The Socialist Labour Party: a Historical Perspective

If we do not learn from the mistakes of history, we are doomed to repeat them

Chris Edwards.

July 1996

The SLP and the Mass Organizations

The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) is an important development for the vanguard of the British working class, To my knowledge, there has never been a case of the left-wing of the trade union bureaucracy breaking from the rest of the Labour and trade union bureaucracy and forming a new party. This was neither the case with the Communist Party (CPGB) in the 1920s nor with the independent Labour Party (ILP) in the 1930s, the two previous historical precedents comparable to the SLP split. However, in mass terms the SLP is still marginal. The greatest danger facing it is one of sectarianism towards the mass organisations of the working class the Labour Party and the trade unions. The Labour Party continues to be the mass party of the working class. It is too big and central to working class politics, in a negative way, to ignore it. It cannot be bypassed. It has to be confronted. In order to become Iess marginal, the SLP must grow at the expense of the Labour Party--a much deeper split in the Labour Party is necessary than that represented by the SLP. In order to provoke such a split, the SLP must carefully monitor the developments in the Labour Party and, whenever it becomes productive to do so, actively intervene into the crisis of this party. It is necessary to build SLP fractions in the Labour Party wherever local circumstances present the possibility of achieving this. This can be done by sending in SLP people. not known by the local Labour Party. Alternatively, it can be done by establishing links with the kind of Labour Party members, and there are lots of them, who say that the SLP's policies are better than Blair's, but they think that the SLP is premature and that the possibilities of fighting inside the Labour Party are not yet exhausted etc. We've all met this type of person. We should say to them "OK", we will work together. We will work outside the Labour Party and you inside it. We will form an alliance. You will be the voice of the SLP (or an SLP-sponsored sympathisers' organisation) inside the Labour Party. These Labour Party fractions will be the lever by which the SLP will break away the broader Iayers of the Labour left which are necessary to build the SLP into a mass force. At a certain point, the fractions can be brought together into a new National Left Wing Movement like the one the CP sponsored in the mid 1930s.

The possibility of achieving this wilI be greater after the election as Labour begins to sell out in office. But the fractions must be put in place now so that they are able to take advantage of the crisis when it happens. At the present time, SLP fraction work in the Labour Party would not be a popular prospect for many SLPers and this proposal will probably go down Iike a Iead balloon in the short term. Many of them are fed up ex-Labour Party members who now have an understandable, but mistaken, sectarian contempt for intervening in the Labour: Party. Others are ex-members of far left organisations many of which have always had a sectarian, abstentionist position in relation to Labour Party entrism or fraction work (e.g. SWP) or who recently developed such a position (e.g. Militant Labour ). Some are ex-members or far left organisations which did not call for a vote for Labour in elections even when the Benn movement was at its. peak: (e.g. The Leninist/CPGB).

At the same time the SLP must continue to challenge the Labour Party electorally and present a left alternative to it. In other words an inside outside strategy is necessary. The trade union Iink. should be utilised, for as long as it continues to exist, to gain access to the Labour Party. And where appropriate, in particular localities where a fight is taking place between Ieft and right SLP members should be sent into the Labour Party, for a temporary period to assist the Ieft. Comrades sent in should link up with the existing Labour left currents and establish a united front with them. The SLP ignores the Labour Party at its periI. If the SLP continues to simply say to the Labour left "come and join us" and Ieaves it at that it will wait a long time. The united front tactic is essential to build the SLP. The SLP is too small as a party to carry out the united front with the Labour Party on a national basis just yet. But it can establish a united front with sectors of its left wing through internal fraction work.

The then revolutionary British Communist Party (CPGB) in the I92Os had just such a strategy under Lenin's guidance. The CP sponsored the highly successful entrist organisation the National Left Wing Movement while continuing to present an alternative to the Labour Party. It also had a revolutionary organisation in the trade unions, the Minority Movement which organised a layer of fellow travellers and sympathisers. These were people who supported the programme of the Comintern, but who were not yet prepared to join the CP. While there are some obvious differences between the CP of the 1920s and the SLP today, the SLP can learn a Iot from the experience of that earlier period.

