Dissafillate from the labour party - Now

[peaccenicked]

It makes no sense to pay money to a party upholding anti trade union laws
http://reality.gn.apc.org/polemic/disaleaf.htm

[peaccenicked]

http://www.unison-edinburgh.org.uk/un/un12.html

http://www.abc.net.au/am/s594440.htm

(Edited by peaccenicked at 1:56 am on Oct. 28, 2002)

[redjordi]

There is nothing Tony Blair and all the New Labour right wingers would like better than the unions dissaffiliating from the LP. Do you realise that you stand on the same side as Tony Blair?

[peaccenicked]

Tony Blair wants to lose money suckered out of the working class since when. Why should workers give to the electoral coffers of this complete tory. Destroy the labour party. It is reactionary through and through.
socialist inside merely give it 'left' credentials which it no way deserves.

[Palmares]

I am not aware of any 'Labour Party' that represents socialists as it was originally supposed to. This is evident in my country of Australia, with the Labour Party almost identical to the ruling Liberal Party (conservative is better suited as their name, but they thought it was not wise to use it). Blair is a stupid lapdog, he should realise he isn't American.

"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-classed muscle man for Big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...."
-Smedley D. Butler (1881-1940) Major General (U.S. Marine Corps)

[Marxman]

Peacenicked - ever heard of a phrase:"You're playing right into my hands."

Which hands? Start from Tony Blair's

[peaccenicked]

Comrade you are living in cloud cuckooland if you think the Labour party is going to go to the left. It will only move to the left if there is a left threat to it. Your toadying to Blair is extremely foolish.

[Marxman]

If there's no Labout party, then there's nothing. Labout party is a solution and right now I really don't know about its tendencies. If it has Stalinist tendencies, then to hell with it.

[bolshevik1917]

Absolutley pitifull peaccenicked, you show a total lack of understanding of the way things move!

Answer me two questions.

1. Right now, is the working class in general 'revolutionary'?

2. When the average worker becomes unhappy, where does he go?

You guys always think you can just start up these new so called communist parties and the workers will come flooding in, that is not the case and has proven not to be in the past.

If conditions existed to build a party outside labour then we would, comrade Ted did it in the 30s with the RCP.

This article on our beloved sects may interest you in the meantime..

At 4.45 p.m. on Saturday 1st December, the Socialist Party walked out of the Logan Hall in Bloomsbury and out of the Socialist Alliance, the organisation they helped to found a few years ago.

The opening session of the conference had heard a fraternal address from the International organiser of Rifondazione Communista, Gennaro Milliori, who called for "building a movement of anti-capitalist trends around the world". The assembled delegates applauded enthusiastically this call for unity and internationalism, and then proceeded to give the fraternal delegate an excellent lesson on how they were going to build a united movement in Britain - by splitting.

As an opening shot, Socialist Party spokeswoman Hannah Sell, warned that the result of the SA Conference backing certain Constitutional proposals of the SWP, ISG and independents would be the SP's defection from the Alliance. She then went on to explain that this was "not an ultimatum" - which it very clearly was.

The argument of the SP was that the Alliance had to remain a Federal organisation which they claimed would make it more open to activists in the labour movement who were allegedly "breaking from their traditional organisations".

Translated into plain English this means: the SP wants the SA to be as loose as possible to prevent the SWP from controlling it. But since a) the SWP has a big majority, and B) nobody doubts that if the SP were in the majority they would insist upon the most absolute centralism, the delegates did not take this demand very seriously.

The arguments of the SWP and its supporters was that individual members needed to be better represented by having a "one-member one- vote" constitution - just like the Labour Party. John Rees made some pointed comments about the failure of the SP to stand under the SA umbrella in the General Election and said that it could not be allowed to happen in the future if the Alliance was to develop.

Translated into plain English, this means: "We are the majority, and you must do as we say".

The SP presented the SWP's proposals as an attempt to use their weight of numbers to "dominate the Alliance", something the SP would not tolerate.

This means: "If you don't let us play our own game, we will take our ball home".

Having heard 6 different motions on the proposed constitution, and having made sure that the outcome would be satisfactory to the SWP, the conference proceeded to vote for a split. The vote was as follows: -

SWP/ISG et al 345 votes Socialist Party 122 votes Workers Power 29 votes C.P.G.B 42 votes Pete McLaren 97 votes Rev.Dem Group 21 votes

This gave the SWP/ISG/et al motion an absolute majority of 34 votes, meaning that it was carried without a run-off being necessary.

Dave Nellist stayed in the Chair and the bulk of the SP remained to see how the amendments went in the afternoon. In the words of the poet: "hope springs eternal in the human breast". But alas, things were to get no better.

