[in a series of major articles by Keith…]

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in a series of major articles by Keith White wh Party, in the context of the new problems far Southall youth attempt to drive fascists off the streets. ANL sticks to pacifist line working class plans.

Opportunities

The Tory attacks, combined with fraudulent demagogy from Labour 'lefts' and Stalinists along with betrayals by the trade union bureaucrats are the obstacles facing those workers who are seeking to defend themselves.

Organisations to the left of the Communist Party are faced with the task of laying before workers their perspectives for an alternative road to that of class collaboration..

Unprecedented opportunities are opening up for revolutionaries for one simpie reason: the working class internationally faces the choice-socialism or barbarism.

The Workers Socialist League has been and will continue to be built as an independent organisation.

This is because we are of the opinion that now, more than ever, a clear perspective and principled programme of action must be given to workers coming into struggle.

No perspective For us the battles to come will involve not only a struggle against the existing misleaders of the working class but also the sharpest criticisms of those in the "revolutionary left" whose practice time and again proves that they have no serious perspective for the struggles ahead.

We have for this reason frequently polemicised against the International Marxist Group for its catch-all "unity" drive.

This new series of articles is intended to deepen the polemic in an effort to further develop our membership, confront serious forces in the IMG with the bankruptcy of their organ¡sation's present path and • to educate those who might take the IMG's conceptions as good coin.

Equally important, however, will be to begin a long-overdue dialogue with the membership and periphery of the Socialist Workers Party.

Biggest

As the biggest group to the left of the Communist Party, the SWP will continue to attract to its ranks many people whoif the balance of forces were different-might easily join the WSL.

At the same time the twists and turns of the SWP leaders particular brand of syndicalism can only be further exposed.

• The SWP has no conception of how to go from here to the socialist revolution.

But it would be wrong to assume that this bankruptcy of programme will automatically lead to its disintegration in face of mounting class struggie.

The SWP leadership has shown in the past that it can opportunistically adapt itself to changing circumstances and find new ways of posing as 'the' revolutionary party.

Industrial base

It entered the period of the Labour government with a substantial membership-including significant industrial base, which had been built during the Heath government.

This industrial base was brought into the International Socialists (as the SWP was then called) on the basis of the most minimal trade union militancy and anti-Tory rhetoric.

On'30 March 1974 the First National Rank and File Movement Delegate Conference was held.

"It was sponsored by the following rank and file papers, Collier, Carworker, GEC Rank and File, London Transport Hospital Worker, Rank and File Teacher, Tech Teacher, NALGO Action, Redder Tape and Case Con. The CP controlled papers, Flashlight and Building Workers Charter, and the dockers rank and file Dockworker were the only papers of any significance which did not sponsor the Conference. Some 500 delegates from 270 trade union bodies reflecting the main areas of recent rank and file activity attended, a considerable achievement in the face of sniping sectarian attacks from many individual CP members and from the organised right wing, They included some 51 AUEW bodies, two of which were District Committees, 37 TGWU bodies,' 28 NALGO branches, 12 NUT bodies, 9 CPSA branches and 19 Trades Councils."

IS. Jefferys The Challenge of the Rank and File, International Socialism 76, March 1975).

The rank and file organisations cited by Jefferys had been built in the period of Tory attacks (1970-74).

On the basis of a significant recruitment from the student radicalisation around the Vietnam war, IS was able to build a big organisation with the IS leaders has not gone unchallenged.

But these challenges were met in each case by ruthless bureaucratic repression.

Crimes

Those who think that the SWP's lack of internal • democracy is a new phenomenon should consider this catalogue of crimes.

And those who like Foot bemoan the existence of many organisations on the left should know that quite a number of these have been set up in the wake of expulsions from the IS group.

In 1971, for example, Workers Fight, the only organisation to respond to a "unity" call made by the IS leadership in 1968 were expelled.

"No disciplinary charges were laid against the Tendency nor could they have been ... the IS leadership's explanation for the expulsion move was that the Trotskyist Tendency called IS 'centrist'...

But this explains nothing. We never characterised IS otherwise, either before the 1968 fusion or after." (Workers Fight no. 1, January 14,1972).

Today Workers Fight is the League (ICL).

BO Don This is the first Socialist Workers In 1973 the Revolutionary Opposition was expelled. This tendency-led by, amongst others, the present leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Group-had attacked IS's theories on economics, and its lack of a serious orientation to winning workers from social democracy, and had argued for a programme of transitional demands.

