru is a petty bourgeois party, we should certainly not do so. Comrade Macnair agreed: it would only be tactically correct to support candidates from petty bourgeois or nationalist parties if they represented a movement away from cross-class nationalism and towards the working class. In fact the reverse is happening: leftists are moving into Plaid Cymru because the Labour Party and socialist parties are so weak. Comrade Manson emphasised that Leanne Wood is a Plaid Cymru loyalist.
Comrade Nick Rogers was not a member of the CPGB in 2005 and remembers observing the CPGB strategy from the outside. He said the strategy was correct but the way it was put into practice was flawed. The Labour candidates the CPGB supported were an odd lot, and the CPGB made itself a "laughing stock" by refusing to support Jeremy Corbyn.
Comrade Manson reminded the aggregate that the CPGB contacted the 30 or so candidates who were on the Labour Against the War list and some proved to be thoroughly pro-imperialist. He was surprised that only four would say they were for troops out immediately. Corbyn did not respond to numerous attempts to contact him, and despite exhaustive research comrade Manson could find no instances of his expressing an unequivocal 'troops out now' position in anything he had said or written.
Comrade Jack Conrad agreed we can only judge candidates by what they say, and added that the Weekly Worker did well to expose the inability of Jeremy Corbyn and the Stop the War Coalition to take a principled stand. Comrade Phil Kent informed the meeting that Corbyn has since changed his position and now calls for troops out immediately. Comrade Rogers said this change should have been covered in the Weekly Worker. If we want to engage with the Labour left, he is the person we should talk to.
CPGB line
Comrade Richards said the idea of supporting the principled candidate with the most chance of winning was an unnecessary complication of the 2005 strategy - especially as it effectively means supporting the more principled Labour candidates against left rivals. He said a simple line of supporting all working class anti-imperialist candidates would be clearer.
Comrade Conrad reiterated that the left has swapped automatic Labourism for automatic anti-Labourism, and we want to send a message to the left that this is a dead end. Comrade Richards said the CPGB's "new line" would make more sense if the party had a real engagement with the Labour left. He observed that the trend of people leaving the Labour Party and joining left groups has gone into reverse: there is a steady trickle of members back to the Labour Party.
The CPGB is as weak as the rest of the left, and should be prepared to admit as much, comrade Rogers urged. The Weekly Worker is a huge asset, he added, and the way we can make our interventions. Comrade Manson replied that the CPGB is weak numerically, but the rest of the left is weak politically. Comrade Mc Shane said the left is approaching terminal decline, but the CPGB should not accept passivity in its ranks. It is true that the Weekly Worker is our main vehicle, but it is enriched by reports from comrades who attend meetings and are engaged with the left. She said it is not enough just to support candidates without trying to influence them: we should challenge candidates and attempt to get them to adopt a principled anti-imperialism.
Comrade Davies suggested carrying interviews with left candidates in the paper. While he was not against that, comrade Conrad said the most important thing we can do at the moment is engage in propaganda. We want to take the battle to the SWP, SPEW and the Morning Star's CPB, and get across the idea that their projects "stink". If any of them had a principled pro-party position it would be another matter, but they all have deeply flawed perspectives and programmes. In such circumstances it was quite correct to emphasise that we would prefer in general to support anti-occupation Labour candidates. There is little if anything politically separating the Labour left from the main confessional sects.
Comrade Manson disagreed that we were proposing a "new line" - we have long argued for the left to stand down tactically in favour of Labour left candidates who adopt principled positions, and in the forthcoming elections it is highly unlikely that there will be more than one supportable candidate in more than a tiny number of seats. However, he emphasised that with so many council candidates the CPGB and the Weekly Worker cannot investigate them all and produce a comprehensive list, as in 2005. All we can do is make general recommendations for comrades and readers to use in assessing their local candidates.
In conclusion, comrade Macnair said by the time the elections are held in May there may well have been a large-scale and possibly nuclear attack on Iran, which would completely change the political situation and what we would say. Iran was the subject of the second session of the aggregate. Comrade Ben Lewis gave a report of the progress of the Hands off the People of Iran campaign, which the CPGB helped to set up.
Hands Off the People of Iran
The idea for a solidarity campaign opposed to both imperialist aggression and the theocratic regime emerged from discussions between CPGB members and Iranian communists during Communist University in August 2006. Throughout the autumn exchanges between comrades Mark Fischer and Lewis for the CPGB and representatives of several Iranian groups led to the formulation of a founding statement, which was published in the Weekly Worker on January 4 2007. The official launch of HOPI took place at a meeting on the evening of February 24, taking advantage of the fact that comrades were gathered in London for the Stop the War demonstration.
