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Home , Joe Higgins, Labour party (Mauritius), Militant Tendency, Socialist Party (France), Ted Grant, Terry Fields

The Politics of the

John Molyneux

Why are there two main organisations The Roots of SP politics on the Irish radical left - the Socialist The SP is the Irish section of an inter- Workers Party and the Socialist Party? national Trotskyist tendency called the This is a question that many ask today. Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) which consists of a number of af- Both organisations work together in filiated socialist organisations - most of the United Left Alliance which currently them very small - in a variety of differ- has five TDs in Dail Eireann. But ent countries. Its ‘parent’ organisation was while working together in a common front what was then known as the Militant Ten- against the right wing parties, neither the dency in Britain and its political and the- SWP or SP hide the differences that exist oretical leader was , a South between them. African Trotskyist who came to Britain in the 1930s and who became a leading fig- ure in the Revolutionary Communist Party The purpose of this document is to (RCP) which for a short period in the trace the connections between the current late 1940s united most of Britain’s very political line and conduct of the SP and few Trotskyists. In the sixties, seventies its fundamental politics developed over and eighties what distinguished the poli- decades. Such a document is necessary not tics of Ted Grant and of the Militant Ten- because we have any desire to quarrel with dency was their strategy of ‘entrism’ into the SP - rather we wish to be able to work the , which was also adopted with them in a comradely and cooperative by virtually all their international affiliates way where any divergences of perspective in relation to their respective social demo- and tactics are debated openly and settled. cratic parties. Rather, its purpose is to clarify the differ- In Ireland, the Militant first appeared ences in politics and methodology. in 1973 with a paper bearing that name and proclaiming in its banner headline, Given that this document, by its na- An Independent Programme for Labour. ture, is going to make a series of criti- The Labour Party was entering a coali- cisms of the SP it is necessary to make one tion with at the time and many thing clear at the start: the members of left wingers had left in disgust. Militant, the SP, both leaders and rank-and-file, are however, warned against any attempt to undoubtedly genuine and sincere socialists build any alternative party to the left of and working class militants who serve the Labour. The only place socialists could cause of with dogged determina- usefully be, they claimed, was in the Irish tion, hard work and real commitment; this Labour Party. is precisely why we have been and remain This policy came to an end in the keen to work with them in campaigns and early nineties after the expulsion from the strengthen our unity in the ULA. None of Labour Party of a number of their leaders. the criticisms presented here alter this. Like the rest of the CWI, the Irish Mili- 0This article was originally written as an internal briefing document for the SWP. Thanks are due to Kieran Allen for his assistance with the piece.

92 tant then took the view that the Labour (World Party of Socialist Revolution)’ and Party and social democratic parties every- an even grander programme, written by where had become capitalist parties. In Trotsky, entitled The Death Agony of Cap- Britain, the change to open party building italism and the Tasks of the Fourth In- was strongly, but unsuccessfully, resisted ternational which also became known as by Ted Grant, who was expelled, and in ‘The Transitional Programme’. Since then the mid- nineties the name Socialist Party the Trotskyist movement has undergone was adopted in both England and Ireland. many splits and changes but in under- In Ireland, former leaders of the Militant standing the SP it is important to know such as Finn Geaney also departed at this that they and the CWI see themselves as time. The current politics of the SP are the true ‘orthodox Trotskyists’ who still a product of this whole long development. stand on the ground of this document and In particular they have been shaped by the proclaim their adherence to its political following factors: 1) the legacy of Trotsky’s method. They see themselves, and them- ; 2) their analysis of selves alone, as the true heirs of Trotsky Russia and Eastern Europe; 3) their pro- and of the whole Marxist tradition. longed ’entry’ into the Labour Parties; 4) This is unfortunate because there were the campaign and their turn to major flaws involved in both the founding open work in the nineties. We shall look of the International and in its programme. at each in turn. In the first place it was highly problematic declaring the existence of a ‘world leader- The Legacy of the Fourth In- ship’ without any serious base in the work- ing class and bound to lead to a misplaced ternational pride and arrogance. It led in turn to an When, in 1933, the Comintern or Third over emphasis on, almost a fetishisation of, International, failed to mount any seri- the importance of the programme at the ous resistance to the rise of Hitler and expense of the movement of the working the Nazis, Trotsky decided that it was class from below. It also led to a belief dead for the purposes of revolution. From that ‘the leadership’ can draw up the pro- that time on he sought to build a new gramme of the revolution in advance of, revolutionary . Un- and without interaction with, the actual fortunately circumstances were very much working class struggle. Marx, by contrast, against him - this was a period of terri- used to say ‘One step of the real ble defeats for the working class - and the movement is worth a dozen programmes.’ Trotskyists made little . However Moreover the economic and political in 1938 they decided to proclaim a new perspectives on which the Transitional Fourth International. The founding con- Programme was based, though plausible at ference in September 1938 was attended the time, turned out to be mistaken. The by only twenty one delegates from eleven programme declared that was in countries (only one of whom, the American its ‘death agony’ and that, ‘The economic , represented a substantial prerequisite for the proletarian revolution organisation) and met for only one day in has already in general achieved the high- a house in . est point of fruition that can be achieved They compensated for their actual under capitalism. Mankind’s productive weakness on the ground by adopting a forces stagnate.’ From this Trotsky drew grand name, ‘The Fourth International the conclusion that ‘there can be no dis-

