THREE years ago the a leading force in establishing Socialist Challenge, approached you with a proposal to form a united revolutionary socialist organisation. You rejected this.
Since then Socialist Challenge and Socialist Worker have gone their separate ways, and have had many differences: Of these the most important surrounded the attitude which socialists should take to the Labour Party. Socialist Challenge argued that the democracy struggle in the Labour Party, the Benn Deputy leadership campaign, and other struggles in the were so important that it was not enough for socialists to support them passively from the outside.
We said that they had to take part, side by side with Labour Party activists and trade unionists who did notwant to create a new party but did want to struggle for socialist policies, did want engage in extraparliamentary activity to achieve them, did want to challenge the right wing leaders of the Labour Party and unions, and centred their aspirations on the person of Tony Benn.
We said so for two reasons: first, because we thought that what they were fighting for would advance the socialist cause; and second because we knew that the ideas of revolutionary socialism would not get a hearing unless we threw ourselves actively into their struggle.
Socialist Worker took the opposite view.
Now, you have addressed an open letter to Labour Party members which Socialist Challenge supporters calling on them to withdraw and Join your organisation.
What has happened since you rejected fusion three years ago? Let us take the major issues which socialists have had to face up to. to and Groups to purify the party. much larger -many the Malvinas war, did oppose the war in Ireland (and warmly applauded Bernadette when she addressed her first Tribune rally last week), did back the Palestinians against does support the Salvadoreans and wants to get out of NATO and has taken active part in extraparliamentary actions.
The question we should therefore dif- ask is this: has there been a greater radicalisation inside the orbit, or outside the orbit, of Tony Benn? And would you have been more effective raising your policies inside, or outside, this layer of people?
You have not grown you have wound up your rank organisations claiming they have no base in the working class because the stewards have degenerated - in the middle of a giant wave. of health strikes. You have not been more efTective in getting action around your cite demands. And when massive struggies around democracy leadership of the Labour Party gripped both the Labour Party and the unions, your only role was to vote Benn when it came to the crunch." What you have done, comrades, is precisery wnat you accuse une maintani But and the Labour left of doing: giving up and running away from a real, SWP's Tony Cliff, his response to declining influence was to wind up Women's Voice and Rank and File did stand up against mass struggle. Your approach is very close to abstention:
Maynard reminded Neil Kinnock last week, in a struggle an abstention is a vote against.
Party over: on the fiercest part is just beginning. new left in the Labour Party, at the base of the constituencies and unions doesn't want to be saddled with this new NEC, doesn't want the purge, and does want to see a government that will carry out the new policies which Labour has voted for.
this leadership, possible to stop the witch-hunt, and possible to force a and file Labour government to carry out these policies: provided, ourselves both understands that independent mass action will be needed to impose these policies on an cabinet.
it help socialism if the socialists are expelled from the Labour Party? Would they then devote building a real socialist party? We don't think so. You know, and we know, that it will be a tremendous defeat: and the effect of every defeat is always to weaken the left. Every socialist knows this, and that is why and as Joan unions.
contrary, the The Morcover, it is possible to unseat union bureaucracy.
as you and agree, the left ing WOTTS unwilling Labour So let's ask a simple question: will side the themselves to the seventics Party. the witch-hunt is being resisted so fiercely. There is going to be a big fight, and the fight will spill into the aren't you putting yourselves in a place where you can not just wait for such developments Nor can you pretend that the unions are some kind of safe haven in which the Labour Party does not intrude. Why, after three years of selling out strikes, does Sid face his most serious challenge over his behaviour at Labour Party conference? This fact alone shows the fundamental flaw in your argument about the You see, it is very double edged: you say, and we agree, that the union caders are a 'conservative layer in British society, committed to improvCOOTERS framework of capitalism'. But may we remind you that the union leaders do also play some role in the unions? Are you proposing to organise outunions? You can't judge whether or not to conduct a fight in an organisation simply because it is dominated by bureaucrats.
The problem is this: how will we assemblethe forces that can mount a effective challenge to the leadershir of the right wing? The experience o shows that only ceed: and that means, given the prelevel of working class consciousness, a chailenge to the right wing's role in the Labour Party.
And it is not a realistic perspective to tell workers who want to defeat this leadership now, that they should wait until the SWP is big enough to present an alternative to the Labour Party!
The problem, comrades, is that the union leaders operate on two fronts: in the unions and in the Labour Party. Trade unionists all see the Labour Party as the party of the unions'. On the other hand this makes much caster for the . union bureaucrats to hide hehind the excuses about waiting for a Labour government.
But on the other hand it makes it harder for them to stop socialists inside the Labour Party from organising to defeat them.
Whenever in the past they have succeeded in driving socialists out of the party it has never been because they managed to foist mass expulsions me party: i nas because the socialist themselves backed up and ran away.
That is why Lenin, for example, proposed affiliation to the Labour Party. He recognised that as a purels parliamentary party, it was forced to allow great freedom to its members to organise or it would lose its claim to represent all working class opinion He wanted to ensure that the com took advantage of this freedom help Labour Party members fight the union leaders both in the unions and in the Labour Shock And that was the importance of the Deputy Leader You see. it is true that the Campan or constitutional reform 'did not set out to alter the fundamental character of the Labour Party'. It could not have done so and we have never claimed it would. But we do think that the reforms weakened the bureaucracy's grip, not just on the Labour Party but on the unions too. For what did the campaign do? It shook the leaders to their roots!
It forced them to confront their members and explain why they support allegedly left wing" policies and vote for Labour leaders who oppose them. It gave the trade union rank and file the opportunity to take on their leaders and call them to account for their politics Now, of course, because the campaign was led by reformists the controntation was limited and when it was over it was wound up. But didn't it make it rather casier to wind it up for the fact that you weren't in it?
Nor is this the only trade union development which is conditioned by whaLers pere the block vore. The Let's take the block vote. most bizarre thing about your attitude, comrades, that vourselves cannot deal with the block vote because for you it is a non-issue You take the left to task for failing to deal with it — but how will you deal with it? What do you think the unions should do — affiliate to the SWP? For our part we have some very concrete proposals that we shall be taking up over the next few months. For example, how about a campaign to en sure that the block vote is cast for unilateralist candidates in the NEC elections? It will be rather easier to keep track of these votes now that the Labour Party has agreed to a recorded vote - but perhaps you didn' notice Or how about a campaign for a split block vote according to votes at union conference for different positions? These kinds of ideas, which understand the relations between the bureaucracy and the Labour Party but try to use it against them, to fight for accountability, are impossi ble unless you are part of the struggle in the Labour Party.
But comrades you are not no because you have been witch-hunted out, but because you ran away before the fight began.
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Nor is the struggle in the Labour but help lead them?