WeeklyWorker

07.07.2010

United front Hodge-podge

Mark Fischer detects SWP softness toward potential allies in the Labour Party

Sometimes when leaders of the Socialist Workers Party reply to debates at Marxism, one idly wonders whether they are cynically presuming ignorance amongst their audience, whether their own mangled schooling by the sect has lodged a deep stupidity in them as politicians, or whether, in fact, it was the group’s stupidity that attracted them in the first place.

A moment’s reflection is more than enough to dispel the last two options. Clearly, SWP cadres like Joseph Choonara are intelligent people, well versed in the history of the Marxist movement and, in relative terms, theoretically able. So I can only presume that his reply to critical remarks from a young member of the Commune group in his Saturday July 3 session on ‘The united front’ was more or less entirely cynical.

The Commune comrade had raised the notion of communist political differentiation within united fronts, encapsulated in the slogan formulated at the time of the Communist International’s discussion of the question in the early 1920s - “March separately, strike together!” Comrade Choonara mocked this “silly stuff”, asking his audience to imagine a bloc of SWPers actually physically “marching separately” instead of joining the mammoth anti-war demonstrations of 2003. Such an idiotic posture would have been typical of the “communist propaganda sects” that plied their trade around Marxism every year and to whom the comrade had made mocking references earlier in the session.

Disappointingly, this lame nonsense got an appreciative laugh rather than a collective squirm from an audience embarrassed at the comrade’s gaffe. This indicates either the sort of collective ignorance I mentioned above, or that the culture of cynicism runs deep through the ranks of SWP cadre, not simply its leadership (perhaps a mixture of the two). After all, there is no question that the SWP’s method is directly counterposed to the political heritage that it claims as its own - Lenin, the Bolsheviks and the early Communist International. These comrades must be aware on some level at least of the nature of the politics that this Comintern slogan was meant to embody and that their own practice runs directly counter to it.

Comrade Choonara’s session was one of a number at this year’s Marxism that provided important indicators on the parameters of the SWP’s work over the coming period. In its response to the anticipated protests and strike actions as the Con-Lib Dem government’s cuts start to really bite, the SWP will make what comrade Choonara called “serious” overtures to other forces - primarily the Labour Party at various levels - for joint campaigning work and action.

“Serious” here should be taken to mean proposals that are in effect non-aggression pacts - a method encapsulated by comrade Choonara as “the primacy of action over theory”. In truth, what is being talked about is the primacy of action over principle, a fact that had been even more starkly illustrated in comrade Charlie Kimber’s session on ‘Can the Labour Party revive?’ the previous day.

The comrade made some correct and important points during his opening. Labour’s defeat was not the result of Tory strength per se, but more of the alienation of millions of Labour voters from the party during the Blair years. Blair himself had been lucky; Labour’s unprecedented electoral success was explained primarily by the programmatic exhaustion and unelectability of the Tories, not the ideological hegemony of New Labourism. Despite working class alienation, the predictions of the likes of John McDonnell MP of a 1930s-style Labour wipe-out had not transpired because of a late surge of support from Labour’s traditional base, alarmed at the now real prospect of a Tory government for the first time in 13 years.

This last-minute swell of Labour support from working people was a form of “distorted class feeling”, comrade Kimber correctly asserted, and underlined the fact that Labour was not the same as the Tories: ie, simply a bourgeois party. It retained a connection to the working class via the workers’ movement bureaucracy - “an organic link” that posed the necessity of a united front with Labourites to face the “huge challenges” which were looming for our class.

The points made in the second half of the comrade’s opening were more directly pertinent to the SWP’s political orientation in the near future. These can be summarised thus:

A member of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, taken early in the debate after comrade Kimber sat down, was such a godsend to the assembled SWPers that it was hard not to suspect a set-up - once the possibility of an actual pro-SWP god is discounted. The comrade raised the highly pertinent question of the SWP’s potential ‘softness’ on Labour. Yes, he allowed, let’s work with Labour Party members, councillors or even MPs - but only if they were clearly and implacably opposed to cuts and attacks on the class.

So, of course, a number of the subsequent SWP speakers in the debate had great fun mocking this SPEWer, recalling just how marshmallow-soft his organisation had been on Labour in its earlier manifestation as the Militant Tendency. Others pointed out that its present-day ‘hard’ assertion (and it is little more than assertion) that Labour is a simply a bourgeois party effectively disarmed it - SPEW had no way of explaining why Labour’s vote had not collapsed, SWP national secretary Martin Smith correctly observed, and thus no way of relating to “workers’ illusions” in the party that still retain some potency.

Far more instructive than this sort of political baby seal-clubbing - enjoyably gory though it was to watch - was the more or less explicit guarantee that SWPers conveyed in their contributions that they would indeed be soft on any potential allies they worked with in the Labour Party. Leading London activist Candy Udwin observed that Camden council, where she works and is a Unison militant, was not even producing hot air about fighting the impending cuts. But mobilising people was the key and for that the “broadest possible unity” (see above) was essential. The later contribution from Martin Smith cited the involvement of the loathsome chauvinist, Margaret Hodge, in Unite Against Fascism (a campaign the SWP seems to be taking as something of a template for its forthcoming work, if the number of times it and Hodge were name-checked over the course of the weekend - both from platforms and in private conversations with individual SWPers - is anything to go by).

Another contributor stated that the SWP’s approach was not a “ploy to catch out” Labour leaders and activists. Helen Salmon emphasised that the first task must be to get the Labour Party luminaries on board, even if this meant sitting down to “write the programme with them”. Michael Bradley noted that having a “nice united front with nice people” was a nice idea, but you have to be realistic - or deal with “concrete reality”, as Martin Smith had put it just after he had mentioned Margaret Hodge (comrade Bradley also cited the woman - she has clearly become emblematic of the strong stomach you need when you conduct united front work SWP-style).

Charlie Kimber’s reply to the debate partially corrected some of the more crass statements the floor discussion had thrown up, emphasising that a bottom line should be opposition to “all cuts” as a condition for working with Labour councils and others. It will be interesting to see how long that ‘hard’ stance lasts, as the appetite of his organisation for numerical growth - its fundamental raison d’être as a sect - reasserts itself in any upswing in the class struggle.