Why Marxists are in the Labour Party

Scan page 5

"disrupter' - the accusations fly thick and fast.

But why are Trotskyists in the Labour Party? And do we have a right to be in the Party?

CHRIS ERSWELL replies to the right wing.

TROTSKYISTS are accused of being "secretived" and "dishonest" organised clandestine "tendencies" and "factions"

But people who say it is wrong for groups to organise themselves within the Party as a faction or tendency around a newspaper should bear the following points in mind:

* The very same people who are complaining now about internal tendencies would be the first to moan if pendent parties up inde- these groups set their own candidates against Labour, splitting the vote.

* Historically the Labour Party was set up not as a single homogeneous party, but as a • federation working class organisations which individually retained their autonomy, internal rules and full timers.

The trade unions, the Independent Labour Party and other socialist groups came together in the aftermath of the • Taff Vale judgment to form the Labour Party. Did this mean that these individual organisations, the trade unions and the ILP, had to sack all their full-timers newspaperon. down and close down their Did this mean that these organisations had to stop holding conferences and electing their own officers?

To even ask the question is to show how ridiculous June 27 ~ 00 2 2 9 2 3 30 is the talk about "parties within parties". Is the ILP today a "party within a party'? The Co-Operative Party? The unions?

What about the Fabians and the Tribune Group -let alone the Manifesto Group, Labour Solidarity or the Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding?

Long before Trotskyism was even. heard of, the revolutionary British Socialist Party, forerunner of the CP, was affiliated to the Labour Party. John McLean, Britain's greatest Marxist revolutionary, stood in elections as a Labour candidate. The young land then revolutionary) Communist Party applied to affiliate as an autonomous organisation to the Labour Party. They were denied this right because the right wing McDonald leadership didn't agree with the CP's views - so much for democracy. Using the Tory POLISH SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN bulletin: new issue out now. Individual copies, or saleor-return bundles, can be obtained from Marion Pitman, 29 Hampton Road, Twickenham, Middlesex. press they managed to sway Labour Party conferences against the CP's request to affiliate.

Affiliation would have entitled local CPs to send a delegate to local GMCs and District Labour Parties as well as nationally a delegation to Labour Party conference - just like all the other affiliated organisations. It was denied them because their views were different from McDonald and Snowden.

Five years later, these same right wing careerists deserted the Labour Party and formed a coalition with the Tories.

Chance

The Trotskyists, who carried on the revolutionary tradition of the early CP were faced with a similar problem. Like the CP, there was no chance of them gaining the right to affiliate to the Labour HEALTH WORKERS for the Full Claim meeting -Tuesday June 29, 7.30 at Headington Labour Club.

Speakers (in personal

capacity): Dominic Johnsor (NUPE convenor, Churchill hospital), Jo Coxhead Oxford CoHSE secretary).

SOLIDARITY with health workers: North Islington Labour Party meeting. Thursday June 24, 7.30 at Archway Central Hall.

Speakers: Jeremy Corbyn (Labour prospective Parliamentary candidate for North Islington and NUPE), Syed Boukhari (CoHSE)

LONDON Workers' Socialist League educationals on basic Marxism. New series starting soon. Write for details and registration to WSL, PO Box 135, London NI ODD.

SOUTH AFRICA Freedom Day rally. Saturday June 26, 6.30 to 8.30 at Conway Hall, Red Lion Sy, London WCI. Also films, workshops and exhibitions from 3pm lo. 6.30 al Conway Halt, and music and dancing from 8.30 al Students Union, City University, Northampion Sq. Organised by Anti Apartheid So they joined anyway as individuals, and organised with Labour c i-thinkers, retaining their autonomy in defiance of the right wing autocrats.

Trotskyists and others in the Labour Party today are only asserting our right to fight for our views in an organised and effective way, against the attempts of the autocratic dictators who have historically denied the revolutionary left the right to affiliate as autonomous organisations.

Moreover, the word 'entryism' rings false -with its implications of Trotskyists appearing from some dark, mysterious corner and "infiltrating" the wholesome ranks of Labour. Many Trotskyists were active in the trade unions and Labour Party well before they became convinced of Trotskyist ideas - and indeed they became convinced of those Saturday June 19 to Sunday June 27 is Gay Pride week. Events on Saturday 26th include:

GAY PRIDE carnival parade. Saturday June 26, assemble 12.30 at Reformer's Tree, Speakers' Corner, London, and march at Ipm to Malet and march at Inm in Matat Street.

Other gay pride events: * Dance and disco, Manning Hall, ULU, Malet St, 4.306.30 and 7.30-midnight. * Gay black group - all day event at ULU, Malet St. * Gay youth movement (under 26) - meet outside Buckingham Palace for picnic, 1am. * Gay workshops 3-5.30. koom ze ULU. isn gays in f 1..111T1 London: workshop 5.307.30. Room 20 ULU. * Information stall at Gay's the Word bookshop, 66 Marchmont St, London WCI - 1lam to 8pm.

WORKERS' march against Racism: FROM Brick Lane through Brixton to TUC conference in Brighton. September 4 to 8. Sponsors include: Jayaben Desai, Anwar Ditta, Nasira Begum, Tony Benn, Ted Knight, Ken Livingstone, Paul Boateng. Details 01-274 3951. ideas precisely as a result of their experience in the labour movement.

