It is now back in Workers Power. Its rupture happened unnoticed by the rest of the membership.

During the congress it did not organise a single fringe meeting and WP did not have a stall or a paper-sale. Of all the oppositionists, SLA was the one which produced the largest bulletin for the congress. However, in around 30 pages it did not put forward any motion or suggestion for it. All the contents were old re-printings. WP and their SLP supporters had nothing to propose. During the congress there was a 70-strong meeting of all the oppositions.

The SLA only intervened to put forward one single idea: that everybody should leave immediately the party. Nobody took them seriously. In its January issue WP said (to the SLP’s left) that "the time has come for a sharp reassessment of what they have achieved". That is what we say to the WP’s members. The WP intervention inside the SLP was its biggest entryist adventure ever. It resulted in fiasco. The WPers who joined the SLP are leaving it without winning a single person to WP. These comrades wasted at least one year and much energy for almost nothing. Even more, half of the comrades who were members of WP before joining the SLP would not re-enter WP. Instead of achieving something, WP is now very discredited amongst the SLP’s left-wingers.

In December 1995 WP argued that "thousands of trade unionists...need a strong, well organised socialist voice and an organisation to organise and lead their resistance. That is why WP welcome Arthur Scargill’s call for discussions on the left to consider the establishment of the SLP." WP committed itself to building a "revolutionary SLP".

Consistently with that position WP should had advocated an offensive tactic towards that milieu and pushed for an active intervention in the process of creation of the SLP. When the SLP was launched, some left organisations (like the FISC, CPGB, RDG, IBT, ILWP, etc.) decided to intervene in it. However, WP was larger than the combination of all of them. In addition it had a much stronger national structure. During the 1980s it was the most theoretically productive and most programmatically consistent left group. A decisive intervention in the SLP since its inception could have put WP into the dominant force on the left and into leading the opposition which accounted for around one third of the party’s membership.

For hundreds of activists who joined the SLP trying to build a combative alternative against Labour, WP could have become a pole of attraction and the defiant force against the leading bureaucrat’s passivity. It could have led the SLP’s contingents and also a tenth or more of its branches. It could have created a lobby of many candidates around its own programmatic ideas. WP could have developed a similar line formulated by Trotsky towards the ILP in the 1930s: intervening into it, opposing a revolutionary transitional programme to Scargill’s little-England nationalism and reformism, while it demanded that the SLP adopt a united front policy towards Labour.

To actively intervene inside the SLP doesn’t mean the same as dissolving the organisation or ceasing to publish its paper and journals. A group of comrades could have remained officially outside the SLP being in charge of doing all the external work, while a disciplined contingent was inside it doing entryist work. The CPGB, a group much smaller than WP, participated in the SLP without ceasing to print its weekly paper. Nevertheless, WP didn’t follow that course.

Only a few weeks later, WP decided to make its first U-turn. In its March 96 paper, it characterised the SLP as "Britain’s newest reformist sect" and ruled out any intervention in it.

However, after the first SLP congress (May 96), WP was very impressed with it and decided to make a third U-turn. It’s June paper said that the SLP is not completely a reformist party, that it is in process of definition and that revolutionaries could win that battle: "The founding conference indicated that the SLP is a party that remains in the process of formation … with a small but significant minority clearly seeking revolutionary policies and answers, one thing is certain: the struggle for the political soul of the SLP has only just begun." The logical conclusion should have been to make a very serious and active intervention in it. Some weeks later WP’s youth organisation ("Revolution") applied to join the SLP.

During mid 1996 many long-standing WP’s cadres surprisingly appeared in the SLP branches claiming that they left their previous organisation and that they would be the best activists in building the SLP. The quantity and the quality of the SLPers which came from WP was not valueless. Now, when WP is calling all their members who joined the SLP to return home, there is no reason why we should continue trying to protect these comrades against the witch-hunts, keeping information secret.

By mid-1996 at least a dozen cadres who were trained for many years by WP where inside the SLP. Some of them had differences with WP, but most of them were loyal to it and even had been continuously members or leaders of it. One of the new SLPers was a founder WP member and another three were, or are, members of the LRCI’s national or international executive committees. If these comrades could have worked together they could have created a bigger and more nationally spread bloc than any other current, attracting tens of SLPers. A tendency around concrete issues could also have promoted a broader pro-democracy coalition.

Nevertheless, WP adopted a very sectarian and confused position. It instructed its supporters inside the SLP not to associate themselves with any other comrade, even with former WP members, who where not under the guidance of its Central Committee. WP created a very exclusionist faction: Socialist Labour Action. It was opened only to comrades who were politically loyal to WP’s leadership. It was not close to any single rank and file SLPer or even to other SLPers who were former WP’s members.

The SLA was so sectarian that it even didn’t want to take any responsibility for building a broader opposition. Inside the SLP there were four oppositionist broad fronts: the Revolutionary Platform, the Left Network, the Campaign for a Democratic SLP and the Democratic Platform. WP instructed its supporters to boycott some of these efforts or to reject even a single commitment in the leadership of these fronts.