93 cussion of systematic social reforms’ and ropean and world proletariat1. that the reformist organisations, both So- cial Democratic and Stalinist ‘will depart Indeed Grant was still echoing the the scene without a sound, one after the words of the Transitional Programme in other’. In reality none of this happened: 1979. ‘...we are now in the epoch of the the Second World War brought the end death agony of capitalism. There will be a of the economic crisis and was followed tendency for living standards to fall in all by the massive post-war boom in which the countries of capitalism, including the the productive forces grew rapidly; there industrial countries, with only temporary were substantial reforms (such as the es- exceptions2. tablishment of the National Health Service It is a dogmatic and mechanical ap- in Britain and a throughout proach which still affects the leaders of the much of Europe) and improvements in liv- SP today. They still believe they have ing standards across Europe and the USA; the correct Marxist programme and that and in general the Social Democratic and advancing this programme is the key to Stalinist parties grew in strength. the socialist transformation of society This Finding themselves having to deal with leads to a top down view of the relationship these difficulties, and with Trotsky no between the party and the working class. longer alive to assist them, many of Trot- The party is in possession of vital insights sky’s followers retreated into a conserva- which it must teach the working class be- tive frame of mind in which defending the cause it has studied Trotsky’s transitional programme and maintaining the letter of programme. Less emphasis is placed on a Trotskyist ‘orthodoxy’ became all impor- party learning from a working class which tant. In 1946 Ted Grant was still repeating has entered struggles and which will throw Trotsky from 1938: up its own demands. The definitive decline of Eu- rope, already begun in 1914, Russia and Eastern Europe: has been aggravated in the suc- the Stalinist States ceeding decades, and World War II has put its seal on this As ‘orthodox’ Trotskyists the Socialist decline. While cyclical upturns Party, have always felt obliged to defend will take place and are tak- Trotsky’s characterisation of Stalinist Rus- ing place at the present time, sia as a ‘degenerated workers’ state’. They there can be no real growth of argued that the Stalinist bureaucracy had the productive forces as in the betrayed genuine past. The chronic crisis and in Russia but that the survival of state death agony of capitalism will ownership and state planning meant that, once again be revealed in its despite , Russia remained fun- full scope... The programme damentally non-capitalist and a workers’ of the Fourth International will state. When in 1948 Tony Cliff first pro- become the banner of the Eu- duced his analysis of Russia as state cap- 1Ted Grant, Economic Perspectives, 1946, http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1946/04/ economy.htm 2http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1979/08/world.htm 3‘Against the theory of - Reply to Comrade Cliff’ http://www.marxists.org/ archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm .

