Emancipation & Liberation

 

The RCN discussed the forthcoming Scottish Independence Referendum at its Dundee aggregate on March 25^th. Papers were presented by Allan Armstrong, Eric Chester and Susan Dorazio. Allan and Susan presented general papers covering the principles behind any campaign for Scottish self-determination. Allan and Eric also provided papers with more immediate proposals.

The RCN also noted that other Socialists had already made contributions to this debate. Two articles in particular, by George Mackin and Gregor Gall, have been published on the new Frontline website.

We are publishing the papers presented to the RCN aggregate on this website, and also providing links to those on the Frontline website.

It was agreed that an independent Socialist campaign (e.g. Socialists for a Scottish Republic) needed to be launched, but that the question of how to vote in the referendum could be taken nearer to the event, when the balance of class forces involved became clearer.

 

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 1. Thinking Through a Socialist Campaign

for Scottish Independence

All sides are bringing a sense of urgency to the task of organizing a campaign for a referendum on Scottish independence.  This is totally understandable for historical, political, and personal reasons.

However, I believe that it is in the best interest of the revolutionary Left to take time to consider a range of perspectives and strategies rather than getting caught up in the agenda, and the methods, of the corporate politicians in Westminster and Holyrood.  According to them, the terms of the debate are obvious and pretty much set.  Now it’s just up to the rest of us to find our place in it.

Fortunately, it’s not too late for the Scottish Left to seriously consider, debate, and eventually formulate our own position– one that enables us to engage in the independence campaign now, as well as to pave the way for what will undoubtedly be a long and intense struggle for a Socialist Scotland within a Socialist Europe.  To my mind, this would be a strategy that challenges an “up or down” vote,  and that sets in motion the principle of internationalism from below by viewing a movement for national self-determination as essentially a deep-seated drive for justice, democracy, and collective and individual liberation. Identification with other social movements also helps curtail political opportunism, whereby electoral activity becomes an end in itself.

The point of this strategy is to put a clear and direct light on what it should and could mean for Scotland to achieve independence in the 21^st Century.  Thus, a socialist referendum campaign would call for separate referenda on issues that are critical for the Scottish working class.  These include the monarchy, NATO, the EU, and the pound sterling.  At the same time, and just as important, is the task of working to create internationalism from below by honoring and acting on the deep connections– past and present– between the Scottish working class and that of England, Wales, and Ireland.

That is, our programme and tactics need to develop simultaneously from the collective processes of democracy and from the passion and idealism of a social movement.  This would be an electoral campaign based on a revolutionary analysis of capitalism, our socialist/communist principles, the history of social movements,  and the belief that a global democratic socialist society is possible.

We know that the question “Do you want an independent republican socialist Scotland?” will not be on the ballot in 2014.  For this very reason, an explicitly socialist position on the terms of independence that will be of long-term benefit to the Scottish working class should be the center-piece of  our programme and maintained throughout the campaign.  It may even necessitate a “no” vote if we get stuck with only an up-or-down option.  But how else can we keep alive our vision of socialism as an alternative to the failed economic and political system that  is bringing misery to so many lives world-wide and will continue to do so until we organize to replace it?

Lessons on the interplay between tactics for immediate gains and the yearning for freedom can be learned from such social movements as those for woman’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery, the formation of trade unions, civil rights, gay rights, women’s liberation, and abortion rights.  In all these cases, human rights and liberation from oppression propelled the development of these movements, in spite of the conflicts and divisions that occurred within them.  Indeed, their strength lay in opening the terrain for discussion and debate. Such needs to be the case with Scottish independence as we find ways to be a strong voice for revolutionary socialism within the array of positions and proposals.

In short, I think that the essence of this short- and long-term project for national self-determination is the necessity for linking up democratic electoral processes with liberation consciousness.

 

Susan Dorazio, 15.3.12

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2.    A Socialist Strategy for the Scottish Democratic Movement

The historical background

1.            The UK was formed as, and remains, an imperial and unionist state with substantial anti-democratic Crown Powers. One feature of these is the constitutional denial of the right of self-determination to the UK’s constituent nations – partitioned Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. These powers give the British ruing class and its supporters considerable leeway to resort to extra-constitutional methods to suppress any national democratic movements.

2.             Since the decline of the UK as an independent imperialist power after World War 2, the British ruling class has sought to maintain its position in the world as a junior partner to US imperialism. The UK state is NATO’s most reliable member. As a result of this commitment, the UK has a particularly bloated military budget, a continued commitment to nuclear weapons, and has been involved in almost continuous imperial wars.

3.            The period of British imperial decline began after the First World War, became more apparent after the Second World War, and accelerated from the late 1950’s. With British imperialism acting as the ‘glue’ which held the British state together, this decline has led to the rise of national democratic movements seeking self-determination for each of the UK’s constituent nations. These movements combine politics, economics and culture. They enjoy a support wider than any one particular party.

4.            In Scotland, the struggle to lead the national democratic movement has largely been fought for between the social democratic Labour Party and the populist  SNP. Socialists have only played an episodic role, more often confining themselves to cheering on either the liberal unionists or constitutional nationalists, i.e. acting as Left unionists or Left nationalists.

5.            In the mid-1970’s, old Labour, with STUC prompting, moved to adopt a liberal unionist policy of Scottish devolution within the UK. Labour claimed that Scottish self-determination could be exercised within the Union. Labour’s policy was then linked to a defence or an extension of the welfare state, in order to retain working class support.

6.            However, Labour’s first attempt to lead the Scottish democratic movement was seen off when a decisive majority of the British ruling class moved sharply against their earlier tentative support for political devolution (recommended by the Kilbrandon Commission) in the late 1970’s. They successfully split the Labour Government and Party, and defeated the move to limited self-determination represented by the 1979 Scottish devolution proposals. This ushered in a period of conservative unionist reaction, linked to a greatly stepped up offensive against the working class under Thatcher.

7.            It was only with the resurgence of national movements in the 1980’s (beginning in partitioned Ireland during the Hunger Strikes, and extending to Scotland after the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign), and the renewed national democratic challenges faced by the UK state, that the majority of the British ruling class moved to supporting political devolution (liberal unionism) once more. This process was begun under the Tories with the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, but they refused to extend this to Scotland or Wales (confining themselves here to administrative and cultural devolutionary measures).

8.            Blair’s New Labour Party produced the successful liberal unionist political formula for UK constitutional reform with ‘devolution-all-round’. With ruling class backing and the trade union leaders securely subordinated to the government and employers under ‘social partnerships’, New Labour was able to deliver in the 1998 devolution referenda in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, Labour leader, Donald Dewar came up with ‘Independence within the UK’ to counter the SNP’s policy of  ‘Independence in Europe’. However, this was no longer tied to any traditional social democratic vision of a strengthened welfare state (old Labour), but to ‘neo-liberalism with a human face’, i.e. promises of less brutal ‘modernisation’ (counter-reforms) than the Tories. This was coupled to a few isolated reforms, e.g. abolition of Section 28 and Highland land reform.

9.            Between 1997 and 2010, New Labour presided over a neo-liberal offensive of accelerating counter-reforms and increased resort to imperial wars. This undermined Labour’s traditional social democratic, working class electoral base. By 2007, New Labour had lost its position at the head of the Scottish democratic movement.

10.            At the time of  its limited resurgence in the late 1960’s, the old SNP advocated political independence in a form that would be recognised by the UN. They were opposed to rule from either Westminster or Brussels. This was linked to their pro-small business economic policies. They also advocated some social democratic-style policies, albeit more limited than those of old Labour, who termed the SNP ‘Tartan Tories’ and anti-Catholic. This meant that the SNP only developed a weak presence in most traditional working class areas, especially in Glasgow. They found their main support in small town Scotland outside the Central Belt.

11.            A more social democratic Left emerged (the 79 Group) within the SNP, which tried to build the party’s support in Labour’s traditional heartlands. They switched the SNP to a support for  ‘Independence in Europe’, and raised clearer social democratic demands. The SNP began to make some advances at the cost of Labour (particularly during the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, marked by Jim Sillars’ by-election win in Govan in 1988).

12.            The SNP tried to compete with Labour for leadership of the Scottish democratic movement. After failing to get the Scottish Constitutional Convention to adopt the SNP’s independence proposal as an additional option in a future referendum, they eventually ended up as pressure group for New Labour’s proposals. They supported a ‘Yes’ vote in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum. (In this respect they acted a bit like the Broad Lefts pressuring trade union bureaucracies to beef up, implement, or not retreat from their official policies).

13.            From the late 1980’s, and particularly under Salmond’s (ex-79 Group) leadership, as New Labour increasingly ditched what remained of its social democratic, welfare state commitments, the SNP was able to move on to the electoral terrain they had abandoned. Like New Labour, the SNP’s main commitment is to ‘modernisation’ (counter-reforms in the interest of big business). Their prime orientation is to win over key elements of the Scottish establishment, and hopefully global corporate backers. However, the SNP has also selected a few social democratic economic policies, e.g. free prescriptions, opposition to university fees, which has enabled them to position themselves (through the process of triangulation) to win over ex-Labour voters.

14.            In order to win over Scottish establishment and corporate business backing, the SNP began to redefine Scottish self-determination as ‘Independence-Lite’. This meant the acceptance of the Crown Powers (supporting the monarchy) the power of the City of London (keeping the pound) and the British High Command (Scottish regiments to remain part of a shared British Army). In effect, the SNP had moved to Scottish Labour’s old (but now rejected) ‘Independence in the UK’ stance. This accommodation may be further accentuated by the SNP leaders’ links with Scottish bankers from British banks with HQs located in Scotland (RBoS, BoS), and the current crisis facing the euro. The SNP has also promoted policies to attract the global corporations (e.g. cuts in corporate taxation) and appeals to ‘maverick’ businessmen, e.g. Brian Souter, Donald Trump and now Rupert Murdoch.  They have also taken social positions to the right (triangulation once more) of New Labour on abortion and gay rights, hoping to win over the support of the influential Catholic hierarchy (who earlier had been decidedly hostile), whilst making similar overtures towards socially conservative Muslim bodies (amongst whose older representatives, Labour had once enjoyed much support before the Iraq War.)

15.            The SNP leadership has indicated its willingness to accept ‘Devolution-Max’ as a ‘down payment’. The SNP’s wannabe Scottish ruling class backers recognise the declining power of the UK and British imperialism. They are prepared to bide their time to inherit ‘their just desserts’. The last thing they want though is any mass action. This would upset their cosy relationship with elements of big business and the Scottish establishment. The SNP leadership fully accepts the current global economic order, i.e. corporate capitalism, and the necessity for austerity measures to prop it up.  They want the continuation of most of the features of the UK state, only with ‘a good lick of tartan paint’, i.e. a ‘Scottish Free State’ in a similar position to the post-Civil War, Irish Free State (but without the preceding republican phase!)

16.             With the current decline of US and British imperial power, these states’ respective ruling classes do not want any of the uncertainties opened up by a wider Scottish democratic movement making its’ voice heard (e.g. challenges to continued imperial wars, NATO and nuclear bases, the UK’s status on the UN Security Council, or to the ‘necessity’ for the sternest austerity measures). Therefore, as in 1979 (but only more so), the British ruling class currently opposes the limited self-determination proposals on offer – Devolution then, ‘Independence-Lite’ now. It will use all the required constitutional and extra-constitutional methods at its disposal under the Crown Powers to ensure that the SNP’s proposals are blocked. The current ineptitude of the unionists parties’ public counter attacks on the SNP will only ensure that the British ruling class is more likely to resort to the hidden measures at its disposal under the Crown Powers to get its way. They will also find allies in the governments (and states) of the US, and probably the EU (although this could change if divisions between British and European finance capital open up further).

17.            The first time that Socialists were visibly competing to lead the Scottish democratic movement was after 1919, during the 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave. John Maclean went on to champion a Scottish Workers Republican ‘break up the UK and British Empire’ strategy as part of the wider international communist challenge. He took his inspiration from the wider Irish democratic movement’s challenge to the UK state, and the political legacy of James Connolly. The defeat of the International Revolutionary Wave after Kronstadt in 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty (with its acceptance of Partition) of 1922, and the Irish Civil War (1922-3), coupled to Maclean’s own death in 1923, ended this Socialist challenge for leadership of the Scottish democratic movement.

18.            The marginalisation of this Socialist challenge led to the British Left (both official CPGB and the social democratic ILP), including its Scottish, Welsh (and for some, its Northern Irish) components, championing a ‘British road to socialism’. They largely accepted the existing unionist state as the framework for implementing their socio-economic strategy. Thus, whenever national democratic movements arose, the British Left tail-ended others’ constitutional proposals. Some supported liberal unionist measures (devolution); whilst others supported the constitutional status quo, i.e. they acted as conservative unionists. Both wings of the British Left sought to maintain a British state.

19.            The next time Socialists began to compete for the leadership of the Scottish democratic movement was between 1998-2004, with the rise of the SSP. The SSP took substantial support away from the SNP at this time. An internal debate occurred in the SSP over whether to tail-end the SNP (Left nationalism), or to mount an independent campaign (Socialist republicanism).  The highpoint  of this challenge occurred in 2004 with the Declaration of Calton Hill and its associated demonstration.

20.            The split in, and the decline of, the SSP has had the effect of fully handing over the leadership of the Scottish democratic movement to the SNP. This is also             accentuated, at present, by New Labour’s refusal to advocate meaningful liberal unionist reform – ‘Devolution-Max’. They prefer to get into bed with the Tories in a conservative unionist anti-SNP alliance. As a result of the parliamentary majority gained in the 2011 Holyrood election, the SNP leadership is now in the position of being able to put forward its version of Scottish self-determination for the 2014 ‘Independence’ Referendum (‘Independence Lite’ – with or without the additional option of either ‘Devo-Max’, or the even more limited ‘Devo-Plus’).

21.            At present, Socialists, and a still relatively quiescent working class, are not in a position to determine or significantly influence the course of events. This means that we are unable, with the present balance of class forces, to amend the terms of the forthcoming ‘Independence’ referendum.  Therefore the  battle is currently confined to whether the referendum offers only an ‘Independence-Lite’ option, or whether this is supplemented by either a ‘Devo-Max’ or a ‘Devo-Plus’ option. The option of a genuinely politically independent Scotland, i.e. a Republic (i.e. no Crown Powers), is not one of the referendum choices.

22.            As long as the unionists maintain their united conservative approach, the greater their opposition (Tory, Lib-Dem, Labour, Ulster Unionists, BNP), the more the SNP’s own ‘independence’ proposals will be associated with the desire for greater self-determination in the eyes of the wider Scottish democratic movement. We are currently in a 1979 (strong British ruling class opposition), not a 1997 referendum (strong British ruling class support) situation.  A defeat inflicted by the unionists, even for these very mild proposals would, as in 1979, produce a further rightward shift in politics in Scotland and the rest of the UK. One effect of this would be a further ratcheting up of the anti-working class austerity offensive, and an even greater willingness to get involved in imperial wars. Any Socialist group that was seen to have contributed to this situation by recommending either a ‘No’ vote or abstention, would likely become even more marginalised.

