On Scargill's call for a Socialist Labour Party By Dave Hyland The International Communist Party has consistently campaigned among workers and youth and all those affected by the deep crisis of the capitalist system for the building of a new workers' party. After the Labour Party conference last year, the ICP issued a statement, Workers must build a new party, published in the International Worker and distributed as a leaflet in its thousands. To deepen the discussion on the vital historical and political questions raised, a conference was convened on February 25/26 this year in Sheffield that was attended by over 80 workers, youth and students. Contributions explained that building a new party to represent its own independent class interests arises as an objective and urgent political task for the working class. It was stressed that the rapid right wing political degeneration of the Labour Party and the decision of its leader, Tony Blair, to ditch the 77 year old reformist Clause IV from its constitution could not be approached simply from the standpoint of the actions of "bad individuals". The political and social decomposition of the Labour Party represents the historical bankruptcy of national reformism in the face of profound objective changes in world economy over the last 20 years. This has destroyed the semi-insulated and protected national economies which in the past formed the material basis for the national programme and policies of the reformist parties and trade unions in the west and the former Stalinist regimes in the east. In May, the Militant Labour group - formed by the majority of the Militant tendency that broke from the Labour Party in March, 1993 - published an article in the Militant newspaper by its National Secretary Peter Taaffe, re-appraising its attitude to the Labour Party after its ditching of Clause IV. Taaffe concluded by calling for the building of a new mass socialist party and declared that "while building our own organisation, we will support all attempts to create a genuine, mass socialist party in Britain." The International Communist Party welcomed Taaffe's article and accepted it as a genuine call for open discussion among socialists about the type of party the working class must build and on what programme. To take forward this discussion, the ICP's National Secretary, Dave Hyland, wrote an Open Letter to comrade Taaffe. The letter stressed that the workers' movement in Britain had to draw up a historical balance sheet of its experiences with reformism and Stalinism. These showed that a genuine socialist party cannot be built on a parliamentary perspective, based on the trade unions or a national reformist programme. The collapse of Stalinism and reformism is a tremendous historical vindication of the 70 year struggle carried out by the Trotskyist movement, the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. The fight in defence of the historical principles of the Trotskyist movement had been taken forward throughout the post-war period by the International Committee of the Fourth International, enabling it to accumulate a rich theoretical and political capital. Despite the political differences that separate us, the ICP was inviting Militant Labour to begin a sincere critical appraisal of reformism and Stalinism in the context of the discussion on building a genuine socialist party in Britain. The ICP is still awaiting a reply from comrade Taaffe. The importance and urgency of clarifying fundamental historical and programmatic questions has never been greater. This has been re-emphasised by the recent disclosure that Arthur Scargill, the Stalinist President of the National Union of Miners, has produced a document calling for the building of a new Socialist Labour Party. What attitude should all those genuinely seeking to build a new workers' party take towards Scargill's document? The following article seeks to address this question in order to develop the discussion among socialist minded and class conscious workers on the type of party the working class needs. The October issue of The Miner, the journal of the National Union of Miners, carried an article by NUM President Arthur Scargill in which he raised the possibility of breaking with the Labour Party and building a new socialist party. Shortly after this, Scargill presented a nine page discussion document, "Future strategy for the left", to a carefully selected meeting of trade unionists in London, made up of members of the Labour Party, the Communist Party of Great Britain and various middle class radical groups. Scargill outlined the reasons why he was calling on them to break from their support for the Labour Party and launch a new "Socialist Labour Party", to be founded on May 1, 1996. A report back meeting of that London discussion was given to a similar audience in Glasgow. It was from that meeting that Scargill's document was leaked to the Glasgow Herald. Scargill has played a dominant role in the labour bureaucracy for several decades. Because of his position as leader of the NUM, whose membership have a history of uncompromising and militant trade union struggle, Scargill's carefully cultivated public persona is that of the "militant workers leader". This false perception has been encouraged by both the capitalist media and the radical groups who often portray him as a revolutionary figure. For this reason Scargill's call for the building of a new party provokes a reaction both in the labour bureaucracy, the Stalinist and middle class radical groups and in the working class itself. The fact that Scargill feels the need to produce his document now is an objective expression of the intensifying social polarisation and the increased tempo of political events in Britain. It is a clear indication that the most conscious section of the bureaucracy are acutely aware of the growing alienation workers and youth feel towards the rotting reformist organisations and are discussing ways of organising a new political trap. This is why all those who feel a responsibility towards the workers movement and who are genuinely seeking to build a party that will represent workers' independent