29.10.2009

Triumvirate’s reorientation faces Left Platform rebellion

The SWP leadership around Martin Smith has retrospectively formulated its differences with deposed leader John Rees. Peter Manson examines its downgrading of ‘united front work’ and undemocratic obsession with secrecy

The first of three Socialist Workers Party Pre-conference Bulletins is out (No1, October). For the first time it is being circulated to members electronically, in line with the decision of the SWP special conference in June, which accepted changes based on the recommendations of a commission set up to examine ‘party democracy’.

Previously, to have distributed the internal bulletin (or IB, as it is normally referred to) via email was considered a ‘security risk’ - it is easier for members to forward it to outsiders than a hard copy. So, by way of compromise, the identity of contributors is concealed by the use of first names only. Which means that only a very small circle of comrades in the know are able to link leading members with particular positions and arguments - hardly a measure that empowers the rank and file.

I will return to the question of SWP ‘democracy’ later, but I would like to start with how the central committee now justifies its removal from the leadership of John Rees, who was excluded from its slate for re-election at the January 2009 annual conference.

In its discussion article, ‘Conference perspectives, 2009-10’, the CC writes: “Starting in September 2008 and culminating at the SWP conference in January, the party underwent a fierce internal debate over its perspectives. This arose from the drive by the majority of the then central committee to reorient the SWP to a focus on building and supporting the resistance to the effects of the recession.”

This explanation for the split at the top is entirely retrospective, since it was not spelled out a year ago. In fact no substantive differences of perspective were elaborated by the CC then. But now the membership is told: “This shift was opposed by a minority who were not re-elected to the CC in January. They argued (somewhat contradictorily) that building the Stop the War Coalition should remain the SWP’s central focus and that responding to the recession required the launch of a national united front modelled on Stop the War.”

It is true that Rees and co continued to stress the importance of “united front work”, of which the STWC was the jewel in the crown. But it is highly debatable that they played down the significance of the economic crisis, as the CC implies.

It writes: “… Stop the War is a valuable united front that needs to be maintained. But the war no longer dominates the political landscape in the way it did, roughly speaking, between 9/11 and the London bombings .… the dominant issue for us as a party, as it is for mainstream bourgeois politics, is the economic crisis and how to respond to it.”

However, “building united fronts against the recession is considerably more complicated” because of the “highly fragmented and opportunistic trade union bureaucracy that still has many ties to Labour”. So, for example, the SWP’s People Before Profit Charter “proved stillborn” (in case you were wondering what happened to it; in fact, the leadership admits, “it had little credibility even within the party”).

So the logic is clear. While new ‘united fronts’ are not ruled out, a response to the crisis and the expected working class fightback necessitates rebuilding the SWP itself. The “new electoral initiative, if it comes off”, is touted as a possible new united front. Apparently the SWP appeal for a united left alternative to New Labour was “very well received”. But “it isn’t easy to translate sentiments into deeds, particularly since such an alternative requires the different fragments of the radical left to acknowledge that their own electoral projects have failed.”

Despite its own appeal being “very well received”, though, it seems that it will not be the SWP driving things forward on the electoral front: “… there is some prospect that the initiative planned by Bob Crow of the RMT will succeed in uniting most strands of the radical left on a single platform. Assuming that a basis can be agreed that is acceptable to the SWP and our allies, this should allow us to stand a limited number of candidates in areas where we have a good track record electorally in next year’s council and parliamentary elections.”

Let us not spend too much time speculating where the CC considers the SWP has a “good track record” in parliamentary elections - after all, this aspect of its work merits only a couple of paragraphs in its perspectives document.

Anyway, the SWP “reorientation” has been “thoroughly vindicated” by the experience of the past year: “The turn we made in September 2008 towards building the resistance to the effects of the crisis has led to something of a renaissance of the SWP.” The Gaza protests, mobilisations against the British National Party and English Defence League are cited, not to mention “building solidarity with the new workers’ struggles”. Then there was the “successful mini-Marxism” in December and “a superb Marxism 2009”.