23.             A useful analogy would be the 2011 November 30^th strike. Any genuine Socialist could see that the prime reason why the public sector trade union bureaucracies organised this strike was- a) to provide some immediate pressure to be readmitted to the ‘corridors of power’ to negotiate another shabby deal (e.g. TUC, UNISON leaderships), or b) to make fighting talk to jockey for position (e.g. the PCS) and increased membership (e.g. the EIS), by holding out until others capitulated, but then climbing down saying they have been let down by others. Logically, if Socialists had adopted such a narrow political focus, their pre-strike ballot recommendation would have either to vote ‘No’ or to abstain, rather than be led into action (then inaction) by this  group of ‘posers’. However, this would be to ignore the prior widespread demand and support amongst trade unionists for a real fight back on pensions. It was therefore important to relate to this by recommending a massive ‘Yes’ vote to make this politically visible. Three million strikers showed there was a potential movement to take on the politicians’ (of all parties) and bosses’ austerity offensive.

24.            However, there were then two additional options – a) the Broad Left (machine constitutional) approach of pressuring the same bureaucrats to take more action, i.e. ‘push them Left’, or b) the Rank and File (‘industrial republican’) approach of trying to develop independent action and take the leadership out of the hands of these bureaucrats.

25.            By analogy, there is also a wider Scottish democratic movement pressing for greater self-determination. It is opposed to the British ruling class and UK state’s current clampdown. Not to become engaged in such a campaign would reflect a position of irrelevance, and would amount to abstention from the wider Scottish democratic movement in its struggle for greater self-determination.

 

Allan Armstrong, 17.3.12

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 3.    Outline of a Policy on the

Scottish Independence Referendum

 

1.   Neither option that is likely to be available on the 2014 referendum is one that we as socialists can vote for as a meaningful step toward a genuinely independent Scottish republic. Devo-max would still leave critical decisions in the hands of Westminster. The limited form of “independence” being proposed by the SNP would still leave Scotland tied to the UK, in terms of the monarchy and, at least immediately, in terms of the currency, while also leaving Scotland tied to U.S. imperialism through NATO and the military bases. It will leave Scotland tied to the EU, in terms of budget decisions and, in the long-run, currency.

2.   We can not urge others to vote for either option. This means that we will not participate in coalitions and organizations that seek to mobilize people to vote for the independence option on the referendum, even if the coalition is critical of the SNP’s perspective.

3.   Given these unacceptable options, we will spoil our ballots, perhaps writing “Yes to an Independent Scottish Socialist Republic.”

4.   If the Left were stronger, we would urge voters to boycott the referendum. Instead, we will emphasize the total inadequacy of the options being offered and organize pressure for further referendums on the monarchy, NATO and military bases, the EU and the currency.

5.  We will also present our vision of an independent Scotland, presenting a positive vision to the pro-business tax haven perspective of the SNP.

 

Eric Chester, March, 2012

 

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 4.  Some Proposals for Socialists working in

the Scottish Democratic movement.

 

A.            The first requirement is for Socialists to create a united front organisation of  Socialists, independent of the SNP and the Scottish Independence Convention (the scope and timing of its activities are determined by the SNP leadership) -  e.g. Socialists for a Scottish Republic. This can raise the voice of Socialists and the working class in the wider Scottish democratic movement, and make a  bid to take the lead. This would mean a campaign to demonstrate the limitations of the SNP’s constitutional nationalist, ‘Independence-Lite’  proposals, and any liberal unionist (Labour Party, STUC) ‘Devolution-Max’ or ‘Devolution-Plus’ proposals (if these ever emerge as a serious option).  Furthermore, if things start to get nasty and the UK state resorts to the  repressive measures at its disposal under the Crown Powers, it will need committed republicans to lead the type of defiance the SNP leadership will shy away from.

B.            Such a campaign should be linked with, and brought into those struggles being fought against exploitation (e.g. against the current austerity drive) and             oppression (e.g. women and gays fighting against discrimination; and the ending of religious interference in state bodies such as education and health). Salmond’s big business backers do not shy away from class conflict (Sir Tom Farmer’s support for the Con-Dems’ imposed austerity drive) or from reactionary measures (Brian Souter’s homophobic campaigns),  since they want to shape a future Scotland in their interests now – and  possession is nine parts of the law. If we want to see a very different Scotland, then we must be involved in class struggles during the independence campaign against the SNP’s big business and other reactionary backers.

C.            Socialists should also actively seek support from those involved in the Scottish  cultural arena. The rhythms of cultural contestation are not so directly tied to those of the socio-economic struggle, and often anticipate later political upturns (e.g. the post-1979 referendum upsurge in radical Scottish cultural activity, which preceded the support for greater Scottish self-determination from the late 1980’s). The cultural arena currently forms the most vibrant section of the wider Scottish democratic movement.

D.            Socialists should fight on an ‘internationalism from below’ basis, by taking the campaign into England, Ireland and Wales. The SNP leadership has its own ‘internationalism from above’ links. They support the British Crown, British bankers, and global corporate executives – to name but a few. The  break-up of the UK and the US/British imperialist alliance is in the interests, not only of the working class across these islands, but across the world.

E.            Furthermore, the Euro-banker-dominated Council of Ministers and European Central Bank are taking on an increasingly imperial role, most obviously in Greece.  Attempts are being made to blackmail nationally based working class resistance and threaten workers with complete economic marginalisation, if they do not bow to the Euro-bankers’ demands. Therefore, the aim of any successful ‘break-up of the UK state’ campaign is not to fall in behind the current EU leadership (or to become cannon-fodder in a fight between the British bankers of the City and those of the EU, especially Frankfurt), but to link up with Socialists in the other European countries, to offer an ‘internationalism from  below’ European-wide Socialist perspective.

F.            How we vote on the day of the Scottish ‘independence’ referendum will be determined by the political weight Socialists and the wider working class can bring to bear in the Scottish democratic movement. The aim would be to take the lead in the struggle for greater self-determination from the SNP, particularly in a situation when its leadership falters in the face of a British ruling class resort to its Crown Powers. This would then mean by-passing the existing Holyrood parliament (which under the Crown Powers has its sovereignty lying in Westminster, and is effectively controlled by the UK state) and pushing for a Constitutional Convention, independent of such direct political constraints. However, to arrive at this situation there would need to be large scale independent working class action, prepared to defy the current British ruing class’s austerity drive and its other reactionary policies (e.g. continued participation in imperial wars), and hence confident about being able to force its own proposals for the exercise of Scottish self-determination on to the political agenda.

G.            If, however, the effective leadership of the Scottish democratic movement remains in SNP leadership hands, then a tactical ‘Yes’ vote would likely be needed in the 2014 ‘Independence’ referendum. This would be the only form of greater self-determination on offer (as in 1979) to head off a stepped up British unionist/imperialist and employer offensive. (To use an analogy from the field of trade union struggle -  if you are unable to win the £20 pay rise you originally demanded and fought for, then you might have to settle for a £2 pay rise, especially if the alternative is either nothing or a pay cut!) This is an important argument against adopting an abstentionist position as a principle.

H.            There will be a division amongst others on the Left in Scotland between those arguing for a Left nationalist political strategy of pressuring the SNP (political ‘Broad Left strategy) and those arguing for a Socialist republican (political Rank and File) strategy to take the Scottish democratic movement out of the hands of the SNP (a political ‘Rank and File’ strategy). Given the currently low state of working  class opposition, this latter strategy may appear very ambitious.  However, we  saw the collapse and despair of those in the Scottish democratic movement,  who staked all on backing Labour’s 1979 devolution referendum proposals for the exercise of Scottish self-determination, after they failed. The current SNP proposals are also doomed to disappoint, whether before or after the first hurdle of the 2014 ‘Independence’ referendum. To avoid a repeat of the wider political demoralisation in Scotland after 1979, it is vital that an organisation like Socialists for a Scottish Republic has developed a big enough presence that the more conscious can turn to it when the SNP falters and fails to deliver.

Socialists need to become active contenders for the leadership of the Scottish democratic movement.

 

Allan Armstrong, 17.3.12

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From Frontline

 

14 points to consider for the 2014 referendum

 George Mackin considers the approach the left should take to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.

http://redflag.org.uk/wp/?p=99

 

For a socially just Scotland

Gregor Gall looks at what a socially just Scotland would look like and how that differs from the vision of the Scottish National Party.

http://redflag.org.uk/wp/?p=51

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Other articles, which have already been published on this website and are relevant to the wider debate can be found at:-

 

http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2012/01/11/internationalism-from-below-2/

 

http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2011/05/27/after-may-5th-a-looming-constitutional-crisis/

 

 

 

Getting Over The Hee Bee GB’s

An ‘Internationalism from Below’ critique of the British Left

In the current period the existence of a majority SNP government in power in Scotland and a referendum on Scottish independence on the horizon poses the question as how should socialists and communists respond to these developments. Should we condemn the rise of Scottish nationalism as separatist heresy or hail this democratic threat to the imperialist UK state as an opportunity for working class advance.

This pamphlet captures an important debate between Allan Armstrong of the Scottish Socialist Party and the Republican Communist Network presenting an ‘Internationalism From Below’ perspective with its associated strategy of breaking up the UK state and the UK unionist positions put forward by Nick Roger’s of the CPGB and Alan Johnstone of the SPGB.

The great strength of this debate format, which began at the Republican Socialist Convention held in London in Feb 2010 and continued in the pages of the Weekly Worker over a number of weeks, is that it allows each side to respond and develop their positions in a fuller, more nuanced and generally comradely but passionate manner. Such debates are all too rare.

Allan provides a republican communist analysis and strategy for defeating the UK state based on the concrete reality of the UK as a multinational but unionist state incorporating England, Scotland, Wales and part of Ireland (‘the Six Counties’), with the tensions and challenges this presents. This involves a critique of those approaches to socialist/communist organisation that abstractly demand that it mirror that of the UK state as a point of principle. Nick and Alan respond to this analysis and critique. This clash of viewpoints, well articulated, make this make an extremely relevant document for our time.

Bob Goupillot

Copies are available for £2.50 (including postage & packaging) from:-
RCN, c/o PO Box 6773, Dundee, DD1 1YL

A STRONG AND UNITED LEFT IS NEEDED MORE THAN EVER

 WE HAVE NOT STOPPED THE CAPITALIST OFFENSIVE

 WE NEED TO LISTEN, LEARN, THEN MOVE ON

In our lifetime there has never been a greater need for unity of socialists and communists, nor has there been a greater fragmentation of the Left.

What we have had under capitalism is as good as it was going to get. Now employment protection, pensions, health services, housing provision and education are under sustained and organised attack with a disproportionate effect upon youth and women.

The post World War II gains are under attack by all the pro-capitalist parties, not just the Tories; yet still union representatives and various sects call on workers to oppose TORY or CON-DEM cuts.

Doesn’t it make you want to weep? It’s not just that these cuts are being implemented by all parties, it’s that all parties are doing so because capitalism requires it and they have no alternative to capitalism.

Capitalism is not in crisis in the sense that those who ‘run’ it have made mistakes; capitalism is doing what it has to do – subject economies to periodic painful depressions in order to survive.

This is the point. It is not possible in the long term to humanely manage or reform capital! Capitalism can be forced to grant limited concessions by organised militant action, but as soon as we let our guard down they will snatch them back as is currently happening.

We need to move beyond capital’s parasitic stranglehold on human society. We need to find a way to organise to that end.

PAST FAILURES

Many groups/organisations/parties on the Left point to achievements of which they are proud – recruitment, a prominent role in key struggles, electoral successes or producing quality publications are examples. Yet the Left is weaker and more fragmented than for many decades and, in Scotland, the once strong SSP is a shadow of its former self*. Self-proclaimed revolutionary ‘parties’ or proto-parties put most of their efforts into fighting each other. Why is this?

• Gurus, self appointed leaders and media attention seeking personalities have set up and controlled too many of our organisations. Democracy has not been open or even practised.

• Members and recruits are ‘given the line’ to repeat. They are told what to think instead of being encouraged how to think.

• Front organisations are set up with little if any democracy mainly in order to recruit.

• Broad Lefts share this same democratic deficit and limiting aspirations.

• New activists become disillusioned and misdirected – just think of some of the slogans (and weep again) ….

….Fight The Con-Dem Cuts.. it’s capitalism we are fighting against and all the parties supporting it and all the organisations supporting them, including the Labour Party, the TUC, STUC and the SNP.

…Make Poverty History… you mean, make capitalism history and all the parties and organisations supporting it.

We need to move beyond populism, reformism, electoralism and egotism.

CONDITIONS FOR REGROUPMENT

A fundamental issue is the democratic and interpersonal nature of how we interact. We won’t get far without open, comradely and non-sexist behaviour.

We need a framework that lays out rights and responsibilities of individuals, groups, platforms, networks and organisations that come together. We need a style of discussion and debate that allows us to listen, reflect, and question. We need to discourage the sectarian ‘We have our line and we will vote en-bloc’ behaviour.

We need to start from a few fundamental realities:-

It is the capitalist mode of production that constitutes the underlying problem. It is a system of exploitation with its wage slavery and domestic drudgery, and its denial to the majority of the guaranteed material means to provide a decent living. It is also a system of oppression with its patriarchy and consequent sexism, its competitive states, national chauvinism and racism, and its denial of real democracy and human dignity. It is a system of necessary and recurring crises, continuous wars and environmental degradation.

Capitalism promotes a selfish individualism based on ‘having’. We must offer an alternative, based on that aspect of being human which capitalism suppresses – our shared social existence. Then we can prioritise ‘being’ over ‘having’. Therefore, it is not enough to fight against capital. We must fight for a system of human emancipation and liberation – i.e. communism organised on the principles:-

1.  “From each according to their ability; to each according to their needs.”

2.  “Where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

We need to develop an Immediate Programme based on meeting our real needs which, through the development of independent working class politics and organisation,  allows us to fundamentally break with capitalism and move towards the first phase of communism, i.e. socialism.

We should lead by example. We will be judged by the way we behave within our organisation.

 NEXT STEPS

We in the Republican Communist Network are joining in the call for a regroupment of the Left and will help to facilitate this.

We are NOT suggesting the setting up of another Party – that would be a decision for those who had come together under this regroupment, once a sufficient base of support had been won amongst the working class.

We ARE suggesting that the points within this leaflet should form part of the discussions for a regroupment. Others will certainly have additional points to discuss.

A fuller description of our current thinking can be found at:- http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2011/12/23/beyond-the-ssp-and-solidarity-forgive-and-forget-or-listen-learn-and-then-move-on/

Please contact us if you are interested in joining the call for a new regroupment at RCN, c/o PO Box 6773, Dundee, DD1 1YL or www.republicacommunist.org/blog. This is NOT a recruitment tactic (although we would like to hear from you if you are interested).

Please add your voice to the call for a regroupment at whatever meetings/demos/strikes you participate in.

