Scottish Socialist Party history, 2005 conference report and Revolutionary Platform plans
by Steve Wallis
Version 2, 28th March 2005
This year's Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) conference included elections for Convenor. To understand them, it is necessary to go back to the origins of the SSP in the Militant Tendency.
The Militant Tendency was a revolutionary socialist organisation that infiltrated the Labour Party to try to convert it into a genuine socialist party (although it was believed within the organisation that that would never be possible and that it would be necessary to lead a split-off from Labour at some point in the future). Infiltration (or "entrism" as it was known) was also used as a means of recruitment – from about 25 to several thousand at its height during the miners’ strike and when Militant led Liverpool’s Labour council in its dispute with the Tory government (which won a lot of extra money in the first year inflicting the first major defeat on Margaret Thatcher, but which collapsed in the second year to ‘trendy left’ councils like Blunkett’s Sheffield caving in – it ended in the farce of the council sending out redundancy notices to the entire workforce, supposedly as a delaying tactic but widely misunderstood (and Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s infamous speech at the Labour conference was a disaster for Militant). I put this decision, made jointly by the leaderships in Merseyside and at the National Centre in London (as all key decisions were during this dispute) as being due to infiltration by conspiratorial organisations on the side of big business.
Militant’s growth due to entrism was largely a result of leading the Labour Party Young Socialists for several years – until it was closed down by the Labour leadership.
Margaret Thatcher’s second major defeat – and the one that brought her down as Prime Minister – was also due to Militant. It was the Militant-led and initiated mass non-payment campaign that defeated the poll tax, involving over 18 million people at its height who hadn’t paid or were in arrears (out of about 40 million adults eligible to pay). The poll tax was a flat rate tax, albeit with a 20% rate for unemployed people and students, for local services to replace the “rates”.
The poll tax was brought in in Scotland one year before England and Wales (it was never introduced in Northern Ireland). That was ideal for Militant, because the organisation was particularly strong north of the border, especially in Glasgow. The left was stronger generally due to the greater poverty and the national question.
[In my opinion, this decision as well as the decision to introduce the poll tax at all was far from a mistake by Margaret Thatcher, but a masterstroke. It produced the conditions under which a fairly small revolutionary socialist organisation could reach the big time by leading a campaign of millions. In the past, different layers of workers had been taken on and defeated one by one, and this time we were all being taken on at once. In my opinion, Margaret Thatcher was a revolutionary socialist in disguise!]
Militant’s success at leading such a huge campaign was tempered by the fact that it actually lost members during it due to burn-out and the failure to recruit sufficiently! This was mainly due to the betrayal by All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation Secretary Steve Nally after the riot at Trafalgar Square in London after the 200,000-strong national demo on the 31st of March 1990, to mark the introduction of the tax in England and Wales, when he said under questioning from a journalist that the Federation would hold an investigation into the cause of the riot (rightly) and would “name names”. Naming names to the police, or other people who would pass them onto the police, is a complete no-no within left-wing movements, and its refusal to expel Nally and put in motion a new election for Federation Secretary put Militant on the defensive at the very time that they could have been recruiting thousands or even tens of thousands of new members. Militant said that Nally was not properly prepared for the interview (it was hard to believe that response to violence had not been discussed bearing in mind that previous violence had taken place at some town hall demos) and that he had meant that he would name names to the movement and not the police – but the police would have enough spies within the movement to make the two equivalent. Nally’s remark also ensured that the Federation did not hold an investigation into the causes of the violence; a subsequent TV documentary showed the police started it. [At the time, a tiny anarchist organisation called Class War claimed responsibility. They weren’t actually a violent organisation at all – they were known for amusing headlines, but they seized the opportunity to grab the limelight. They all but completely vanished from the UK political scene soon afterwards. The term “anarchist” is widely interpreted to imply “violent”, but at an “Earth First! Gathering” I attended last summer, mainly attended by anarchists, I went to a meeting on violence and only one person said he advocated it!] It is obvious to me that Nally was a big business infiltrator into Militant.
Militant was much more insulated from Nally’s “mistake” north of the border since there was an entirely peaceful 50,000-strong demonstration in Glasgow on the same day.
[I joined Militant later in the campaign, as it proved it was serious (on the 6th of June 1990). More of my views on the poll tax are contained within my autobiography “Transition” on the internet at http://www.stevewallis.me.uk/transition.htm.]
