Press Gang

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racist committees with their local Community Relations Committees.

These morally righteous and useless Uncle Tom bodies, hated by working class blacks, are steered by local political and church worthies and police liaison officers.

In the London borough of Islington, the Communist Partydominated Trades Council, which had refused to actively defend black youth in the area from police attacks or to campaign for jobs for youth, leapt forward to form a committee for racial harmony' with the CRC, where it happily receives assurances of goodwill from the police.

But the Socialist Workers Party initiated Anti Nazi League suffers similar defects. problem facing the working class.

The liquidation of an allegedly Trotskyist organisation like the IMG into such a 'popular' and apolitical campaign follows directly from its Pabloite, 'Socialist Unity' perspective of forming an alliance with any 'left' tendency in the hope of 'reforming' them to revolutionary positions.

But the fight against fascism is a class question. Anti-fascist committees must be based on workers organisations.

Workers must rely on their own strength, and combine the fight against the fascists with the fight for socialist policies to solve the problems of low wages, unemployment and bad housing.

Central to this struggle is the fight to break workers from, and overthrow the existing labour movement bureaucracy. movement.

Deterrent

But he does make the point that :

"The greatest deterrent to the criminal [not to mention the picket, or the demonstrator is police on the street. Suggestions that the number of policemen has fallen since the Tories lost office are just untrue Tory propaganda.

"By the end of 1977 Britain had 7,500 more policemen than it did in 1974' And by the start of 1978 those policemen had conspired with the reactionary Lib-Lab Coalition Government to deprive the workers' movement of the hard-won democratic right to march through London-effectively giving the National Front the right to veto any Labour movement march by declaring their intention to hold a counter-demo.

Hayward, however, is not satisfied with even this number of uniformed state thugs. "We need more", he tells his no doubt enthusiastic businessmen readers.

David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan made sure to pack his flowing white robes before setting out for England.

His aim of securing links with the fascists in this country seems to have been a secondary one.

Most of his time in this country was spent in clandestine interviews with fascinated reporters and posing for pictures.

One by one newspapers and radio stations made contact with the "elusive" Wizard in unnamed suburbs, anonymous pubs or over the telephone.

In each interview the American fascist pressed for white races to visit eachother. In each interview his superhuman powers to avoid being found by the police were heightened.

The radio reporter who told Duke that his views were "repugnant" was a rarity.

More typical were those who allowed him to rant on for five minutes at a time about 'white supremacy and the need for 'racial purity'.

Duke's ambition, so he said, was to have a touristtype shot taken of him in his robes in front of the Houses of Parliament.

It was the press who drove him to the appropriate spot on the embankment, watched while he slipped into his robes and snapped away with their cameras while he posed. every single Fleet obliged by bia: his pic ture on Page 1.

Mo it billed him in a role. The familiar := world coziness of the made the picture ed::: Fleet Street feel sate harm.

Yet that is the exactly that the accorded less than ago.

Fascinated, 1 .. strangely attracted ars: iciently repelled Flee: has done for the KAK the fast talking tases: not do for himse.:-. given them the pus: crave.

When Duke ?3.:: white robes :c: B:.: knew what he w3: =: knew the press * ...

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Heathrow engineers vote to continue their strile The firemen's strike - 'selective' trade union work would have left Trotskyists in the role of mere spec "Under the influence of the betrayal by the ristorical organisations of he proletariat, certain rectarian moods and proupings of various rinds arise or are regenrated at the periphery of he Fourth Interrational"

Transitional Programme. This was how Trotsky in 1938 characterised the politcal origins of sectarian elements whose positions, then md now, have always threatmed to liquidate the profamme and principles of Trotskyism into sterile propaanda circles and discussion lubs, divorced from the practical struggle to build a evolutionary leadership 'in he working class.

The decision last month ly twenty two members of he Workers Sócialist League D resign from the Trotskyist rovement, and to seek fusion rith the sectarians of the ternational Spartacist indency is clear proof that be political essence of Trotsky's warning has not een fully grasped even aday.

Sheer arrogance

The twenty-two-not one af whom had been part of the original nucleus that formed the Workers Socialist League in sharp opposition to ectaranism • in December 1974-devoted the 11 weeks »f discussion prior to their teparture at the WSL's iccond Annual Conference to tacking every aspect of the ecord and programme of the novement they had joined.