When it became clear that the vote was going against them, comrade Nellist issued a brief statement that the SA was "no longer the organisation he'd helped form" and led an organised walk-out of around 100 SP'ers. Why the SA was "no longer the same" was unclear to everyone. What was perfectly clear is that the Taaffites only believe in democracy as long as they are in the majority.

Those still inside the conference expressed their "regret" at the SP walk out. However, the regret did not last long. John Nicholson of Sheffield SA was swiftly elected as chair in Nellist's place and the conference got on with the serious business of carving up the leading positions.

After the walk-out of the Taaffites, one would have thought that this would have been a simple matter. But such a supposition would be to seriously underestimate the capacity of sectarians for the creation of a chaotic environment wherever and however.

The report of the event continues:

"There was some tension on the question of using the Slate system to elect the NEC, especially amongst ex-CP'ers and the Green Left Network. In the event Slate1 which included 3 SWP'ers, 5 members of the other principal groups, ex Militant members Lesley Mahmood and Margaret Manning and ex Labour NEC member Liz Davies was elected by a large margin."

"Some tension" means there was a row. Having got rid of the main enemy, the remaining participants now had nothing better to do than to start attacking each other. Well, one has to while away the time somehow....

The further proceedings of the conference are of no interest to anyone. Even what we have reported thus far is only of interest as a horrible example of how not to build an anti-capitalist movement in Britain or anywhere else.

How to destroy the movement

Ten years ago, when the supporters of Peter Taaffe destroyed the old Militant, they argued that the workers had seen through the Labour Party, before Labour won sweeping landslide election victories. They argued that they could grow "by leaps and bounds" once they broke with Labour and "raised the banner high", especially in Scotland. But all they succeeded in doing was to wreck the most successful Trotskyist organisation ever seen since the days of the Left Opposition.

At the time of the split the Taaffites publicly claimed 5,000 members. They rapidly lost the overwhelming majority of these. The youth which they never educated in the ideas of Marxism soon got tired and dropped out. A large layer of the older cadres soon followed suit. And the thousands of new recruits they claimed would be queuing up to join as soon as they left the Labour party never materialised. Once they realised they were out in the cold, the decline in membership was swift. At present they probably do not have more than a few hundred active members in Britain.

They have lost everything in Scotland and Merseyside - the two main areas of the old Militant, which Taaffe personally controlled. They have lost many members and cadres. Very few of the old leadership are still active in politics. They were forced to sell their centre in Hepscott Road, which had been bought as a result of the collective efforts of all the comrades over decades. Now their "strategy" of the Socialist Alliance is also in ruins.

They cannot explain this disaster in terms of the Labour Party, since they have had ten years to prove their point and to "grow by leaps and bounds". Instead they have collapsed by leaps and bounds. So they blame it on the objective situation. This will not wash. The plain fact is that their perspectives have been shown to be completely false. They entertained big ideas about replacing the Labour party (hence the "Socialist Party"). Tommy Sheridan in Scotland talked about "replacing the Labour Party" and Dave Cotterill comically called his group "the real Labour Party" in Liverpool. This showed the way they were thinking. They actually asserted that the Labour Party was going to "wither on the vine". However, what has withered over the past ten years is only their ridiculous illusions and pretentions.

The sectarian groups have no chance of building anything serious because they have no understanding of how the working class moves. All history demonstrates the truth of the law that when the class moves, it first expresses itself through the existing mass organisations. In Britain that means the trade unions and the Labour Party. This was shown by the events around the Livingstone episode. That was only an anticipation of how things will develop in the future, when the crisis of capitalism begins to find an expression inside the unions and the Labour Party.

The sects drew all the wrong conclusions from the Livingstone affair. They imagined that they were going to build an alternative to the Labour Party. They got their answer at the last general election, when Scargill's party and the SA got derisory results and the Labour Party, despite all the crimes of Blair, received a massive vote from the working class. Although many also abstained, they did not for a moment consider the sects as a serious alternative. This result threw the latter into disarray, but the reason for it is not hard to see. The workers continue to vote Labour, not because they like Tony Blair, but because they see no alternative. Is it so difficult to understand this?

The crisis in the SA is the result of the fact that the workers are not "breaking with their traditional organisations" in order to join the SWP, the SP or any other small group. In fact, they do not even notice the existence of such groups. Insofar as some workers drop out of the Labour Party in disgust at Blair' policies, they do not go to the sects, as the latter thought they would. They merely go home, falling into temporary inactivity. But this cannot last. The fresh winds of the class struggle will begin to blow again. And when this happens, the movement will once again be expressed through the unions and the Labour Party.