Since Militant was conducting most of its activities outside the Labour Party, Labour was going a long way to the right and expelling left-wingers to the point where it would be a long time before it went to the left again (if it did at all and I didn’t think it ever would), and conditions in Scotland were in advance of England or Wales, Militant made the decision to launch Scottish Militant Labour (SML) in advance of the 1992 general election.
The Chair of the Scottish (and All Britain) Anti-Poll Tax Federation was Militant member Tommy Sheridan. Tommy was banned from demonstrating in a certain area of Glasgow, due to being arrested at a previous anti-poll tax demo, when the first attempt at a “warrant sale” took place anywhere in Scotland – which happened to be within that area of Glasgow. Warrant sales were particular to Scotland (which has some different laws to the rest of Britain), and were sales of people’s goods in the streets that had been seized by sheriffs’ officers (bailiffs). A large number of people surrounded the warrant sale preventing it from going ahead. Tommy ripped up the court order (interdict) in front of the TV cameras, making a fiery speech, and got jailed for six months.
Tommy stood for SML in Glasgow Pollok constituency from his prison cell, in the 1992 general election and got over 6,000 votes, coming second to Labour. He stood again, also from his prison cell, in the local election to Glasgow Pollok ward (part of the constituency) a month later, and got elected to Glasgow City Council.
Tommy’s success was the springboard for further SML election successes, and they subsequently united with other socialists in the Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA). The SSA’s main activity was in Glasgow Pollok (again) in a campaign of non-violent direct action against the extension of a motorway. The SSA project was successful because SML took it seriously, conducting most of their activity under the banner of the SSA. Although Militant Labour was subsequently set up in England and Wales, and socialist alliances were set up south of the border too, Militant didn’t take the alliances particularly successfully down here and the later name change from Militant Labour to the Socialist Party signified the beginning of the end of the abandonment of the socialist alliance project by the organisation in England and Wales. [The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) later joined the socialist alliances, and wound up the national network (with a few allies) at a conference on the 5th of February this year. I am proposing the formation of “democratic socialist alliances” – to distance the new organisations from the Stalinist states that collapsed in the USSR and Eastern Europe and from the bureaucratic way that the SWP ran the socialist alliances (where you had committee meetings a week before full socialist alliance meetings and required resolutions to be submitted to those meetings, with seconders as well as proposers).]
In 1998, a big discussion took place in SML, the Socialist Party and similar organisations around the world linked by the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). The discussion was around a proposal by the SML leadership to transform the SSA into the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), with SML becoming the International Socialist Movement (ISM) platform of the SSP. The transformation involved moving from fortnightly SML meetings and monthly SSA meetings to fortnightly SSP meetings and irregular ISM meetings (as and when they are required). The newspaper (Scottish Socialist Voice) and property (not much since the office was rented) was transferred from SML to the SSP. The SML leadership’s proposal was very strongly supported in Scotland, but the British and international leaderships opposed the move on the ridiculous grounds that if the ISM did not meet at least once a month (I think) and there was not a frequent newspaper/journal, it would be dissolving the organisation! Look now, folks, the ISM still exists, it has three of the SSP’s six members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs), had both candidates for Convenor at this year’s conference, has an irregular journal “Frontline” that is published as and when issues justify it (rather than just produced for the sake of it or to out-sell another platform) and had a fringe meeting at the conference. So much for a “dissolved” organisation!
Despite these ridiculous arguments, the SML proposal only had the support of the overwhelming (if not unanimous) majority of the French organisation (led by Murray Smith, who later became a leader of the SSP with responsibility for international links, and is now a leader of the French LCR; he was the only member of the international leadership to actually visit Scotland!) and the Manchester/Lancashire (my region) and Merseyside regions of the Socialist Party.
The main opportunity for rank-and-file members of the CWI to take part in the discussion was at the “1998 European School of the CWI” – a conference where anyone in one of the CWI’s sections was welcome but no decisions were made. At that event, I was the only member from England or Wales to speak from the platform in favour of setting up the SSP. It was through noticing that some people were swept along by the mood as the balance of forces shifted from one side to the other during the event, whereas others retained a poker face throughout, that I recognised that there was a large amount of infiltration going on (that I initially put down as state infiltration but I now realise is more usually by more secretive conspiratorial organisations on the side of big business – and by those on the side of the working class to oppose them). When the CWI and Socialist Party ultimately took the decision to oppose the setting up of the SSP (but reluctantly allow it to go ahead to avoid splitting the international) that I resigned from the Socialist Party. I remained a Socialist Alliance member, and continued to take part in activities on a range of issues, most significantly against sanctions and war on Iraq. However, in that time I have spent large periods of time as a political prisoner on psychiatric wards, as a result of becoming a significant player in the world situation at that European School.