The leading members of his sectarian grouping lisplayed their particular ment for combining frauddence with ignorance and heer arrogance by usurping he title "Trotskyist Faction" mi entitling their revisionist ipposition document 'In tience of the Revolutionary ¡rogramme"

In taking space in our ¡ess to examine the political isses involved in s the lesertion of these forces we te not so much concerned to nswer their lame and largely listonest arguments for withrawal from the class Figgle. : Our purpose is much more D ensure that our movement di supporters draw the eressary political lessons im the struggle, and gain a learer assessment of the citical problems confrontthe working class as a resie-of which the factional Figgle within the WSL was a ciection.

Exasperation

Trotsky analysed sectarram as the product of istration within certain nes of the workers moverat at the betrayals carried e: by their leaders.

This is then coupled with he frustration of layers rain or around the revoltonary movement at their arlity to win workers to le: programme.

I their exasperation, secLans lose patience with the Diggle for revolutionary edership, and seek to substi•c= the issuing of stern tinatums for the painsling intervention needed to i workers to Marxism. "At their base lies a refusal struggle for partial and ransitional demands, i.e., for he elementary interests and reds of the working massses, • they are today.... They ropose turning their backs • the 'old' trade unions, e.. to tens of millions of rganised workers-as if the lasses could somehow live mtside of the conditions of he actual class struggle! They nain indifferent to the mer struggle within reform* organisations-as if one buld sin the masses without the Workers Socialist League were no exception to this general characterisation.

Seeking to substitute wooden dogma and rigid formulae for the flexible demands and tactical approach of the Trotskyist movement, they grew impatient with every contradiction that conflicted with their schemas.

It is no coincidence that their documents and their contributions in the pre-conference discussion always studiously avoided coming to grips with the real contradictions inherent in the class struggle-the very contradictions that offer opportunities for the revolutionary movement to develop.

In particular they made no reference whatever in their 14-page "positions document" to the international economic crisis of capitalism.

At the centre of this crisis is the desperate attempt by the bourgeoisie in every country to halt the fall in the rate of profit.

Lenin addressing workers This objective economic crisis-itself the product of the irreconcilable contradictions of the capitalist system -provides the material basis for political developments.

It forces the employers in every country onto the offensive against the working class, not simply on the wages front, but also through the drive towards rationalisation, speed-up, mass sackings, and cuts in public spending programmes and social services.

At the same time the intensifying competition for international markets" in a period of recession opens up a period of escalating trade war and protectionism-containing within it the threat of a renewed world war.

Under these conditions the scope that existed in the 1950s and 1960s for capitalism to concede reforms to head off the growing strength The reformist trade union and Labour leaders and the Stalinists who oppose the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and argue for "peaceful', Parliamentary action by workers are now transformed into the open policemen of wage control and speed-up-and 'are increasingly sucked into the most brazen collaboration with the employers and their institutions, as shown by the Lib-Lab coalition deal and the growth of "worker participation" schemes throughout Determination The opposite to this rightward movement by both the capitalist class and their lackeys within the workers' movement is the continuing strength and militancy of the working class itself.

Again and again workers have shown their capacity, their willingness and, given a lead, their determination to struggle not only against the employers but also against the Labour leaders in the government and against their own treacherous union Leyland toolmakers, Port Talbot electricians, Heathrow engineers and firemen have each in their own way inflicted setbacks on their bureaucratic leaders and come into sharp political conflict with the government.

Real opportunities

It is on the basis of these material conditions, and not on the basis of ideal utopian schemas, that the Workers Socialist League has, since its formation, insisted that real opportunities exist for the fight for the Trotskyist programme within the working class.

The Trotskyist programme sets out, in Trotsky's words:

... to help the masses in the process of their daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat".

By mobilising workers in the fight for demands which correspond to their material problems but lead on to show the necessity to overthrow capitalism, the transitional demands bring workers into head-on conflict with their reactionary leaders, who act in defence of the capitalist system.

In this way the question of new leadership is raised in life within the labour movement.

For the programme to have this effect, it is necessPHOTO: John Smith. IFL dreams:

"Revolution is impossible without a change in the views of the majority of the working class, and this change is brought about by the political experience of the masses, and never by propaganda alone" (Lenin, Left Wing ism, p.86).

The problem begins when forces in or around the revolutionary movement lose sight of the revolutionary opportunities contained in the contradictory developments of the class struggle-and respond simply to surface impressions and appearances.

Their view becomes one-sided and cut off from the movement and the conflict that must be the life-blood of revolutionary intervention.

Transitory moods within the working class become mistaken for profound shifts; the apparent "strength" of the bureaucracy is mistaken as a sign of the "weakness" or "illusions" of the working class; and the economic crisis is viewed as a static factor, within which possibly the employers could hold back from attacking the working class.