The same point emerges from the experience of the Independent Labour Party in the thirties and Trotsky's advice to his co-thinkers in Britain in relation to this party. The ILP was a much bigger organisation than the SLP of today and it adopted a position which supported the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat. It also adopted a position that industrial agitation was more important than electoraI work. Urging his supporters in Britain to join the ILP, Trotsky also argued that the ILP must carry out a united front with the Labour Party and the trade unions "while breaking away from the Labour Party, it was necessary to turn towards it" he argued. Unfortunately, not all the British Trotskyists heeded Trotsky's advice and those that did were too weak to influence the ILP.

In relation to electoral work, Trotsky supported the standing of ILP candidates against Labour, even at the risk of splitting the anti-Tory vote, while calling for a vote for Labour where it was not possible to stand ILP candidates. It has been argued by some on the ieft that we should not stand against Labour at all because it would split the anti-Tory vote. It has been argued by others on the left that we should only call for a vote for SLP candidates (plus maybe Militant Labour) and not call for a vote for the Labour Party where we are unable to stand a Ieft candidate. Both of these points of view are mistaken in my view. In an interview with a British Trotskyist, Trotsky argued the following on this issue in the 1930s:

"... it would have been foolish for the ILP to have sacrificed its programme in the interests of so-calIed unity, to allow the Labour Party to monopolise the platform, as the Communist Party did. We do not know our own strength unless we test it. There is always a risk of splitting and of losing deposits but. such risks must be taken. otherwise we boycott ourselves. "

Trotsky, Writings on Britain. Vol 3 p117. New Park Edition.

I think a similar situation exists now and the same approach is necessary. While many comrades in the SLP would probably agree with this they are opposed to calling for a vote for Labour in constituencies where the SLP is not able to stand. Some on the left, like Militant Labour declare that the about Party is not now a "bourgeois workers' party", as Lenin called it, i.e. bourgeois in policy and leadership but with a mass working class/trade union base. Militant Labour argues that it is now simply a bourgeois party like the Liberal Party or the US Democratic Party. Therefore we should not call for a vote for it. In my opinion, this is false to the core. It is certainly true that Blair's objective is to turn the Labour Party into a bourgeois party (Clintonisation) like the Liberals and to break the trade union link in the process. But the question is: has he succeeded? It is clear that he hasn't. Has the trade union link: been weakened? Certainly. Has it been broken? No. Has Blair jettisoned Clause IV and abandoned socialism? Yes, he has. But the Labour Party never had any· socialism to abandon in the first place. The ideology of the Labour Party has never been socialist. It has always had more in common with liberalism than socialism. When the Labour Party was founded the break with the Liberalism was organisational, not political. Clause IV talked of "obtaining for the working class the full fruits of its labours" etc., not the working class obtaining for itself, by its own self-activity, "the full fruits of its labours". So it was always a timid Iiberal reformist approach, not a genuine socialist one.

There is a further aspect of this wrong, lopsided assessment of the Labour Party which says that it is now simply a bourgeois party like the Liberals or US Democrats. The Communist International, under Stalin, made a similar, if more extreme, mistake in its assessment of social democracy in the early 1930s. During the so-called "third period", the Comintern described social democracy not as a social democratic, but as a "social fascist" party. The German Communist Party refused to form a united front against Hitler on this analysis, saying that social democracy was worse than Hitler. We are aIl familiar I' m sure, with the disastrous results of this policy. It allowed Nazism to triumph over the strongest CP in the world. While the SLP' or Militant Labour would presumably have sufficient good sense not to make this mistake again, it is clear that a wrong or one-sided assessment of the Labour Party can become a slippery slope to sectarianism and ultraleftism in relation to the mass organisations. Take the united front. If the Labour Party is no longer a bourgeois-workers' party and is now simply a new a new bourgeois Liberal or Democratic Party then clearly the united front tactic is not applicable to it. The idea of applying the united front to the Liberal Party is ludicrous and, given SLP/Militant's assessment of the Labour party as simply bourgeois, it would be equally ludicrous to apply the united front to it either. The antipathy of both the SLP and Militant Labour to beginning the task of building fractions in the Labour Party, which would be able to capitalise on the crisis of Labour after the elections, is an aspect of this which will lead to its continued marginalisation. This could become more serious if the fascists start to grow if Blair is elected (as they did under Wilson and Callaghan in the 1970s) while the Ieft alternative remains marginalised. What many in the SLP and Militant Labour do not grasp Is that the reason revolutionaries call for a vote for Labour has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with how "socialist" it is or is not. It has nothing to do with whether it is more right wing now than before or whether it is Bennite, Kinnockite or Blairite. It is necessary to call for a vote for Labour now, as in the past, solely because the mass of workers, including a large percentage of its vanguard, continues to have illusions in the Labour Party. We can best break these illusions in practice by putting Labour into power. It then has to either deliver the goods or expose itself as the sham that it is. When Labour does sell out, this then creates the best circumstance for a left alternative, like the SLP, to develop.