While the sects are fiddling and fussing on the fringes of the Labour Movement, the real process passes them by unnoticed. It is maturing in society, in the factories, in the unions, in the shop stewards committees - a process which tomorrow will inevitably be reflected in a growing polarisation to the right and left inside the Labour Party. This elementary truth - which Lenin and Trotsky explained long ago - is a book sealed with seven seals to the sects, who are busy constructing phantom revolutionary armies in the clouds.

We will wish them bon voyage, and get on with the serious work of building the forces of real Marxism in Britain and internationally, which can only done through patient and painstaking work in the working class and its mass organisations.

[RGacky3]

many labour parties are not socialist but some are, for example the norweegen and sweedish labour parties are very socialist, the french labour party is also very socialist.

[peaccenicked]

The Labour party is not the working class movement in reality it is an anti working class movement. Socialists in it are involved in the mass deception of the working class. While the left is splintered outside the Labour party, it is also splintered inside the Labour Party. All
your artificial bonding of the working class with the Labour Party is false. It is a mere formal mechanism that revolutionary consciousness can set aside to get on with the work of building an honest organisation of working class revolutionaries that can act as a pole of attraction to the working class in a revolutionary situation. The Labour party is the last place in the world a revolutionary wants to be, it is house for the brain dead and the carreerists and small sects who want to feel self important.
Ted's Grant's group is a sect, a bureucratic centralist sect which has very little, if any influence in the Labour Party.
It is a pre revelutionary situation but that is nothing to do with burying revolutionaries in the Labour Party to recruit and lose members of the advanced workers initially attracted to it.
Where does the average unhappy worker go, to the pub or the doctor. Workers come into politics because they have been politicised, and not because of unhapiness but in spite of it, because they think they can do something. I spent three years in the Labour Party and we did nothing for the working class but everything for the Party bureaucracy and recruitment to the Militant sect ran by Grant.
The Left is hardly new, most of the trends in it can traced themselves from the CPGB, even the Balham group which contained the first British Trotskyists, including Healy, Cliff and Grant split from the CPGB.
Trotsky advised Grant to go into the Labour Party. In that sense Grant is right about his unbroken link but it did not occur to him that Trotsky was wrong.
Lenin after breaking from the second international for its pro imperialism set up a principled position.No to the supporters of world war one. No to the supporters of the bombing of Iraq.
Trotsky choose to ignore this principle because of the relative strength of Stalinism. Stalinism has collapsed into the labour party. Ted Grant is at Square one and is too blind to see it.
You nor Grant has a realistic view of the Labour movement, it is totally clouded by Grant's need to make clones of himself. At some point we need a mass socialist party but it will not grow out of the labour party,
it will grow out of principled workers finding a way to to destroy the Labour party's reactionary hold on the working class.
Open your eyes buddy. Our problems are much worse than you make them out to be.

(Edited by peaccenicked at 2:35 am on Oct. 31, 2002)

[Rob]

Well the US labor party at least seems pro-working class. check them out: http://www.thelaborparty.org/

as for the British Labor Party, I don't have much of a clue.

[bolshevik1917]

"Where does the average unhappy worker go, to the pub or the doctor. Workers come into politics because they have been politicised, and not because of unhapiness but in spite of it, because they think they can do something."

The unhappy worker (as well as going to the pub or the doctors) will not go directly into the Labour Party, but his trade union which is conected to the Labour Party. As we are entering similar conditions as the one's that saw Militant become a success in the 1970's it is vitaly importaint for all serious socialists to be inside, not out.

The working class generally are not revolutionary at present, it is therefore highly unlikely that they would consider joining or even voting for some 'communist' or 'socialist' party. A small sect with mixed up ideas, no trade union connections and generally no hope!

You have made it clear you have no intention of returning to the Labour Party, so be it. Good luck comrade with your task of turning a tiny sect into a mass workers party, you will certainly need it!

[antieverything]

It is easier to use existing organizations and establishments as shells for new ones. The Labour Party will be easier to transform than to destroy...this can be achieved either inside or outside the party itself--by mobilizing the left-wing of the party or by an alternative party forcing them to once again represent the working class (much like the greens are doing to the Democrats here in the US).

[peaccenicked]

"The working class generally are not revolutionary at present, it is therefore highly unlikely that they would consider joining or even voting for some 'communist' or 'socialist' party. A small sect with mixed up ideas, no trade union connections and generally no hope!"