Such an approach represents a capitulation to the empirical methods of bourgeois commentators.

It leads to two, apparently different types of response.

The opportunist response This is the f Marxism which Second Annual class-softening the fight for transitional demaets, accomodating 'lett abandoning points of principle in the search for an easy "unity" which might offer a short term increase in numbers.

This kind of approach is typified in Britain by the chameleon-like International Marxist Group, and internationally by the "United" Secretariat of the Fourth The sectarian response to the difficulties of intervening in the working class is to avoid the struggle altogether.

The sectarian brands the workers as too "politically backward" to merit the attention of his group of (inevitably petty-bourgeois) "professional revolutionaries".

The time is never quite right for him to transform his copious flow of words into even the most modest form of action.

Sooner than make mistake, or sully a principle, the sectarian will do nothing at all. Trotsky summed up their attitude in the Transitional Programme.

«These nerally h First part of an extend resulted in the split Conference. "Politically backward"

Sterile sterile polit ians ive no need Led ana lysis of the struggl of 22 members of the 1 By John the other shore. They simply dawdle in one place, satisfying themselves with repetition of the selfsame meagre abstractions. Political events are for them an occasion for comment but not for action"

The most chemically pure form of a sectarian organisation today is the international Spartacist tendency.

We will show in due course however that all their efforts to guard against opportunism by abstaining • from action have been to no avail-and that the most bankrupt reformist positions coexist in their propaganda alongside the most hysterical ultimatums to the working class.

But this link between opportunism and sectarianism is no accident-it is the rule.

The apparent contrast between the opportunist's lightminded contempt for principles and the sectarian's lightminded contempt for practical work is only a difference in form.

In practice, since neither the opportunist nor the sectarian will fight for transitional demands against the existing reformist and Stalinist leaders of the working class both leave the working class without an alternative programme or While it mav score a

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SOCIALIST PRESS, heinesias 15 March, 1978 ‚E OF IONARY abstentio e against sectaria:

Vorkers Socialist Lister.

Spartacists merely preserve it in brine, witholding its demands - from the living struggle, the actual consequence of each position is the same.

The intimate working relations between opportunism and sectarianism are most clearly demonstrated by the curious hybrid positions advocated by the Workers Revolutionary Party.

On the one hand the WRP scorns the fight for transWRP leader G. Healy -WRP demonstrates link between opportunism and sectarianism.

itional demands, and advocates in their place simply the expropriation of all major industry: on the other hand WRP members join class collaborationist "participation" committees, TION Fi revisions of League at its leadership proclaims its international movement-the International Committee-is the only defender of Trotskyist principles, and the Trotskyist movement: on the other hand they grovel unashamedly to the Gaddafi dictatorship, to bourgeois nationalist forces in the Middle East and to Vietnamese Stalinism.

The most rank opportunism features side-by-side with ultra-left sectarian positions.

Class context

In devoting considerable attention to tracing the roots of sectarianism and its close links to opportunism we may appear to have digressed from our examination of the recent split in the Workers Socialist League.

But our political struggle cannot be understood outside of its material and class context.

Because while the fake "Trotskyist" faction within the WSL dressed up their arguments with ringing statements about internationalism and the history of our movement, their real starting point was petty bourgeois timidity in the face of the daunting task of constructing Trotskyist party in this country based on the working class.

A second article will examine more closely the positions argued by these national questions.

We should point out here, however, that while there were many points of disagreement on the historical points thrown in for discussion by these people, none of those points provided grounds for a split.

Nor were they seriously argued as such. The real interest of the opposition was in withdrawal from the class struggle of today.

This was why it was no accident that their arguments, conveyed with a trenzy ot arm-waving histrionics, failed to convince a single one of the industrial workers within our movement.

Jaded

The petty bourgeois forces they did attract were a motley combination of raw, inexperienced new members, intermingled with jaded individuals weary of politics, and a number of individuals that responded to the inevitable problems of building a movement in the working class by running away.

These people had, for varying reasons, failed to participate or learn from the major qualitative development of the Workers Socialist League in 1977.

During that year our movement succeeded in a number of areas in sinking far deeper roots into the working class movement.

PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL CASIONI Important new layers wthin the movement were trained to the point where they are capable of intervening and giving firm leadership in workers' struggles.

Rationalisation

But such a change did not emerge spontaneously. A sustained fight had to be waged against certain petty bourgeois elements within the movement who resisted becoming directly involved in the class struggle, and those who deterred by their own failures to develop such work in the past sought out "easy" solutions.