Having disposed of one red herring, we must consider the objection raised by Michael Foot that belief in parliamentary democracy is a litmus test for membership of the Labour Violent Trotskyists are denounced because we advocate the violent overthrow of the state, because we allegedly wish to set up an Eastern European style dictatorship, and because we allegedly deny the legitimacy of parliamentary democracy.

A picture is painted of mindless hot-heads engaging in violence for no reason, for the hell of it. The peaceful road to socialism is contrasted to the horrors of the . Stalinist atrocities. Leninism is glibly equated with Stalinism and the Trotskyist struggle against Stalinism is dismissed with a contemptuous wave of the hand.

Truth

To disentangle the truth from this web of facile and cynical slander is not easy, given that any army of professors, wiseacres, and media-men have spent half a century burying it.

To deal only with the central issues: do Trotskyists believe in parliamentary democracy? To answer this question properly and clearly we must say that we believe that only a parliament of non-exploiting working people can be democratic, and we believe that a parliament dominated by the state of the exploiting classes cannot be truly democratic because they will respect their material interests before a democratic decision that seeks to re-distribute their wealth.

Majority

An institution can only be truly democratic to the extent that all participants respect the majority decision.

Those who impudently ask whether Trotskyists believe in parliamentary democracy should consider this: instead of looking for evidence of Stalinist totalitarianism amongst the anti-Stalinists by way of Orwellian double-think, surely any true democrat (like Michael Foot) should address himself to another slightly more obvious question.

Do the employers and their political representatives believe in parliamentary democracy? Will they respect a majority decision which outlaws their robbery of the working class?

If we really live in a free democracy, why is it only confined to the House of Commons? Why does democracy end when you enter the corridors of Whitehall?

Who elects the senior civil servants, the officers in the army, the Chief Constables, owners of industry, editors of newspapers, judges, etc?

Do they believe in parliamentary democracy?

The answer is, of course, yes - as long as no action is taken to outlaw their massive wealth and colossal robbery of the working class.

Instead of looking for dictatorship among the democrats, let us look at a real contradiction staring us in the face: the undemocratic nature of the bosses' state outside of Parliament. Why is Michael Foot silent about this?

Trotskyists are* rebuked for advocating violence to overthrow the employers. This is supposed to place us outside of the peaceful reformist traditions of the Labour Party.

"Extra Parliamentary" activity is condemned when carried out by the working class, but when the Law Lords wage an extraparliamentary war against even the very modest GLC fares policy, it is best to remain tactfully silent.

Yet those who preach pacifism to the unarmed exploited classes in the Labour Party, say nothing to the exploiters who are armed to the teeth.

In fact, those who, like Foot (and Benn), advocate a pacifist ideology to the labour movement, are in fact disarming that movement both ideologically and physically in the face of a ruthless enemy.

Pacifist

A genuine pacifist would recognise that the property owning. classes will use violence to prevent the labour movement from seeking to break free from the constraints of crisis-ridden capitalism. A sincere pacifist would correspondingly seek to disarm that class in order to prevent their bloody suppression of the labour movement.

In order to achieve that ask, a consistent and honest pacifist would be forced to come to the clinical assessment (as opposed to a cowardly ducking of the issue) that in order to disarm the ruling class it is first necessary to arm the working class.

In short. if pacifists are not to be regarded as phony pacifists, as agents (conscious or blind) of the bourgeoisie, they would declare that only the revolutionary disarming of the robber class can minimise the bloodshed, and prevent the suppression of socialists and trade unionists who are seeking to liberate the working class from the profit system.

Is such a perspective inconsistent with the traditions of the Labour Party? After all, has not the whole orientation of the party been towards electing a Labour government? Wasn't the Labour Representation Committee convened to represent the labour movement in Parliament?

In what sense can we speak of the Labour Party ever having any connection whatsoever with extraparliamentary "revolutionism"?

Trotskyists work as hard as anyone to win over the working class politically through electoral and campaigning activities and to win elections on a socialist programme. We are for winning reforms, for extracting as much as possible from the system.

But let's look at the trade unions of which the Labour Party is the political wing.

Any trade unionist who has ever been on strike knows that picket duty consists for 90% of the time of peacefully persuading other trade unionists not to cross the picket line. This is the "winning over' of other workers to our point of view: the trade union equivalent of electoral activity in the Departure But every so often an employer will seek to cut short this process by bussing in scabs with the help of the police, forcibly smashing through the pickets. The trade union response has always been traditionally to resist such attacks by organising • a mass picket.

The experience of Grunwicks, Saltley and Laurence Scotts has demonstrated this graphically. Workers were faced with either meekly allowing the employers to use force, or organising a force of their own to defend the picket Here is the point of departure for the revolutionary traditions of the Labour Party and trade unions. Were the "violent"

and "revolutionary"

actions of the NUM ai Saltley inconsistent with membership of the Labour Should the NUTGH occupiers at Lee Jeans have been banned from membership of the Labour Party?

Should the Manchester North AUEW DC be disaffiliated from the Labour Party for supporting the Laurence Scort pickets?

Were the pickets nox "extremists" in occupying their factory against closure: in organising mass pickets to "forcibly prevent the removal of plant and machinery? After all, such unparliamentary behaviour could hardly be described as being consistent with the "peaceful.

reformist traditions" of the Labour Party, could it?

----- pull-quotes -----

LABDUR 'Entrist', 'infiltrator'

120 2 221. 9