It is not clear to what extent these “achievements” can be called a “reorientation”. But the CC claims they resulted from “the greater political clarity achieved during the internal debates of last winter”. The conclusion arrived at was that the SWP itself had been neglected: “While it was absolutely right for the party to turn towards the movements after Seattle and 9/11, it is now clear that the way in which this turn was carried led to a near-collapse of basic party organisation that has had damaging long-term effects.” Similarly, “The crisis in Respect underlined the importance of ensuring that in building wider united fronts, proper resources and attention are devoted to the party itself.”

In fact, “the turn towards workers’ resistance” has exposed weaknesses: “… many branches no longer have around them the networks of working class activists on which they can rely … Rebuilding these networks must be one of our main priorities.”

Sad state

This is backed up by another contribution to IB No1, entitled ‘At the crossroads’ and signed “Martin and Anne (West London)”. I do not know Martin’s surname or his precise relationship to the leadership, but he seems to be someone completely in tune with the CC, in terms of both analysing the sad state of SWP branches and proposing a remedy.

To illustrate the extent of the disorganisation, the duo write: “… in West London there are 220 members on paper, of which only 12 have organised themselves properly, in branch and district. It should come as no surprise then that all the party’s work, everything important, goes through these 12 organised comrades.”

And Martin and Anne cannot resist a snipe at the ancien régime: “The former national organiser tried to start a branch in his area by sacrificing surrounding branches and parachuting in comrades from elsewhere. Party Notes reported combined public super-sales and abundant recruitment every week. And yet, when the hiatus subsided, there was pretty well nothing left, including in those areas that had been sacrificed.”

As for the remedy, “The first thing we have to do is to reject the dangerous idea that there is little we can do now to improve our strength and organisation and that we just have to wait for better times. What times are we waiting for? For war? For an economic crash? For Labour to implode? For millions of workers to move to the left towards us? We have all of these things, now. It is not the objective conditions that explain our inability to grow.”

Again, let us not dwell too long on whether “millions of workers” are moving to the left towards the SWP and look instead at the overall state of the membership. Details are provided, for some puzzling reason, in a section of the IB that appears to be part of the democracy commission’s report. The relevant paragraph reads: “At present there are 5,800 registered members of the SWP. A registered member is a comrade who states that they wish to be a member of the organisation. Anyone who fails to pay subs or does not make contact to indicate they wish to continue to be a member after two years is removed from our registered members list and placed on our unregistered list of members.”

Reference is then made to the SWP membership card, on which is printed: “A member of the SWP is expected to pay regular subs and sell Socialist Worker.” The comrades conclude: “This is what we have to strive to achieve, but we don’t want to turn away people or exclude from the organisation individuals who for whatever reason are unable to fulfil this.”

There follows this astonishing admission: “At the moment 2,900 people, or 49% of SWP members, pay regular subs. This is too low …”

No wonder West London is in such a state - and it is no use laying all the blame at the feet of the previous leadership. When a member is defined as “a comrade who states that they wish to be a member”, it is legitimate to ask, whatever happened to the Bolshevik criteria of commitment to the cause? It is not a question of ‘excluding people’ who make such a statement, but of ensuring they take seriously the requirements of membership, which must surely include an obligation to pay dues. Membership of a revolutionary party should only be granted to those willing to make such a commitment - which may imply a preparatory period in many cases.

However, there is no sign of the Smith leadership addressing this key question. Without a serious approach to organisation and its essential component, democracy, the SWP cannot be rejuvenated. The leadership will end up resorting to bureaucratic tinkering.

Socialist Worker

Closely linked to the SWP’s “reorientation” to working class struggles are plans to transform Socialist Worker, the organisation’s main propaganda weapon.

There have been persistent rumours about the ‘resignation’ of Chris Bambery as editor following a ‘rebellion’ of SW journalists, and the IB article entitled ‘Socialist Worker - the paper we need now’ may cast some light on the context. Comrade Bambery was previously a Rees ally on the CC, although, unlike Lindsey German and Chris Nineham, he did not step down in solidarity with comrade Rees when the former leader was deposed.