The SSP was created in time for the first elections to the Scottish parliament (in 1999). Because they were conducted by proportional representation, Tommy Sheridan was able to get elected as an MSP for Glasgow. He was by default the main spokesperson – i.e. Convenor. Until the next Scottish parliamentary elections four years later (on May Day 2003), when the number of MSPs went up from one to six, the SSP was regarded by many as a one-man band, despite the fact that there were thousands of activists. Nobody had challenged Tommy for Convenorship ever since he first took up that post.
Despite the brilliant role that Tommy has played in the past, as I outlined above, I have been aware for some time that he had become a liability as party Convenor. That is because he always wears a suit (even on demonstrations) and has a fake tan. Some people question how genuine the party is when it is run by someone who repels a large number of working class people for these reasons. I have no doubt that he has a lot of credibility from activists who hear his great fiery and very political speeches at demonstrations and meetings – but with the soundbite politics and deliberate biases of the mass media, how genuine Tommy really is does not get across to many others.
I don’t want to comment on the allegations in the News of the World that Tommy had an affair with a woman in Aberdeen. Tommy is suing that Murdoch rag and I wish his cause well. Whatever happens with that, the fact that Tommy and his wife Gail are expecting a baby soon added to the urgency of getting a better Convenor (from the point of view of the party’s fortunes) before the general election.
The highlight of the broadcast of the May Day 2003 Scottish parliamentary election coverage was seeing Colin Fox celebrate getting elected as an MSP for Edinburgh by hurdling a barrier. It was certainly something to celebrate getting an MSP in such a middle class city. However, my delight was tempered by seeing that he was wearing a suit. I recently visited Edinburgh and watched the Scottish parliament in operation, and he was wearing a jacket. That is a significant improvement on Tommy’s choice to always wear a suit, but I would have liked to have seen him in a T-shirt with a political slogan on it. We don’t want to appear yet another ‘respectable’ political party – we want to appeal to those who are put off by the traditional politicians. I am hoping to stand as Greater Manchester Democratic Socialist Alliance candidate for Withington in the forthcoming general election and I think I stand a very good chance of becoming an MP. I’ll never wear a suit or jacket in parliament! [I know Colin will have read this message; I sent it to his email address at the Scottish parliament and even if it was deleted by the person who saw it first (as Rosie Kane’s often are), he would have doubtless been sent it by somebody else. I hope he has taken this comment in good heart, and if he only sometimes decides to be a bit more rebellious then I’ll feel that my comments here on this point have been worthwhile.]
The person with the best public profile of any of the SSP MSPs is by far Rosie Kane. When I was in Manchester, at about 7.30am on BBC1 one morning shortly after May Day, the breakfast news had an item on Rosie saying she had generated by far the most coverage of any MSP since the election. It showed that she had written “My oath is to the people” on her hand when forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen and was wearing jeans to show her contempt for “her Majesty”. She also showed she had a sense of humour (essential in politics) by pledging her allegiance to the Queen’s “hairs and successors” rather than “heirs and successors”.
Rosie also showed how dedicated she is when she read out with great gusto and feeling the “Declaration of Calton Hill” that over 1,000 people signed at a protest in Edinburgh (that I attended) when the Queen opened the new Scottish parliamentary building – calling for an independent Scottish republic based on the principles of liberty, equality, diversity and solidarity. It was recorded by the BBC for broadcast the following day. There is a website on which you can sign the declaration on-line – however, the website owners were obviously worried about publicising the popularity of the declaration, hence they have lied about the number of people who have signed it (the website showed over 3,000 at one time and now shows about 500). I have set up a Declaration of Calton Hill discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/declaration-of-calton-hill.
