'Workers in retreat' moans Cliff

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Having just witnessed the spectacle of leading members of the British Socialist Workers Party voicing public disagreements over fundamental issues at an SWP day school, I thought your readers would be interested to hear some details.

The school entitled "Class Struggle in Crisis?" was held on September 8 at the Polytechnic of Central London.

Originally set up as a forum to discuss the ideas advanced be Stalinist historian Hobsbawm in last September's Marxism Today the school featured Richard Hyman (exSWP and now of the International Socialists Alliance) and Steve Jefferies of the SWP debating with veteran CP spokesman Sam Aaronovitch.

A winding up speech from Tony Cliff on "The Way Forward" was scheduled to follow an afternoon of workshop discussion.

Hobsbawm had argued that the "forward march of labour" ran aground in the narrow waters of economism and sectionalism 30-40 years ago.

Hyman and Jefferies have written articles challenging this assessment, and Jefferies pitched vigorously into a speech along similar lines in the morning session.

By lunchtime it was clear that the audience-90% SWPwas waiting eagerly for Cliff's advice on "the way forward".

Cliff therefore spoke early in the afternoon session; but his message was the direct opposite of that suggested by Jefferies and by the title of his speech.

Cliff argued forcibly that the working class is not only not advancing, but is actually in full retreat!

Speaking in the midst of a growing tide of wages militancy that has brought repeated strikes by 2 million engineering workers and increasing evidence of militant action against the cuts, Cliff brandished capitalist newspaper yelling:

"Look at the horrible defeats in this paper! Three defeats in one day!"

And as to ram home his message of unrelieved and unwarranted pessimism Cliff cited as "evidence" gloomy speeches by delegates at the SWP's recent Rank and File Conference!

The real logic behind the SWP's minimal campaign for union endorsement of its sixpoint Rank and File Code of Practice was spelled out by Cliff.

In the SWP's view despite an almost unprecedented wave of strikes since late 1978 we face a period when even elementary PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report trade unionism cannot be taken for granted!

They-or at least Cliff-see the Code of Practice as a last rallying point around which militants can try to regroup a retreating working class.

Meanwhile Cliff is preparing his next book-tellingly entitled Stop the Retreat.

With an assessment which is so far away from reality-and which fails completely to grasp the role played by the reformist union bureaucracy in stifling and betraying struggles-it is scarcely surprising the SWP can offer no lead to workers above the level of mere trade union militancy coupled to abstract talk of socialism.

While Jefferies and Chris Harman plainly disagreed with Cliff's defeatist and subjective view of the present situation, the lack of any internal democracy within the SWP means that the Cliff line will continue to predominate.

One telling point against the SWP by Richard Hyman, however, sums up the SWP's înability to offer a revolutionary lead to the working class.

He pinpointed the SWP's lack of any bridge between wages militancy and the struggle for socialism.

Without such a bridge, he argued, it is perfectly possible for a high level of militancy to coexist with an inability of the labour movement to progress towards a socialist solution. SWP Rank and File Conference Trotskyists, unlike the SWP, stress the importance of such a bridge-a system of transitional demands which lead workers from today's consciousness and struggles to grasp the necessity for socialist revolution.

While Cliff and his SWP co-thinkers moan about the class, only the Workers Socialist League is engaged in the struggle to construct the type of leadership needed to take workers forward to socialism.

Yours fraternally, SC