class interests must address Scargill's document seriously and carefully explain its political significance. Fundamental questions The advanced stage reached in the historical crisis of the world capitalist system confronts the working class and the whole of mankind with a catastrophe. While a tiny minority of capitalists enrich themselves, growing numbers of the world's population face poverty, mass unemployment and intensified exploitation as well as the increasing threat of racism, fascism and a third imperialist world war. Entire working class communities have been reduced to concrete deserts and deprived of jobs, education, public utilities and the social dignity won in over a century of struggle. The reformist Labour Party and trade union organisations were built by the working class at the beginning of the century to fight for and defend these hard won social gains from the capitalist class. They have betrayed every struggle over the last 20 years. Abandoning the working class, they have transformed themselves into the open and direct tools of the capitalist state, the banks and transnational corporations. The workers' movement must build its new political party and class struggle organisations to defeat the barbaric plans of the capitalist class by overthrowing the entire profit system or it will be destroyed through social atomisation, fascism and war. In carrying forward this urgent task fundamental theoretical, historical and programmatic questions can not be put aside. For a genuine socialist party to be built it is these basic political issues that have to be clarified. It is not just a question of building any political party or "class struggle" organisations. While tactical initiatives play an important role, the class character of a party is primarily determined by its historical perspective and political programme. In response to the betrayals and collapse of its old organisations the working class has tended to adopt a deeply sceptical attitude towards politics in general. But it is precisely at this point that workers must learn the strategic lessons of their own historical experiences throughout this century by drawing up a balance sheet of reformism and Stalinism. It is now 95 years since the Labour Party's predecessor, the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) first met at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street in London. In those nine decades the working class in Britain and internationally have been through extremely bitter experiences with reformism and Stalinism. To accept Scargill's position that a new socialist party should be based simply on a re-run of the LRC, would only provide the reformist and Stalinist bureaucrats responsible for the present disastrous situation with a political amnesty and lay the basis for even greater betrayals and defeats. Socialist minded workers and youth must approach the vital task of building a new workers party in a politically serious way. This means placing Scargill's document itself in its proper political context. Scargill's political history It is not possible, or necessary, to review every aspect of Scargill's political career. The ICFI and ICP have produced many statements and articles that draw attention to Scargill's reactionary role. The intention here is to merely sketch a brief history of the central issues. Scargill has operated as a Stalinist bureaucrat within the leadership of the NUM and the labour bureaucracy in Britain for well over 20 years. As a teenager he joined the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain and later stood as its candidate in Worsbrough, Barnsley. He was part of a Young Communist League delegation visiting Moscow in 1957 in the wake of Khruschev's "secret speech" at the 20th CPSU Congress criticising Stalin and in the aftermath of the Hungarian Uprising. He has consistently publicly defended every crime of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy. Scargill was attracted to the CPGB because he shares the Stalinists' nationalist outlook and a conception of "socialism" that is not socialism at all but bureaucratic centralism. It is the "socialist" perspective of the petty-bourgeois bureaucrat - reforms imposed from above by a centralised bureaucratic apparatus within the confines of the existing nation state structures. From this standpoint Scargill has always been ferociously hostile to the fight carried out by the Marxist movement to mobilise the struggles of the working class on an international strategy and its own independent political perspective in a struggle to overthrow the profit system. That is why, despite his workerist demagogy, he has limited the militant trade union struggles of the miners to putting pressure on the capitalist state to force it to implement the bureaucracy's corporatist strategy. In 1974, the NUM leadership negotiated the corporatist "Plan For Coal" with the incoming Labour government and used it to stifle workers' opposition to pit closures as Wilson and then Callaghan rationalised the coal industry. In 1984-85 Scargill once again corralled the miners' bitter strike struggle behind this programme to preserve the interests of the NUM officials and prevent the development of a political movement of the working class to bring down the Thatcher Tory government. The consequences of that betrayal and defeat for the miners and the whole working class have been catastrophic. It led to the decimation of mining communities, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a further ten years of Tory rule. The objective changes that had taken place in world economy meant that the British ruling class were in no position even to make the corporatist concessions of the past. The historical bankruptcy of the reformist and Stalinist perspective was fully exposed. But because of the protracted domination by the social democratic and Stalinist bureaucracy over its organisations for 70 years, the working class was unable to draw the strategic lessons of this and other defeats during the 1980s. This has led to enormous political confusion and disorientation. In the absence of a clear perspective