Using the method of formal logic (so-called common sense), however, it is often argued by some on the left that for revolutionaries to call for a vote for Labour reinforces the illusions which workers have in reformism. The argument goes something like this: "we are revolutionaries and the Labour Party is reformist. Revolutionaries do not believe that reformism can bring socialism. Therefore, revolutionaries should not calI for a vote for the Labour Party." But the danger of reinforcement of illusions in reformism, i.e. revolutionaries giving left cover to Labour, is avoided by the way we call for a vote for Labour. If we say "vote Labour, but prepare to fight"; if we warn that the Labour Party will, sell-out; if we say, as Lenin did, that our electoral support for Labour is that of "a rope supporting a hanged man", then we do not create illusions in reformism. Our old friend Trotsky had this to say, which I believe was correct then and is still valid today:

"I would say to British workers 'You refuse to accept my point of view. Well perhaps I did not explain it well enough. Perhaps you are stupid. Anyway I have failed. But now you believe in your party. Why allow Chamberlain to hold the power? Put your party in power. I will help you aIl I can. I know that they will not do what you think, but as you don't agree with me and we are small, I will help you put them in.' But it is very important to bring up the questions periodically."

Trotsky, Writings on Britain. Vol 3. p144.

It is clear from the above that the sole purpose for calling for a vote for Labour is the fact that workers still believe in the Labour Party and that the most effective way to prove them wrong is to help them put their party in power so that they can see in practice the treacherous nature of reformism. Has there been a qualitative change today in the nature of the Labour Party? Does the working class no longer have illusions in it? We have already answered the first question negatively. To answer the second, we have to recognise that for a small sector of the broad workers' vanguard there is an increasing political clarity about Blairism. but for the mass of workers there are still significant illusions in Labour reformism. That is why the SLP is, as yet, only a small vanguard party and has not made a breakthrough in recruiting the majority of the vanguard, let alone the mass of workers. To the extent that this situation continues, it will be necessary to call for a vote for Labour where the SLP is not able to stand a candidate against it. This is the position of the SWP. For once in their lives they've got it right. CaIling for abstention is completely irresponsible in my opinion.

In the trade unions, it is clear that the SLP needs to avoid a) allowing the Labour Party to monopolise trade union support and b) to avoid the errors of Third period Stalinism i.e. red unionism, splitting the trade unions to create a rump left wing union confederation. A new Minority Movement would avoid both these pitfalls. Where we have strong support for affiliation to the SLP and a break from Labour, we should urge unions or branches to do so. We must defend the right of unions to affiliate to whichever workers' party they wish to do so. There is no contradiction (except in formal logic) between this stance and campaigning inside the Labour Party against Blair's attempts to break the union link. The SLP should argue for any unions which are not yet willing to affiliate to the SLP to remain affiliated to the Labour Party (and resist Blair) until they are ready to affiliate to the SLP. Where national unions are expelled from the TUC, or branches from national unions, for afiliating to the SLP, we should campaign for them to be reinstated in the TUC/national union rather than setting up new "red" or "SLP"' unions. Fighting witch-hunts can be a powerful way of bringing other rank· and file militants in the unions closer to the SLP. Where we are a minority., we must set up SLP-led Minority Caucases in unions and union branches and get them to affiliate to an SLP-led Minority Movement. This would be short of full affiliation to the SLP, but would show a tangible relation to its trade union wing. The SLP must take the lead in "organising the unorganised" which is its natural constituency. The CP in the twenties made its name by organising unemployed marches and articulating the demands of the most downtrodden sections of the working class. The SLP must do the same. Taking up the attacks embodied in the Job Seekers' Allowance is a good way of beginning the task of building an SLP-led unemployed workers' movement.