UNITED WE STAND A CHANCE OF A BETTER FUTURE

 DIVIDED WE FACE INCREASING BARBARISM UNDER CAPITALISM

 WE MUST LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES AND MOVE ON

* see http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2012/02/11/the-rcn-platform-and-the-ssp/

 

The gap between revolutionaries and reformists is fundamental and widening as the economic crisis deepens. This gulf in underlying perspectives is reflected in the conflicting approaches taken to an array of specific issues. Specific differences in strategy and tactics should be viewed as elements in a recurring pattern that in varying forms is being constantly repeated.

Historically, reformists have held that the transition from capitalism to democratic socialism would occur through a series of small, incremental steps, with each successful reform building seamlessly on previous victories. In this scenario, there would be no need for a revolutionary break, or even popular insurgencies. Instead, inexorably capitalism would be superseded by a new economic and social system that would be obviously superior to it.

Many “orthodox” Marxists accepted this position during the heyday of the Second International prior to World War I. It has now become all too clear that socialism is not inevitable, and that the current ruling class will cling to power with ruthless determination. Thus, while it is important to reiterate that capitalism cannot be reformed, and that a revolution is an essential moment in the transition to socialism, such a statement does not sufficiently demarcate a revolutionary perspective. Many of those on the Left would agree with some version of such a formulation, and yet their practice remains determinedly reformist. Certainly most of those in the various Trotskyist cadre groups operate on this basis.

One argument that is frequently advanced is that leftists need to organize around narrowly focused issues that can be won by placing pressure on the authorities. The argument holds that each victory, no matter how small, increases the confidence of the working class. As the working class becomes more confident of its power as a class, it is able to organize around another, slightly more challenging, issue. Such a policy of incrementalism is necessary, so it is argued, given the intense demoralization of the working class following upon a series of major defeats over the last 25 years.

Arguments such as this were advanced by the International Socialist Group in their role as leaders of the Coalition of Resistance as they gave uncritical support to community activists protesting the displacement of the Accord Centre for the disabled by a car park built for the Commonwealth Games. Any effort to widen the scope of concern, for instance to discuss the absurd priorities that allowed vital social services to be cut while hundreds of millions of pounds went to build elaborate sports stadiums, was ruled out of order.

This argument epitomizes the reformist approach to politics. Progress is made on a step by step basis. Popular mobilizations are organized, but the limits are carefully drawn to avoid ruptures and confrontations. In fact, there is no evidence that such an approach has ever worked. Quite the contrary. Organizations that rally around a narrowly focused issue soon lose their initial impetus and usually become thoroughly integrated into the prevailing system.

Furthermore, this strategy fails to grasp the entire point of the current crisis. The wages, benefits and working conditions of the working class are becoming worse, not better. This reflects a fundamental shift in the balance of class forces. In the current period, a policy aimed at winning incremental reforms will prove to be a failure even within its own terms.

We should certainly point out that only a militant mass movement can have any impact on the immediate situation, and that organizations that avoid confrontations, and that operate within the rules are bound to be dismissed out of hand. Yet we also need to be clear that, at best, a militant working class can only slow the corporate onslaught. Previous defeats can only be reversed by moving beyond the framework of the capitalist system and preparing for the revolutionary transformation of society. Small victories in this context are certainly desirable, but they are bound to be infrequent in this period and they will soon be swamped in the general downward spiral.

Revolutionary class consciousness does not depend on winning victories, but rather on the growing realization within the working class that there is no choice, that capitalism can only bring misery and catastrophic disasters. An immediate transition to a socialist society is thus a vital necessity. As the system unravels, reformism loses its hold on working class consciousness and the opportunities for a revolutionary movement increase. The situation in Greece provides a compelling confirmation of this proposition.

Single issue campaigns can provide a starting point for radicalization if they avoid the reformist trap. The campaign around ATOS provides a case in point. ATOS is a French company hired by the British government to push the disabled off of benefits. Demonstrations have been held at its Glasgow offices in conjunction with similar actions around Britain. Protestors have made a point of linking the protests at ATOS with the broader campaign to stop the cutbacks and have also presented a broad anti-corporate critique.

Reformism appears in other guises as well. One variant appears when leftists engage in electoral politics. The argument starts with the premise that the primary purpose of a political party is to elect its candidates to office. With this as the strategic goal, the platform and propaganda of the party are designed to maximize votes. The rationale holds that electing representatives to the legislature will increase the credibility of the party within the working class. Thus, the party will grow, making it likely that even more candidates will be elected in the next election. This upward spiral will make the party a significant social force, thereby bringing the transition to a socialist society even closer.

Obviously the Scottish Socialist Party operated along these lines during its heyday prior to the Sheridan debacle. Many who have remained continue to believe that a new upsurge along these lines is possible. The problems inherent in this strategy are many. Elected candidates become the focal point of the party, setting the agenda and determining the tactics. In addition, creating celebrities becomes a centerpiece of party politics. There is no question of the party mandating the actions of its elected officials since winning electoral victories has become the paramount objective.

The RCN was among the first to object to this style of politics. We need to go further and see electoralism as yet another version of reformism. Instead of developing a socialist perspective, radical politics is jettisoned for a diluted liberal reformism in a drive to win short-term marginal victories. We need to connect with the heritage of Guy Aldred and others who made it clear that they were using the electoral arena to present a socialist vision and not to win votes on a diluted program of reforms.

Broad Left formations within trade unions represent yet another variant of reformism. A wide range of “progressive” union activists come together on the basis of a minimal program with the goal of replacing the current crop of bureaucrats with a new set of “left-wing” officials. Once again socialist politics is downplayed in order to gain short-run victories.

In several unions the Broad Left has been able to unseat the old-time moderates. Once in power the leftist officials follow the many of the same patterns as before. Loyalty to the current leadership becomes the essential prerequisite to a full-time staff job. Progressive unions, while critical of the Labour Party, still remain within its orbit rather than definitively breaking with it. Opposition to the continuing wave of cuts is confined to top-down one-day national strikes, while rank and file actions are discouraged.

The recent wave of protests by electricians presents a positive alternative. Organized at the grass-roots level these protest push the bureaucrats to take action. Site Worker magazine, put out by militant electricians some of whom have been banned from the construction industry has moved further, urging electricians to act on their own and to not rely on the bureaucrats at all.

Reformism has been the bane of the working class in Scotland and throughout the UK. Even today, it remains a major obstacle to the development of a revolutionary movement. Calls for left unity seek to create a broad coalition that slides over the fundamental gap between revolutionaries and reformists. The RCN should be advocating an alternative strategy, a unity of revolutionary, anti-authoritarian socialists that could work together in broader venues such as trade unions, the anti-cuts campaigns and the electoral arena.

This period is dominated by the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, a crisis that shows no sign of ending. We should state clearly that the working class will be pushed backward as long as we remain within the constraints set by the global market economy. Of course, as revolutionaries we participate in trade unions and social movements, but we do so on a principled basis as socialists. We, therefore, inevitably come into conflict with the pervasive opportunism of reformists. Revolutionaries do not narrow the range of our demands to those that may be won, but rather we challenge the capitalist onslaught on a broad range of issues, as we stress the interconnections between demands and their links to the crisis of capitalism.

As revolutionaries, we need to emphasize that fundamental changes are won on the streets and on the shop floor through militant direct action. We take part in elections to put forward a socialist program, not to win votes or elect legislators. Our candidates should be bound to our platform, and their agenda, should they be elected, should be set by the party, instead of elected officials determining the direction taken by the party.

Revolutionaries should participate in the official unions where they act as collective bargaining agents, but we need to formulate a socialist program and not merely adapt our position to that advanced by leftist union officials. Revolutionaries believe that a democratic union requires the election of shop stewards, and that power should be retained at the shop floor and not revert to union headquarters. Crucially, we need to encourage rank and file committees within an industry that cut across union lines, and that can organize militant actions as the only effective way of slowing down the wave of cuts. This is particularly crucial in the public sector in forging a militant movement that can effectively confront the pay freeze and the proposed cut in pensions.

Revolutionaries and reformists fundamentally disagree on tactics, strategy and the overall perspective for social change. These disagreements are not conjunctural, that is they are not rooted in the specific circumstances that we currently confront. We can expect that these divisions within the Left will continue throughout the transition to socialism. For now, we need to deepen our ties to other revolutionary groupings, here in Scotland, and throughout the world.

 

Eric Chester

 

 

 

 

At its AGM on January 22^nd 2012 the RCN agreed to withdraw as a Platform within the SSP. This decision was not taken lightly as many of us in the RCN were founder members of the SSA and in turn the SSP.  We agreed from the start that the project of bringing together the Left in Scotland was important, exciting and very necessary. We publicly declared, upon the formation of the RCN, that our role was to act as a communist pole of attraction for Socialists, Republicans and those interested in the emancipatory and liberatory possibilities of Communism.

It is our assessment that the SSP no longer unites the majority of the Left in Scotland, so that a new organisation will be needed to bring about such unity in the future. We believe there are many current SSP members and ex-members, who also think that it no longer can perform this role, but are interested in the creation of such an organisation.

Some RCN members will remain members of the SSP, where they feel it continues to play a beneficial role in working class struggles, whilst other RCN members have left.  For these reasons we have concluded that it is no longer appropriate to be a Platform within the SSP.

We wish to assure you that this decision should in no way be taken as support for the sectarian Solidarity project – it remains our view that it was wrong for all the reasons we have publicly stated elsewhere.

In the coming months, we in the RCN look forward to joining others in on the Scottish Left, including SSP members, in evaluating the past, assessing the present, and debating the future.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The rise and initial success of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), between 1998-2004, was a significant historical event, not only for the history of the Left in Scotland (with knock-on effects in the UK and Europe), but also in the wider world of Scottish politics. It is therefore vital that we account for this success, despite the SSP’s subsequent fall from grace. This record can not just be left to cynical media and academic figures who have claimed that the SSP project was always doomed from the start, so we should all just accept the current world order and make the best of it.  Nor can we leave the accounting to those Jeremiahs in their ‘revolutionary’ sects, who cover their own inability to grow significantly, by issuing their anathemas and pouring scorn on those who try.

Before the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg said that the choice facing humanity then was ‘Socialism or Barbarism’. Istvan Meszaros has modified this for today’s crisis-ridden world of corporate imperialism, with its austerity drives, mounting environmental degradation, and the continued threat to humanity posed by weapons of mass destruction. He claims that the choice we face now is  – ‘Socialism or barbarism if we are lucky’!

Therefore, to provide new hope, we must account for the factors that contributed to the initial success of the SSP, and see what can still be useful in the future. However, any meaningful accounting also means identifying those weaknesses, which contributed to the SSP’s decline, so that these are not repeated.

Many, from either side of the ‘Tommygate’ divide, still hold fond enough memories of “the good old days” before the split, to hope that something like the SSP can be built again. Recently, some have even been tempted to say, “Let us forgive and forget”. This may sound attractive, in the face of the current unprecedented attacks on our class. However, such a stance would just lead to the repeat of earlier mistakes, perhaps in more desperate situations.

This contribution, which is also based on a strong desire to rebuild that lost unity, argues that to be successful in such an endeavour, we need instead to ‘listen, learn and then move on’. Then we can indeed recreate socialist unity, but on a higher basis. We must take account of those challenges, which the SSP failed to meet, to better prepare ourselves for those that we will certainly meet in the future.

 

1. THE STRENGTHS OF THE SSP

a)          Politics

The drive for greater socialist unity in Scotland originated in the experience of the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign. This drew together socialists and communists from diverse backgrounds in a successful struggle against the Tories and their official Labour Party helpers – one of the very few.  Later campaigns against water privatisation, the Criminal Justice Bill, and in support of the Liverpool Dockers, also brought socialists and communists in Scotland together in common campaigns.

Militant, a section of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), led by Peter Taffe, had learned, through the bitter experience of the Liverpool Council Fightback and the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign, that conducting a successful major struggle was incompatible with membership of the Labour Party (LP), and that Labour is an anti-working class party that acts as a block to socialism.

The CWI majority (1) formed Scottish Militant Labour (SML) to challenge Labour more effectively. However, SML went beyond this, and drew upon the experience of those earlier working class campaigns. With the help of others, they initiated the wider Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA), in 1996, to draw in these forces, as well as those members in the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP) concerned about their parties’ rightwards drift. In the process, the CWI in Scotland changed from being the organisationally independent SML to becoming the International Socialist Movement (ISM), a platform in the new SSA. They called for the unity of socialists in Scotland.

The size of SML/ISM was important. Others had called for socialist unity before the SML had been able to ditch its Labour Party entrist past, and to seriously consider such an initiative.  However, it needed an organisation with a certain critical mass to make any such unity initiative gel.  In Ireland, for example, there have been a number of politically experienced people who were inspired by the example of the SSA/SSP. They formed the Irish Socialist Network to bring about such socialist unity there. However, they have not had the critical mass to create an Irish Socialist Alliance, then to build this up into an Irish Socialist Party.

The ISM wanted to build a wider organisation, which was not just a front for its own tendency – something that proved a stumbling block with the Socialist Alliance in England. This problem was highlighted there by the competitive sectarianism of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the CWI/Socialist Party (SP) (as Militant later became in England and Wales).

The ISM also wanted the SSA to move quickly beyond being an alliance, which might end up as little more than an electoral non-aggression pact between different participating organisations. Today, in Ireland, this remains a strong danger with the recently formed United Left Alliance (ULA). The ULA is heavily constrained in any attempt to move forwards to a new united party by the desire of its two major components, the CWI/SP-Ireland and People before Profit (an Irish SWP front), to preserve their own control above all else. The SSA, however, was able to move on and become the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) in 1998.

When it was founded, the SSA drew in other political groups or some of their key activists. Allan Green had pushed from the start to get the Socialist Movement (socialists in the LP) signed up, whilst Bill Bonnar of the Communist Party of Scotland, and George Mackin, former member of the editorial board of Liberation (socialist Republicans in the SNP) joined up.  Members of the Trotskyist United Secretariat for the Fourth International (USFI) in Scotland joined, although they did not constitute themselves as a platform. The Red Republicans, who emerged from the Anti-Poll Tax Struggle in the Lothians, and the Dundee-based Campaign for a Federal Republic also joined. These two organisations later merged, on a new political basis, to form another SSA platform, the Republican Communist Network (RCN). The SSA soon threw itself into activity in support of the Glacier workers’ occupation in Glasgow, then in a variety of actions to save schools and other council facilities.

By 2002, all the major political groups in Scotland were in one political organisation (2) – the SSP. The SSP eventually included left Scottish nationalists, e.g. the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement (SRSM), many in the ISM, and some ex-SNP’ers; left British unionists, e.g. the CWI, SWP, Workers Unity (3) and some ex-Labourists; and socialist republicans, e.g. the RCN and others. Key figures from the Labour and SNP Lefts joined, e.g. John McAllion and Ron Brown (ex-Labour MPs), Hugh Kerr (ex-Labour MEP), Lloyd Quinan (ex-SNP MSP). The SSP included socialist and radical Feminists, and a small number of green Socialists (4).

