[I READ with amusement Barney Davies and Cynthia…]

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I READ with amusement Barney Davies and Cynthia McPowell's letter in Socialist Organiser No. 68 giving the SWP's critique of SO's "left reformist policy"

If this letter had been written in 1921 then may be it would have had some relevance, but to say that it reminded me of the old adage "History repeats itself first time as tragedy, second time as farce" would be being lenient with our friends.

Squeezed

The comrades must try and grasp what the real relation of forces actually is between revolutionaries and the rest of the labour movement.

«Not so" say our latterday Lenins from Warrington ho go on to inform us that "the Labour Party is being squeezed between the SDP on its right and the SWP on its left" . Yet if one were to ask the majority of people today what letters "SWP" stood for it would not be an insult to say the likely reply would be "a new sort of washing powder"

In their frenzied and obsessive desire to refight the Russion Revolution, our friends have dressed poor Tom Hart and John Mcllroy (SO 68) in the garb of Father Gapon and Kerensky as a mere parliamentarist flotsam and jetsom that will herald the "Great Coming" of the pure essence-the Socialist Workers Party-to mass influence and leadership of the working class.

Resilient

Throughout their letter Barney and Cynthia continually reduce complex realities to simple truisms. "Power lies on the shop foor not in Terry Duffy's office. Look at Laurence Scotts" , they say.

And what does Laurence Scotts show? Quite simply that "rank and file" organisation, even with 100% support for industrial action as at Scotts, is not sufficent on its own to bring victory. Indeed, Sir John Boyd and Roy Hattersley know very well that if you control the union and Party apparatuses with their collossal funds, official legitimacy and extended domination over confederated union structures then you can isol ate and starve out even the most ded icated and resilient fighters.

Hence the central importance of combining a strategy of strong inter-plant solidarity with a policy of capturing the union organisations for the class struggle left and bringing them under democratic mass control. Simple self-activity at the level of the factory, will sooner or later lead to demoralisation unless it is integrated within an understanding of the dominant power structures of the labour movement and of how to break up these centres.

The same goes for the There is nothing Boyd and Hattersley would like better than for the "Trots" to leave the Party and ghettoise themselves within the SWP.

The major question for revolutionaries. today is to appreciate the unity of the left reformist movement in the Labour Party and the trade unions and that whilst the programme and practical steps taken by the Bennites on this or that question may be woefully inadequate, it is clear that by fighting for a campaigning Labour Party that takes support for industrial struggles seriously, we can gain a massive audience for Trotskyist ideas.

Groups

Yes, at the end of the day the historical evidence tends to show that the Labour Party would be unable to lead the working class to a socialist overturn and a society of workers' councils. However, a socialist Labour Party could take the working class a long way down that road-at least until the conditions were ripe for the formation of a mass revolutionary workers party-which is certainly not what propaganda groups like the SWP are today.

JOCKY ATKINS, Rochdale (EETPU)