I felt initially that if any of the MSPs was to become the new Convenor, it should be Rosie because of her public profile and because she is based in Glasgow. However, I now realise that she doesn’t yet have a sufficient political education for the role of Convenor, since she has not been in a revolutionary socialist organisation (in particular SML/the ISM). Being able to put on a good show on occasion is not sufficient; you need to be able to answer questions on any issue. If Rosie had acquired such an education in the SSP, she would have chosen to stand herself I’m sure – this is not meant as a criticism of her. Indeed, I have been in Rosie’s SSP branch (Glasgow Shettleston) since I handed her a £20 note and join form from the Voice on the first day of this year’s conference (since there were no standing order forms at the conference and branch organiser Nick McKerrill refused to take any subs from me; I will move a resolution that Nick is removed as branch organiser at the first branch meeting I attend) – and I think that Rosie’s natural brilliance combined with my influence will enable her to gain the education to make her a future SSP Convenor.
At about the same time as Tommy Sheridan stepped down as Convenor, a 'financial crisis', a deficit of £200,000 (albeit half of which is the mortgage on their excellent new Glasgow premises), was revealed. I initially thought that it was a hoax, used to persuade the News of the World to print false allegations about Tommy Sheridan so he could sue them – since a financial crisis would imply gross mismanagement if not corruption bearing in mind that the six Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) apparently all give about half their wages totalling around £150,000 a year to the party, and they can also claim up to about £100,000 in legitimate expenses, which can be used towards the Glasgow and Edinburgh offices.
Since it was obvious on arriving at the conference that it was not a hoax, the Treasurer, Allison Kane, was obviously corrupt or inept, and I thought it important that she was removed at the elections at the end of the conference. I shouted out about this in the foyer, handing out copies of my leaflet with my views on infiltration on the front, and my Campaign for Democracy in the UK (http://www.democracycampaign.org.uk) on the back. I mentioned the same things, being quieter but also handing out the leaflets, to try to ensure that Allison Kane was removed as Treasurer – and hopefully ensure that a system of accountability is set up to that the same thing cannot happen again. I was not present for the elections the next day, but I noticed later in the Scottish Socialist Voice that she is still Treasurer, presumably because nobody had put their name forward before the conference in opposition to her; hopefully she will be held to account in the future so that similar problems do not happen again.
The key decision at the conference was electing the new Convenor: Alan McCombes or Colin Fox. There was an element of farce about the election contest that made the result a less reliable measure of party opinion than it should have done – neither candidate mentioned the “M” word – Militant. I’m not necessarily saying that Alan would have beaten Colin if it had not been for this factor, but I think it would have been considerably more likely. That said, it was Alan’s fault for not bringing it up, so I’m not saying that Alan was defrauded by the election process.
Both Alan and Colin were members of Militant. I know very little about Colin’s political history before he became an MSP – I don’t recall him being at the 1998 European School of the CWI, or indeed at any meeting or conference before then. An article in the Scottish Socialist Voice pointed out that he was a member of Militant, so I am not just guessing at that by the fact that he is now in the ISM. However, it is clear by my lack of knowledge of Colin’s role (and I did attend a lot of CWI events in my time in the organisation), that Colin played much less of a role than Alan in forming the SSP. Alan was the leader of Scottish Militant Labour at the time of the 1998 European School, and I had a discussion with Alan at that event before making my speech. That was very useful, in finding out his views and influencing him. It was my discussion with him at that event that was the ultimate deciding factor in my mind in supporting Alan in the election as soon as I knew he was standing (I didn’t have a vote, but I could influence people who did by talking to them).
Alan said in the debate that he had been urged to promote himself, and overcome his natural modesty. However, he did not do that enough, and talked vaguely about working with a number of other people in the SSA to set up the SSP. If he had said that both Colin and himself were in Scottish Militant Labour (to overcome any possible feeling that mentioning the “M” word would put people off) but that he was the leader, and led SML’s transformation of the SSA into the SSP (and possibly led SML’s role in the creation of the SSA; I’m not aware of his role that far back), then that would have greatly benefited him.
The fact that Alan and Colin are both in the ISM now was treated as a secret, as something that either the ISM or the SSP should be embarrassed about. The fact that ISM members are in many key positions in the party despite the ISM being numerically small is testament to the political past of the Militant Tendency and SML, the quality of discussions within the organisation and the dedication of its members to fight for the causes that it supports. I attended an ISM meeting in Glasgow a while back that was advertised in the Voice, and it was pointed out (clearly for my benefit) that the ISM no longer are a “democratic centralist organisation” (like the SWP); i.e. they don’t discuss things amongst themselves and then act or vote as a bloc. Instead, members can act or vote according to their own views or consciences. Of course, it doesn’t mean that the ISM doesn’t discuss important issues – of course it does, but for the purpose of educating its members rather than binding their actions.