Tommy Sheridan (former SML) was elected to Holyrood in 1999. He was re-elected, along with Frances Curran and Colin Fox (both former SML), Rosemary Byrne (former president of Irvine Trades Council), Carolyn Leckie (prominent Unison activist and strike leader) and Rosie Kane (environmental activist), in 2003. An impressive 117,709 votes were gained in this election. Keith Baldassara (former SML) and Jim Bollan (former CP member and Labour leader of Dunbartonshire Council) were also elected as local councillors. This was a considerable achievement. It showed that the SSP had become an important force amongst a significant section of class-conscious workers in Scotland.

SSP MSPs were seen to give public support to workers in struggle, including nursery nurses and working class communities occupying threatened public services. Tommy had been very publicly arrested in 2003, whilst Rosie was jailed for failing to pay a fine in 2005, as a result of the protests they made at the Faslane nuclear base. This highlighted the SSP’s policy of committing its elected representatives to taking direct action when it was deemed appropriate. The SSP policy of having a worker’s representative on a worker’s wage was actually implemented by the SSP MSPs between 1999 and 2007.

The SSP provided inspiration for the Socialist Alliances in England and Wales, and for the Irish Socialist Network. It also formed a part of the new European Anti-Capitalist Left (EACL). The SSP inspired the USFI, including its largest European section, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) in France. They later went on to form the wider New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) in 2009.

After the split in 2006, the SSP continued to form part of the EACL, standing candidates under its banner in the Euro-elections of 2009, whilst the breakaway Solidarity retreated into the left British chauvinism of the No2EU campaign (5).

The SSP played a prominent part in the build-up of the Anti-War Movement, beginning in October 2001 with its principled and active opposition to the war in Afghanistan, and culminating, on February 15^th 2003, with the massive Anti-Iraq War demonstration in Glasgow, led by the Stop the War Coalition (6). The many marches, held all over the world on that day, formed the largest international demonstration yet witnessed.

The SSP played the leading part in organising the wider European Left opposition to the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in July 2005. Four of its MSPs, Carolyn, Colin, Frances and Rosie organised a protest in Holyrood against its failure to stand up to US/UK security force attempts to severely curtail the right to protest at Gleneagles. The four MSPs were suspended and the party was heavily fined. This led to international solidarity, including support from the acclaimed black poet, Benjamin Zephaniah (7).

The SSA and SSP leaderships recognised that there is a National Question in Scotland and that socialists should consciously address it. Although left Scottish nationalism remained a strong pull on the leaderships of the SSA and later the SSP, republicanism made considerable inroads. The party backed the Calton Hill Declaration, and the successful protest at the royal opening of the new Scottish Parliament building on October 9^th, 2004. This was the last SSP big event to gain favourable wider publicity (8).

The SSP contained a well-organised Feminist element with articulate women prominent in the party. The hotly debated and controversial 50:50 rule, addressing the issue of women’s representation at all levels of the party, was passed at the SSP’s 2002 Conference in Dundee. This contributed to the election of four women out of a total of six SSP MSPs in May 2003 – the highest percentage for any party in Europe.

The SSP was also able to draw support from influential cultural figures, e.g. the Proclaimers, Belle and Sebastian, Peter Mullen and Ken Loach.

At the height of its success between 1999 and 2004, the SSP enabled socialist politics to gain a public visibility. This meant that the ideas put forward by openly declared socialists became the topic of conversation, discussion and debate in workplaces and communities throughout Scotland.

 

b)          Organisation

With the founding of the SSA in 1996, the CWI/SML committed its resources and experienced organisers, at national and local level, to the new organisation. As ISM platform members, they took responsibility for developing the SSA, and later the SSP. However, in many areas, particularly where there was little or no ISM presence, other experienced socialist and communist activists played a key role in developing local branches, and exerting pressure to ensure that democratic practice became more embedded in the SSA and SSP, and to encourage the development of an open, non-sectarian culture.

A majority amongst the ISM, who constituted the SSA and SSP leaderships, appreciated the need to exercise a less tight political control over the SSA and SSP membership than the CWI leadership had desired. The ISM was more prepared to listen to suggestions from people who came from other political backgrounds, and with these comrades’ help, the SSA was able to develop open active branches and democratic structures.

Thus, the ISM majority (9) made a considerable contribution to building a wider more inclusive SSA (later SSP). This provided a striking contrast to the behaviour and unity initiatives undertaken by their original CWI mentors. The CWI/SP walked out of the Socialist Alliance in England, when they could not dominate it  (that role was left to the SWP!). Their Campaign for a New Workers Party has proved abortive, because of its inability to attract or hold on to wider socialist forces, whilst the Trade Union and Socialist (electoral) Coalition is turned on and off according to the needs of the CWI/SP. The CWI (and SWP) treats any unity initiative either as a ‘party’-front or as a recruiting ground. Therefore, the ISM’s support for developing an inclusive multi-platform party did represent a considerable achievement, and a big break from the Left’s past sectarian practice.

Platform rights were allowed and respected to a considerable degree. The SSA and SSP constituted a united front of self-declared revolutionaries and left reformists. Comrades could openly state their support for revolutionary politics. A real culture of debate and comradeliness developed in the SSA and SSP, which for a time was even able to rein in some of the sectarian practices of the CWI and SWP (10).

Despite some undoubted remaining problems, the SSA and SSP were more democratic than all previous left groups in Scotland and the wider UK. SSA and SSP conferences were organised where genuine debates took place in a largely comradely fashion. Attractive ‘Socialism’ events, with outside speakers, were also organised.

SSP branches were soon formed in every part of Scotland, including the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland. This represented the most extensive support for socialist politics in Scotland that had been achieved so far.

 

 2)      THE WEAKNESSES OF THE SSP

 a)         Politics

The development and handling of ‘Tommygate’ turned out to be the most public failing of the SSP. One effect of this was to disguise some other weaknesses, which would undoubtedly have emerged more clearly after the election of its six MSPs in 2003. The political conditions, which led to these other problems, were created by the international Left’s inability to prevent the Iraq War in 2003, and the decline of working class action in the UK, including Scotland.

The electoral setbacks of the European Left in subsequent (pre-2007 Crash) elections, including those in Italy, France and Ireland, demonstrated this. The Scottish Greens also lost five of their seven MSPs in 2007. If ‘Tommygate’ had not happened then the SSP would still probably have been reduced from six to one MSP in that election – i.e. Tommy. And he thought he was smart in helping to create Solidarity as his own special fan club to further advance his own celebrity politics!

Yet, there had been no prior public questioning in the SSP of the promotion of the Tommy ‘myth’. This failing was to have dire consequences. When ‘Tommygate’ erupted in 2004, the leadership was left floundering over how to deal with a ‘Tommy’ who had been their very own creation. This confused many members and supporters who began to look elsewhere – often either to the SNP, or even back to the Labour Party.

Remarkably, as Tommy had moved further and further into the world of celebrity politics (aided by his new wife, Gail, whom he married in 2000), the SSP leadership allowed him to build up an entirely new public image for himself as the Daniel O’Donnell of the Left. (He later utilised this in court to claim his leisure activities were largely confined to playing Scrabble with Gail!) This involved publicly turning his back on his pre-marriage image as the Errol Flynn of the Left (which he wistfully recalled in his chats with Coolio on Big Brother).

Key SSP leadership figures knew from early on that this new public image was false, but did not challenge Tommy’s hypocrisy. However, even if Tommy had been able to make a ‘Doris Day’ (11) like conversion, socialists should still not have been involved in allowing the public promotion of such a conservative, 1950’s, family man image.

When Solidarity was formed in 2006, it became, in effect, the Continuity Sheridan-SSP. Celebrity politics were enshrined at its founding conference, with the virtual anointment of Tommy by his mother, Alice Sheridan.  With Tommy in prison for the 2011 Holyrood election, Solidarity sought a new celebrity candidate in the form of George Galloway, accountable to nobody but himself.

The resort to celebrity politics was not, however, rejected in principle by the SSP leadership after the split. An attempt was made by the SSP International Committee to highlight this wider problem amongst the Left in Britain (e.g. Derek Hatton, Ken Livingstone, Arthur Scargill and George Galloway), in a leaflet for the 2008 Convention of the Left in Manchester. However, a section of the SSP leadership suppressed this because it might have upset Galloway and his supporters (12).

Celebrity politics, however, are just one aspect of a wider populism, which avoids the open promotion of socialist politics. Promoting populism is a quite different matter to promoting popular politics in order to extend openly socialist ideas beyond their traditional narrow organisational confines. Populist politics, which downplay the centrality of the working class, have often revealed themselves in the SSP. Although the SSP stood as part of the EACL in the 2009 Euro-elections, it ditched the EACL’s own slogan, ‘Make the Bosses Pay for their Crisis’, and retreated to the vacuous, non-class specific, ‘Make Greed History’ (13).

This resort to left populism, though, was not as bad as Solidarity’s support for No2EU’s, ‘No to social dumping’ – a right populist, thinly disguised racist attack on migrant workers, reminiscent of the NF/BNP/Gordon Brown call for ‘British jobs for British workers’.

One reason for resorting to populism is the fact that those coming from the CWI tradition never developed an adequate understanding of what constitutes socialism/communism. Up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CWI largely equated socialism with nationalisation. Although the weaknesses in this position have been recognised by those who have moved away from the CWI, there has been no real attempt to develop a new clearly articulated socialism/communism, which could effectively challenge a capitalism very much now in crisis since the 2008 Financial Crash.

Part of the problem lies with the CWI’s long sojourn within the Labour Party, where they began to adapt to the reformist milieu they were working with. Whereas Marx had viewed the state as a machine designed to perpetuate the rule of capital, backed by “a body of armed men”; those from a CWI background tended to see the existing state as being in the hands of the wrong people – the capitalist class – instead of the representatives of the working class. In particular, they had looked forward to a future elected Labour government, pledged to socialist policies, ‘capturing’ this state, passing an Enabling Act and nationalising the top 200 companies. But the capitalist state can not be equated with its ‘representative’ institutions – behind these lie the ruling class’s ‘deep state’ with its military, security, judicial and other bodies, all beyond our effective accountability, ready to bypass parliament, and to take ruthless action against any fundamental challenges from our class.

Therefore, the solutions offered by the leaderships of SSP and Solidarity (where the SWP also avoids offering any socialist strategy), to meet the current crisis of capitalism, tend to be national reformist. They stretch from a call for neo-Keynesian state economic intervention to demands for nationalisation  - i.e. from left Labourism to old style, orthodox Marxist-Leninism. The call for nationalisation is sometimes relabelled ‘public ownership’, or supplemented with an unspecified, ‘under democratic’ or ‘workers’ control’.

There has been little appreciation of the international economic integration of the corporate imperialist capitalist order. This places very real restraints on national ‘solutions’, and makes the development of an internationalist strategy and international organisation vital. The massive anti-(corporate) globalisation, anti-Iraq war, anti-G8 and Occupy protests have shown that millions of people already understand the need for an international response. Yet there has been little indication that the Left can build on this by creating a new International (14).

The EACL is very much constrained by the limitations of the ‘socialist diplomacy’ practised between its two dominant political groupings – the USFI and International Socialist Tendency (SWP). There is clearly a glaring need for concerted international action in the face of the EU leaders’ austerity drive, which has led to unprecedented attacks on Greek, Portuguese and Irish workers. These will have a knock-on effect on the rest of the European (including the UK) working class.

There has been no real debate in the SSA or SSP over socialists’ participation in parliamentary and council elections. Are parliament and local councils vehicles for bringing about socialism through accumulative reforms; or do socialists participate in elections to these bodies to support independent class activity, and to put forward the case for socialism/communism?

Again this confusion arises because a significant section of the Left tends to see the state machine as neutral, and just requiring a different hand at the helm, rather than a capitalist state, shaped to meet the capital’s needs. The existing state machine is  worse than useless as a means of socialist transformation. Indeed it is a trap for the working class.  What should be recognised is the need for the state’s destruction and its replacement with a commune-like semi-state, intended to wither away as the lower phase of communism (socialism) gives way to its higher phase.

We never got near this kind of debate about a Maximum Programme within the wider SSP.  This was perhaps understandable in the context of the long debt-financed consumer boom, which coincided with the first ten years of the SSP’s existence. Efforts were concentrated instead on developing and implementing elements of an Immediate Programme. Now capitalism is once more in deep crisis. Attempts to buttress each national economy through superficial reforms can only lead to intensified international competition, with a downward pressure on pay and conditions, and an even greater likelihood of wars, possibly extending to the imperial metropoles themselves. Therefore, it has become imperative that socialists/communists outline their alternative society and the means needed to achieve this.

The SSP became too election focussed, particularly after winning its six MSPs. This sucked prominent regional or trade union activists into the parliamentary centre. The decision to spend so much money on parliamentary support workers for the newly elected MSPs was an indication of this creeping electoralism. A three way split developed between the SSP’s MSPs – 1) Tommy and Rosemary, 2) Caroline, Frances and Rosie and 3) Colin – as to how to relate to Holyrood. There was little effective party control over these MSPs. The parliamentary ‘tail’ sometimes wagged the SSP ‘dog’.

If ‘Tommygate’ had not erupted, a strongly electoralist wing would probably have emerged in the SSP, offering the party’s MSPs as coalition fodder in the event of a hung Holyrood parliament (15). Former Labour MEP, Hugh Kerr, was already suggesting, before the 2003 Holyrood general election, that the SSP stand down in favour of the SNP in first-past-the-post seats, anticipating such coalitions and a more parliamentary focussed politics (16).

Those who learned their initial politics in the British Left have shown little understanding of the UK as an imperialist, unionist and constitutional monarchist state, and the role of the Crown Powers in maintaining British ruling class control. Nor do they appreciate the real nature of the current British and Irish ruling classes’ ‘New Unionist’ strategy of promoting the ‘Peace Process’ and ‘Devolution-all-round’, aided and abetted by trade union leaders locked in ‘social partnerships’ with the bosses and politicians. This is done to ensure that the UK and the Twenty-Six Counties remain safely subordinated to corporate capitalism and US/British imperialism.

In reaction to their earlier left British unionist training, the majority amongst the SSA and SSP (and later the Solidarity) leaderships have shown a strong tendency to be pulled towards Scottish nationalism, and have become sentimental Scottish republicans rather than militant socialist republicans. Although the 2005 Declaration of Calton Hill represented a partial break from this, the SSP leadership has gone on to tailend the proposed constitutional reforms of the SNP in their proposed Scottish Independence Referendum (17).

After the split between the SSP and Solidarity, some members of the now defunct ISM became divided between the Frontline supporters found in the SSP, and the Democratic Green Socialists (DGS), who played a similar role in Solidarity. It was these two organisations’ initially shared break from the CWI, which had led them to move on from much of the old left British unionist politics (although long retaining elements of such politics over the issue of Ireland), only to court left Scottish nationalist politics as an alternative.