amongst workers, it has meant that despite their betrayals and right wing political degeneration the labour bureaucracy has been in a position to maintain political control. The role of the Socialist Movement The labour and Stalinist bureaucracy have been provided with valuable assistance by the middle class radical tendencies. Towards the end of the miners' strike, when the anger of the miners and all class conscious workers towards the labour bureaucracy was at its sharpest, Scargill and the Campaign Group of "left" Labour MPs, headed by Tony Benn, created the Socialist Movement. This is a Popular Front alliance supported by various middle class radical groups from the state capitalist Socialist Workers Party, the Pabloite Socialist Action to the Workers Revolutionary Party-Workers Press. These groups represent a middle class social tendency that adapted and thrived on the bureaucratic corporatist state structures established after the war. With the collapse of these structures they have all moved sharply to the right and directly into the camp of the capitalist class. This "left" political formation has performed a real service for the bourgeoisie. Their role has been to encourage scepticism towards history and politics in general and socialist politics in particular. They have mobilised to prevent workers and youth from intervening as the Labour Party completed its social and political degeneration and its transformation into a right wing capitalist party of the Tory or Liberal Democratic type. At every sharp turn in the objective situation that threatened to break apart the political paralysis holding back the working class, the Socialist Movement would be swung into action to sabotage such a development. In 1992 Scargill and the Socialist Movement launched the "Save our Pits" campaign. It was based on an economic nationalist programme and oriented towards sections of the trade union bureaucracy, the Confederation of British Industry, the Church and small businessmen. Its purpose was to create a popular front to suppress any independent political movement of the working class, when, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism the entire financial and political strategy of the bourgeoisie was threatened. It gave the ruling class and the labour bureaucracy time to work out a new strategy. Divisions within the Socialist Movement Scargill's document was not motivated by a desire to open up a discussion among workers and youth. It was written as an internal document for the petty-bourgeois milieu that make up the Socialist Movement. Differences within its ranks have until now been kept within the closed circle of the labour bureaucracy, but the leaking of Scargill's paper has thrown a light on the disputes that have emerged during the last period. These differences are driven by the economic and political crisis of British imperialism as the crisis of world capitalism deepens and the intensifying class polarisation. "Future strategy for the left" essentially represents Scargill's reply to Tony Benn's supporters in the Socialist Movement. Benn has stated at every opportunity that there must be no split form the Labour Party. To justify this cowardly position, he cites as a historical precedent the split by the centrist Independent Labour Party (ILP) from Labour in 1932. Declaring that the "same mistake must not be made again", Benn insists that the lesson which must be drawn is that the ILP became increasingly isolated and was finally forced to return to the Labour Party in 1946. In fact the ILP was not isolated because of its split from the Labour Party, but because it rejected the call to join the Left Opposition and the Fourth International and orient to the working class on the international socialist perspective and a revolutionary socialist programme in a struggle against social democracy and Stalinism. Instead, the ILP leaders oriented their organisation towards the labour bureaucracies on a centrist perspective and programme. They claimed that the principled international perspective and revolutionary programme of the Left Opposition represented "sectarianism". Contrasting the "small" Trotskyist groups to the "big" social democratic and Stalinist organisations, the ILP vacillated between the counter-revolutionary Second and Third Internationals. This was why they became increasingly isolated from the working class, finally liquidating themselves back into the reformist Labour Party. In contrast to Benn's position, Scargill fears that the Labour Party has become over-exposed politically and is calling on the supporters of the Socialist Movement to break organisationally with it and help him set a new reformist trap for the working class. In reaching this decision, he was probably influenced by the 80 meetings he held up and down the country last year to try and mobilise support around a campaign to "Defend Clause IV" within the Labour Party. These meetings attracted very few workers or youth and were almost exclusively attended by bureaucrats and middle class radical forces. In his capacity as President of the International Miners Organisation. Scargill will also be fully aware of developments taking place throughout Europe and the value of similar political formations that are being created. In one of the most revealing passages in his present document he states: "Today, radical opposition in Britain is symbolised not by the Labour and trade union movement but by groupings such as those which defeated the Poll Tax, the anti-motorway and animal rights bodies, Greenpeace and other anti-nuclear campaigners, and those fighting against open cast mining. "These are now the voices of protest and direct action, reminding us that only through direct - including industrial - action and defiance of unjust laws can we achieve real advances, whilst a moribund Labour Party and trade union hierarchy pleads with citizens to accept and submit to those laws. The environmental and community activists are doing a good job, but, inevitably, their aims are "single purpose" with no clear political perspective. It is a tragedy that the Labour Party is not at the centre of co-ordinating