Letter: Yes! They Are

Scan page 9

"The sectarian looks upon the life of society as a great school, with himself as a teacher there. In his opinion the working ciass snow pur aside its less important matters and assemble in solid rank around his rostrum: then the task will be solved." - Trotsky.

Gaddaffi was established in 1917, at the height of the imperialist war, to reward the staff officers who were directing the carnage, and the speculators who were making 'patriotic fortunes out of it.

Since then it has been the reward of thousands upon thousands whom the British capitalist state has wished to 'dignify' Two of Miss Redgrave's tellowmembers of the Order merit particular attention.

One is Major-General Richard Clutterbuck OBE, author of numerous books on 'counter-insurgency, frequently (and correctly) denounced in the WRP press as a spokesman for military savagery against the workers' movement.

He helped direct the war against the Communist movement in Malaya în the 1950's, in which British troops beheaded Malayan partisans as an 'example to the peasants.

INTELLIGENCE

Another is Sir Maurice Oldfield, who got his CBE in 1956. He was for decades a leading official of the British Intelligence Services.

He was in line to head SIS, but resigned in protest against Wilson's refusal associate the various intelligence and political police services into a joint agency, along the lines of the CIA, to carry out its work more efficiently.

It would be difficult to find a more sinister and dangerous reactionary in this country.

We hold no brief for the politics I John Lennon, which are those of protest and mysticism.

But we say that it was a correct and elementary step in solidarity with the Vietnamese people to reject his 'honour.

And the fact that Miss Redgrave, complete with such a blood-stained bauble, sits on the Central Committee of the WRP indicates an obscene contempt for principle. WRP were moribund, that the national committee of the ATUA had ceased to function and that there had been no national conference of the ATUA for over two years.

CAMPAIGNS It pointed out too that opportunities for political campaigns in trade union elections had been simply passed up, and that the Political Committee was simply allowing the trade union factions it had itself set up to atrophy and die.' These charges have never been refuted by the WRP leadership, then or since. They continue to treat the need for systematic, political work in the trade unions with cynical contempt.

They refuse to direct the membership into a fight for the demands of the Transitional Programme -instead they expel anyone who attempts to put them forward even within the party.

Indeed we challenge the WRP to produce evidence of any fight carried through anywhere by their members for any of the transitional demands.

MEETINGS IGNORED

The reality is that many WRP members up and down the country simply do not bother to attend trade union meetings. For them it is not a question of trade union work being 'autonomous' or not -it just does not exist!

And parallel with this, the News Line regularly carries the most hypocritical and treacherous statements of trade union bureaucrats without comment and as good coin.

As for the charge that Thornett wanted to make trade union work "autonomous" - this is a new invention by the WRP leadership.

Any reader with the energy to plough through WRP leader Banda's turgid diatribe Whither Thornett? or any of their polemical material against the WSL will find not a single reference to such an allegation.

How is it the WRP has taken nearly two years to spot such a glaring supposed attack on Bolshevism?

But the question of practice in the trade unions goes right to the heart of the WRP's sectarian political degeneration.

PHRASES ONLY

resolution contains a number o phrases about the intention of the WRP leadership to "fight the union bureaucracy", but scarcely a word about any achievements, the problems, or the development of the WRP's actual work within the organised working class.

It is a document not of scientific fighters for a revolutionary leadership, who take up real battles against the bureaucracy, but of witch-doctors who hope the bitter crisis of political leadership in the working class can be solved by "left" and "philosophical incantations.

On this basis it is possible neither to recruit or to train cadres who can carry out the central task posed by the Transitional ProDear Comrade, It is quite wrong to apologise to the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) for having accused them of 'bankfiscrimination over redundancies, in the main their positions are both bankrupt and reformist.

At the 'Women and the Cuts' Conference in London in February they spoke repeatedly against the main résolution put forward by the Although this was a long and rambling resolution and although we are extremely sceptical of either the IMG or the Working Womens' Charter actually fighting for these demands in practice, it did actually contain all the main transitional demands.

But the RCG argued against the resolution on the grounds that bef- ruit women into the unions" and ore any fight against the cuts and accuse us of inferring, like the CP, against the oppression of women that this will be the panacea! could be taken up the correct This is a slanderous falsification, be laid by means of 'educating' the theoretical and political basis must because they know perfectly well, and our leaflets make it clear that working class. our purpose in drawing unorganised To this end they proposed a con- sections of workers into the unions ference and a bulletin. is to strengthen the fight against the According to the RCG, workers bureaucracy in order to develop the will reach the revolutionary road by reading bulletins in their front consciousness of these workers.

This is the complete opposite of rOOmS. the Stalinists' intention of bringing This idealist position ignores and more workers under the contròl of abstains from the struggles which workers are willy-nilly involved in the bureaucrats.

The RCG also oppose the and is completely opposed to demand for "an immediate injecMarxist dialectics.

tion of funds into the social services For it is not through theory and for a programme of useful pubalone but through the interaction of theory and practice that revolut- he works: on. the grounds that those fighting for this slogan may ionary preparation is made. chauvinistically want to take the Given correct leadership, it is in funds from some other service (!) the course of struggle and exper- and may not necessarily understand ience that workers become consethat the cuts derive from the ious of their objective situation and contradictions of the capitalist the necessary solution.

system itself.

The correct theoretical and practical basis for revolutionaries to They claim that the demand:

"Fails to lay the basis for the give this kind of leadership is Trot- political independence of the sky's Transitional Programme. working class from the bourgeoisie For the RCG the main problem and its state, and it fails to defend is not so much the reformist and unite the whole working class bureaucracy but rather the back- against the effects of the capitalist wardness of the working class, and crisis. they do not understand that it is Here again the RCG is completethrough the fight . against the ly distorting the method of the bureaucracy that backwardness will Transitional Programme as used by be overcome. the wS ine do not make this They also distort the Transition- demand al Programme by treating the dem- conjunction with others, such as ands individually rather than as a open the books , and for the whole. expansion of services according to By this means in the pamphlet need based on a workers' plan. Women and the Public Sector Cuts In arguing for such demands our they manage to accuse the WSL of aim is precisely to develop workers' reformism. understanding of the way in which They quote from one of our the capitalist system based on leaflets that we must "fight to rec- production for profit shackles the LENIN CLENUIILENIN COLLECT WORKS WORES tront cover picture from ine acus just journut.

development of the productive forces, wastes and under-uses resources, while the socialist solutions necessary must be internationalist and achieved through international At the same time we attempt to develop the independent strength of the working class by insisting that workers' plans for public works, that the sliding scale of wages and expenditure, and that the opening of the books, should be carried out by elected committees of workers and housewives, pensioners, etc.

It is through experience, rather than through preaching, that we seek to develop the conscious and independent fight for socialism in the, working class and to defeat reformism.

By abstaining from struggle and from its idealist belief in the potency of education' the RCG is most certainly reformist and bankrupt, as well as anti-Marxist.

Yours fraterally, London WSL member.

EDITORIAL NOTE.

The comrade's point in thi letter is accepted but we make i clear that our apology in the last edition was not a retreat from such a political analysis of the RCG, bur a correction of one particula: article in which a factual error hac appeared.

Since an excessive amount o: column space has now beer devoted to this topic we feel we must now regard this issue a closed.

----- pull-quotes -----

rupt reformism' (S.P. 38). ose the hit troposal for positipe