At the conference, it was only CWI platform members (who are now playing a positive role despite their hostile past of opposing the establishment of the SSP) who announced their affiliation. In general, the secrecy of SSP members about what platforms they are members of (if any) is undemocratic – as newer members or members are denied the knowledge which people ‘in the know’ (either because they know the members personally or because they can tell by the way they argue the points) are aware of.
I would be in favour of platform members being acknowledged as members of that platform, if they choose to announce it, in articles they write for the paper. Similarly, SSP leaflets should be able to have speakers advertised as being members of particular platforms.
Alan expressed the wish to get the SSP less parliament-centred. This, I think, is crucial. The SSA grabbed the public’s attention, and recruited Rosie Kane, with its direct action against the motorway extension in Glasgow that I mentioned above. I was talking to an anarchist called Gwen Noel from Glasgow at the Earth First! Gathering, and she was complaining about the small amount of direct action that the SSP now undertakes. The SSP does mobilise large numbers of activists for the blockades of the Faslane nuclear base that occur from time to time, but they don’t seem to do anything else of that sort. I call myself “a revolutionary socialist (Marxist heavily influenced by anarchism)” nowadays, and am a great believer in unity between people who regard themselves as socialists and people who regard themselves as anarchists – although anarchists have traditionally been opposed to anything calling itself “a party”, there is no reason why large numbers of them could not be won to the SSP if it took direct action seriously. I watched an IndyMedia video in the Autumn which showed anarchists locking their arms together with metal bars and getting in front of Sainsbury’s lorries, with police being physically incapable of separating them – at the end, it was announced that all depots in the country had been similarly blockaded preventing fresh Sainsbury’s milk from arriving anywhere. This was a protest against the fact that that store’s own brand dairy products (along with those of every other supermarket apart from the Co-op and M&S) came from cows fed partially genetically modified feed; as a result there is Cravendale milk in Sainsbury’s and other supermarkets which is advertised as natural, tastes nicer, lasts seven days once opened, and is about the same price for four pints. Gwen went across to Edinburgh for the Declaration of Calton Hill protest organised by the SSP, so she is clearly somebody who can be a close ally of mine in Glasgow, acting as a bridge between the SSP and anarchist organisations. A page on my website (at http://www.stevewallis.me.uk/direct-action.htm) is devoted to discussion of direct action and unity with anarchists. I also want Gwen to be in the revolutionary socialist band Galaxia that I will set up after the general election.
Colin made an overture to the Socialist Worker platform (or Socialist Workers “Party” because they often act on their own initiatives in Scotland like in England and Wales) by congratulating George Galloway for successfully suing the Telegraph, that had printed allegations that Galloway had profiteered from the “oil for food programme” which was part of the sanctions regime that killed over one million Iraqis. [Of course, Galloway’s success does not prove that he was innocent, just that the Telegraph could not prove that he was guilty.] I shouted out that Galloway had invited Tommy Sheridan to join Respect (the SWP’s new vaguely socialist front organisation in England and Wales) and stand against the SSP splitting the left at the next Scottish parliamentary elections!
Colin’s overture to the SWP, as well as the fact that he lives in Edinburgh which is where the SWP are largely based, guaranteed the SWP’s support. The voting figures indicated that, ignoring the SWP (which could probably garner between a quarter and a third of the delegates), the two candidates were just about evenly split. In the end, Colin won by 252 votes to 154.
The Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) argued against an Iraqi speaker, Burhan Fatah of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, speaking for only three minutes in the debate on Iraq since he had travelled 5,000 miles and he was addressing a fringe meeting (rather than allowing him to speak at both!) At the fringe meeting, it was revealed that the SWP argued against him speaking because his organisation unites working class people of different nationalities and religions opposed to the occupation in Iraq – whereas the SWP are cheerleaders of "all the resistance" including those responsible for beheadings, suicide bombings, and the murder of trade unionists and foreign journalists. As would be expected, a good amendment to the SWP motion supporting all the resistance was quite easily passed.