Comrade you cant fool me that a sect inside the labour party is in any better position to contact workers in trade unions than ones or not. It is just not true. During the miners strike, I visited factories all over the East End of Glasgow and gained financial support for the miners. I did not need a Labour party sticker on my coat.
A small sect with mixed up ideas sounds exactly like Socialist Appeal who conducted its disagreements with Taffe in the Guardian. That is very straight forward Just like the time Grant and Taffe took The Labour Party to court because of expulsion. To defend the right of revolutionaries to be in the Labour party while the working class is not very revolutionary is all somehow perfectly straight forward.
Workers joining the Labour party is a sign of stupidity not political awareness.
Quite frankly, incurable labourphilia defies all logic. It is a bit like believing in god you do it because you want to.
Not for any rational reason. It is political movement outside the labour party that will deprogramme you from the ideological grip of Ted Grant. To present an argument that we should not pursue socialism outside the Labour Party because it is not popular and say that we should pursue socialism in overwhelmingly anti socialist, anti trade union party just to have formal links with trade unionists is bloody bananas.
Socialist organisation has nothing to do with kowtowing to the highly bureaucratic 'official' organisations and resting with the bureaucratic nature of the Trade union movement.It is about destroying them and gaining the trust of the working class not by duping them into a reactionary dung heap.

By the way genuine communists live by principles not by popularism. A small group is not necessarily a sect. A sect puts its interests above the interests of the working class. What a labourite sect does is put its interests above those of the labour party, then the Labour parties interests above those of the working class. It is sickenly sad to have so called Marxists behave in such a blatantly confused manner.

Hopeless for everyone concerned. Hope begins with unrelenting political honesty. How can you be part of such a fraud?

(Edited by peaccenicked at 5:08 am on Nov. 1, 2002)


(Edited by peaccenicked at 5:12 am on Nov. 1, 2002)


(Edited by peaccenicked at 6:01 am on Nov. 1, 2002)

[bolshevik1917]

The fact still stands comrade, that probibly the most succesfull movement we have ever had in Britain worked inside the Labour Party. Taffe split, took 5000 comrades, the center, and a load of money with him.

10 years on Taffe has around 300 comrades, they had to sell the center, and are still living off the money (which wont last forever by the way).

And yet, did he not leave because they would 'come on leaps and bounds'?

We also do not just have 'formal' links with the unions - most of us are trade unionists ourself (I am).

[peaccenicked]

I have not been in a single group on the left that has not consisted of mainly trade unionists. The reason to be in the Labour party given is its formal link with Trade unions.
As far as I recall the vote to leave the Labour party was
46 for
3 against.
Why did the minority deserve the money?

I do not see what being in the Labour party has to do with success in recruitment. I remember that one of the difficulties even in my day was that Militant was the Labour Party and that was pre Clause Four abandonment.
What you seem to be suggesting on the whole is plainly false.


I think.

1,Being in the Labour party has no signifance on whether a group is sectarian or not.
2. That sectarianism is rife,inside and outside the British labour party(internationally as well) and
none of the groups are facing it.

This rather long and brain taxing article expains much of the problem. http://www.isf.org.uk/ISFJournal/eJournal/...ectarianism.htm (http://www.isf.org.uk/ISFJournal/eJournal/TheCharacteristicsOfSectarianism.htm)

Marxism may die due to sectarianism, because nobody is being allowed to think straight. No wonder anarchism is taking more and more people towards it.

[bolshevik1917]

What im getting at is 'WAS IT A MISTAKE TO LEAVE THE PARTY'?

yes or no?

[peaccenicked]

NO. it was the best thing I ever did politically. The labour party is a coffin. The Militant was an ideological staight jacket.
One can become human again outside the Labour party.

AS Paul Foot once said''Labourism is a bit like Necrophilia"

[bolshevik1917]

So you freely admit that you agreed and contributed to the actions that almost single handedly destroyed the British movement altogether?

It easy to see it was a mistake, to go from 5000 comrades to 300, to go from around a million pounds to a few thousand, to leave a mass party and split into countless sects...

[peaccenicked]

I am not or have ever been a member of the SSP or the Socialist alliance. The decline of that grouping (which I am only taking your word on)was almost certainly due to it's bureaucratic past.
The labour party is a mass party but an entrist group is not a mass party . These groups use the label 'mass' as a pretentious vehicle for hiding their own bureaucratic and sectarian nature.
The size of a group in a pre revolutionary situation is relatively unimportant. What is important is the content of theory and revolutionary politics, abandoning the Labour party is breaking away from a reactionary dung heap.
We have to stand own our own two feet some time and it is best we do it now and begin to create organisational roots in working class communities.
It is the principled thing to do.
The first principle of anti sectarianism is political honesty,
which can no longer be found in the Labour party.