As a result, the ISM/Frontline’s and the DGS’s politics, with regard to Scotland, have not been drawn from the major contributors to anti-imperial/anti-UK state politics prior to Poll Tax, e.g. the Workers’ Republican tradition of James Connolly and John Maclean, but to a bowdlerised version of Labourism/Trotskyism inherited, but still not fully questioned, from the CWI. This is sometimes topped up with a little sentimental Scottish history and the use of the saltire in the Scottish Socialist Voice.

Those from a CWI tradition also have a poor understanding of the conflict in Ireland. They have been unwilling to address this issue in case any accusations of ‘sectarianism’ affected their electoral campaigns, particularly in the Central Belt. In the SSA’s preparatory stages, the one group, which CWI members went to considerable lengths to exclude, was the James Connolly Society (JCS). It also took years and years to get one-time CWI/ISM members of the SSP on to the JCS’s annual Connolly march in Edinburgh. The CWI’s left unionism was carried into the ISM. This led to their joint agreement to invite Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) as a ‘socialist’ Loyalist, with a background in the UVF, where the British state recruited its death squads (18), to ‘Socialism 2000’ (19).

Despite the 2002 SSP Conference’s 50:50 debate, there was insufficient follow-up debate about the nature of women’s exploitation and oppression, and how women’s emancipation and liberation contribute to wider sexual liberation and to socialism/communism. In the aftermath of the split in the SSP, a marked division remained between those former ISM members in Frontline, who wanted to take on board a more Feminist agenda, and those in the DGS, who retained an opposition to “gender obsessed politics” (many of them had opposed the 50:50 arrangements back in 2000).

In the case of ISM/Frontline members this led to a blurring between socialist and radical Feminist politics. In the case of DGS members this led to a slippage away from any socialist understanding of the role of women’s oppression, and to a schizoid split between holding to libertarian views on sex (e.g. believing prostitution is just another form of wage labour, not recognising the women’s oppression involved), or to a toleration of very conservative sexual relationships (e.g. not questioning the promotion of the ‘perfect celebrity couple’ in the never-ending ‘Tommy and Gail Show’). The political division over the role of Feminism, between the two wings of one-time ISM members, very much added to the acrimony during ‘Tommygate’ (20).

The SSP and Solidarity leaderships, following on the old CWI tradition, have remained wedded to Broad Leftism in the trade unions. This involves a ‘parliamentary’ industrial strategy, which sees sovereignty as lying in the trade union conferences (‘parliament’), when effective control really lies in the union HQs (where the bureaucracy forms the ‘Cabinet’). Broad Leftism concentrates on getting left wing union leaderships elected to replace right wing ones. This is countered to a Rank and File ‘republican’ industrial strategy of democratising and transforming trade unions to make them combative class organisations with sovereignty residing amongst the union members in their workplaces, who are prepared to take independent (‘unofficial’) action when required (21). There has also been no debate on possible new methods of organising workers, e.g. social unions.

There have been illusions around existing Broad Left trade union leaderships, and a failure to extend the principle of a worker’s representative on a worker’s wage in parliament, to campaigning for all trade union officials being on the average wage of the members they represent.  The SSP’s relationship with the RMT was focussed on its General Secretary, Bob Crow, and its Broad Left leadership (22), rather than its rank and file members.

Cultural developments can anticipate wider social and political developments, even during periods when the working class is in retreat. Whilst an effective struggle against exploitation and oppression needs confident economic/industrial and political organisation, attempts to go beyond the alienation we experience under capitalism often takes on a more disparate cultural form, which the ruling classes find harder to discipline and police. Despite the wider vibrant cultural debate found in Scotland, and signs of support from several significant cultural figures, there was no organised attempt to intervene in this debate and to encourage its development in a Scottish internationalist rather than a Scottish nationalist direction.

 

b)          Organisation

From the beginning, despite wishing to create a wider organisation, which brought in others, the CWI/SML still wanted to remain the leadership group. This in itself is not a problem. The issue is how do you go about achieving this aim – by encouraging the maximum democracy or by political manoeuvring?

The CWI/SML sought to bring about wider unity, not primarily on the basis of an agreed Immediate Programme (23), but by courting specific groups and individuals, whilst playing down the revolutionary side of their own politics. This involved a resort to diplomacy, rather than holding an open debate between some of the more advanced positions held by the CWI/SML (and others) and the undisguised left reformism and electoralism of those coming, in particular, from Labour and SNP backgrounds.

Of course, any such open debate, may well have resulted in the SSA adopting openly left reformist positions anyhow, given the historical weight of reformism in Scotland and the wider UK. This is why it was so vital to create and maintain the SSA and SSP as open democratic organisations, where such ideas could be challenged and changed in the light of experience.

The SSA and SSP depended overmuch on the initial political training given to its members from other political organisations before they joined up. There was no comprehensive political education programme put in place for new members. There was an attempt to produce an SSA magazine, Red, but it was short-lived.

When the ISM split into majority and minority CWI/IS factions, the majority ISM kept to the old strategy of trying to remain the leadership by making openings to certain individuals. An ‘Inner Circle’ coalesced within the SSP leadership, which consisted of Tommy Sheridan, Alan McCombes and Alan Green (he represented those from a non-CWI tradition) with a close periphery of Keith Baldassara and Frances Curran (she provided a link with the leading influential Feminists, such as Carolyn Leckie). The ISM used its position as the largest platform to ensure that this emergent ‘Inner Circle’ was given wider support in the SSP (24). As long as the ISM continued to exist, there was still some platform accountability.

The ISM also used its numerical strength to get sympathisers into key positions, whether or not they were up to the job. Paid organisers, who were not transparent or accountable, sometimes built their own fiefdoms either in areas of particular activity or geographical areas.

The ‘Inner Circle’ kept things from the membership (either with tacit ISM acceptance or without their knowledge), e.g. how many real paying members there were, and the fact that the SWP did not pay their subs (although some of their members did join as individuals). Therefore, the activities of the ‘Inner Circle’ were neither transparent nor fully accountable.

Many members of the ISM began to doubt the need for a distinctive platform to advance their specific politics. Instead, they increasingly relied on giving support to those experienced former members of the CWI, and founder members of the ISM, who had steered them through the difficult transition from the CWI/SML to the independent ISM platform in the SSA and SSP.  ISM members began to drop out of their platform, whilst still giving their support as individuals to the ‘Inner Circle’.

In engaging with new political forces, ISM members found themselves questioning some of their previously held beliefs. This is, of course, a good general principle for all socialists. Individual ISM members formed friendships and alliances with other individuals and tendencies, e.g. amongst the left Scottish nationalists and the radical Feminists. This led to a process of adaptation that left individual ISM, or former ISM members, strung out at different points along various lines of thought over a number of key issues. That made it increasingly difficult for the ISM to maintain a unified public position on these political issues.

This was demonstrated most spectacularly over ‘Tommygate’. However, over the issues of 50:50, ‘internationalism from below’ republicanism versus left Scottish nationalism, Ireland (particularly the Connolly march), and secularism versus support for specific identity (especially faith) schools, different ISM members also found themselves on differing sides (25).  As the ISM platform began to fragment, this left the ‘Inner Circle’ as the real SSP leadership, since they were no longer restrained by any remaining ISM discipline.

After 2003, those newly elected MSPs, who had their own trusted personal contacts in the party, also had to be acknowledged by the ‘Inner Circle’. That opened up the prospect of personal, rather than platform differences arising, which could bring about a more dysfunctional leadership, in the absence of either any platform discipline, or of effective wider party accountability.

The ‘Inner Circle’ was unable to successfully address the crisis in the SSP, when ‘Tommygate’ split them, along with their close personal and parliamentary supporters. Both sides put more trust in the bourgeois courts and leaks to the bourgeois media than in the SSP membership. Neither side confined its appeals for support to bona fide working class and socialist organisations. Initially a cover-up ‘deal’ was made between the SSP Executive Committee and Tommy, under which the reasons for his mutually agreed resignation were hidden from the membership. The minutes were not circulated. This sowed further seeds of confusion, adding to those created by the leadership’s shared responsibility in constructing the Tommy ‘legend’ in the first place.

This legacy of personalised politics very much added to the ensuing acrimony, which contributed to the split between the SSP and Solidarity. The two respective leaderships centred on Alan McCombes and Frances Curran on the SSP side, and Tommy Sheridan and his family on the Solidarity side. Supporters were expected to show uncritical loyalty for their leaders’ respective stances in the virtual civil war that developed. Those trying to put forward a more critical viewpoint found themselves subjected, not to real debate, but more often to misrepresentation, and sometimes to vilification.

Prior to the split, the SSP leadership had tolerated the existence of sects, in particular the SWP and the CWI. These were able to take advantage of the SSP’s recognition of platforms (26). The CWI and SWP saw themselves as having all the answers in advance, with nothing to learn from others, when important questions were debated. They were organised as alternative leaderships-in-waiting, ready to take over.

However, instead of establishing firm platform guidelines, diplomatic deals were also made between the SSP leadership and these sects. The SSP leadership did not openly and politically challenge the sectarian practices of these organisations’ leaderships (27). Such an approach could have won over some of their rank and file (albeit not their leaderships, whose sectarianism is hard-wired), attracting them with more open and democratic politics.

 

 3. THE CURRENT SITUATION – FACING UP TO REALITY

There has been no real attempt by either of the two post-split leaderships (SSP and Solidarity) to draw up a balance sheet of the strengths and weaknesses of the original socialist unity project, or to make any honest assessment of where socialists and the wider working class now are in Scotland. The SSP leadership’s main remaining hope, after ‘Tommygate’, seems to be that, “Things can only get better”! And, is Solidarity now on hold until Tommy gets out of jail?!

Solidarity launched itself, in 2006, with the claim that it would soon overtake the number of pre-existing SSP MSPs. However, it failed even to retain its celebrity leader, Tommy, despite his loudly proclaimed court ‘victory’ that year. Solidarity’s leadership took refuge in its ability to garner more votes (31,066 to the SSP’s 12,731) in the 2007 Holyrood election. Yet Ruth Black, its sole elected councillor, soon defected to Labour after an acrimonious internal spat (28).

The SSP leadership believed that there would be an upturn in SSP fortunes, once they were legally vindicated in the Perjury Trial. However, the SSP’s vote fell from the lowly 12,731 gained in 2007, to the abysmal 8,272 in the 2011 Holyrood election, despite the December 2010 court judgement, which upheld the SSP leadership’s version of the ‘Tommygate’ events. This electoral result showed the leadership’s wishful thinking.

Although the Tommy/Solidarity-backed Respect/George Galloway celebrity candidate only received 6972 votes, in the May 2011 Holyrood election (compared with the still unsuccessful Tommy’s 8544 votes in 2007), whilst Solidarity’s own vote plummeted to 2,837, this could hardly provide the SSP leadership with much comfort, considering that both the phantom Socialist Labour Party, and more worryingly, the British National Party, gained far more votes than the SSP.

Indeed, the fact that the BNP’s vote exceeded the combined vote of the SSP and Solidarity was not publicly acknowledged by either leadership, despite the BNP’s and SDL’s ongoing attempts to gain a foothold in Scotland, particularly amongst British Loyalists in the Central Belt. Indeed there had been more concern at leadership levels, to see that the SSP and Solidarity slog it out against each other in certain Glasgow seats, than to ensure that the BNP were opposed everywhere.

What remains of the SSP has become a much looser alliance than the old SSA. Work is left to individuals, the Scottish Socialist Voice has no Editorial Board, the SSP website (29) is Eddie Truman’s sole responsibility, Richie Venton is the SSP’s industrial organiser without any accountability to a committee of SSP trade unionists.

The Scottish Socialist Youth and the SSP International Committee have taken good initiatives, e.g. the Anti-Fascist Alliances (30) and the Republican Socialist Conventions. However, these have not had real united leadership backing (although individual leaders have sometimes given their support, particularly Colin in the latter case).

The SSP leadership does not necessarily follow through conference decisions (e.g. the principled support given to ‘No One Is Illegal’ at the post-split 2007 Conference, which would have meant working closely with the Glasgow Unity Centre). Part of this is due to exhaustion of leading members, but another factor is the continued SSP legacy of having the remnants of this unaccountable ‘Inner Circle’. Whilst no longer necessarily having the vigour to politically oppose initiatives, which they do not fully support at conferences, they can still ensure that any such agreed initiatives receive little effective national leadership promotion or coordination.

The current SSP leadership is divided over the way forward. Some from the old ‘Inner Circle’ are showing signs of abandoning the pretence of that the SSP is still a real party, and of retreating instead towards the formation of a socialist ‘think tank’, somewhat to the left of that recently formed to commemorate Jimmy Reid. This SSP initiative appears to be Glasgow based.

Colin Fox and Richie Venton, however, argue that the existing SSP can be revived if only the correct campaign can be found (e.g. Fighting Fuel Poverty, or Fighting the Cuts), or if members fully throw themselves into a continuous ‘hamster wheel’ of activity. Both work very hard and lead by example. They can always point towards a model branch out there to show that such activity is the way forward. The current example given is the new Ayrshire branch, built with the help of the party’s latest prominent recruit, Campbell Martin. He is a former SNP and Independent MSP. He remains a strong advocate of a left Scottish nationalist approach to the constitution, coupled with some support for populist politics (including the SNP’s minimum alcohol pricing and their misguided anti-‘sectarian’ bill (31).

Mounting campaigns is indeed an important activity for socialist organisations. However, without a proper assessment of the class forces involved, or of how a particular campaign links up with the organisation’s wider Immediate Programme and the struggle for socialism, then any such campaign will either run out of steam; or, it will be taken under the wing of the larger parties. Then, instead of contributing to the building of independent working class organisation, the campaign merely ends up buttressing these parties’ political position, by providing them with some cover for the cuts, or for the other counter-reforms they are imposing elsewhere. The Free Prescriptions Bill, initiated at Holyrood by the SSP parliamentary group, was only enacted by a subsequent SNP government, after the SSP ceased to have any MSPs.

In contrast to the SSP, Solidarity was formed as an alliance (calling itself a movement) and not a party. John Dennis of the SSP South Region made the original proposal for a breakaway, because he thought that internal relations had become too toxic to be contained in one party. However, Solidarity quickly constituted itself as a ‘marriage of convenience’, between Sheridan and the Sheridanistas of the DGS, CWI and SWP. It now has even less political cohesion than the currently loose SSP alliance.

The DSG website is showing signs of wishing to reunite the Left, but largely on the basis of ‘forgive and forget’ (32). The recently formed International Socialist Group (ISG), a Scottish breakaway from the SWP, also involved in Solidarity, seems to be adopting a similar path. Its co-thinkers in Counterfire, in England and Wales, have already drawn Socialist Resistance (33) into their Coalition of Resistance (CoR) against the cuts. Whilst CoR is all too willing to bow before Broad Left trade union bureaucrats and left-talking politicians, it constitutes the most punchy campaigning organisation fighting the cuts at present (as shown by its contingent on the STUC’s October 1^st demonstration in Glasgow).

CoR and ISG have even attracted some SSP members, despite their strong antipathy to those from an SWP background. However, any such unity is also likely to be on the shaky ground of ‘forgive and forget’, rather than ‘listen, learn and then move on’. Ironically, this would just repeat the ‘diplomatic’ approach the ‘Inner Circle’ adopted taken towards the SWP (the tradition from whence the ISG came), back in 2002.

