Against Such "unity'! Joe Quigley Looks at the Img - Big Flame

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A previous example of unprincipled unity - the Alexandra Palace Rally on Equal Rights for women -no mention of the Social Contract from cry for "Unity" to police the platform.

"Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the worker s cause neeas is unity of Marxists not unity between Marxists and opponents and distorters of Marxism."

So spoke Lenin in April 1914 on the eve of the first imperialist war.

The consequence of tolerating within the ranks opponents of Marxism, of failing to split with distorters of Marxism was the collapse and destruction of the Second International.

Today on the eve of big battles in the heartland of capitalism. the unity goes up. "Unity" the Social Contract. behind the TUC's attempt wage control.

The treacherous role of the labour bureaucrats becomes more glaring as the working class surge forward. In such circumstances the clear responsibility of revolutionaries is to intervene against these misleaders with a programmatic alternative.

It is only in the severe test of the struggle itself that the working class will learn to differentiate one programme from another, one banner from another-in short really discover amongst all those different tendencies claiming the right to lead it. who its real friends judgement chills to the marrow a whole range of groups who parade themselves before the class as Instinctively feeling their irrelevance to the needs of the class they consolingly huddle together for bodily warmth and attribute their own retreat in front of the gathering storm, as a retreat by the class itself.

Thus it is no. coincidence that the very week that the Miners and the TGWU Conferences left the Labour-Liberal government policy on wages in tatters, the self-proclaimed Trotskyist IMG and the semi-syndicalist, semi-Stalinist Big semi-cundiralict cami (tolinict Di. Flame signed an electoral pact.

The basis for this "unity" was quite accurately described by a Big Flame spokesman as a recognition on the part of both groups that the working class is in retreat. (Socialist Challenge, July 7, page 7).

Big Flame have recently prodaced a pamphlet virulently attacking Trotskyism, composed of old Stalinist slanders plus more recent empty verbiage on work processes and consciousness devoid of practical content.

But given the speed with which the IMG seems to be abandoning any pretence to uphold Trotskyism, an alliance with such people should not cause too much embarrassment. Esneciallv when on the anection of A draft IMG-Big Flame election programme hammered out at the 'unity' conference in Birmingham was taken to Liverpool for public debate on July 13.

It is obvious from examining this draft that so promiscuous has the IMG's unity mongering become that they were prepared to allow Big Flame to virtually write the whole of the programme for the sake of getting them in an electoral alliance.

The programme's centre piece is "don't rely on politicians, our strength lies in our own struggles"

avoiding any challenge to the existing leadership.

UTOPIAN

Beginning with the utopian demand of asking the capitalist class "for a guaranteed decent standard of living" the draft goes on to say 'no' to public spending cuts, 'no' to unemployment, "no" to racism and 'no' to the Social Contract.

But as the draft also says "no' to opening the books and to a sliding scale of wages and hours, it effectively closes the door on the only programme that can defend workers and mobilise a struggle against the existing leadership.

Instead we are offered a £50 minimum wage and a 35-hour week which, because it contains no commitment to action now, can and will secure the support of the An "independent income for all women is in fact the reactionary claim of wages for housework. "No subordination of education to industry" is simply fatuous, designed no doubt to attract into the alliance the "stop the world I want to get off" alternative lifestylers who imagine that an education system can be separated and operated for different purposes than the economic system that produces it.

Given that the meeting was being asked to endorse this cottage pie of utopian, reformist and reactionary demands it was to be expected that any stand made for Marxist principles would receive a of the Workers Socialist League that was where the platform concentrated its fire.

Big Flame unleashed a stream of petty-bourgeois hysteria which attacked the Transitional Programme in general and Socialist Press in particular The IMG sat cowed Silent go ahead everywhere and most vigorous manner with a split, a split and again a split."

Lenin after 1905 as their new found allies fulminated against the need for theory, denouncing the unfortunate member of the IMG behind his literature stall for bringing his worthless garbage, his unreadable and unread books with him.

When another WSL member attempted to speak the true character of these libertarian "antisectarians" was revcaled. The platform refused to let him speak.

His persistently raised hand stood out as eloquent testimony against the fraudulent unity being fostered and pressure from the meeting forced the chairman to back down.

No debate on the way forward could develop from lowest common denominator politics. For pointing this out the WS incurred the wratn of the meeting.

It is to be hoped that after such gatherings some members of the

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which of course sounds very radical but is in fact a green light for