94 italist, it was Ted Grant who wrote the Moreover if the Army can establish main reply to him3. a series of workers’ states over the heads of the workers, why shouldn’t this be possible What was at stake in this argument for a ‘socialist government’ with a ‘social- was not just what label to attach to the ist programme’ in parliament? Here we see , but what constituted the one of the original roots of the SP’s current essential, the fundamental, difference be- electoralism. tween capitalism and a workers’ state. For Cliff it was which class controls produc- tion and therefore runs the society, for The Effects of Entrism Grant it was the form of property (private versus state property). This became es- The tactic of entry into the mass social pecially clear in relation to the establish- democratic parties was advocated by Trot- ment of Stalinist regimes in Eastern Eu- sky, and adopted by his supporters in 1934 rope. These regimes became ‘communist’ (it was known as ‘the ’ be- not by virtue of the working class in these cause it was first based on the situation countries taking power but by virtue of in France) as a short term measure to re- the advance of the Red Army. If state late to the masses of workers who, at that ownership was the decisive criterion for a point, were joining these reformist parties. workers’ state these countries had to be It was adopted by the regarded as workers’ states, even if ‘de- as a long term (indeed more or less per- formed’ and not fully socialist, and this manent) strategy and raised almost to the was Grant’s view and the view maintained level of a principle. The long period, last- by the whole of the CWI to this day. So ing more than three decades, during which fixated was Ted Grant with the state prop- entrism was pursued had a profound effect erty criterion that even concluded at one on shaping the politics of the Militant Ten- point that Burma and Syria were workers’ dency, the CWI as a whole, and the SPs of states with planned economies. In other Britain and Ireland. words the overthrow of capitalism and the In the first place in order to remain in creation of the economic foundations of so- the Labour Party and not be expelled they cialism did not have to be ‘conquered by had to disguise some aspects of their Marx- the working class itself’, as Marx put it, ist politics. In public they denied they but could be established from above by a were a revolutionary socialist or Leninist ‘leadership’ (in this case the Red Army). organisation, insisting they were only a The subsequent military victories of ‘Com- current of thought around the Militant pa- munist’ forces, armies based on the peas- per (when in fact they were a very tight antry rather the working class, in North democratic centralist party). They also Korea, China, Cuba ,Vietnam and Cam- presented themselves in the Labour Party, bodia , all of which established state own- not as revolutionaries who wanted, a la ership of the main means of production, Lenin in The State and Revolution, to reinforced the point that making this the smash the capitalist state but as left re- key criteria led away from the self eman- formists who believed socialism could be cipation of the working class from below brought about by electing a Labour Gov- as the essence of socialist transformation. ernment pledged to socialist policies. No This in turn has dovetailed, in the political doubt, in private, the Militant leadership practice of the SP, with the focus on ‘the told a different, more revolutionary story, programme’ over and above the struggle. but since they recruited publicly on the

95 ‘Labour Government with socialist poli- played a leading role in the Anti Water cies’ basis there is little doubt that many of Charges campaign in the 1990s or in the their members and, even more so, of their fight against bin charges, they did not play supporters accepted the left reformist par- a substantial role in anti-war campaigning liamentary perspective. at any time. They joined the Irish Anti- The fact that they stood candidates, War Movement only after the massive mo- and got them elected as City councillors bilisation on 2003 and then left afterwards. and MPs in Britain (such as , Instead of targeting US as the and ) as Labour main enemy, they tried to balance a con- Party members, who had to be especially demnation of ‘terrorism’ with opposition careful what they said, only reinforced this to the US war efforts. tendency. Anti- imperialism has always been a As entrists they also adapted to particular weakness (as it was for So- their Labour Party hosts in other ways. cial historically) .Thus they They adopted a very narrow economistic treated the anti-imperialist IRA as equally approach to the working class. By as bad as the pro-imperialist UVF and economism we mean a near exclusive focus UDA. They refused, for example, to sup- on bread and butter issues and a failure to port political status for republican prison- raise more difficult issues concerned with ers during the hunger strike of 1981 instead repression in the broader working class demanding a inquiry to movement. For Lenin: determine who was and who was not a po- litical prisoner. This, despite the fact, that Working-class consciousness many of the union leaders played an active cannot be genuine political role in conniving with the British and Irish consciousness unless the work- states in trying to break the H Block move- ers are trained to respond to all ment. cases of tyranny, oppression, On Palestine they tend towards two violence, and abuse, no matter statism, advocating both a Jewish and what class is affected ... the Arab state despite standard socialist ob- Social-Democrat’s [i.e. Marx- jections to ethnic exclusivity, and to equal ist’s - JM] ideal should not be opposition to Hamas and Zionism. They the secretary, but oppose the boycott of Israeli goods as a the tribune of the people, who concrete way giving support to the Pales- is able to react to every man- tinian cause. In both these cases they cov- ifestation of tyranny and op- ered their effective abstention by reference pression, no matter where it to Trotsky’s opposition to individual ter- appears, no matter what stra- rorism and by, formally correct, but com- tum or class of the people it pletely abstract calls for socialism. affects4. Often what motivated these choices was a reluctance to offend or challenge But, in practice, this was not at all the prejudices of ‘ordinary’ workers in the the approach of the Militant Tendency. Labour Party or trade unions whose votes All issues other than straightforward eco- they needed in elections or for positions nomic and class issues were either ignored in the movement. For example, at the or massively down played. Thus while they start of the great Miners Strike of 1984-5 4 V.I. Lenin, What is to be Done?, Collected Works, Moscow, 1961, Vol.5, pp.412-23