Both wings of the current SSP leadership remain reticent about becoming involved in other political organisations’ unity initiatives, or even in wider campaigns where they might meet up. An exception is made in the case of the Scottish Independence Convention (SIC), which does bring the SSP into contact with Solidarity and ex-Solidarity members. Furthermore, the various struggles impose their own similar joint work, particularly in trade unions. Just as a shared left Scottish nationalism has led to common work inside the SIC, so a shared Broad Leftism has led to joint electoral slates in some unions (e.g. the Public and Commercial Service [PCS] union).

Some SSP and Solidarity members and former members, who have become disillusioned with these organisations, have called for their virtual dissolution into the various campaigns, e.g. Anti-Cuts. They hope that the experience of working with new forces, or ‘knocking heads together’ (i.e. of mutually suspicious SSP and Solidarity members or ex-members) will eventually provide a new basis for unity in the future. Whilst this path can seem attractive, it means glossing over the real political differences that have arisen, and the challenges neither side addressed. Such a course is also likely to lead to more public ‘diplomatic manoeuvres’ (usually accompanied by personalised put-downs in private), in order to bring about a superficial unity, mainly for electoral purposes. This is never a solid basis upon which to build.

Meanwhile, the CWI and SWP continue to slug it out with their own front organisations – the (now defunct?) Campaign for a New Workers’ Party and the National Shop Stewards Network for the CWI, and the (about to be abandoned?) Right to Work Campaign and Unite the Resistance for the SWP. Neither of these sects is likely to commit itself to building a real united party. They prefer to go no further than forming electoral mutual non-aggression pacts like the United Left Alliance in Ireland (which is likely to flounder, if it fails to develop further, after its initial electoral success this year). The prime political purpose of the CWI and SWP is still to build their own sects.

In 2003, a united SSP showed it had gained a definite foothold of support amongst members of the working class in Scotland. The abysmal 2011 (combined SSP and Solidarity) electoral result is an indication that, not only that most politically conscious workers, but also many socialists in Scotland, have moved on from the SSP and Solidarity.

 

 4) WHAT WE NEED TO DO -

LISTEN, LEARN AND THEN MOVE ON

The inspiring legacy of those successful working class campaigns in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, along with the recognition of the need for the working class to organise outside the Labour Party, and to address the National Question in Scotland in a serious manner, provided a sufficient political basis for the successful launch of the initial SSA and SSP project. However, the major challenges the SSP has faced since then mean that new lessons have to be learned if any successful socialist unity project is to be developed in the near future.

We need to acknowledge that the current SSP project is over. We can see that the attempt just to hold things together, hoping things will get better, has not worked. There has been little recognition, at the leadership level, of the need to face up to the new challenges, which the working class has faced; or of the necessary self-criticism about the handling of ‘Tommygate’. The SSP leadership had put the addressing of ‘Tommygate’ on hold between 2006-10, ostensibly for legal reasons during the Perjury Trail.  The 2011 Conference in Dunfermline took a retrograde step by overturning those self-critical decisions, which had been made at the first post-split SSP Conference in Glasgow in 2006.

In pursuing this ‘head-in-the-sand’ course, the SSP will end up as little more than another sect. The leadership’s refusal to develop a strategy to win back the more critical elements of Solidarity (using the Perjury Trial as an excuse), which would have involved some self-criticism, was the first step on this dead-end road. When the SSA was being set up, the SML/ISM understood the futility of trying to build a new organisation solely around an unquestioned and unquestioning CWI leadership. They actively sought wider support, and just as importantly, were prepared to be self-critical and to challenge some of their old shibboleths in the light of recent experiences. Those in the SSP today, who wish to re-establish socialist unity in Scotland, need to recognise that real answers have to be given to those challenges the SSP failed to meet.

Socialist unity, which has the capacity to address the many pressing issues the working class currently faces in a crisis-ridden world, can only be formed on a new and higher political basis. Such socialist unity will also involve those outside the SSP’s ranks. Such unity can not be built on the basis of ‘forgive and forget’ (which will just lead to a reoccurrence of previous bad practices), but must be done on the basis of ‘listen, learn and then move on’.

 

a)           Politics

To meet the new challenges the Left has faced in Scotland, we need to clarify our views over:-

-            What we mean by socialism/communism and how (and if) the immediate struggles we support promote this aim.

-            The promotion of internationalism, through building wider international organisation on the basis of ‘internationalism from below’ and by participating in international actions.

-            The rejection of populism and the creation of an ‘Immediate Programme’ that both enhances the position of our class, and encourages the development of  independent working class organisation and struggle.

-            An understanding of the reasons why socialists participate in elections to state bodies.

-            An understanding of how socialists participate effectively in trade union (and other working class) struggles.

-            Moving on from a left Nationalist approach to the National Question in Scotland, by adopting a serious commitment to socialist Republicanism.

-            A deeper understanding of Feminism (how to achieve women’s liberation and emancipation), and how this links with the transformation of sexual and social relations between the sexes, which socialist men (who should also have a vision of a realisable better society) have a real interest in achieving.

-            A serious approach to Ecology which takes into account the meeting of the human need for water, food, fuel, shelter and transport, but in an environmentally sustainable way.

-            An imaginative approach on how we relate to other areas of struggle, e.g, culture.

 

b)          Organisation

To learn from the mistakes of the SSP (and of Solidarity), and become more effective we need to:

-            Emphasise the vital importance of democracy, transparency and accountability in all the organisations of the working class.

-            The role of leadership

-            Reject the lure of ‘celebrity politics’.

-            Acknowledge that neither the bourgeois courts, nor the bourgeois media, are appropriate places for socialists to get rulings on how they conduct themselves, or to conduct their internal disputes.  We must confine our appeals to democratic working class and socialist/communist organisations and media. How can we convince the working class of the case for socialism if we have to run to the ruling class’s courts over how we handle our own affairs?

On November 30^th, two million public sector workers went on strike (including 300,000 in Scotland), thousands joined picket lines, and tens of thousands went on demonstrations throughout the UK.  However, there is no chance of defending our pensions, when the ruling class and its supporting parties are determined to roll back our class’s gains, and we remain divided between unions and a plethora of different pension schemes. Trade union leaders will all too soon be jockeying for sectional concessions. Only a class wide political offensive, which links up all struggles against the ruling class’s current austerity drive (and this must extend across the EU), has any chance of undertaking a successful defence and then moving on to make real gains.

Nor can the working class be left to the ‘tender mercies’ of a future Miliband (34) -led Labour government.  The Con-Dems may demand an immediate ‘arm and a leg’ from every worker in the UK; but New Labour also wants to saw off our ‘limbs’ – only more slowly. The SNP wants a Scotland that is a low tax haven for corporate business and a playground for the ultra-rich.

Socialists and communists must offer something better.  So let us ‘listen, learn and then move on’.

Allan Armstrong, Bob Goupillot, Iain Robertson, 20.12.11

 

 

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RCN BULLETIN

SEPTEMBER NATIONAL COUNCIL, 2009

Why we produced the motion on socialist unity 

This statement explains why the Republican Communist Network (RCN) produced the motion on socialist unity* which has been put on the agenda for the National Council.

Firstly, the statement was not initially intended to be a motion because we did not think that platforms were allowed to put motions to the National Council (NC). We have never done so before but because it asked the Executive Committee (EC) to reconsider their statement, the National Secretary advised that it was more appropriate as a motion.

It is also important to remember the political context of the motion. The European elections took place on 4th June. Working class people across Britain, despite the worst crisis of capitalism in living memory, saw a left which was fragmented and in disarray. The mainstream, bourgeois parties could offer no solutions and voters were looking for answers. The split left was decimated in Scotland (it fell back far more here than in England and Wales). The BNP and Christian Party overtook every left/ socialist party in Scotland. The economic crisis does not mean that people will automatically turn to the left. The dangers in such complacency are clear to all when the BNP were able to win 2 seats in the European Parliament.

Following these elections, tentative and in some cases, possibly cynical moves towards “socialist unity” were made. As well as invitations to meet from those involved in “No 2 EU”, local initiatives were springing up via social forums and Red /Green groups. Non party members were asking about the possibility of “unity candidates” or non aggression pacts for the imminent Westminster election and the questions around the Glasgow North East by-election was even more pressing.

The Executive produced a statement, which said, “Once all of the legal obstacles have been cleared from our path, we intend to initiate a full, open and democratic discussion around left unity in Scotland and the role that the SSP can play in achieving it.” This statement left many party members unsure which, if any, initiatives they could be involved in. We believed that this statement was too vague and that the “legal obstacles” referred to could potentially drag on for months if not years. We felt that comrades could not simply ignore the initiatives, which were taking place, nor could we refrain from discussion indefinitely and still claim to be the party of socialist unity.

The RCN felt there were real dangers for the party in adhering to the course of action suggested in the EC statement and brought forward our position in order to seek clarification and facilitate a debate in the party on the matter. We believe that such a debate could be held without breaching any legal advice.

We have to say that as a platform, which is made up of hardworking, committed party members, we have been dismayed at the reaction to our statement by some within the party. We recognise that it probably represents a minority viewpoint but we are a party who has recently overhauled the constitution to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated and that all shades of opinion are heard and dealt with in a comradely manner. We hope that this is a tradition the SSP will return to.

We want to sincerely emphasise that our statement was not intended to cause further distress to any party member who may be a witness in any legal case. We are also clear as a platform and have written at length in our magazine, where the responsibility for the split in the socialist left in Scotland lies. That for us is a political crime, which is unforgivable.

We are not under any illusions about what can be achieved in any left unity discussions. The process, which brought about the SSP, took years of joint work and building of trust between groups. That will be far more difficult after the events of the last few years. However, no one can deny that in the current global economic and environmental crisis, socialist unity is needed more than ever.

We welcomed members of the EC who came to speak with the RCN platform last week to offer some clarification of their statement and to seek clarification and explanation from us. We would also like to thank individual SSP comrades who contacted us directly seeking clarification of our position. It is so much easier to understand comrades in a face-to-face discussion rather than via e-mail tirades.

We were assured that local initiatives as we outlined were not forbidden. The content of the executive statement was to protect any potential party witnesses for being held in contempt of court or being accused of obstructing the course of justice which is a criminal offence. We have no wish to place any of our comrades in such a position. We were also assured that the legal obstacles referred to mean the trial which is likely to take place early in the new year.

Comrades the embargo on this discussion cannot go on indefinitely or we will become totally ineffectual as a political force in Scotland. The debate on socialist unity must take place in the spring of next year at the latest or we will lose support and members if we are perceived to be an obstacle to the progress of socialist ideas.

However, given the clarification from the EC, we accept their request to remit the motion to the earliest possible date after the trial.

*   see http://republicancommunist.org/blog/page/3/

 

RCN BULLETIN

JANUARY 2010

General Election 2010 – A short contribution to the debate

Should the SSP stand?

The RCN has generally advocated standing in elections to provide the electorate with a socialist alternative at the ballot box. In the 2009 European elections, we argued vociferously that we should stand as part of the European Anti Capitalist Left.

However, it is important that we continue to review our election strategy particularly in the light of recent election campaigns and results.  Therefore, we must consider whether or not we stand in the coming Westminster elections.

Within the RCN, there are a number of different

opinions (we never have an RCN line and do not practise democratic centralism) but the majority are in favour of standing in a limited number of seats with local branches having the final decision on whether to stand or not. However, we agree with others who say we need to have a clear idea of why we are standing (beating other socialist parties by a few votes is not a good enough reason) and we need to stand on socialist demands not populist slogans.

What was right about the Glasgow North East By Election?

We had a very good candidate who had considerable political experience and who is an excellent communicator. Comrades worked very hard over a long period of time and reported positive responses on the ground. Mobilising against the SDL was a particularly important and significant spin off. Given these factors and the horrible effects of the current recession, we should have been pushing at an open door.

However, we had to fight against celebrity politics and other socialist parties, the SSP having decided not to discuss the prospect of a socialist unity candidate.

What was wrong with the Glasgow North East By Election?

Instead of a campaign based on strong, socialist, agitational propaganda, we resorted to populist politics in order to chase votes. Kevin was never going to “Make Greed History!” Why did we not use our excellent record as the anti war party to good effect? What was our socialist response to the capitalist crisis and the environmental threat to humanity posed by climate change? If we are only going to get 0.7% of the vote, let’s get it for an explicitly socialist alternative. The politics of populism failed.

What should our election strategy be?

We should stand in a limited number of seats given our numbers and financial position. We should support those branches that want to stand candidates. We should throw our weight behind the areas that want to stand in the election, but should be arguing for a socialist campaign. Ditch ‘Make Greed History’ and adopt either the SSP’s own ‘Make Capitalism History – Make Socialism the Future’ or the New Anti-Capitalist Party’s ‘Make the Bosses Pay for their Crisis’. We need to stop policy being made on the hoof. We must develop our programme and outline in much more detail our socialist alternative to capitalism. This is a longer term project for the party than just for these elections.

Instead of chasing passive voters, our approach should be one of “making socialists” by producing educational materials and holding meetings on key topics – War, Recession, BNP, Climate Change - educating our membership in the process.

We should also be emphasising the importance of the Scottish independence referendum, on the democratic grounds of upholding the right to self- determination, not by raising any false belief that the SNP can deliver, or that we should enter into any popular front with them.

What about other left parties?

We need to combat any illusion that we are the only left alternative on offer in any election. Unpalatable as this may be, we should consider non-aggression pacts in specific areas. We could enter a non-aggression pact with the Trade Union & Socialist Coalition, without sinking ourselves into the bureaucratic, anti-democratic stitch-up that it constitutes. The BNP are targeting Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Jim Murphy’ s seats. These are areas where it would make sense to consider non- aggression pacts.

We need to integrate any election work into work we are involved in generally and not see elections as separate from our normal activity of developing ourselves as socialists. We should be building branches ensuring they are functioning in as many areas as possible. Political education and the democratic building of a socialist programme should be a priority for the party.

RCN BULLETIN

SSP SPECIAL CONFERENCE IN GLASGOW – FEBRUARY 5th, 2011

RECHARGING THE SSP

There has been a slow erosion of Labour Party dominance over the working class in Scotland since the late 1970’s. The first signs of independent Left organisation outside Labour’s ranks followed Callaghan’s decision to bow before the dictates of the IMF, and his failure to throw the Labour government’s full weight behind its own Scottish Devolution Bill. This contributed to the formation of the Scottish Labour Party, in 1976, led by Jim Sillars.  The SLP only represented a limited political break with the Labour Party. However, it highlighted two features of future breakaways to the Left – a questioning of mainstream capitalist economics and a concern for greater national self-determination.

However, the SLP had no clearly developed socialist alternative to capitalism.  It also accepted a devolutionary reform of the UK, ignoring the state’s anti-democratic Crown Powers and its ongoing war in the ‘Six Counties’. Most significantly, the initials SLP turned out to mean the Sillars’ Labour Party. The party fell apart when Sillars attempted to bureaucratically suppress anyone who questioned his leadership and policies. This negative aspect has shown itself to be a recurring problem.