The self-styled "Trotskyist" Faction epitomised that resistance, and in its document gave a political rationalisation for the abstention of such people from all forms of practical struggle-whether it be trade union work, or sales of our weekly paper.

Their statement on trade union work was a masterpiece of dishonesty blended with diplomacy:

"The WSL's trade union work has no overall national plan, and is without clear perspectives. No attempt has been made to concentrate forces in particular factories or unions of importance. In an unconscious way the WSL has turned to work in support of particular strikes as a primary field of activity, without any consideration of what political lessons can be drawn from them, and with no consideration of whether we have the resources to do this work without damaging other fields of work, or the training of cadres"

The whole passage circuitously avoids stating the real thought in the minds of the authors: the belief that cadres can be "trained" by abstaining from intervention particular strikes.

Linked to this is the repulsive notion that Trotskyists should clinically assess the possible benefits to be gained for their movement before supporting workers in Preparation The question that arises, of course, is what are we training cadres for? Are they to be professional talkers, debaters, commentators.

Or are they to lead struggles of workers in preparation for the time of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism?

The Workers Socialist League is absolutely convinced that the second answer is the correct road for Marxists.

We must fight in the class struggle where it erupts; and we must build and strengthen our support where no open struggles are yet in progress.

The sectarians took a very different view. Falsely accusing the WSL of undertaking "haphazard mass work' " , they went on to counterpose the petty bourgeois daydream of smoothlyrun, "planned" trade union groups, based on the full transitional programme.

These, they informed amazed WSL members, should be built:

'in selected factories and trade unions, where our work will have the maximum political impact, and which can serve as an example of how communists do trade union work"

Once again, the essence of the sectarian policy of "selecting" exemplary areas of work is the decision to withdraw from and ignore other areas of work.

Spectator

And, to be consistent, this must be adhered to regardless of developments in the class If such a fanciful schema had been adopted at the First Annual Conference of the WSL, then we would have found ourselves reduced to the role of sideline spectator on almost every one of the major struggles that erupted in the course of 1977!

These struggles-which involved questions of government and the power of the state-began with such outwardly unpromising sections as unorganised and immigrant workers in engineering and film processing plants and the catering trade, as well as apparently conservative layers of skilled engineers, electricians and firemen.

Nobody could have predicted that these sections would lead major struggles.

But then to believe that Marxists can in advance "select" and move into the arena of the main class battles is as dangerous and reactionary an illusion as the IMG's eternal search for a "new mass vanguard" of ready. made politically independent workers with whom the IMG can simply "fuse"

Petty bourgeois notion The concept that underlies this whole refusal to intervene in workers' living struggles is the petty bourgeois notion that Marxists can be recruited and trained on the basis of words, ideas and abstract propaganda alone.

This was spelled out in an underlined passage in the document':

"Revolutionaries today like the Left Oppositionists of the 30s, will not assemble their initial forces primarily through a strategy of direct recruitment of trade-union militants whom we have been able to lead in struggle, but through a central emphasis on the struggle to win subjec. tively revolutionary elements in the workers' movement through the power of our ideas, of our programme."

Trotsky held a very different view of the relationship between propaganda and practical work. Rather than counterposing propaganda to agitational work within the working class, the Transitional Programme spelis out the essential need to combine them, defining the period as:

pre-revolutionary period of agitation, propa. canda and organisation He went on:

'The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution"

The Transitional Programme stresses that it is only on the basis of practical struggle that the bureaucracy can be defeated.

Class society

And unless Trotskyists demonstrate their ability to fight the bureaucracy, the! will be unable to win the best elements of workers.

Propaganda, Trotsky means of proparan distic literature, if it is good. one can educate the first cadres, but one cannot rally the proletarian vanguard. which lives neither in a circle nor in a schoolroom but in a class society, in a factory. in the organisations of the masses, a vanguard to whom one must know how to speak in the language of its experiences.

The best prepared propa. ganist circles must inevitably disintegrate it they do not find contact with the daily struggle of the masses...

During revolutionary events the masses do not inquire for the address of this or that sect, but leap over it".

All the high sounding sectarian calls of winning "subjectively revolutionary elements" by the "power oi our ideas" is an elaborate cover for their real programme of action-professionally intervening in revisionist and centrist meet. ings, attempting to score debating points and win sectarian elements within those left' groups.

Insofar as the WSL nas successfully won forces from other left groups it has been on the basis of our serious approach to the struggle for the programme of Trotskyism within the working class.

Abstention Yet the sectarians would have us engage in an endless. abstract debate completely divorced from any practical work in the mass organis. ations of the working class!