96 in Britain many of the miners (for very un- strictly centralised core membership or derstandable reasons) held very backward cadre. This is in some respects a strength, sexist and homophobic views and would and one which they retain, but unfortu- chant sexist slogans on their demonstra- nately it went hand in hand with train- tions. The Militant comrades were unwill- ing their cadre in sectarian contempt for ing to argue with the miners about these others on the left (especially their main ri- things, saying they were just part of work- vals i.e. the SWP). Obviously any small ing class culture, and criticised SWP mem- left wing party needs its members to un- bers, who did challenge these ideas (in a derstand its political differences with other comradely way) as being middle class. left parties but it does not need to edu- Unfortunately this is a habit that per- cate them in a spirit of arrogant contempt sists to this day in the practice of the SP which makes working together very diffi- in both Britain and Ireland and it is linked cult. This is what Militant and later, the to their ‘socialism from above’ approach SPs have tended to do. and their electoralism. If you see the mass Finally, the experience in the Labour of workers as essentially a passive army of Party led to a strategy of organising that supporters because socialism will be intro- stressed manoeuvring in back room com- duced by a government with the correct mittees to win control of particular cam- socialist programme, then it doesn’t mat- paigns. All the emphasis is on gaining key ter very much if their heads contain - positions and bizarre alliances are some- ious backward and reactionary ideas, but times formed in pursuit of this objective. if you see the working class as emancipat- Thus in the current anti-household cam- ing itself in revolutionary struggle then the paign the SP have formed an effective al- fight for the consciousness of the class is of liance with anarchists and left republicans paramount importance. to gain control of key positions. They have Obviously the SP comrades believe even argued against the United Left Al- their approach is correct but this leads liance intervening in the movement with them to defend it by attributing more coherent tactics that have been debated backwardness to the working class than is democratically within the alliance. justified and by quietly going along with conservative ideas when they can be used The Poll Tax, the Water against others on the left (especially the Charges and the Turn to the SWP). Thus for example, they have been happy in the past to denounce the SWP Open Party as ‘all middle class students’ or ‘supporters The abandonment of entrism and the turn of the IRA’. Indeed during their period in to open party building was basically a the Labour Party they used to argue that product of the expulsions they experienced since the Labour Party was ‘the mass party in the Labour Party in both Britain and of the working class’ anyone not in Labour Ireland. What made this particularly hard Party (again, especially the SWP), were to cope with was that this was not sup- not really part of the labour movement at posed to happen. For years the Militant all. leadership had proclaimed that it was vir- Another legacy of entrism was that tually a law of history that workers would to operate semi-secretly under the hos- flood into the Labour Party and that the tile gaze of the Labour leadership Mili- party would move to the left. tant had to operate with a highly trained, The move out of Labour was preceded