The next significant breakaway was the Socialist Labour Party, formed by Arthur Scargill, in response to Tony Blair’s successful campaign to reject the Labour Party’s Clause 4, in 1996, thus consummating New Labour.  Whilst the SLP had a traditional Left Labour statist critique of neo-liberalism, its support for Scottish self-determination was virtually non-existent. However, the second SLP turned out to be Scargill’s Labour Party. It too fell apart when Scargill suppressed all those who opposed him.

When the Scottish Socialist Party was formed in 1998, things had obviously advanced politically since the 1970’s. The new SSP was avowedly socialist in its critique of neo-liberalism, advocated the break-up of the UK and opposed the US/British imperial alliance. However, it was less clear both on what a socialist alternative would look like, and the strategy to be supported to challenge the UK state (tail-ending the Nationalists or a republican socialist ‘internationalism from below’ alliance). Nevertheless, the SSP was able to unite Left nationalists, Left unionists, socialist republicans, socialist feminists, environmental activists and others in a single organisation – no mean achievement.

However, the SSP was also afflicted with the ‘great leader’ syndrome, initially promoted by comrades from the former Scottish Militant Labour and others. This contributed to the ‘Tommygate crisis’ in November 2004. Could the SSP maintain itself as an independent socialist party, or was it doomed to become Sheridan’s Socialist Party? In October 2006, that role was taken on by Solidarity-SSM (the Suck-up to Sheridan Movement) when it split away, after Sheridan’s earlier court ‘victory’.

However, the remaining SSP has yet to prove it can successfully reconstitute itself as the party of socialist unity. There are questions over whether the restriction of internal debate over the last four years on this issue went beyond what was necessary to avoid the legal problems caused by the state’s perjury trial.  Some members appear to believe that the letters ‘SSP’ now stand for the Stuff Sheridan Party, and that the decision of a bourgeois court last December means that we can just continue as before. The very welcome clearing of our leading comrades’ names by a jury majority, however, is not the same as the SSP still being seen as the party of socialist unity, either by the wider working class, or even just by those former members and supporters, most of whom never joined Solidarity.

Any party wanting to overthrow the existing order will be presented with unforeseen challenges. They can either try to ignore the unwelcome consequences of this, pretending that things can go on just as before; or they can use the experience to learn how to deal with such challenges. Everybody in the SSP would now accept that celebrity populist politics, built around the ‘great leader’, has to be rejected. We all share some responsibility for not dealing with this earlier – including the RCN. However, the SSP has still to address two other issues, which its founding members had not considered.

First, what is our attitude to the bourgeois courts? What chance have socialists got of bringing about socialism in the face of capitalist economic and state power, if we run to their courts to sort out our internal problems in the here and now?  The original November 2004 EC decision to allow Sheridan to go to the courts to take on the News of the World was misguided. When he rejected the unanimous EC decision to advise him not to, this was his first anti-party action. But this was disguised from the membership by the EC-Sheridan ‘deal’, with fateful consequences. Similarly, Frances Curran’s decision to go to courts for a ruling on Sheridan’s disgusting Daily Record attack highlights two things. There still remains a belief in some quarters that bourgeois courts are a legitimate arena for socialists to settle disputes with each other; and secondly, an unwillingness to criticise and bring leading office bearers to account – something that can and should be done in a comradely, political and non-personalised way.

Secondly, what is our attitude to the bourgeois media? We shouldn’t secretly resort to their media to criticise the conduct of other socialists, no matter how provocative their actions. Secrecy can lead to malicious rumour spreading, as we soon found out. Even worse is taking money to attack others. The fact that Sheridan first started this in the Daily Record provides no excuse for others. Any responsible jury member should reject paid-for evidence. George McNeilage’s tape threatened to undermine those SSP witnesses who had nothing to gain in court but maintaining their own personal integrity.

The traumatic post-split October 2006 SSP Conference was conducted in a genuinely comradely manner. It took many principled decisions, which still need to be upheld today. However, this means an end to the refusal to answer questions concerning elected office bearers’ public behaviour and the personalised attacks on those raising criticisms, which we have sometimes witnessed since. This post-trial Special Conference must re-establish that earlier tone once more.

Unless there is a shared agreement that have been some major misjudgements in the SSP’s handling of the whole affair, then we will go the same way as the two earlier SLPs. To avoid this means:-

1)       an unequivocal rejection of celebrity populism.  We are radically democratic and egalitarian.

2)       not having leading members beyond question and therefore unaccountable to the membership.

3)      a refusal to go to the bourgeois courts and media in an attempt to solve our own problems.  We need to develop our own socialist methods of dealing with such issues.

Whatever the outcome of today’s Conference, the now long-proven need for a united socialist organisation in Scotland (joined to others in an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance) will remain. How much better, if that organisation was to be a recharged SSP, showing that it can meet any challenges thrown at it in a principled and imaginative way.

 

RCN BULLETIN

SSP AGM IN DUNFERMLINE, APRIL  2011

 FACING UP TO THE CRISIS IN THE SSP

 The motions for this year’s Conference highlight the toll taken on the SSP over the last six years. Is the Scottish Socialist Party still a party, or we have we just become a loose alliance, looser even than the preceding Scottish Socialist Alliance?

AUTO-ELECTORALISM OR SLEEP WALKING TOWARDS MAY 5^th

Motion A1 from the Executive Committee on the Holyrood election only views the national election on May 5^th as a preparation for the Scottish local elections next year. It doesn’t address the political situation we currently face. Labour and SNP are vying with each other to be seen as the embodiment of ‘capitalist responsibility’, implementing the cuts programme demanded by corporate capital, the EU and Westminster; whilst hypocritically claiming to minimise effect of the cuts on the workers or people of Scotland. Nor does the EC motion take stock of the situation we face in the aftermath of the Sheridan Trial, with a split Left and the continued challenge the SSP faces from the supporters of ‘celebrity socialism’. Only now it is in the guise of that opportunist George Galloway and his cheerleaders in the CWI, SWP and Solidarity – when will they ever learn!

However, in order to rally the troops, at least until May, our leadership is also highlighting a recent opinion poll, which places the SSP on 4% in the Regional List. Yet, in the latest council by-election in Paisley, the SSP only received about 2% of the vote. This is in a solid working class constituency with an active branch and a locally well-known candidate.  But this is not enough. The SSP still has a lot to do to win back key sections of the working class in Scotland.  A ‘back to business as usual’ approach is unlikely to achieve this.

TAKING FULL ACCOUNT OF THE PROBLEMS CAUSED BY THE SPLIT

The court’s decision last December, in clearing the names of our leading comrades, was very welcome. However, the jailing of Sheridan for the non-violent crime of perjury does not constitute justice.  It also creates a false martyr. It still leaves Sheridan unaccountable for his offences against our class, and his courtroom and media attempts to drag sexual relations back fifty years.  Nor does the decision of a bourgeois court amount to a vindication of all the actions taken by the SSP over these difficult times. This is why we in the RCN have stuck by our motion remitted from the February Special Conference, which addresses these concerns. Until the SSP can publicly acknowledge our need to be self-critical and learn from our mistakes, we will not regain the confidence of our class. As a result, workers’ support will be directed elsewhere, or many will just retreat into apathy and cynicism.

Other Conference motions also acknowledge the continuing crisis facing the SSP. In particular, Motion B7 from Glasgow West argues that, “The SSP has suffered over the past 6 years because of our inability to discuss openly and candidly the experience of the party and its members surrounding the Sheridan court cases and the split in the party in 2006”. Furthermore, this motion goes on to make some useful proposals involving a structured discussion around important issues. There are a number of other issues which we think could usefully have been added – such as the role of trade unions and how socialists should relate to them; and an assessment of the ‘National Question’ and its impact on the UK – but these (and other) issues could still be added by future ECs or NCs. The Glasgow West motion deserves support.

So too does motion B8 from Edinburgh South calling for the SSP to initiate another Convention of the Left, to be held in Scotland.  This would probably bring along others who are now distinctly hostile to the SSP. However, we should not be afraid to publicly debate such issues as ‘celebrity socialism versus genuine socialism’, ‘tolerating sexism under the guise of  ‘class politics’ versus challenging women’s oppression and sexism as part of the struggle for human emancipation’. We also have a distinctive socialist republican approach to the ‘National Question’ to counter the British Left. Furthermore, if the SSP can show that we have learned important lessons from the trials and tribulations of the ‘Tommygate Affair’, we are likely to get a hearing once more from those who used to look to the SSP for a political lead.

Motion 3 from Scottish Socialist Youth recognises the slippage of the SSP from a properly structured party based on branches to, in effect, a loose alliance. Indeed, the SSY itself has increasingly become another semi-detached part of this federal mix, despite their key role initiating the independent Anti-Fascist Alliances and the continuing Free Hetherington Occupation. The SSP, as a whole, needs to learn from these valuable experiences, and seriously address our young comrades’ concerns.

PROBLEMS STILL UNRECOGNISED AND THE APPROACH NEEDED

There are other problems for the SSP accentuated by the current crisis, which are not the subject of debate at this Conference. The Scottish Socialist Voice has become another largely autonomous body, not subject to the control of a wider Editorial Board, responsible to Conference, ECs or NCs. Although we have a prolific Industrial Organiser, there is no regularly meeting Industrial/Trade Union Committee. Many of these problems have arisen, not through bad practice, but due to the loss of SSP members and the fall-off in branch activity, leaving smaller numbers of comrades trying to hold things together as best they can.

In conclusion, can this Conference fully acknowledge the nature of the crisis that has engulfed the SSP? Can we address our own ‘inner demons’ without acrimony and rancour, and in a spirit of shared comradeship? If we can do this, then we have a chance of reversing the current tendency to fragmentation and of becoming a party once more.

 

 

Trade Unions – Are They Fit For Purpose?

It was generally agreed by participants that the third Global Commune event, jointly hosted by the Republican Communist Network (RCN) and the commune, on Saturday, January 29^th, was a very worthwhile day. Once again, the event was held in the ‘Out of the Blue’ Centre in Leith (Edinburgh) and involved, as well as the organising groups, members of the Independent Workers Union (IWU) in Ireland, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Permanent Revolution, the Autonomous Centre in Edinburgh (ACE), current and ex-members of the SSP, and the Anarchist Federation.

The theme for the day was, ‘Trade Unions – Are They Fit for Purpose?’ There was a shared agreement that the traditional Broad Left strategy for working in trade unions had been shown to be wanting. By and large, Broad Lefts accept the existing union structures and concentrate on replacing Right wing leaderships. However, we now have the situation where new Broad Lefts have to contest old Broad Lefts, which have become as conservative as the leaderships they replaced. This highlights the flawed thinking behind their ‘capture the machinery’ approach.

Mary Macgregor of the RCN chaired the initial and plenary sessions.  The opening platform of speakers consisted of Allan Armstrong of the RCN and the commune, Stuart King of Permanent Revolution, Tommy McKearney of the IWU, Alberto Durango of the Latin American Workers Association (LAWA) and the IWW, and Mike Vallance of ACE. They each put forward different approaches, including organising within or outside existing trade unions, in TUC/ITUC-recognised or independent unions, and the possibility of a strategy involving a mixture of these methods.

Apologies for being unable to attend were given by Brian Higgins of the rank and file Building Workers Group, who is currently involved in the anti-blacklist campaign; and by Jerry Hicks, who has just campaigned on a rank and file platform for the post of General Secretary in UNITE. Therefore, Allan Armstrong, the former Scottish Teachers’ Rank & File convenor provided a rank and file perspective.

Allan used his experience in the Lothian and the Scottish Rank & File Teacher groups. He drew a distinction between a rank and file movement and a rank and file caucus. In 1974/5, the Rank & File Teacher group had been to the forefront of a three month long independent (unofficial or wildcat) rank and file movement of Scottish teachers organised through Action Committees. The central demand was for a £15 a week flat rate pay increase. The Action Committees organised weekly three-day strike action, street activities, large demonstrations, and an occupation of the EIS (the main Scottish teachers’ union) HQ. Negotiations were conducted directly between delegates from the Action Committees and representatives from the Scottish Office at New St. Andrews House in Edinburgh. The teacher delegates were backed by a demonstration outside of striking teachers, whilst the Scottish Office had the backing of the Special Branch (or some other state agency) cameramen on the roof!

The Action Committees held weekly open meetings of striking teachers, and sent flying pickets to other schools to draw them into action. They also worked within the EIS. Many activists were EIS school reps. Eventually there was a palace coup at EIS HQ. This enabled a rejigged union leadership to sanction its own official action. Negotiations were confined once more to union officials and the Scottish Office, much to their mutual relief. Nevertheless, the strength of the independent strike action was enough to force the government to concede the financial equivalent of nearly the whole rank and file movement’s £15 pay demand. However, with negotiations now conducted by EIS officials, the distribution of the money gained was massively skewed in favour of school managements.

The self-confidence gained by teachers meant that further action over the next two years, mostly official, but sometimes involving independent action, was able to win substantial improvements in teachers’ conditions. A new contract clearly defined maximum working hours and class sizes. In the process of these struggles, Scottish education and teacher trade unionism was turned upside down. The employers and union officials were unable to fully reassert their control until the McCrone Deal was implemented in 2001.

After the ending of the initial rank and file movement, around the action over pay in 1975, Scottish Rank & File Teachers continued as a caucus. They campaigned around a very wide range of issues, e.g. pay (for a single salary scale, for flat rate increases), improved conditions (smaller class sizes), for women’s and gay rights, against the use of the belt (the form of corporal punishment in Scottish schools), for the right of school students to organise, for egalitarian educational provision, secular education and support for Gaelic language teaching. They also campaigned to democratise the union – demanding head teachers out and directly elected and accountable union office bearers on the average pay of the members. Most importantly though, they championed the sovereignty of the membership in their workplaces, and defended, and when possible initiated, independent action.

The Scottish Teachers Rank & File caucus was sabotaged by the SWP in 1982, leaving only the Lothian Rank & File group. Later, a Scottish Federation of Socialist Teachers (SFST) brought together the Left once more. However, the SFST became a hybrid Broad Left/Rank & File caucus. Furthermore, the employers had encouraged division amongst teachers by creating a plethora of promoted posts. They also curtailed a vibrant culture of alternative educational thinking amongst classroom teachers, through the top-down promotion of tightly policed ‘educational’ counter-reforms. The Tories’ anti-trade union laws undermined independent strike action, massively aided by trade union officials. However, there was still limited independent action until as recently as the 2003, in protest against the war in Iraq.

Allan summed up by saying that he thought the rank and file approach was still valid in various unions. However, there had been a rapid decline of union membership in many sectors of employment, as well as new areas of work without any union organisation. Union leaderships were often more interested in suppressing any attempts to resist the employers, acting in effect as a free personnel management service for the bosses. Such leaders wanted little more than sweetheart agreements with the employers to ensure a tick-off system of subs collections, primarily for their own benefit. Therefore, socialists should think tactically, and consider when an independent union, or possibly dual official/independent union approach, may be more appropriate than a rank and file caucus approach.