and organising such campaigns. A Socialist Labour Party would be able to galvanise mass opposition to injustice, inequality and environmental destruction, and build the fight for a Socialist Britain". Scargill is expressing concern that social movements are already developing outside of the control of the labour bureaucracy and its radical apologists within the Socialist Movement. He is trying to convince them they need to make a tactical turn so that the bureaucracy can bring these movement back under control. So he appeals to his audience: "Socialists faced with this situation must decide what to do... Do we, and others who feel as we do, stay in a party which has been and is being politically cleansed? Or: do we leave and start to build a Socialist Labour Party that represents the principles, values, hopes and dreams which gave birth nearly a century ago to what has, sadly, now become New Labour?" He warns; "The case for a Socialist Labour Party is now overwhelming... we do not have the luxury of time. Sooner, rather than later, a Socialist Labour Party will be born". Scargill demands "No politics" He concludes his document by outlining the structure and constitution this new party should adopt. "I believe the case for a Socialist Labour Party ( SLP ) is now overwhelming - but if such a party is to be born it must be on the basis of class understanding, class commitment and Socialist policies. A Socialist Labour Party would require a simple Socialist Constitution and a structure designed to fight our class enemies. This structure would demand an end to internal wrangling and sectarian arguments." He calls for the convening of a special "Discussion Conference" prior to an Inaugural Conference to be held ideally on May Day, 1996 and for this new party to then fight every parliamentary seat. The differences within the Socialist Movement are the form through which the labour bureaucracy and their apologists are working out their strategy in response to the new stage in the deepening social and political crisis in Britain. Scargill is calling on the social democrats, Stalinists and middle class radicals to help him put forward the illusion in the working class that a that a new reformist Labour Party can be built to defend their class interests. Benn's supporters are at this point resisting this, because they are concerned that any split with the Labour Party will open up a political discussion within the working class that they will not be able to control. Because of their own role over a whole period of time, they themselves are deeply discredited. In using the Labour Representation Committee as his model, Scargill is assuring all of these counter-revolutionary political tendencies that they will be provided with a political amnesty. By declaring that, "This structure would demand an end to internal wrangling and sectarian arguments", he is making clear that nobody will be allowed to raise the strategic lessons of the working class's historical experiences with reformism and Stalinism or the political history of those like himself within its leadership and ranks. At the moment all the elements that constitute the Socialist Movement have come out against Scargill's proposal and he has publicly denied to the capitalist media that he has called for the building of a new party. But this can quickly change in line with the rising tempo of the class struggle. Whatever the final outcome of this dispute within the Socialist Movement the type of "socialist party" being proposed by Scargill would be a political vehicle for former Stalinist and social democratic bureaucrats to head off the working class. This is not 1900 and there can be no national reformist solutions to the social crisis facing the working class. Any organisation based on such a perspective would quickly degenerate even further, becoming increasingly nationalistic, reactionary and openly hostile to the class interests of the working class. Objective content The fact that Scargill has felt compelled to write this document has a profound objective content. It has been produced it at a time when the crisis of British capitalism - driven forward by the world capitalist crisis - is set to deepen still further, and when there are powerful indications throughout Europe and internationally that the working class is once again becoming conscious of itself as a class and has renewed confidence in its ability to take the road of class struggle. As a result of the protracted undermining of a Marxist political culture and in the absence of a clear political perspective for putting an end to the capitalist profit system, these struggles can be brought back under the control of the re-constructed former Stalinist and reformist bureaucracies with the assistance of the middle class radical forces. But the objective conditions actually exist for ending this political disorientation within the working class, breaking the grip of these reactionary political forces and building a genuinely mass revolutionary world party, the Fourth International and its sections in every country. That is why clarification on the historical and strategic experiences of the workers movement and discussion on political perspective and programme is so critical. All class conscious workers and youth seeking answers to political questions and a socialist way forward have a responsibility to demand that all discussions on the building of a new workers' party have to take place in an atmosphere of open and frank political debate. All the theoretical and programmatic gains made by the Trotskyist movement in its 70 year struggle against Stalinism, social democracy and centrism must be allowed to be raised. Only a party that is based on an international strategy and revolutionary socialist programme can today defend the past social gains and represent the independent class interest of the working class. The ICP will continue to take forward its campaign within the workers' movement for the building of a new workers party on the basis of these fundamental questions and is prepared to discuss with all those genuinely interested in honest and objective discussion. Back