How serious was the

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WHY is Alan Thornett so touchy? Everyone writes bad articles sometimes: I'm considered to be pretty good at it myself.

I don't think I misrepresented his article (SO144).

In my letter I wrote: "It is wrong to see the BL witch-hunt as part of a concerted and integrated campaign to smash the labour movement".

I argued that though it had been possible for BL "management to sweep out the 13 with very little trouble" • conditions did not exist for a general purge. "It takes more than a few horror stories in the press for purges in every industry and every area of society"

I put the argument starkly for clarity and brevity. I do not think that I accused Alan Thornett of specifically predicting "purges in every industry...

Exaggerated

Still, when I first read Alan Thornett's letter I thought that maybe I had exaggerated, or slipped up and commented on something he had said in a private discussion, rather than on his article. Not so. Re-read the article.

With the discovery of the 13, it says, "BI decided, along with the media and the government (who followed events very closely) that this was the basis for a massive witch-hunt against socialists in industry "(emphasis mine).

The article also says that the "powerful defence of the 13 and condemnation of the witch-hunt" by Oxford TGWU district secreFOR THOSE who believe that there is a rational basis to the activities of scientists, a revelation in last tary David Buckle "defused the situation... at a time when it was becoming very dangerous for the labour movement".

Distance

Alan Thornett quotes Buckle further: "In response to questions from the press, he said he could 'smell fascism around in this country'. Such comments from someone like David Buckle show how deep were the dangers for the workers' movement that had developed at that time".

• Alan Thornett seems to distance himself from the letter of Buckle's comment. But he does use the comment to back up his own picture of the dangers to the whole labour movement.

In his letter Alan Thornett quoted his comments on Buckle, but he chose to omit the remarks of Buckle that he was approving.

But his letter itself shows how far from misrepresenting him I was: it refers to the witch-hunt "by the media at the time by forces which posed a danger to the labour movement as a whole". (My emphasis).

He also says: "The Cowley sackings and the witch-hunt around them was one of the factors (his emphasis) which have created a signiticant new situation in industry"

- Since when? What were the others? To illustrate the 'new situation', he cites "the pits.. the Stockport Messenger... the hardening of BT management and their injunction against the POEU"

Was the Cowley witch-hunt a major factor in causing all this? Or wasn't it? Clearly his line of thought is that the Cowley witch hunt was a major turning point.

Wriggling around as Alan Thornett does in his letter is also a "very destructive way of conducting a polemic" - and of conducting political life in general.

On the Socialist League, Thornett evades my point: that JOHN HARRIS Buckle. right winger who opposed his criticism of the SL was internally incoherent. On the one hand, he mis-read and exaggerated the forces and power behind the witch-hunt; on the other he said that this major effort by the rul ing class depended on such small beer of routine journalism as finding 'an angle', "personalities, etc.

Of course the press needed 'an angle'. angle'. Alan Thornett is right here, as far as it goes. 'Red how meaningless the official tar tables are. The average of the 1980 study was probably taking in twice as much nicotine and tar as the mythological model, Steph's' press conference angle', ', and was used.

But they can find or invent 'angles' - they do it all the time just to spice up newspapers. If it was really a decision by 'BL, along with the. media and the government' to launch a 'massive witch-hunt' against socialists in industry generally, then they could certainly have found fuel.

Alan Thornett asserts that it is within the bounds of 'fraternal solidarity' and not 'sectarian intent' to criticise the SL as he did when the witch-hunt is only beginning to die down, for daring to try to have their say at a press conference; but it is outside these bounds to criticise the political content of their press conference some weeks later, when the witch-hunt is clearly over.

He attacks them arbitrarily for disagreeing with him on the tactical issue of whether to lie low physically or not: he then attacks me as sectarian for commenting on their decision to lie low politically, to disavow themselves publicly.

Another contrast: he criticises the SL for daring to have the impulse to make a stand, while praising Buckle - and ridiculousSend letters to Socialist Organiser 28 Middle Lane, London N8. No longer than 400 words please: longer letters are liable to be cut.

getting even token their defence!

There are bits and pieces of truth scattered in this, but it is all exaggerated and distorted, according (I suppose) to Alan Thornett's injunction to "play up BL". . To describe BL management as 'the single most important industrial asset' is perilously close to the "bad King John' theory of history - capitalist class power certainly needs ruthless men, but serious class struggle issues are decided by something more fundamental than the personal qualities of managers.

It is not that I play down or deny the importance of the 'Edwardes Revolution' in BL, but that Alan Thornett paints his pic. ture with no sense of proportion. perspective or balance. Indeed, he openly disavows and condemns objectivity.

But if you decide in advance that, for whatever reason, you are going to play something up or down before you analyse the facts, then you part company with Marxism. You necessarily in. crease the risk of getting lost in your own wishes, dreams, fears and fantasies. As someone prob. ably said, don't play up, don't strike action in