97 in 1989-90 by the struggle against the Poll Tax Federation, said they would ‘hold an Tax. First in Scotland (it was the mak- enquiry and name names’. Subsequently ing of ) and then in Eng- Militant attributed the defeat of the Poll land and Wales, Militant were able to Tax exclusively to non-payment and de- launch and lead mass campaigns of non- nied that the mass demo and riot had any- payment. Similarly, in Ireland the Socialist thing to do with it. Tory Minister, Alan Party played an important role in the fight Clark, in his diaries, tells a different story. against water charges and managed to se- ‘Civil Disorder. Could cut either way, but I cure the election of Joe Higgins to the Dail, fear will scare people into wanting a com- primarily as an anti-water charges candi- promise - just as did Saltley Colliery [in date. the 1972 Miners Strike]. In the corridors These two struggles have provided a and the tea room people are now talking mainly positive experience for the current openly of ditching the Lady to save their fight against household charges. However skins.’ Doubtless the SP are now embar- this is not the whole story. There are other rassed by this rather shameful episode but aspects of the anti-poll tax struggle which the memory of it may be a factor in their the SPs are less keen to remember or cel- original hostility to mass protests in the ebrate and which could have a bearing on Household Tax campaign. their behaviour in the current household It is already noticeable that the move of tax campaign. the household campaign to mass civil dis- The first is that the campaign by no obedience has taken place in areas where means consisted just of mass non-payment the SP has little influence. In New Ross and the poll tax was not defeated just and Donegal, for example, crowds of peo- by non-payment. On the contrary, from ple have invaded council chambers. The the start of the struggle there were mass SP, by contrast, has emphasised public demonstrations and protests at town halls, meetings and a national indoor rally rather some of which turned into attempts to than a mass national demonstration to the storm those town halls. Then on 31 March Dail. 1990 the Anti-Poll Tax Federation (un- Two other things need to be said about der Militant leadership) called a national this period. The first was that the elec- demonstration in . In the run up tion of Joe Higgins to the Dail on an anti- to the demo Militant started to worry that water charges ticket opened up a huge op- it might turn violent. They did their very portunity for the SP but they proved un- best to try to prevent this. On the coaches able to adapt their party to dealing with to London Militant stewards tried to get a huge influx of workers. Political edu- everyone to pledge not to be violent. In cation remained confined to the grooves the event, however, the police attacked the of a narrow propagandist group and those march and it turned into a massive riot in who joined as fighters against wage charges and around Trafalgar Square. soon found it difficult to adapt to the long Inevitably there was a media storm meetings discussing the Transitional Pro- against ‘violence’ and calls for ‘exemplary gramme. After an initial surge of recruit- sentences’ by the Labour establishment ment, many left. like . Sadly the Militant Unfortunately, the current SP leader- leadership also condemned the riot and ship drew the conclusion from this experi- blamed it on anarchists. Steve Nally, Mili- ence that an even deeper immersion into tant member and secretary of the Anti-Poll sectarian politics was required. In 2004,

98 against the background of the bin charges The Labour Party had never been sim- dispute, for example, the party produced ply a working class party. It had never an extraordinary pamphlet attacking the had a predominantly working class leader- SWP and former key figures that had left, ship; it had never fought consistently for including Joan Collins, currently a TD and working class interests; and it had never Dermot Connolly, the former party secre- governed in the interests of the working tary. In it, they proclaimed that ‘Based on class when in office. On the contrary it experience going back many years we do had always propped up capitalism and ac- not believe the SWP has a positive role in cepted all the key priorities of the capital- the re-development of the movement’. The ist class. There was no heyday of work- aim was to clearly inoculate their mem- ing class politics in the Irish Labour Party. bership against any genuine dialogue with Labour, for example, had led the cam- others on the left. The result of this ex- paign against Noel Browne’s Mother and perience has led the SP to adopt a dual Child scheme in the 1950s and even when approach. it turned left in the sixties, it was led by On one hand there is a genuine attempt a member of the Knights of Columbanus, to engage with mass movements and to en- Brendan Corish. courage them into existence. But this is of- Lenin described the British Labour ten combined with a political methodology Party as follows: of manoeuvring and denouncing perceived ...most of the Labour Party’s rivals on the left. members are workingmen. On the other the combination of the ex- However, whether or not a tremely hostile environment in the Labour party is really a political party Party and the success of the Poll tax and of the workers does not depend anti-water charges campaigns convinced solely upon a membership of the Militant leadership to make a final workers, but also upon the men break from Labour. However entrism had that lead it, and the content been so central to the Militant and CWI of its actions and its political tradition, so much their political trade- tactics. Only this latter deter- mark, that this created a substantial po- mines whether we really have litical/theoretical problem for them. Were before us a political party of they to concede that decades of entrism the proletariat. Regarded from had been a failure? Or perhaps they this, the only correct point of could acknowledge that the strategy was view, the Labour Party is a more problematic than they had previously thoroughly bourgeois party5. acknowledged? Neither of these options seemed to have appealed. Instead they Lenin summed up the contradictory opted to argue that entrism was no longer character of the Labour Party by defining appropriate because the Labour Party had it as a ‘capitalist workers’ party’. So when qualitatively changed. From being ‘the Labour moved rightwards under Blair or mass party of the working class’ it had be- Spring it was a quantitative shift rather come, they said, a purely capitalist party, than a fundamental change. Moreover indistinguishable from the Tories or Fi- what constituted the ‘workers’ element in anna Fail. This merely exchanged one me- this capitalist workers’ party, namely its chanical position for another. working class base - as expressed in its 5 V.I.Lenin, On Britain, London 1959, p.460)