Their platform was not circulated and they were expelled for political differences.

In 1974 the Left Opposition was expelled. Its platform 'In Defence of Marxism' was as usual not circulated by the IS At the 1974 IS conference Left Opposition members were not able to argue for their positions as they did not control PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report a branch from which they could elect delegates. The National Secretary then wrote individually to each of the LO's supporters as follows:

'Dear ( 1, 1 am informing you that the National Committee on 13 October 1974 has expelled you from the organisation. Yours fraternally, Jim Nichol."

In many ways the LO's critique of IS was the best yet, but it lacked cohesion and agreed perspective.

The RCG, Workers Fight, IMG and even the WRP recruited members out of the Left Opposition.

The LO had originated in a tendency known as the Left Faction which subsequently split into two. In 1975 the second part of the Left Faction was expelled and formed the present day Workers Power group.

All these oppositions criticised IS from the left.

But there were already rumblings and disputes within the IS leadership itself, Over the next couple of years these differences led to a steady replacement of many of the old guard leaders and their disappearance from the organisation.

In Birmingham 17 IS members in the AUEW left after two others were expelled for wishing to support the Stalinist led Broad Left slate in the union elections and opposing the standing of an is candidate.

These and others including a number of the old IS leadership came together to form the now

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h will examine various aspects of the politics of the British ing revolutionary socialists after the reelection of the Tory Stan Pemberton, TGWU Chairman and figurehead of the protest against the closure of Dunlop's Speke factory. He opposed the policy of occupation from the outset, as did the entire 'action committee. Socialist Worker however praised the 'action committee's' paper and refused to offer any criticism of Pemberton. ile defunct Workers League.

Behind the drift away of the industrial members was the turn IS made-particularly during the life of the last Labour government-awav from the huilrina HIVIIE шинишу of rank and file groups.

Instead it lurched towards 'get rich quick' electioneering stunts and the "Right to Work". campaigns, which were conducted outside of any political struggle against the trade union bureaucracy.

Routine union work • The central thrust of the IS leadership was around the building of "the revolutionary party" and this reached its logical conclusion in the declaration of the Socialist Workers Party.

Many industrial members did not like these developments.

They had been brought into IS on the basis of steady, routine trade union work on a minimum programme, centred on the building of rank and file organisations.

The new methods grated on them and many voted against them with their feet.

A layer of disgruntled IS ex-leaders in opposition however still clung to the past and regarded the launching of a party as premature. They hankered after the old days.

This whole period is a complex and messy one and the purpose of this article is not to give a history of the IS/SWP.

Suffice it to say that the departures from IS/SWP have been on such a scale that there now exists a sort of IS "old boys and girls" club, which defends what it calls the IS tradition."

This group clearly does not as yet know where to go.

Calling itself the International Socialist Alliance. it has. along with the SWP, been the primary focus for the IMG's unity offensive.

The IS/SWP has been built on the method of pragmatic empiricism and what accompanies that method-political opportunism.

For the IS/SWP a political line is regarded as correct if it "works" -i.e. if a steady flow of recruits and an increase in paper sales tolows from wnat malan fall in your paper.

Before 1968 IS had little in the labour movement. But as the May/June events in France brought the working class into the centre of the political arena in Western Europe IS was quick to cash in.

Up to 1974 its syndicalist perspective of mere trade union militancy brought it many members.

But in the final days of the Tory government and throughout the life of the Labour government, more political questions were posed than IS could answer.

How do you fight the trade union bureaucracy and the Labour lefts? What can you do with a programme of mere trade union militancy when the workers are, to judge from surface appearances, accepting the policies of the Labour The 1974 Rank and File Conference The WSL as a Trotskyist movement understood that far from "accepting" the policies of the Labour and TUC leaders, workers were arabolina with the problem of how to confront Wilson, Callaghan and Healey, how to get round the problem of a trade union bureaucracy fighting tooth and nail to protect social democracy.

We battled to give leadership and perspective and we were ready to play a role totally out of proportion to our size when the pay battles erupted.

Right to work

The IS/SWP who refuse to pose the real political problems 'facing workers as ones of leadership simply threw up their hend hands and turned to the easy route to growth through the "Right to Work" and electioneering campaigns.

The election campaigns are in fact another illustration of the IS/SWP pragmatism.

Having declared the Labour Party "dead" and having found the building of rank and file groups far from easy, they stood in" a number of by-elections and received derisory votes.

