Why support Militant ?

Scan page 12

IVER THE last three years ocialist Organiser has ¡een in the forefront of the ›attle to democratise the Labour Party: the decadesong monopoly of power by he PLP has been broken, policy-making was handed ›ack, albeit with the exlusion of the undemocratic rade union block vote, to the members of the Party.

Temporarily we have been thrown back on the defensive by the recent NEC turn to the right, but the long-term prospects for a thorough democratisation of the Labour Party and key trade unions must still look promising.

In mounting their counter-attack the Right have, however, struck at the Achilles Heel of the left wing movement: the Militant. During the political and constitutional battles of the last period, Militant THE British gutter press have remained aloof, walled up behind their demands for total nationalisation of everything that moves.

Not only that, but they hold to political positions on major issues that put them well to the right of even bourgeois forces. On Ireland, they substitute a mundane trade union economism for the political dissolution of this imperialist enclave in the North.

On gay rights, they are outflanked on the left by the Young Liberals. On the Falklands, they even proposed that their own members should join the Armed Forces. On CND, they abstain, saying it is a diversion from selling the paper.

Why are these archaic positions still held to by a current that imbibes the rhetoric of revolutionary Marxism? tion the Revolutionary JOHN HARRIS Ted Grant - aloof and archaic?

The answer lies in a form of political organisation practised by the Militant newspaper that has effectively insulated its leading core from the major political developments of the last three decades. For Ted Grant and Peter Taaffe, the women's movement is an irrelevance, something of no significance whatsoever for working class people.

Unfortunately, and I don't like having to say this, the Militant is an ossified sect, incapable of any creative application of Marx's tradition to today's problems. It occupies 1940s time-warp which in practice entails that the current will become a genuine obstacle to a thoroughgoing politicisation and democratisation of the It has not been possible for the women's and gay movement, the campaigns for withdrawal of troops from Ireland, or any of the other progressive movements of the past few years, to express themselves through the Militant as an organised tendency within the Party.

If we are to politically disarm the right wing and win the mass of working people to our views, then we have to be simon-pure in both our 'socialism' and our 'democracy' To defend the Militant today in the present battle with the right wing is to misunderstand the immensity of the tasks that face us and the practical measures that need to be taken to win workers to socialism and democracy.

Hence I would advocate a policy of non-support for Militant in the present struggle, on the basis that we can't support a current with which we so fundamentally disagree and which fails to understand the very nature of the 'new working class democracy' we all wish to create.

ALAN CAMPBELL, Withington, Manchester. Dear S.0 We invite readers to send us their letters, up to a usual maximum length of 400 words.

Send to Socialist Organiser, c/o 28, Middle Lane. London N8.