[bolshevik1917]

Labour is a 'mass party' because obviously its big, and it is the party of the trade unions which are the organisations of the working class.

As Marx said "The workers have discovered that the union is the only way for them to withstand the overpowering pressure of capital."

I am in complete agreement with you when you talk about size, theory etc. Dialectics show us that quality turns to quantity and vice versa, but you misunderstand our position within the party. We work independantly as an educational Marxist organisation, as we are currently a minority in the Labour party we do not work much within it - at this stage the signifigance is in the unions.

Our long term view is that each local socialist appeal branch should look to establish itself in its local communities and offer socialist viewpoints. The task now is to win people over to Marxism.

Although I am a member of the Labour Party, I will only begin to work inside it when my branch become equal or bigger than the local LP membership. You can sneer and say 'this tactic hasnt got you very far' but remember we are ten years old, and just moving out of a capitalist boom - I see things changing, they will change. Rember how well the tactic worked in the 70's with Liverpool city council, where we pulled all the strings.

Right now I am totally focused on Socialist Appeal and the trade unions, the struggle will show in the party later. We can see the way the unions are going, in my opinion the fire fighters are just the tip of the ice berg.

An interesting point here, Mick Shaw talking on the Labour party in an interview with Socialist Appeal.

"SA: Given that the unions are being forced more and more into conflict with the Labour government, how do you respond to people who say that the unions should break their links with Labour?

MS: I think it would be a big mistake to walk away from the Labour Party. Firstly there are many individual members and members of parliament in the Labour Party who are very supportive of trade unionists, and cases such as ours. I think that our task should be to remain in the party to retain a political voice, and to ensure that trade unions have a proper independent political strategy putting forward policies that support working people."

The full interview can be found at http://www.marxist.com/Europe/Mick_Shaw_FBU.html

[peaccenicked]

This link here is probably the closest to my own position.
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/392/rcn_debate.html. I am in complete agreement with Mark Fischer on sectarianism. It seems to me when he is talking about parties of an old type he includes Socialist Appeal. You talk about ''education''. My exprience was a one sided explanation of the ''party line'' and a no serious dicussion of other views which were dismissed as coming from the 'sects'. What a joke.
I did not say that the Labour party was not a mass party. What I did say was that sectarians inside the labour party used the word ''mass'' to hide their own blatantly sectarian dismisal of other groups.
You have given me not one single reason for being in the Labour party that makes sense.
You repeat the word 'mass' like a parrot hoping I will eventually hear it.
Why do you need a labour party card to talk to Trade Unionists or meet them or appeal to them.
There are Trade unionists who still support the Labour party and are members of both,despite the Tory anti trade union laws that Blair has not repealled.
As I advise battered woman to get out of bad relationships. I say comrade address the issues and just unthinkingly repeat party dogma.

(Edited by peaccenicked at 1:28 am on Nov. 8, 2002)

[bolshevik1917]

I have always been able to put my views across at Socialist Appeal meetings, and if any views are different or against the 'party line' then this should obviously be discussed. We do not try and ram things down peoples throats - anyone who has read 'the history of British Trotskyism' will vouch for me there.

I have explained our position within the party, yet again I stress we do not carry Labour party cards around everywhere with us, we work as a marxist organisation right now, we are currently in the quality and not quantity stage.

The relationship between the party and the unions is quite simple, when the mood changes in the unions it reflects strongly in the party, the party could prove a valuable tool in a few years time and anyone who dismisses anything as 'dead' is not thinking dialecticaly. (im not accusing you of saying this, but many SSPers have said it to me).

Again - the unions are moving to the left - this at some stage will reflect in the party - the party is already in power and does not need to be voted in. Parliament can be usefull in pre revolutionary situations, as Marx said

"If in England or in the United States the working class wins the majority in Parliament or Congress, it could then use legal means to abolish the laws and institutions obstructing it's development"

The bottom line of this debate is that you will not join the party, and I will not dissafilate from it. We have both made our positions clear enough for anyone reading to sum up their opinion on the matter. We could carry on this debate for weeks, months, years if you want. But if you read my other post about the SPGB attack on bolshevism you will realise that there are more importaint issues to look at.

[Punx for Peace]

I'm a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and I'm always seeing former rank and file members working for other more left-wing parties (such as the Greens).

The cause of most of the wayward ALP members is the ALP's failure to address social issues such as refugees and similar issues.

I'm always being praised for staying in, but I don't know how much longer I can bang my head against a brick wall!