Trotsky had little time for such a position:

"It is not enough to create a correct programme. It is necessary that the working class accept it. But the sectarian, in the nature of things, comes to a stop upon the first half of the task. Active intervention into the actual struggle of the worker masses is supplanted for him by an abstract propagan. da of a Marxist programme"

(Trotsky, Writings 1935-61 Having decided to throw aside the approach embodies in the Trotskyist programme the sectarians within the WSL followed their Spartacis: mentors into the most remote wilds of sectarian abstention Next week:

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Bevin, (later the mramous thought to be detrimental to Secretary Brian Mathers arguing his way past Cowley Though the witch-hunt and attack orchestrated against the nine Cowley militants by the TGWU bureaucracy and other agents of the right wing trade union apparatus is without parallel in recent years, it is not unique in the history of the British labour movement.

At periods of crisis when the struggle between labour and capital is at a sharp point the employing class has frequently been unable to carry through plans unaided and has needed to act through its minions, the treacherous trade union bureaucrats.

Shabby trail

The period of particular parallel with today is the early 1950s when extreme right wing General Secretary Arthur Deakin blazed the shabby trail now being followed by Region 5 officials Deakin set a new style of dictatorial rule over the TGWU, which is now fighting to become Britain's least democratic union.

But nothing starts completely from scratch.

Deakin himself learnt his methods and built up his techniques from an earlier Bevin period of witch-hunts in the TGWU which took place long before the name 'McCarthy' meant anything.

In the 1920s, the major oppositional force within the trade union movement had been the Communist Party, organised initially within the Minority Movement.

Rank and Following the defea of the 1926 General S rike the Minority Movement was reorganised as a Rank and File movement based on trade union branches and shop stewards' organisations.

This Rank and File movement was strong in the bus workers' section of the TGWU and produced the paper The Busman's Punch.

Its particular base was in the Central London Bus Committee of the TGWU, as the Movement had the support of the 31/50 branches of London busmen.

Independent

Then, as now, the union bureaucracy could not tolerate the existence of a body outside its control-a body which instead reflected the independent interest of the working class.

In acting against it the TGWU used the infamous Black Circular issued by the TUC General Council in 1934 which asked the executives of unions 'to give consideration to the possibility of drawing up regulations or amending the rules of your organisations so as to empower them to reject the nominations of members of disruptive bodies for any official positions within your organisation"

Rule change For "disruptive bodies" read-militant bodies prepared to fight for the working class, including, at that time, the Communist At the same time the TGWU adopted a change of rule, requiring members to sign a declaration to "observe the constitution of the union"-a declaration designed to leave the door open for vague and unspecified allegations against militants.

In the 1930s it was the London busmen who received the attentions of the TGWU's kangaroo noosemen.

Constitutional

During a strike over wages and for the seven hour day at the time of the coronation of George VI in 1937, the Central London Area Bus commuce Icluscu lo aurope the Excutive Committee's document on the strike.

They put out their own leaflet and printed material in the Daily Worker.

As the Committee was a constitutional body of the union, there was little the bureaucracy felt able to do about it. minister of Labour in the war coalition and then TGWU General Secretary) spoke in 1937 of the impossibiltiy of carrying out his "duties" (ie. suppressing workers' struggles) when there was an "organisation within an organisation". Clearly Bevin objected to the existence of a body prepared to defend the working class!

He instituted a Finance and General Purposes Committee inquiry into "unofficial" movements.

This star chamber inquiry lead to a motion being forced through the Biennial Delegate Conference of the TGWU.

Under the provisions the rights of members to take part in unofficial action, affiliate to 'unofficial' bodies, or issue journals or literature not authorized by the union, or even to nold unotticial meetings, were drastically curtailed.

Suspended

It also gave the TGWU bureaucracy the ability to proscribe organisations which dealt with wages, hours, conditions, in a manner they 1 1- 1 - 1. - 1 - 1... --1-11larch, 1978 the union.

After the bus strike the Central London Area Bus Committee was suspended and the eight leaders either expelled or banned from the union office; among these eight were Bert Papworth and Bill Jones.

Reinstated

Some militants at this point tried to set up a breakaway union the National Passenger Workers Union.

The CP policy however, was correctly to oppose such breakaways and instead to raise the demand "strengthen the union and change the Papworth and Jones were eventually reinstated into the TGWU after massive protests, and they remained to fight the TGWU bureaucracy under Deakin in the post-war period.

Once again they were to be witch-hunted and purged in the grand era of anti communism in the unionsthe early 1950s.

Next week Deakin and anti-cor

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PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report PHOTO: Joh