99 vote, its membership and its organic re- ist Party to the extension of lationship to the trade unions - was weak- the ULA into North has noth- ened but clearly did not disappear. ing to do with being slow to By adopting the undialectical view that move on the issues that af- the Labour Party was now a purely cap- fect the working class, but is italist party the SP threw away decades based on having a principled of Marxist analysis of in and sensitive approach to the favour of a position they would previously conflict of national aspirations have denounced as ultra-left. [Note ‘conflict of national as- This is what lies behind the Irish SP’s pirations’, i.e. loyalism - loy- current dogmatic and sectarian refusal to alty to British imperialism - is contemplate sharing a platform with even regarded as a ‘national aspira- former Labour Party representatives in tion’] that exists in the North. campaigns. These, it is argued, must first prove, their genuine socialist credentials We believe that a new work- before being allowed to share platforms. ers party in the North, even This sectarian approach misses out on op- more so than elsewhere, must portunities to bring many more people over be based on the emergence of from Labour to the radical left. a layer of working class ac- tivists from struggles. It is vital that a new formation is The SP today rooted in the understanding The politics of the SP in Ireland today of the need to oppose both are a product of all this history. Yes, loyalist and republican sectar- they are committed and hard working so- ianism,...and for workers unity cialists who undoubtedly are genuine in against sectarianism and capi- their desire to end capitalism, but they talism. have a mechanical and formalistic view of While sometimes over the last how this is to be achieved. They empha- years, the SWP have argued sise the question of the programme over for workers unity, that does not struggle from below and the ‘socialist pro- mean that they have overcome gramme’ they so exalt emphasizes nation- their one sided view of the na- alisation and state planning over the self tional question [i.e. opposition -emancipation of the working class. They to imperialism] which has been retain an economistic view of working class a hallmark of their position. struggle, showing little interest in other is- sues. They are still weak on issues of anti- The SWP approach has been imperialism, especially in the North where infected with the view that re- they equate republican nationalism and or- publicanism as it emerged dur- ange loyalism, demanding that any united ing the Troubles is progressive, left formation in the North must be based and that includes an approach on acceptance of their position. In their that tends to excuse Catholic own words: sectarianism while highlighting and condemning loyalist sec- The opposition of the Social- tarianism6. 6What programme for the United Left Alliance?, www.socialistworld.net,14/07/2011