There is, of course, nothing wrong in receiving derisory votes if your election programme and campaign can play an important part in showing the way forward for workers in the day to day struggle for socialism.

The IS/SWP, however, which cannot by its very nature put Trade union militancy is not forward a clear revolutionary programme or principled perspective for day to day work, turned away from electoral politics declaring that it "didn't work"

Propaganda

The most recent stunt which the SWP have initiated is the Anti Nazi League.

Here the threat of fascism was "combatted" by a propaganda campaign which centred on the evoking of hostility within Britain to the German fascists.

The aim was to be the reduction of the fascist vote through the destruction of its "respectable' image.

The low votes of the NF in the general election have been claimed by the SWP. as a vindication of the ANL.

In the process, however, the SWP leadership has created considerable problems for itself at the base of the organisation, where many members-particularly workers-react with embarassment and disquiet at the AN L's shameless pacifism.

After the Leicester demonstration-where the ANL's plans for a peaceful protest on the opposite side of town from the fascists were frustrated and a sizable counter demonstration fought to get at the fascistsmore problems will certainly arise within the ANL.

Ditch ANL?

In this situation it is by no means unlikely that the SWP will make moves to jettison the ANL-particularly as the NF have over recent months turned more seriously towards open physical attacks on working class organisations and the black community.

Indeed the IMG seems to sense this possible development and the latest Socialist Challenge carries an article stressing the need to continue the building of the ANL, and the importance of mare carnivals.

This subservience on the part of the IMG to the latest fad of the SWP runs alongside their appeals to that organisation for the building of a 'united revolutionary party' In the battles to come under the Tories the calls for "unity" icking in the working class: the will be widespread.

The WSL is, of course, in favour of the maximum unity against the class enemy.

But this unity must not be at the expense of the elaboration of a clear perspective for struggles in progress, and the fight for leadership.

More than ever it will be necessary to clarify the theoretical and practical bases of the revolutionary party which must be built.

The boxed quotation from Paul Foot brings together many of the more disgusting aspects. of SWP politics.

Its talk of the "purging of deviants'" is rank hypocrisy.

But the passage, with. its scornful remarks about those who "preach at workers from on high", also rings with the SWP's total refusal to challenge the political limits of spontaneous trade . union militancy.

For the SWP the struggle is of course not for theoretical purity-whether in "contact with real life" or not.

Follow moods

The sole objective is to fit the policies of the movement to the current moods and feelings of the working class, so as not to impede recruitment.

This, of course, is why Socialist Worker can so easily avoid the use of Marxist terminology, which is also scathingly dismissed by Foot.

Far from equipping its worker recruits with the scientific knowledge, the method and the programme necessary to lead the socialist revolution, the SWP-both in its press and in its day-to-day work-leaves militants at exactly the political level with which they come into the movement.

There is, no attempt to combat syndicalism, adventurism, or opportunism. No training in fighting the labour Patronising But this is not because workers are incapable of making such political development.

Indeed it is not workers who are "frustrated". and "embarassed" by the proper explanation and use of the science and language of Marxism PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL risis is one of leadership but the patronising petty bourgeois leadership of the SWP, who seek to build a party in the working class by themselves consciously descending to a political level actually lower than many individual trade union militants.

The way to combat workers' "healthy contempt for 'fringe groups' " is not, as the SWP believe, to abandon the struggle to develop workers politically or posture as a "mass party", but to present to workers an honest, correct and principled programme on which they can carry out their daily struggles in the union and learn in practice the treachery of the bureaucracy and the inadequacy of other 'left' groups.

Cynicism

Without such a programme, workers' "healthy contempt" will certainly evolve sooner or later into cynicism and open opportunism.

Foot's statement, however, appalling though it is, does address itself to many of the problems would-be revolutionary socialists must face.

How do you win the working class to revolutionary politics? What is the : link between theory and practice?

These questions and the perennial complaint that there are "too many left groups" must be answered by Trotskyists.

In its daily work the WSL does in. fact answer them. Our practice shows those interested enough to examine it just how you build a revolutionary party in the working class.

But a revolutionary party is above all conscious. It has continually to refine its theoretical understanding so as to sharpen its practice.

This series will attempt to show the link between IS/SWP theory and practice and the bankruptcy of that theory and practice and the way in which the IMG adapts to it.

It will also outline the alternative to SWP/IMG politics and what we think of unity both in the day to day working class struggle and in the relations between ourselves and other left groups.

Continued next week

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Page 8 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 20 June 1979