The ISM had, in their actions since the formation of the SSP, been concentrating on building the SSP and winning other SSP members over to their positions. This unfortunately has meant that the platform has shrunk in size and infiltrators on the side of big business have got in a stronger position. At the fringe meeting, the Chair refused to call me so I waited until the end before answering the main mistake made by a speaker:
The youth organiser Donnie Nicolson said that the SSP would not get any MPs at the general election so we should concentrate on G8 protests. I pointed out that bookies predicted that Galloway would win when he said he wanted to stand in the west of London. Surely we can win some seats in Glasgow like Pollok or wherever Rosie Kane MSP stands – if she puts herself forward, which I encouraged her to do when I spoke to her later in the conference.
I have set up a Revolutionary Platform (RP) of the SSP, initially as an internet discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp. The RP will be open to members of other platforms to join as individual members, other platforms (hopefully en masse in the case of the ISM platform, probably as a split-off from the SWP) as sub-platforms, and of course the many revolutionaries in the SSP who aren't currently in any platform would be welcome to join.
How we proceed with the establishment of the RP will of course be discussed on the list, but I will propose a launch meeting in Glasgow in the week before the election, with speakers including Rosie Kane MSP, Alan McCombes of the ISM (if he is willing to speak but hopefully he will be) and myself from the Campaign for Democracy in the UK and hopefully Manchester Withington candidate (for Greater Manchester Democratic Socialist Alliance). A week before the election should ensure that leaflets delivered by postal workers for Rosie's constituency arrive in time to advertise the meeting – giving voters a chance to question Rosie about her policies at the meeting. The meeting will also revitalise SSP members from across Glasgow for the final vital weekend of campaigning.
Somebody at the ISM fringe meeting suggested producing anti-G8 wristbands, which someone else sensibly said should be red. I mentioned (talking over other people as the only way to have my say) that red wristbands were already used by Kerry supporters who refuse to accept that he lost – see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/us-electoral-fraud (the fraud was necessary because Kerry pledged to tax the rich and close all tax loopholes).
I would suggest that the SSP should hold meetings in Edinburgh – and indeed Glasgow – around the time of the G8, on the various issues involved. I said above that if a speaker is from a particular platform, then that can be put on leaflets rather than pretending that we all think the same way, or relying on people to “be in the know”. As far as the G8 is concerned, Donnie said that we must get away from the idea that it will mainly attract students who are the preserve of the SWP and campaign wholeheartedly. I agree, but he didn’t point out a strategy – having SSP leaflets with good politics on and announcing a meeting with a speaker advertised as being from the RP will attract working class people, because they want to know about revolution! Wishy-washy sloganeering won’t work. The SWP achieves a certain base because they are willing to talk about revolution, which the SSP and Voice tend to veer away from.
I was staying in Glasgow for the conference in Perth and on the Sunday, I intended to get the first train to Perth from Queen Street, at 9.42am according to the board. When I arrived by that time, the next train anywhere was at 10.10am and I was told that there wasn't another train to Perth for two hours! This gave me an excellent opportunity to expose the reason why the information at that station is unreliable – the monarchy! That led to talking about how MSPs from all the parties except for the SSP sucked up to the Queen while the SSP organised the Declaration of Calton Hill protest.
I decided to go to Edinburgh from Glasgow Central and from Edinburgh to Perth. I talked to a lot of railway workers, and the idea of renationalising the railways with compensation only to any pension funds that happen to be invested in them struck a chord – the bosses have profited many times over from the original sale prices, so there is no justification for any compensation for them whatsoever.
When going from Edinburgh to Perth, I happened to change trains in Dunblane. That gave me half an hour in a pub, and I started off by exposing the SWP (in the weekly column in Socialist Worker saying "What the Socialist Workers Party stands for") for arguing for "a workers' militia". Guns are hated in Britain generally, but the one place they are hated more than anywhere else is in Dunblane, due to a gunman going on a rampage at a school. In the same paragraph, they argue for "a workers' state based upon councils of workers' delegates" – known as “soviets” in Russia.
In Russia in 1917, there were two revolutions. After the February revolution, a capitalist Provisional Government came to power that would not grant any form of elections. As well as campaigning for “bread, peace and land”, the Bolsheviks (who later became known as the Communist Party) campaigned for a Constituent Assembly. However, because Russia was largely a peasant country, the Bolsheviks lost the elections after they came to power in October to the right-wing Social Revolutionaries (SRs) based on the large landowners. Lenin and Trotsky, who had led the October revolution, persuaded the Bolsheviks to abolish the Constituent Assembly (by force). They argued that there would have been massive repression of the Bolsheviks if they let the right-wing SRs take power, but surely the working class would have been able to defend them in a country that had had two revolutions in the same year! The result has been over 87 years in which “socialists” and “communists” have often been regarded as “undemocratic”.