100 In the history of the Marxist move- really want is just for them to vote for you, ment there is a particular term, ‘cen- why not ask them to ‘stay at home’, so long trism’, which accurately describes the po- as they remember you when it comes to the litical character of the SP. The term comes election. from the German Social The same electoralism is shown in their (SPD) which at the time of the First World role in relation to the ULA. After much War contained three currents - the right, prevarication they agreed to the ULA be- led by Scheidemann and Noske, who were fore the last election - as an electoral openly reformist, supported the War and alliance- but since the election they have helped suppress the German Revolution opposed any development of the ULA be- (including being complicit in the murder yond a mere electoral alliance, blocking of and ); virtually all proposals in that direction on a revolutionary left led by Luxemburg and the Steering Committee. Liebknecht, who opposed the War, and As true believers, sincerely convinced became the Spartacus League and then that they and they alone are possessors founded the German Communist Party in of the true Marxist method inherited from 1919; and vacillating between the right Trotsky, they are reluctant in the extreme and the revolutionary left, the Centre to put themselves in a position in any cam- led by . In words Kaut- paign or in the ULA where they might be sky proclaimed his commitment to Marx- democratically outvoted by the rank and ism and ‘revolution’ but in practice he al- file. [The Socialist Party in Britain lit- ways avoided drawing revolutionary con- erally walked out en masse of the Social- clusions or pursuing revolutionary action. ist Alliance when that body adopted the Hence Lenin and Trotsky developed the democratic principle of one person one vote term ‘’ to describe political ten- - and claimed this represented the SWP dencies that waiver between revolution and wrecking the organisation!]. reform; that in the abstract adhere to a A useful insight into the SPs real revolutionary programme but are conser- modus operandi is provided by Dermot vative and cautious when it comes to ac- Connolly’s account of their behaviour over tion. the question of a list of anti-bin tax candi- This is the Socialist Party. They are dates. formally committed to revolution but in practice highly electoralist. They have a Having been members of the top down and controlling attitude in cam- SP until very recently, and in- paigns such as the household charges cam- volved in its leading bodies, we paign where they originally insisted on can state without any doubt drawing up ‘the plan’ in advance and on that the SP has been and everyone else adhering to it. Originally remains absolutely determined they tried to discourage protests and na- not to become involved in any tional demonstrations and arguing that all sort of election pact or list the mass of working class people need to which would involve the SWP. do is ‘stay at home and stay away from However, given the events of their computers’. Working people trans- last autumn, they had to re- form themselves and their consciousness in spond to the pressure from struggle. That, Marx says, is how they fit working people that the bin themselves to run society. But if what you tax campaigns should put up

101 a and really put didates who they couldn’t ar- it up to the right wing parties, gue against. When it was pro- and labour, in the June elec- posed by people at this meet- tions. ing that areas where there was They therefore came up with a question mark over the local the public position that they campaigns’ level of organisa- were in favour of a slate of anti tion and activity, such as in bin tax candidates, provided it Ringsend or Coolock/Artane, contained genuine people who we could write to the mem- had actually had involvement bership, calling a meeting and in the struggle. On paper this then judge whether to support sounds fine. Why give a plat- candidates on the basis of the form to political opportunists level of turnout and local sup- to jump on the band wagon? port, This was rejected out of It is also the case that if a slate hand. So was a proposal to fa- was open to anybody and ev- cilitate a meeting between the erybody that some people with SP and SWP (who had made no real creditability would have clear their willingness to co op- stood, getting derisory votes erate and withdraw one or two and weakening the overall ef- candidates) to try and resolve fect and thus the campaign. differences. The SP even- tually gave an ultimatum; The reality though was differ- either their version of the ent. the SP were not concerned list or they would not par- with putting forward a cred- ticipate in it. [My emphasis itable list of candidates, but - JM]7 of ensuring that there was no list. At a meeting of the four campaigns to discuss a possible Despite all these problems the SWP re- all list, it was quickly mains willing and committed to working in clear that we were not fac- a comradely way with the SP in the inter- ing a situation where anybody ests of Left unity and the wider interests of and everybody was trying to the working class. We hope that joint work get themselves onto this list. will improve trust and even help the SP to There could have been a list overcome some of its more mechanical ap- of twenty plus candidates, all proaches to issues. Doubtless we will also of whom had played some role learn much in the process. We believe the in building the various cam- Household Tax campaign can win and that paigns, and were likely to be the ULA, if it develops, still has the poten- nominated as candidates by lo- tial to be a pole of attraction to working cal campaigns... people. But we are not willing to be tied Instead the SP insisted on down or restricted to the limits imposed by a limited list, which in- the SPs mechanistic approach to the strug- cluded only those SWP can- gle.

7Dermot Connolly, ‘The Socialist Party, Joan Collins and the Bin Tax Campaign’

102