The article is signed, “John and Mike (Hackney)”, but begins: “This document … was produced by John Rose and Mike Simons.” Oops. The two are national committee members and their article is based on the paper they put forward to September’s NC, so they are not just a couple of individuals throwing in their tuppenceworth.

While “of course” SW “remains easily the best paper on the left”, the comrades say, it “needs to make changes in form, content and its relationship with its readers to relate to this new situation and influence it.” More precisely: “The paper must be much more focused on the working class, rather than being a reflection of the social movements.”

The “style of the paper needs to change. Articles need to be written from the perspective of its core audience. They need to be shorter and written more simply. The paper should provide its audience with bullets they can fire in the class struggle: a pithy fact, the short, sharp, funny exposé of the madness of the system, a convincing two-minute argument, as well as the longer, more nuanced or theoretical pieces.” However, many of the latter would no longer have a place in Socialist Worker: “some articles and arguments it currently carries need to move to the Review or the SW website.”

Comrades Rose and Simons make concrete criticisms that are not necessarily linked to the changes the CC is demanding: “SW has not properly covered the crisis over Obama’s US healthcare reforms,” they state, before adding: “SW needs to be clear about the politics when it does cover the big stories. Eg, SW September 5 had an excellent piece about the proposal by a top finance government official supporting the Tobin tax, which has split the ruling class, only then to deny that the left should support it - despite Alex Callinicos’s Anti-capitalist manifesto making it very clear that the left must do so.”

Clearly there has been resistance at Socialist Worker - although I am not aware of the leadership having uttered a word about it to the membership.

SWP democracy

Whether or not comrade Bambery has resigned the editorship, he is still on the officially proposed slate for the new central committee. In addition to Bambery, the slate consists of Weyman Bennett, Michael Bradley, Alex Callinicos, Hannah Dee, Chris Harman, Charlie Kimber, Judith Orr, Colin Smith and Martin Smith.

In other words, the outgoing CC is proposing that its members be re-elected en bloc (apart from sitting member Viv Smith, who is not on the new slate). The CC is also recommending that its number be augmented by the election of Amy Leather (Manchester), former student organiser Dan Mayer, and author and Socialist Review writer Joseph Choonara.

The method of electing the CC was one of the most contentious items before the Commission on Party Democracy, whose report was amended and agreed in June. The clearly self-perpetuating CC is in theory answerable to the 50-strong national committee, whose decisions are “binding” on it, according to the SWP constitution. However, up to now, the CC has always set the agenda for NC meetings, which have discussed CC proposals to the exclusion of virtually everything else. But now, the June conference decided, “NC members should be entitled to put other issues on the NC’s agenda.”

So that’s all right then. However, the final document states, “this necessary rebalancing should not be allowed to undermine the importance of the CC as a centralised political leadership that takes the initiative in ‘the national direction of all political and organisational work’.”

Despite strong opposition to the slate system, whereby members may not vote for individual candidates, but only the slate as a whole, the leadership won the day. “One of the main strengths of the present system,” states the agreed democracy commission report, “is that it elects the CC as a collective. This means that comrades are elected who have a contribution to make but, because of their relative youth and inexperience, wouldn’t win a popularity poll. It also means the leadership is elected as a balanced team of comrades who can make different contributions within what is a working body that operates according to a division of labour.”

The difference now is that the CC slate is proposed at the beginning of the three-month discussion period and can be amended - by the outgoing CC - at the end of it following discussion. And don’t forget that any five delegates may propose an alternative slate at conference. Of course, if there is an election between competing slates this could be viewed as a “popularity poll” - and there is no guarantee that a rival slate would result in a “balanced team”.

There is nothing wrong with the outgoing leadership - or anybody else - proposing a slate for the new CC. What is wrong is the insistence on ‘take it or leave it’ - the denial of the right to elect or not elect individual candidates.