Making the SLP More Inclusive--and how not to do it

On the question of the relationship between the SLP and the rest or the left, I would argue that if the SLP is to become something more than just another Ieft party, it will have to grasp the nettle of allowing other existing socialist organisations to affiliate to it. The Labour Party was not just a federation of trades unions. It also had political parties affiliated to it, e. g. the independent Labour Party before it split in the early thirties. The Cooperative Party was another. The British Communist Party applied to affiliate with Lenin's approval, but its application was rejected. So there are precedents in the past for this kind of thing. There is clearly a good deal of hostility to this idea within the SLP leadership. Presumably they fear it would turn the party into a beargarden of competing factions which would make the party uninhabitable for the uninitiated. This danger is real. But the when socialist organisations entered the Labour Party in the early 1980s, the party had a very lively internal life without it degenerating into paralysis. it still functioned and membership grew. Overzealous, hotheaded, sectarian young leftists might be considered by some to be a pain at times, but they also bring enthusiasm and energy. A leadership which cannot respond politically to marginalise politically, what it considers to be ultraleft or sectarian politics is a poor leadership. A leadership which is confident in its own politics ought to be able to respond politically to criticism from such people, without resorting to bureaucratic exclusions. Exclusions can be just as damaging, in a different way, to the party as endless, internalised sterile wrangling by bone-headed robotic sectarians. As many people are driven away by bureaucratic methods against sectarian wranglers as there are by sectarian wrangling.

A US Marxist, Paul Le Blanc, recently put it this way in the US magazine In Defense of Marxism: the test of a good party leadership is not its ability to tolerate what it considers to be an opposition which behave reasonably but its ability to respond politically and avoid a bureaucratic overreaction to, what it considers to be an opposition that behaves provocatively. I think this is very true.

By the same token, it is a definite plus if an opposition presents its criticisms in a way that is capable of being taken on board, even when it is considered that the leadership is hopeless or bankrupt. Any fool can present criticism in a form which is the political equivalent of sticking tongues out and pulling faces in a childish exchange. We are alI familiar with the kind of sectarian outfits whose idea of persuading political opponents to their point of view is the political equivalent of spitting in their eye. They present their viewpoint in such a way as to make it as difficult as possible for their opponents to agree with them. They can then wallow in their own exclusive isolation.

Heated arguments are often unavoidable in politics when basic principles are being violated by opportunist leaderships. Immigration controIs was just such an issue at the SLP launch conference. However, the more substantiated and reasoned our arguments are, rather than arrogantly or demagogicly asserted, the more chance there is of those arguments being partially or wholly embraced later by the very leadership which opposed them earlier on. It is not unknown for shamefaced party leaderships to present as their own good ideas what they previously opposed at an earlier stage, often without realising it, and without acknowledgment, The Ieft shift on withdrawal from Ireland by the SLP leadership at the conference was a good example of this process at work in the SLP. The SLP leadership is now to the left of Militant and the SWP on the question of immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland (the former organisations worry about the "bloodbath" that might result if the troops left and place conditions on withdrawal). We should not underestimate the possibilities for further shifts of this is type and we should make it as easy as possible for the SLP leadership to make them. We can do so by trying to keep the debate on as high and as political, plane as possible. It also does no one any harm whatsoever to keep the debate as good-humoured as possible, rather than getting into demagogy, mud-slinging and trench warfare. It is more difficult for a leadership to make a left shift without losing face when the Iatter occurs. Politics should not be seen as a zero-sum male virility contest.

History has some examples of sell-out bureaucrats who have shifted back in a revolutionary direction. Virtually the whole of the French Socialist Party, including a part of its hitherto social-patriotic Ieadership (i.e. Cachin and Frossard), affiliated to the Communist International after the Russian Revolution. This party had previously voted for its "own" war effort in the First World War. The Bolsheviks allowed these former working class traitors to join the French CP. and they attended the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920. We should neither naively expect this to happen inevitably nor cynically rule it out with our present SLP leadership. Instead we should put it to the test by presenting our case coldly, dispassionately, intelligently and coherently and avoid unnecessary provocation which would only muddy the water. It would also make it more difficult, as we have noted already, for the leadership to make a left shift without losing face. We need more light and less heat, less sectarian posturing by the opposition and less bureaucratic overreaction by the SLP leadership. This will not guarantee that SLP's future but it will maximise the chances of a positive outcome.

