Workers Finn

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that: the Russian of 1917 was a adventure that the were right to oppose.

IS do not shirk this conclusion. In their journal (issue no. 40) Duncan Hallas attacks the Socialist Labour League on precisely these grounds.

'The SLL claims to be the embodiment of 'orthodox Trotskyism'. The claim has considerable justification. The League's present policies are rooted in the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International. Its errors arise fundamentally from the attempt to apply this analysis to a world situation in which it is irrelevant or false."

It could not be more cleatly put, yet Workers Power who hope to escape the consequences of IS practice while refusing to face the revisionist theory that underpins it, already give ample evidence in this first issue that they will repeat much of it. Indeed far from attacking the Keynesian economics that are at the base of IS theories we are told that the main problem with IS was not its bourgeois ideas but the failure of the IS leadership to hammer a programme out of these ideas!

"IS has done serious and often splendid work for workers in struggle (in every way a crucial task). But its socialist [!] policies have remained on the level of abstract propaganda for socialism and workers' control"

But a programme for revnhitinnary intervantion in tha splendid work" for workers In collusion with the shop stewards, two militants were dismissed from their place of work by management. Because of the initial acquiescence of the work force, WSL comrades had a hard fight persuading the two victimised workers to fight on what was clearly a basic trade union principle.

At the stage of having won the two militants around, a Mr Pratt representing Workers Power made his appearance. He argued that the trade union principle was "not the important question"

"RANK AND FILE"

The important question according to Mr Pratt was to build a "rank and file movement" for democracy in the T&GWU (the union of the two. victimised members).. For one of the two this 'alternative' was the ideal way to rationalise his reluctance to fight and Mr Pratt's intervention served as the pretext to retreat from a struggie.

When the WSL proposed that Mr Pratt and his colleagues join with the WSL in a campaign in detence of this trade union principle Mr Pratt declined on the grounds that the WSL were only interested in "using such a campaign to recruit members". • At least Mr Pratt showed the opportunist instinct that hsi organisation stood to gain littie and the WSL much from a campaign on principle (though it does throw some doubt on how meaningful is WP's talk of united frant transal-l Before issue of written W existence. lane support arises precisely because such forces do not exist and have to be created in the process of a struggle against their reformist leaders.

Trotsky makes this very clear when in an 'historical review of the united front' he observes *Were we simply to unite the working class around our banner by eliminating the reformist parties or trade union organisations that of course would be the best way. But in that case the very question of the united front in its present form would be non-existent.

'VACUUM'

Here again Workers Power repeat Is who believed that they had discovered a 'vacuum on the left' in the early 1960s because workers in that period had advanced their interests without recourse to the parliamentary leaders. We call on workers to force the 'lefts' to fight because as Trotsky said:

"We are interested apart from all other considerations in dragging the reformists from out of their lairs and in setting them beside us at the head of the struggling masses. With a correct tactic, we alone stand to gain thereby. The communist who is dubious or is airaid of this behaves after the fashion of a swimmer who after approving the propositions as regards the best method of swimming dares not risk jumping into the water."

In a perverse way the shoddiness of this magazine is its most attractive feature, preparing the reader as well and as honestly as it does for the confusion of ideas that reign within. Sad and surprising such a long labour in IS has failed to produce anything more than commonplaces badly expressed. A recognition that they have nothing to say is probably responsible for the tone of false chumminess that pervades the magazine, we must do this and 'we' mustn't accept that is the ingratiating method by which themselves off as part of pass the presumably hope to pass workers movement.

REBOUND

this review of the first this magazine could be orkers Power went out of On the rebound from a -.:1t. the Fourth International. Nothing in the recent history of the USFI could justify such a turnabout. In fact it was the sectarian desire to maintain a separate organisation that made such a conclusion inevitable.

No less dramatic a turnabout was produced by Workers Fight on the Labour Party. In the first issue of their theoretical journal you can read about identical arguments for abstaining in a fight with the labour lefts as are to be found in the first issue of Workers Power. But having failed with this 'revolutionary' hot air to raise Workers Fight's modest balloon off the ground, the third issue of the journal finds the entire membership - inside the Labour Presumably it is to such sterile battle grounds that Workers Fight will wish to take their new bride though they will probably find her far too coy and embarrassed in her new surroundings to be capable of "sowing criminal illusions" in anyone.

SAME Clearly Workers Power is going nowhere and in these inflationary times it is eminently sensible to share the costs with a group that for many years have been travelling the satne road. For us the desire to unite the class around a revolutionary programme forces us into an implacable struggle against all these unprincipled manoeuvres which for the revisionist groups are no more than a desparate clutching at straws.

Before we can unite and in order that we may unite we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation.

Otherwise our unity will be purely fictitious, it will conceal the prevaling confusion and hinder its radical elimination".

(Lenin: Collected Works Vol 4 In this brief passage Lens opens up the alternative road to revolutionary regroupment that stands out starkly against the unprincipled combinations of "Workers Fight' and Workers Power.

by Joe Quigley.

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SUCIALISI PREss, weanesday 11m I effectively defend a single job or fight for a single wage increase. It is on this basis that unity must be Emmand lastarrrassos the rathalin and orgeu perween wit valvur duu Protestant workers.

In Britain, socialists must take the struggle for the immediate withdrawal of troops right into the labour movement. This must be done in such a way as to connect with the struggles of the British working class.

We have to explain that spending on the Irish war, running into millions, contributes to the cuts in social services, housing, health and much else. We have to demand that all spending on this war be stopped immediately.

HYPOCRITICAL

The trade union leaders who make hypocritical noises about unemployment must be forced to come out against recruitment into the army, and instead recruit workers into the trade unions to fight against the bosses.

In the same way, opposition