[The final part in Keith White's series of…]

Scan page 7

The final part in Keith White's series of articles examining the politics of the British Socialist Workers Party.

.. the break up and dispersal of the organisational capital of this group would represent a big set-back to revolutionary politics in this country.

"What we stand for is a fusion of two revolutionary traditions, a synthesis of our experiences rather than an obliteration of one by the other ... it follows from our characterisation of the SWP as revolutionary organisation."

There is in this document not a single mention of the transitional programme; indeed there is not even a mention of what the programme of the united organisation should be, except for a heavy emphasis on what the comrades choose to call "the united front"

By this vague term they appear to mean firstly rank and file groups which are not dominated by one organisation; secondly not actually leaving the mass organisations of the class and forming red unions; and thirdly not denying the class básis of the Labour Party.

No wonder that Strawson called this document 'dreadful' and called for an official reply from the IMG CC.

We do not know whether such a reply has been drafted or indeed whether the Birmingham comrades still hold to their 'dreadful' positions.

What we do know is that the CC meeting which voted down the document almost unanimously, also voted that no reply should be written.

We can legitimately suggest that the reason for this was a reluctance to confront these arguments-all of which logically flow from the IMG leadership's own refusal to seriously confront the SWP.

Their muddled concept of principled basis for fusion being around the simplistic formula of 'whether an organisation has crossed class lines' has opened the door to the Birmingham document-and possibly still worse to come.

The most positive contribution to the CC discussion was a document entitled 'A small question of method: the IMG and the SWP(UK)' Its principal strength was to draw out the deep political gulf between the SWP and Trotskyism. Its opening paragraphs hit the nail right on the head with the contention that the document finally adopted by the Mistakes the contemporary manifestation of the SWP's politics (syndicalism) for its nature:

"It isolates the essentially pragmatic nature of the SWP which "continually leads to capitulations. . . which are little SOCIALIST LEAGUE SCUM!B WORKERS DEFENCE