Stuart King of Permanent Revolution then drew on the experience of the early Minority Movement in the trade unions in the early 1920’s. The CPGB’s work in the Minority Movement formed part of the wider work of the Third International, which had organised the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) in 1920 to conduct united front work within the international trade union movement. Although mostly associated with the official Communist Parties, RILU drew together wider forces within the unions, especially those from a Syndicalist tradition.

Stuart argued that there were some similarities in the early 1920’s to the situation we face today. In April 1921, the two leaderships of the NTWU (later the TGWU) and the NUR, failed to support the miners of the MFGB (later the NUM), in the face of employer imposed wage cuts, despite being part of the Triple Alliance. This ‘Black Friday’ climb-down led to a growing feeling of demoralisation amongst workers. Many left their unions. The Minority Movement launched a ‘Back to the Unions’ campaign, with the intention of getting workers organised to resist the growing employers’ offensive, and to bring the union leaders under the effective control of the rank and file.

Stuart said that we also face a period of retreat today, as existing union leaderships had joined social partnerships with the state and employers. There was also declining union membership. The ‘Awkward Squad’ had also turned out to be not that awkward when it came to effectively challenging the employers and the state. Nevertheless, workers still look to their official unions when it comes to taking defensive action – as recent strikes of civil servants, airline cabin staff and others have demonstrated. This means communists must be active within the existing unions and struggle to bring them under effective rank and file control.

Stuart’s contribution provided a counterpoint to others who emphasised the fundamental differences in the situation we face today, compared to the past. In particular, Tommy McKearney of the Independent Workers Union of Ireland highlighted the major challenges workers now face.

Tommy argued that thirty years of neo-liberal economics have finally done fundamental damage to the system it was meant to promote. Facilitated by globalisation, the enormous transfer of wealth from workers to capitalists has created a situation where consumers in the west no longer have the purchasing power to buy the produce of their own industry and the developing countries have not yet reached a level where they can take up the slack. The contradiction is explicable only by Marxist economists.

What has also happened, almost unnoticed by many commentators, is the collapse of social democracy in the face of the neo-liberal assault and the most recent crisis in capitalism. For a few years the social democratic movements of Europe disguised their collapse by stealing the clothes of the neo-liberals. Tony Blair, Schroder, Mitterand were in reality as far to the right as any Tory or Christian Democrat. In the face of economic collapse post 2008, they could only offer right-wing solutions.

Moreover, the trade union movement that had give birth to and thereafter sustained these parties for almost a century was as ideologically and organisationally bankrupt. There is no longer a viable middle way between socialism and capitalism.

The IWU recognises this fact and has decided to seek out new and more appropriate methods of organisation in order to meet the new challenge. Among other strategic options, the IWU is actively developing a policy of building community and/or social justice unionism. This concept is not new or devised by the IWU but it recognises the need to emphasise the struggle between classes and the need to promote the unity and solidarity of the working people.

Tommy summed up by saying that we are in a new era. There has been a fundamental change in social relationships in the west, and we must recognise this in our ideological analysis, in our policy decisions and in our organisations structures. The IWU may be small but we are confident in our analysis and in our strategy.

Then Alberto Durango gave a thorough and humorous account of his experience as a migrant worker from Colombia now living in London. Migrant workers often had more than one job to make ends meet. This sometimes meant that they could be in more than one union.

Alberto had started as a cleaner in a non-unionised office. First of all, his boss had resorted to Alberto for help, asking him to inform workers who did not speak English that they would have their hours cut and changed. Alberto brought the workers together and told them in Spanish  – “This fucking manager wants to… !” They began to organise, turning first to the T&G. The T&G (now UNITE) organised an official Justice for Cleaners campaign. There were some initial successes against large City of London and Canary Wharf companies. LAWA, which Alberto was very much involved in, was to the forefront of campaigning, and was provided with office space and money by UNITE.

However, there was a limit to how far the UNITE leadership was prepared to push. After organising some demonstrations, it contented itself with signing ‘no further action’ deals in return for minimum pay awards. The employers then started changing workers’ hours and conditions and pressured them over their immigration status. Alberto was sacked, arrested and had his home raided by the police.

UNITE’s leadership wasn’t prepared to challenge this. Therefore, workers had to organise their own independent Cleaners Defence Committee. This had led to an international campaign {including solidarity action in Edinburgh, following Alberto addressing the first Global Commune event}. The UNITE leadership, supported by the local Broad Left, then turned on the workers involved, smearing activists, refusing to back those without papers, and taking away LAWA’s facilities.

In order to organise, LAWA then turned to the IWW. A wider organisation was required to unite migrant workers from many countries. They needed an independent forum for organising, without being directly sabotaged by UNITE officials and the Broad Left. The new IWW cleaners’ branch provided this. However, some cleaners still worked within UNITE too, and had participated in the rank and file campaign to elect Jerry Hicks.

The last of the morning speakers was Mike Vallance. He explained how ACE, with its own premises, had been set up in the aftermath of the successful Anti-Poll Tax campaign. ACE became very much involved in claimants’ campaigns, providing a venue for meeting and socialising, organising support demonstrations and providing advocates to support people in their dealings with various state agencies. ACE also operated as a venue for a wider range of campaigns and various organisations, including the Anarchist Federation. It was also involved in the production and distribution of a number of bulletins and other publications, including the commune.

Currently ACE was involved in the Edinburgh refuse workers’ campaign which was challenging the City Council’s massive cut in pay and worsening of conditions. The Council’s attack was being made under the guise of bringing about ‘parity’ across their workforce. It had begun under the last administration led by the Labour Party, and was continuing under the present Lib Dem/SNP administration. The refuse cleaners’ union, UNITE, was in cahoots with the Council, and they had organised no effective backing, despite the campaign being official. Their main concern was to bring the current official work-to-rule to an end.

ACE had been involved in providing bulletins, posting support stickers, but most of all, in attempts through sit-down actions to blockade scab drivers employed by the Council to break the refuse workers’ work-to-rule. Workers fear that it is the Council’s intention to privatise the refuse collection service, and replace them with non-union workers on lower pay and worsened conditions. Yet, despite the almost total lack of official support, the workers had so far rejected any of the union-backed ‘offers’. In the light of this determination, ACE was hoping to draw others into its solidarity campaign.

This was followed by a short plenary session. Contributions ranged from one participant who said that social democracy had revealed its bankruptcy as far back as the First World War. Matthew Jones of the commune particularly welcomed Tommy’s appreciation that a new political trade unionism was needed after the now evident failure of social democracy and stalinism. In order to maximise participation, the meeting soon broke up into two workshops, with RCN and commune members acting as facilitators and recorders. The discussions stemming from these will be written up and posted.

After lunch, Paul Stewart and Patricia Campbell of the IWU presented the case for a community or social justice unionism approach. Paul showed a DVD drawing on the experiences of the Kanagawa City Union in Japan. This union organised migrant workers, especially from Latin America. It addresses not only workplace issues, but the wider problems workers face in the community such as racially motivated and domestic violence, sexual harassment, health, welfare and visa problems. It also calls on members to participate regularly in protests outside offending companies. Paul was going to make this DVD more widely available.

Patricia followed this up with a power point presentation (until the technology failed!) of the current work of the IWU in attempting to broaden out union organisation into the communities. The IWU had conducted a participatory survey into the issues that local communities wanted to address. It also sought to address the problems faced by migrant workers. The IWU had already challenged the strong-arm tactics of the PSNI (the revamped RUC) in Armagh City. It had also campaigned on the streets, with red banners, against the DUP/Sinn Fein government’s proposals to limit marches. These would prevent workers from organising their own demonstrations. The IWU had helped to force the authorities to retreat.

The two follow up workshops discussed the possibilities of wider community organising. They also returned to the issue addressed in the morning of whether unions were fit for purpose. The discussions stemming from these will also be written up and posted.

There was a final report-back plenary session with further discussion. The initial platform speakers were provided with an opportunity to say what they thought had been learned and gained from the day. The majority of those in attendance over the day were activists. However, the need for wider forums for strategic debate and discussion, which did not necessarily lead to immediate calls for activity, was nonetheless appreciated.

There was a wide consensus that there was no single approach to organising workers in the complex and changing situation we faced. The long period of working class retreat probably disguised some of the new methods of resistance that were emerging in the face of the current capitalist offensive. It was also acknowledged that learning from wider international experience, especially that of the IWU, had been very useful. There had been differences over whether the situation we now face is altogether different from earlier experiences, and over the longstanding issue of whether ‘to party or not to party’. However, these differences were all aired in a very comradely manner.

A good day was followed by the now traditional Global Commune social session in Wetherspoon’s  ‘Foot of the Walk’, where members from all the organisations present through the day continued their discussions till much later!

Allan Armstrong. 10.2.11

The RCN welcomes the vindication of those SSP comrades who refused to go along with Sheridan’s attempt to use his public and celebrity position to extract money for personal gain. Whilst fully recognising the political damage and personal hurt to SSP members resulting from this debacle, the RCN opposes the jailing of our former SSP comrade Tommy Sheridan and looks forward to the day when such issues will be dealt with within the organisations of our class not those of the bourgeoisie.  Lessons, however, must be learnt.

The rise of the Scottish Socialist Party to a position of influence and respect within the working class of Scotland, owes a great deal to the hard work and dedication of many comrades. No one can underplay the contribution made to this by Tommy Sheridan. He became the public face of the socialist movement in Scotland and inspired many people to become involved in class based activity. However, Tommy is a human being and is flawed like the rest of us. He grew to believe his own rhetoric; he courted the press on personal and family matters and set himself up to be the epitome of the clean-cut family man. He grew to believe that he was the SSP.

As we said at the time of the split within the SSP: The decision of Tommy Sheridan to pursue his court case against the unanimous advice of the SSP National Executive represented a rejection of inner party democracy and the accountability of party officials to the membership – an anti-party action, which has had dire consequences for the SSP. It was a gross political mistake.

The subsequent decision to form a new organisation, Solidarity, on little other political basis than personal support for Tommy Sheridan, represented a continuation of this anti-party action and heralded one of the most serious mistakes made by socialists in post war Scottish politics. It placed personality and individual egos above principled politics. It weakened the working class in the face of the current ruling class offensive.

The decision of the SWP and CWI to back this split, further demonstrated their own sectarian agendas. These organisations’ lack of commitment to principled socialist unity has already been clearly shown by their recent separate ‘unity’ initiatives in England and Wales, and in Northern Ireland.

The most immediate lesson for socialists is the incompatibility of trying to build a socialist organisation through promoting a celebrity leader. Furthermore, this has been highlighted, in the UK, not only by the example of Tommy Sheridan, but also of Derek Hatton (CWI/Militant), Arthur Scargill (Socialist Labour Party) Ken Livingstone (one-time Left independent) and George Galloway (Respect).

The consequences of the internecine warfare for the SSP and the working class movement have been catastrophic. Our credibility as an organisation, which can lead the struggles that face us and unite the left in Scotland, is severely diminished. However, we have survived and in pockets around Scotland have continued to work democratically and been leading fighters in various struggles.

Now is the time to learn the lessons of this tragedy. If we do so, then we can possibly rebuild as an organisation and once more play our part in forging socialist unity and taking forward the fight for a progressive and equal society.

Although we hold Tommy Sheridan responsible for the initial damage to the SSP, we also recognise the potential for subsequent and continuing damage caused by the misguided actions of a number of our own comrades, some of these actions in direct contradiction to Party policy. To avoid this, we must:-

• Encourage debates where political differences and attempts to make SSP office bearers accountable for their actions are addressed without acrimony and personalised attacks, either by those criticising or those criticised, and with understanding.
• Apply our constitution equally to all members.
• Insist that all officers of the Party adhere to Party policy.
• Not elevate any individual or group to the position of Great Leader/s. The party has democratic structures to ensure this does not happen and these must be adhered to.
• The membership of the party must be trusted. Some of the fallout from the court case could have been mitigated if the minutes of the EC had been dealt with in the normal manner and been made public to the membership. Only the RCN argued for the minutes to be open. This was a case of the party still treating Tommy Sheridan as more important than any other member and as such above the democratic scrutiny of the party.
• No resort to the bourgeois courts to decide political issues as per conference decisions at the October conference post the split.

Socialists should not go to the bourgeois courts for rulings on how we conduct ourselves. Such appeals should only be made to the democratic institutions of our class. What chance have socialists got of bringing about socialism in the face of capitalist economic and state power, if we have to run to their courts to sort out our problems in the here and now? Therefore, we need to re-emphasise the SSP Conference policy passed on October 20th, 2006.

• SSP members should avoid resort to the state’s courts when seeking redress for politically motivated attacks on their behaviour
• When SSP members are subjected to politically motivated attacks by the state or media, they should be able to call upon the support of the SSP National Executive to conduct a party campaign including the following tactics as deemed appropriate:-
  • articles in the party’s press
  • direct appeals to the trade union members in the state bodies and/or media responsible
  • calls for boycott actions
• SSP members should not resort to the non-party media when making allegations against other SSP members. Such allegations should be brought initially before the appropriate party body at the level concerned with the right to appeal to a higher level, the ultimate appeal being the SSP Conference.
• The elected press officer should be responsible for day-to-day responses to the outside media, when members are under attack. The press officer is directly responsible, initially to the National Executive, then to the National Council, and finally to the National Conference.

We accept that individuals found themselves in exceptional circumstances. However, in line with the above decision, the George McNeilage tape should have been seen to be dealt with by the party. This has been damaging for the SSP amongst the broader labour and trade union movement. The end does not justify the means.

Frances Curran’s use of the courts for a ruling being called a scab by the Daily Record was also a political mistake and against Party policy. Party members who handed minutes to police or who gave affidavits to newspapers must now see that however well intentioned, their actions were not helpful and once more were against party policy.

Once again, it is our contention that we must bring the continuing self inflicted damage to an end. The mistakes we made must be acknowledged, breaches of policy on the part of office bearers should be addressed and we must show ourselves to be a democratically accountable party.

Also, the Party must now seek to carry through the decision of the post-split 2006 SSP Conference which welcomes back former members without recriminations, especially now that they can clearly see the tragic implications of the misguided actions of Sheridan, Solidarity, SWP and CWI leaderships.

Principled unity is our strength. We have a duty to the working class and the cause of socialism to maintain socialist unity and to conduct ourselves in a combative, determined, confident, but friendly manner aimed at convincing thousands that the SSP’s principles and policies coincide with their interests. The future is ours, provided we collectively seize it.(Passed overwhelmingly 20th October 2006)

We must also try to win back the largest group of all – those former members who left the SSP and did not join Solidarity. They have raised criticisms, not only about egotism of Sheridan and the unattractive sectarianism and splitting tactics of the SWP and CWI, but also of some of the badly misjudged actions of the SSP in attempting to deal with these problems. This group currently forms an important bridge to those wider sections of the working class whom we need to win over once more to principled, socialist unity.