The democracy commission made some sound points, particularly in its ‘Statement of general principles’. What a pity it did not follow through its fine words with concrete recommendations for genuine democratic practice.

It defined democratic centralism as “the ongoing effort to combine democratic decision-making with unity in action” and stressed: “Party democracy is essential because the working class, our class, is the democratic class, the principle bearer of democratic values and norms in society … Democracy is essential because the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself - an inherently democratic process … Democracy is essential because without democratic training party members will not be able to work, argue and lead successfully in the wider working class movement. It is essential also for correct leadership: only on the basis of democratic debate and input from the party rank and file can the party leadership or the party as a whole hope to estimate correctly the mood of the class, and the best way forward in the concrete situation.”

You cannot fault any of that. The same applies to some of the criticisms of SWP practice - criticisms that bear all the hallmarks of veteran John Molyneux, the ‘loyal oppositionist’ elected onto the democracy commission. For example, “The main form of democratic difficulty we have experienced has been reluctance, at all levels of the party, of comrades with sincerely held doubts and/or differences to speak up. One reason for this has been the tendency to put down dissenters so severely and comprehensively as to deter any repetition or imitation.”

It is further stated: “Nor should there be a fear as - with reason - there has been in the past, of exclusion, isolation or ostracism for the expression of dissident views.”

And: “For some time now the custom and practice has been for all differences within the CC to be hidden from the wider membership (except for close personal confidants), with all CC members presenting an image of more or less total unity until the last possible moment …. the responsible discussion of serious political differences when they arise would help educate comrades and train them in thinking for themselves.”

But there are big problems with all of this. It is all very well advocating greater tolerance of dissident views when the dissidents have no means of organising. Permanent factions are banned and any hint of controversial debate is artificially constrained within the three-month discussion period before conference. Individual members may not come together to campaign for change or issue joint documents outside this period. No wonder the CC is self-perpetuating.

It is all very well advocating greater internal openness, but what about public criticism? If “the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself - an inherently democratic process” - how can this come about if the working class is barred from knowing anything about the differences that divide its would-be leaders?

Openness

But such public openness is anathema to the SWP leadership: “If for example, the organisation decides, as it has done, to oppose the slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’, it is not then permissible for any member, especially a leading member, to support this slogan in a … public forum.”

The example provided by the democracy commission is deliberately chosen to conflate the particular with the principle. The fact that no-one ought to advocate ‘British jobs for British workers’ has been transformed into ‘No-one ought to oppose the SWP’s line in public’. But the same argument applied to the organisation ought to be applied to the class as a whole: “the responsible discussion of serious political differences when they arise would help educate comrades and train them in thinking for themselves.”

However, the SWP is still completely obsessed with secrecy. The debates and disagreements raging within it are not the business of the working class. Which is why the SWP just cannot take advantage of the huge advances in communication technology made over the last couple of decades.

Here is what the DC writes about the use of email and the internet for the circulation of SWP documents: “Any comrade who is given access to documents by email can forward them. Any access to secure internet sites only works if you can trust everyone not to pass on access to others, or the documents they access. For us, this is the largest problem with using new technology to improve access to the SWP’s internal debates.

“There are a number of obvious ways in which a leak could happen. A disaffected existing member with a grudge. A new member who doesn’t understand why we keep our debates to ourselves. A split in the organisation that leads to one side opening the debate to the wider movement. Someone deliberately entering the SWP to gain access to our documents and debate. A deliberate hack by someone hostile to the SWP.”

But why is this a problem? Why does the SWP need to “keep our debates to ourselves”? The DC gives two reasons. Firstly, the SWP may wish to discuss the role of non-members with whom it is working. However, for instance, “An honest appraisal of the role of leftwingers in a trade union or other campaign may lead to complications in our relationship with them.” Yes, it may, but that is a problem with all honest analyses, which, of course, are absolutely essential for working class advance. While I would not dispute that there is a time and place for diplomacy, this comes a distant second to the need for honest, open criticism.