Introducing the discussion, comrade Lewis said the founding statement has had a good response from around the world, including from comrades in Iran itself. The main focus of HOPI at this stage is to engage in a battle of ideas, confronting left groups which sponsor numerous unprincipled and "frankly treacherous" campaigns - Campaign Iran sees it as part of its remit to act as apologist for the theocratic regime in Tehran.
Communist Students will play a key role in building HOPI during the next few months, with planned interventions at the National Union of Students conference. A week-long speaking tour is also proposed. All comrades were encouraged to urge their contacts to sign the founding statement. Comrade Fischer is continuing to approach Labour MPs, trade union leaders and other prominent figures. Tommy Sheridan, Leanne Wood AM and the SWP's Mike Gonzales have already signed.
Comrade Tina Becker agreed that the groundwork has been laid and it is time to start serious campaigning. There needs a higher level of involvement from all CPGB members. She urged comrades not to wait to be told what to do by the PCC, but to become more autonomous in organising HOPI meetings and actions.
Comrade Richards suggested that the party nominate one comrade to work full-time on HOPI, to build contacts and raise its profile in left politics. Comrade Becker replied that having a full-timer and local initiatives are not mutually exclusive, while Stan Keable agreed that a strong centre and local activity reinforce each other. Comrade Macnair suggested having texts available on the web which cells and individuals could download to make local leaflets and posters. Comrade Mc Shane suggested a petition which could be circulated on campuses.
Comrade Conrad encouraged all CPGB local cells to arrange a HOPI meeting in their areas. Comrade Mc Shane agreed, and pointed out that we must continue to involve our Iranian comrades at all stages. They plan to launch HOPI in other European countries where there are Iranian exiles.
Comrade Macnair warned against imagining that it could persuade the imperialists not to attack Iran. The US does not plan to send troops into Iran - it may bomb the country or it may simply continue to support the opposition. It hopes the threat of attack will provoke a coup, but comrade Macnair thought it unlikely that there is any section of the Iranian military ready to carry out a US-backed coup. Whatever the Bush administration plans to do, nothing HOPI or the Stop the War Coalition or even the Democratic majority in the US congress could do will stop them.
HOPI's job is to become a support organisation for Iranian workers, women and students, and campaign for the workers' movement to have an independent voice. We want a clear anti-imperialist and anti-theocratic regime solidarity movement and in doing this work the left in Britain is also our target. Comrade Conrad said our main task at present is to fight the pseudo-internationalism, promulgated by the SWP currently and 'official communism' in the past, which pollutes the workers' movement by supporting any reactionaries attacked by imperialism.
Draft programme
In the final session of the aggregate, comrade Jack Conrad gave a brief opening on the PCC's suggestions for the planned revising of the CPGB Draft programme. He said there are a number of areas - Europe, ecology and democracy spring to mind - that demand a discrete section and others where an update is obviously necessary. Differences within the organisation on certain questions also need to be explored and debated prior to the redraft.
Comrade Conrad said the background had already been covered in a series of articles dealing with the question of what a programme is in general and what our programme in particular should cover. Ours is an orthodox Marxist programme like those of Marx and Lenin themselves - a minimum-maximum programme for a democratic republic ruled by the working class.
In redrafting the programme we shall not just be looking at necessary additions, but also at making cuts, at crystallisation. Any programme should be as concise as possible. It is a strategic road map and need not and should not attempt to cover everything.
The PCC proposes that from March onwards every alternate London seminar should be devoted to the redrafting process. It is a collective educational task for the whole organisation and a study of the genesis of the Draft programme itself should be very instructive. In parallel, other cells should also study the existing programme and suggest revisions. A special section of the website dedicated to discussion of the draft programme will be set up.
Comrade Conrad emphasised that any member could suggest alternative texts, up to a completely new draft, such as a transitional programme. The long process of redrafting will culminate in the setting up of a programme commission which will compose a suggested text, to be discussed and voted on at an extended members' aggregate. The whole process may take up to two years.
It is desirable to involve the Campaign for a Marxist Party in all this, said comrade Conrad, and to elicit as many ideas and contributions as possible from comrades outside the CPGB.