Why Are Militant Group Callaghan's Favourite Marxists? Party Young Socia

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Militant supporters allowed to rule the roost in the LPYS, while Socialist Press supporters are hounded and expelled Bradford As a "tame cat 'Marxist' of Labour's Militant Group" .. / was interested to read the whole page (!) which you devoted to the Labour Party in Socialist Press no. 150 (16 May 1979).

Unfortunately, it contained a number of distortions about Militant's role in the Election and afterwards.

You "quote" a sentence which appeared in the Editorial of Militant issue 455. The sentence being:

"Sections of the middle class were undoubtedly panicked by the Tory press's hysterical denunciation of last winter's strikes and particularly of the unskillful tactics occasionally adopted by some of the public service workers who had little or no previous experience of strike action."

However, rather than quoting the whole sentence, you quoted only theemphasised words added to which was the prefix: "climbing down to right wing attacks on the winter's pay strikes Militant even lashes out at • what it astonishingly describes as: land then the quote).

This more than implies that we are blaming last winter's strikes for Labour's defeat in the election.

This is a complete and utter distortion of our position, reminiscent of your "fellow travellers" in desperate ultraleftist distortionism, the WRP.

To quote from the Editorial article in Militant which you claim to analyse:

"But Labour's rank and file will utterly repudiate this attempt (of the Right) to blame defeat on the workers who were pushed by the government's own policies into taking industrial action ... Responsibility for the defeat lies with the Labour right's pro-capitalist policies."

A million miles removed, I'm sure you'll agree from "just a back-stabbing attack on the strikes that did occur, for supposedly damaging Labour's election chances" as you claim in your article.

Yours is not the method of a revolutionary Marxist tendency, but that of a hopelessly sectarian grouplet, which, in despair at its inability to engage in reai scientific polemical criticism of Militant, a tendency which is a thousand times more correct in its perception of Marxism and Trotskyism than is the WSL, has to indulge in distortions, lies and fabrications, in order. to attack Militant, presumably "to advance the theoretical level" of its revolutionary cadres.

Any fool, and 'fool' is the operative word, can omit parts of a sentence, add his own introduction, and then interpret the "sentence' in a totally contradictory. manner to the original meaning. However, to try to build a revolutionary tendency on it is bound to be a disaster. This appears to be what you are trying to do in last week's Socialist Press. I... 1 Isn't it time that you started concentrating your attacks on:

1) The Labour Right instead of the Left and Pseudo-Left, when discussing the Labour 2) The Tories, our class enemies, when examining the broader political spectrum.

Note-I say "concentrating" not "wholly devoting" to the groupou groups mentioned.

You obviously have not forgotten your WRP past.

Fraternally yours, Abdul Sheir Bradford North LPYS and Militant supporter.

WE REPLY Brother Sheir's indignant fetter sidesteps completely the political point that was being made in our original article-and PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IF in doing so reveals much about the nature of Militant Group We began by challenging the Militant's pathetically limp characterisation of the Callaghan government not as a thoroughly reactionary, anti-working class government but as a "failure".

We went on to query how any self-styled "Marxist" paper could find itself describing some of the witch-hunted pay struggles of last winter as "unskillful tactics"

The question we asked of the Militant Group, and which Brother Sheir refuses to answer in his lengthy letter was:

"Are we to believe that the subtle manoeuvrers at the Militant editorial offices could have found a way to take strike action in a hospital without a frenzied Tory press witchhunt?"

The answer is clearly "no" It is not possible for Marxists to distance themselves from the "unskillful tactics" of the hospital and public sector workers without in effect separating themselves from these struggles as a whole.

Concordat

Indeed, it was through their willingness to concede that effective picketing and the solid industrial action in support of pay claims throughout the winter amounted to "problem" to be "solved", , that the TUC leaders wound up endorsing the reactionary restrictions of the Concordat.

For Militant to use the term "unskillful tactics" is undoubtedly a climbdown in front of right wing attacks and Tory press campaigns, and an attack on the struggles that did take place.

The fact that this was dressed up in the left platitudes quoted by Brother Sheir about workers being "pushed into taking industrial action" by the "Labour right's pro capitalist policies" does not invalidate our basic point that Militant, by using this tell-tale phrase echoes the positions of the bureaucracy.

Rather than railing at Socialist Press for highlighting evidence of such am bureaucratic approach amongst the Militant leadership, Brother Sheir would do better to investigate how it is that the paper he supports could refer to these The "anti-Tory" line of current issues of Militant show unmistakeably the way in which such an approach blunts the struggle against Labour's right wing leaders.

The editorial of Militant 456 lon the Queen's Speech), for example, concludes by arguing that:

"the working class must be mobilised and united around a bold programme for the socialist transformation of society."

How, Brother Sheir, is such a programme to emerge without the removal of the right wing, anti-socialist Callaghan lique?

And how are they to be removed without simultaneously exposing the spinelessness of the 'lefts' who tamely allow the right wing to rule the roost?

The general call for 'unity' at this stage, with Callaghan declaring outright opposition to mass political action against the Tories, can only lead to impotence and surrender to the reactionary policies of the right wing.

Best equipped

If this is your view of "Marxism" • then Militant is certainly the organisation best equipped to satisfy you.

But it also satisfies Callaghan and the Labour bureaucracy, who allow Militant free reign amongst Labour's youth in the confidence that it offers no real alternative and no serious challenge to their control.

Socialist Press supporters, on the contrary have faced bureaucratic attack, vilification, expulsions and exclusion from the. Labour Party as a result of their tenacious struggle against both the crypto-Tory right wing and the 'left' fakers.

And it will be our supporters -though at present small in number-that remain at the forefront of the struggle in coming months for the mobilisation of the working class, not as pure election fodder for the Labour Party machine, but in the mass actions that are needed to defeat the Tory government and construct a principled revolutionary leadership.