Oppositionists within the SLP have to struggle on the issue of the exclusion of other socialist organisations. This is an important issue, but it cannot be won overnight. It is an issue which can only be won by patient, political argument in SLP conferences and branches. To do this it is necessary for oppositionists to stick: around Iong enough to achieve this. It will not be achieved by openly defying the constitution kamikaze fashion and getting expelled. Neither will it be done by breaching the democratic centralism of the SLP and attacking it publicly in meetings, and in the newspapers of other oganisations as has been the case in some places. The only thing such provocations will achieve is more paranoia on the part of the SLP Ieadership and more bureaucratic repression. ln the process, the prejudices of each side are fed by the mistakes of the other side. Instead of positive resolution of problems through high-level political discussion, there is an escalating tension on the basis of suspicion and mistrust, Ieading to a breakdown in the working relations which are necessary to build the party.

It is an old trick of sectarian oppositionists to mount a provocation to wind-up the Ieadership of their organisation so that it over-reacts bureaucratically. The sectarian opposition is then able to shout "repression" and consolidate a layer of intermediate sympathisers around it, who don't like bureaucratic methods. It's a good game, but sometimes has the unfortunate by-product of preventing the person who carries cut the provocation (who runs the risk of expulsion) from participating in future conferences of the SLP, which is where the real battle is, I would have thought. It is thus a slightly self-defeating exercise in the long-term.

The lessons of working class history, which the SLP might usefully learn are, in a nutshell, that the strategy of the revolutionary CPGB in the early/mid 1920s was very effective until the influence of Stalinism became apparent. The National Left Wing Movement in the Labour Party and the Minority Movement in the trades unions maximised the influence on the labour movement of the small British CP.

The CP, and Iater the ILP, were too small to carry out a united front tactic towards the Labour Party on a national scale. The NLWM and the MM were a skillful attempt at a scaled-down version of the united front in which internal rank and file organisation was used in place of the external united front used on the Continent. After the rise of Stalinism, the wrong assessment of social democracy as "social fascist", the failure of the CPs to establish a united front with social democracy, and red unionism, dissipated overnight whatever influence the CP had in the labour movement, and in Germany paved the way for the victory of Hitler.

The majority of British Trotskyists failed to heed Trotsky's good advice about joining the ILP. The ILP leadership failed to heed his advice about building fractions in the trade unions and the Labour Party. Instead, it gravitated towards the CP which was then about to lurch from ultra-leftist red unionism to ultra-right popular frontism, in alliance with the so-called liberal-bourgeoisie. The current policy of the leadership of the Party for Communist Refoundation in Italy, which attended the SLP launch conference, shows that Stalinist popular frontism is alive and well to this very day. The ILP, under the influence of "Third Period" Stalinism, failed to build fractions in the trades unions and the Labour Party and therefore never broke out of its marginalisation. It faded from the political scene after a number of years. The SLP does have some advantages over the ILP in that it was formed and is led by a sector of the left wing of the trade union bureaucracy and it is challenging Blairism in the unions. The General Secretary of the Bakery Food and Allied Workers (BFAWU) was recruited to the SLP at the TUC Congress last Autumn.

The lesson for the revolutionary left is that this time it must seize the opportunity afforded by the SLP to make a quantum Ieap in the fortunes of the left, and not make the mistake made by the British Trotskyists in relation to the ILP in the early 1930s. To achieve this, it is necessary for the revolutionary left to recognise the importance of the SLP and not dismiss it, simplisticly, as a "diversion". The far left must apply to join, or affiliate, to the SLP. Within the SLP, revolutionaries who are already members of the SLP should struggle patiently and intelligently for the SLP to grasp the nettle of the right of other socialist organisations to affiliate to it. They should recognise that the only chance of achieving this is if they act in such a way as to decrease the paranoia of the SLP leadership rather than carry out provocations which will needlessly create more paranoia and make the affiliation of other organisations impossible. Revolutionaries must present their arguments in a such way that they can be taken on board by those with whom they are debating. Exactly the same revolutionary socialist content can be presented either in a form that is intelligent, reasoned, substantiated and nuanced or in a form that is shrill, demagogic, ultimatistic and inept. This is not a recipe for diplomacy (the "D word") although there is a place for this at times, but for a pedagogical approach. Adopting such an approach, it is necessary to work within the framework of the SLP constitution, while trying to change that constitution through patient political struggle. Most importantly of all, revolutionaries will only be taken seriously if they build the SLP.