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Socialist orgamsaulous establisa fight to build a joint organisation'. withdraw the resolution would be Frame whether one ste over farman OUR FIGHT to do.
has been WOrK. substitute your own.
Centrist
ference resolution on Such 'unity' match between formally united organisation.
the word itself.
forced these suspicions. supporting le tainly - SINO AMISSILES those people who saw is incestaber Approach More significant is I have been asked by our central committee to reply to your letter suggesting that our two 'the framework of a You state that at your conference you agreed 'to in July Yet 1978' which, as you will recall, declared that we were a 'syndicalist break with Marxism'. This you suggest enables our two organisations to engage in joint work and discussion with an ultimate view to fusion As we wrote in our reply to your letter of 1978, if our two organisations were agreed over our analysis of the present situation and what had to be done it Be very wrong of us indeed not to unite our forces. However your attitude at the time made it ab- presented as solutely clear that we were far from, such agreement.
aven vour view orus vou nao to see has vour ou- whether or not we were formally in the same Tactics our readersmo ano our radicon. since they were likely to lead us 'to cross the clas lines' if it came to any large scale convulsion concluded that for you any talk of 'unity' could only be a manoeuvre designed to make tat easier for you Have things changed as a result of the resolution that was passed at vour last conterence? Not if the only change to your basic perspective and orientation terminological, without any real shift in vour analyses are bauce ror wuoul a sum suc Inose wine a tised or anisation to ted in coint our me trid organisation to try and counter our method as soon as possible. "influence LO needed to be fusion where one side calls the other "centrists" we are opposed to slatlupulli can only mean a permanent slanging government and opposition' inside a Yet two years ago when you waged an offensive over the question of unity, you did regard us as centrist. We cannot help suspecting that your basic analysis of our tradition remains the same despite your willingness to jettison The resolutions and speeches at your conference and the article in Socialist Challenge since have rein resolution in favour of a unity apreal syndicalists. ference) of effectively seeing us as centrist; and cerwithin the opposition there was a grouping. Front small but closely linked to leading elements in the Fourth International, who openly call us centrist want us to 'fight for a united organisa tion' including all these elements. If the unitarians ir the Great Debate in Central Hall. For Valerie, Paul Foot's argument against Benn could be summed up in the most hostile terms: 'Paul Foot echoed Hilary wainwrignt s semi-syndicanst tneme or going were power lies' on the shop floor.
Valerie claims to be a supporter of unity. With supporters like that who needs splitters? We can only wonder whether being "semi-syndicalist' we are still in Valerie's eyes a 'syndicalist break with MarxThe same hostility was shown in the major article in Socialist Challenge on the lessons of the steel strike tivities of the SWP only detracted from what is the major task of the strike, 'the and support for the key militants involved.
Tons.
Note the word only. Notning we dia in the strike had any beneficial effect. The hundreds of thousands of leaflets, the many national and local bulletins, the ferent parts of the country to discuss tactics, the work around picket lines and flying pickets, even the call or a adora sunke commulice realistic prospect — it all 'only' deflected, the attention from the key task. For comrade Grogan, as for 'only' an obstacle in the class struggle to be got rid of socil fistsed so hide their identity as revolutionary Action But that is not all. Apparently our comrades ir socialists. Instead, week after sure arcas uncy mauc uc 'mistake' of producing SWP bulletins called Real steer News analysing wilal done from a revolutionary socialist The result, Grogan claimed in a letter in Socialist Challenge a fortnight later, was the isolation of the SWP comrades from the real developments of the rank and file movement. By issuing Real Steel New: as well as taking part in the strike committee, pickets we were trying to impose a party bulletin on the fight inside the structure of the : union, most notably the strike committees. This could only undermine the development of the rank and file leadership For revolutionaries to be open about the lead ther tone offer to non-revolutionary activists (Grogan ISTS councillors, JPs) stops the development of rank and fie leadership! One begins to wonder who are the Now the IMG are entitled to their own opinion of what needs to be done and of where we go wrong. But sucn a rundamentany avergent view mom us ma ke strike as to lead you to say we only deffected people away from the major task hardly lays the basis for real unw orom orcansalous If the articles of comrades Grogan and Coultas were isolated occurences may be we could just let them pass. But they were not. As we have seen, ther followed on from the terms of the unity resolution And their points have been repeated almost word for word in articles since, for instance in an arti cle by another 'supporter of unity •ener router m Socialist Challenge of 22 May. Like Grogan he objects to revolutionaries being open about where they build a party front in opposition to building a naThe hostile tone is contained in his comments on an article by tony. in calling for unitea tront ac We are told that Cliff's call for a united front approach against the Tories conpostons acoote• oy ine last coll The lie that the SWP was opposed to united front (because we refused to hide our politics inside them was common currency from the IMG when you still •described us as 'centrist' (despite the fact that year after vear our conference passed resolutions on the united front — two at the last conference and we have Taken numerous auces oranese sena can continue to repeat the lie again indicates that attitude of many of your leaders to us. remains !
There is another element of hostilitv in vour titude to our organisation to which we unfortunat have to refer. This is the way you continually rep be me or scarce mr your unty resolution nati 'SWP does not have a democratic internal regime This must amaze the thousands of our memb • who. for instance. argued our differing analyse the class struggle, the organisation of blacks a do cal me a suca cust as vigorou over the sort of paper we needed the year before.
Your justification for your lies is tortuous in ! extreme: Steve jettreys supported minority Di Ine movers or ine malority Dosions dope him being elected to the national committee, and i ' delegates overturned that oppositi i ne ract unal une conrerence delegates vote do the recommendations of the leadership shows th the organisation is undemocratic! The fundamen , however your dishonest and illogi our organisation that underlies it. It is a tone t makes us suspect that 'a fight for unity between c orals tons come ones conta acke strife and sectarian sniping with any attempt ourselves to curtall this in the interest of implemer tion of the democratically agreed majority positic being denounced as "undemocratic":
You virtually admit in your unity resolution t wial you foresee is not in really unica action tol single organisation, but endless arguments betw our two organisations even if formally united 'In fighting for unity with the SWP we wo not dissolve me key bonca orterences.a ween us. ' (ie your contention that we "semi-syndicalist) oolcurit on our positions on the un front, the independent women's movem and so on i will be conducted before, dur So the 'fight for unity' will involve you arguing in!
we've already heard from cdes Coultas, Grog this really the way forward to building an organi tion that can overshadow the CP and appeal to th WOrKers looke lo we Lavoll Icil al preocll! isn't it really a guarantee of reproducing on a lar and more disastrous scale the ingness that • Characterises groups such as the si You go on to say 'Public discussion on all points that divide us would be valuable We won wiener vou can reary deneve us. Arune bouts C divide us would go right back to 1947.
No doubt in some of us too there lurks a little s tarian demon that would like to recall the about ti or the rourtn internanonal in 1948 in suade discovering that workers' states had been crea three vears belore without the working class. or y claim in the mid-'60s that there were 'workers a peasants governments' in Algeria, etc, etc, Ilauscall But is that really the recipe for building a pa rooted in the workplace?
The very fact that you can even suggest that si discussion is Vallavic muicales lo us Ilal a zi chunk of your leadership want not a united interv tionist organisation, but a permanent debate in framework which would lead us right away from problems of the working class todav. What we wo end up with would be a slanging match (the tone your articles already prove that) which would hin the modest work that we have been doing to buil revolutionary presence in the class We regard it as our revolutionary duty to av what you mean by 'fighting for unity' we have to we can have none of it.
•wesaved v because we know nawa the IMG there are many revolutionaries who h