The second reason for the obsession with secrecy relates to the security of individual comrades: “Given the public availability of our documents, this puts a number of comrades in difficulty. Contributing to [internal bulletins] now raises the prospect of being Googled by employers, union officials, workmates, Nazis. Some comrades may now fear their name appearing in a bulletin, in case their employer sees it. This all curtails our democracy.”

Another problem that is real enough. However, the DC is talking about the existing situation, where SWP documents are already circulating widely, thanks to SWP members themselves, sites like Socialist Unity and, of course, the Weekly Worker. The document states: “The point of a secure-site solution is to attempt to secure our IBs. It would take one breach to have made this fail. Clearly Weekly Worker have access to our Party Notes. If they have someone passing it on, this person could as easily pass on our documents, or their password.”

As the comrades recognise, it is no longer possible to control who sees SWP discussion documents. Any organisation of several thousand members - let alone one with such loose membership criteria - cannot hope to restrict the circulation of internal bulletins to members only (in fact that was already the case before the days of the internet). If it was not the Weekly Worker, it would be someone else.

For our part, we are proud of our role in making such important documents public. We regard this as a service to the entire movement, as well as to SWP members and the cause of SWP democracy. That is why, for example, you can read for yourself IB No1 on our website.

But aren’t we being irresponsible? Aren’t we jeopardising the security of SWP members? This is an important question, but it is one that individuals need to address themselves. In the words of IB No1, “Occasionally comrades need to write under pseudonyms ... Perhaps this should be considered under certain circumstances.” Perhaps it should. It would certainly save the DC from agonising over questions like: “Do we give every new member access to our email/internet documents? Do we wait till they’ve paid one months subs, three months?”

But the DC is busy trying to do the impossible and keep the lid on debate: “If we introduce a system of distribution of bulletins electronically then the rules governing bulletins should be extended. No comrade should be allowed to circulate documents during the conference discussion period except through the central procedure. There should be no exceptions to this.”

There are also “some concerns about participation in blogs”. For instance, “Had an SWP member been running a site that became the focus of a discussion about the recent CC split, or had the site actively encouraged such a discussion, it could have had serious implications for the party - apparently legitimising a side in the split.”

What on earth is the problem with SWP members not only facilitating public discussion of important differences within the organisation, but actually taking a side in it? There actually ought to be none - except for bureaucratic control-freaks.

Then there is the usual SWP animosity towards internet discussion lists and blogs, where participation is very uneven - only “a smallish group of people with the time and the inclination” join in, while “Often the most active of SWP members are those least able or willing to wade through hundreds of emails or blog postings.”

Additionally, “such discussion sites often remove the debate from its context. In a branch or district meeting comrades can thrash out how a perspective applies to them. On the internet, it can be harder to take account of differing situations.” In fact, “In times of crisis it may become a place where confusion could be cleared up, or made worse. Surely at such times meetings are the place to deal with arguments.”

Meetings ought to be the place where formal decisions are taken. But discussion, debate and “arguments” are a natural and essential part of political life. Yes, often they are ill-informed, partial and even result in the wrong conclusion being drawn, but in general, the more debate we engage in, the more likely we will be to arrive at the correct position to adopt.

Finally, let me mention one final area where the DC had an input: ‘United fronts and party democracy’. Warning against the pull to the right in ‘united fronts’ (Respect in particular comes to mind), the comrades write: “The pressure is stronger if you also speak as the public face of the campaign. Then you deliver a reformist speech over and over again. What you say begins to limit what you can think.”

How very right. But what kind of ‘united front’ is it that obliges revolutionaries to act like reformists? I thought we participate in them (unlike popular fronts such as Respect) in order to expose the limitations of reformism and advance working class principles?

Perhaps this very basic error is not unconnected with the SWP’s inability to get questions like democracy right.

Read Pre-conference Bulletin No1 online at www.cpgb.org.uk/ref_files/Preconf%20Bulletin%201%20Oct09.pdf