I have sometimes argued that only one of Lenin or Trotsky was an agent of big business (in a conspiratorial organisation that had infiltrated the Bolsheviks), but now realise that both of them were. Lenin was allowed to travel through Germany to return to Russia in 1917, to deliver the April Theses, in which he called for “All power to the Soviets”. The first programme in the Channel 5 series The Russian Revolution in Colour revealed that Lenin only spoke to workers and sailors from Kronstadt who had arrived at the Bolsheviks’ headquarters in Petrograd for about a minute during the July Days, making the point that he was not keen on spontaneous uprisings. Even if Lenin and Trotsky were correct in their analysis that it was necessary to hold the workers back, on the basis that the rest of Russia was not sufficiently prepared for a revolution, Lenin should have taken the opportunity to educate them, preparing them for a future revolution. If they had led the working class to power in Petrograd, the revolution could have quickly spread across Russia. Instead, the Bolsheviks were decimated, Lenin was accused of being a Russian spy, and a military-police dictatorship under Kornilov was on the verge of coming to power forcing the Bolsheviks to lead the October revolution. The Channel 5 programme was biased in ignoring Trotsky completely and calling the Provisional Government “democrats” despite the fact that they refused to hold elections, and the programme did not offer any clues as to why the Bolshevik-led Soviets held elections to a Constituent Assembly after coming to power after highlighting Lenin’s preference for the Soviets holding overall power. Nevertheless, it was pro-working class and the truth probably lies somewhere between it and Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution”. I had heard through discussions in Militant that the Kronstadt sailors played an important role in the revolution, but Trotsky played their role down probably because of his Red Army’s later suppression of them when they correctly realised that the gains of the revolution was slipping away.
Lenin was excused by Militant members, who said that he thought that his dictatorial rule was only a temporary measure, needed because of the invasion from about 20 other countries, the civil war and the failure of the revolution to spread. Lenin supposedly realised the danger of Stalin coming to power too late, when he was approaching death.
Since Stalin killed all his other main opponents in the USSR, whereas he let Trotsky live in exile until getting one of his agents to kill him using an ice pick in 1940, it is rational to believe that Trotsky was also an agent of big business. There is further evidence of this, including excesses committed by Trotsky as leader of the Red Army. Most significantly, there was the disastrous position adopted by Trotskyists at the time of the Second World War, which led to the British Revolutionary Communist Party collapsing from a very strong organisation to a handful – describing it as a war between rival imperialisms like the First World War. It was against fascism, which is a mass movement of the middle class and “lumpenproletariat” in Marxist terminology (unemployed people and low waged non-union workers, who are sometimes described as the “underclass” but are really part of the working class).
Last year, I attended a “Justice for Gordon Gentle” demo in Glasgow Pollok, in support of justice for a 19-year old soldier who had died in Iraq having just been trained and his tank not having the equipment that could have saved his life. Unlike all SWP-organised demos at which every speaker puts forward pacifist positions that convince no-one and arguments about legality that people hear in the mass media all the time, Tommy Sheridan made a good speech – pointing out that the war in Iraq was completely unlike that against Hitler (which was worth fighting).
I returned very late on the Sunday to the conference, but in time to hand out a lot of copies of my Campaign for Sanity in the NHS (http://www.health-service-sanity.org) leaflets (rather than the infiltration leaflets I had handed out on the Saturday – both varieties of leaflet had details of my Campaign for Democracy in the UK on the back).
My other intervention at the conference on the Sunday was changing the lyrics when I sung along to the Internationale, which as usual ended the conference. There are two parts of the official lyrics that I disagree with. Firstly, “Away with all your superstitions” – some superstitions are useful so “Keep some of your superstitions” is better. Secondly, and most importantly, you should not unite with the whole of the human race as the song traditionally ends – don’t unite with Tories or fascists and do unite with good animals and birds. Since the last two lines: “Then comrades come rally, and the last fight let us face! The Internationale unites the human race!” are repeated, I can shout out the controversial line once in French and then in English (so people without sufficient knowledge of French know the point I'm making), as follows:
Then comrades come rally, and the last fight let us face!
L'Internaçionale unite la classe travailleurs!
Then comrades come rally, and the last fight let us face!
The Internationale unites the working class!