In mid-1996 the Revolutionary Platform had its first conference with around 25 or 30 delegates. In that meeting comrades who split with WP over political differences managed to influence its programme and to replace the aim for a federal republic by the strategy of a socialist workers republic. Nevertheless, WP instructed its supporters not to attend that meeting, even to put forward their positions.

WP’s supporters attended the meetings of the Left Network (LN) and the CDSLP but they rejected even a single leading position of responsibility. In the LN one of the WP’s supporters was commissioned to produce a united front bulletin but he came to the next meeting with a bulletin containing only WP’s policies. It was launched as the SLA bulletin. The LN and the CDSLP later national aggregates almost unanimously condemned the SLA because they printed leaflets in which they fingered SLP oppositionists as members of other organisations. According to Scargill’s constitution, any person who could be labelled as a supporter of another group could be automatically expelled from the party.

The SLA did not participate in the Democratic Platform. They didn’t even come to the meeting of the entire SLP oppositions realised on 10th January.

WP’s sectarian approach was linked with its own confusion and lack of confidence in themselves. WP didn’t have a constant, consistent and clear position on the SLP. They shifted radically from one position to another. At one point the group was selling a monthly paper (WP) which characterised the SLP as an unchangeable counter-revolutionary Stalinist sect, while the theoretical journal (Trotskyist International) was writing that the SLP was a progressive phenomenon and that it was necessary to influence it. The confusion become even more when the WP’s supporters outside and inside the SLP had entirely contradictory lines. Outside Socialist Labour, WP was calling for its destruction and for voting for the Blairites against the SLP candidates, while inside the party the WP’s supporters were supporting these candidates against New Labour.

WP might have had a point with the argument that as long as Labour is the mass party of the working class (albeit with an imperialist programme) it could be possible to push this party into power in order to expose its nature and intervene in its milieu. However, they didn’t want to see that the extent of the extreme right-turns is leading thousands of activists outside into opposition to that party. If WP wants to intervene in the SLP (and also in the SP and the SWP) it is important to relate to the militants who are trying to create a class alternative against Blair’s neo-conservatism. In that sense a revolutionary organisation has to advocate also a critical vote for representative socialist candidates and for socialist electoral alliances. This doesn’t mean a propaganda bloc, but a left united front around specific demands against cuts and privatisations and for the defence of the proletariat’s living conditions and conquests.

However, WP’s tactic towards the SLP was not at all related to what the interests of the working class were, but what were the appetites of its own small sect.

Richard Brenner, a WP leader, wrote that: "A revolutionary party would therefore call for a vote for Labour in all constituencies where it is unable to stand." (Weekly Worker 145). WP could vote for the SLP only "if we find it possible to join [the SLP] as a revolutionary organisation with full rights". (WW143) That meant that WP, which never stood a single candidate in more than two decades of existence, would always vote for Labour even against any possible significant emerging left force. The only way in which it could give a vote for the SLP was by not depending on its ideas or weight in the class or the activists. WP’s tactic towards the SLP was summarised in the following ultimatum: as long as you don’t allow us to join you as an independent party we will support the Blairites against you and we will sabotage your organisation.

WP had a devastating contradiction. On the one hand it advocated a vote only for Labour while in its constant "Where We Stand" column WP always prints that "we are for the building of a revolutionary tendency in the Labour Party". Nevertheless, WP does not do any work inside it. On the other hand it send more than 10% of its cadres into a party to which it refused to give any kind of electoral support. In the three places in which the SLA had a strong influence (Leicester, Cardiff and Vauxhall), WP’s policies destroyed all the work that its SLA supporters had been doing.

In Leicester the SLA was firmly opposed to making any electoral compromise with Militant Labour towards the council elections in late 1996. Revolutionaries inside the SLP should have argued that the best way in which the SLP could stand candidates was by making coalitions with the rest of the left and combative trade-unionists. It was the SLP’s right-wing which opposed any bloc with ML and the left because it didn’t want to appear "radical" towards the union bureaucrats which they tried to recruit. In that election the SLP achieved 8% while ML obtained 12%. The two forces combined could have achieved a better performance than 20% and could have disputed the electoral victory to New Labour. That result could have put a positive outcome for the left inside the SLP and moved the party towards becoming more open and inclined to be a broader party of the left. In its sectarianism against ML, the SLA campaigned for a pure Socialist Labour ticket presided over by a member of the Stalinist and homophobic EPSR. In the May general election the SLP nominated the same EPSR candidate for a Leicester constituency.

This time the SLA editor decided to make a U-turn breaking any sense of party discipline and to call a vote for New Labour against his local SLP candidate.

In Vauxhall the branch was voided and in that condition it courageously participated with its own resources in the general election. In no other constituency did WP have so many activists. However, WP decided to campaign for a Blairite against this rebel branch. Nobody backed that SLA secretary when she was totally censored by the branch because she openly supported an organisation which called for the defeat of their candidate. She became very isolated in her branch and the party.

In Cardiff, they "wholeheartedly" supported the SLP candidate Terry Burns during the general election while in the rest of the country they voted for Labour. It was the first time in 22 years of existence that WP advocated a non-critical vote. There were also other twists in WP’s policies. Traditionally WP called for a critical vote for Labour non-bourgeois candidates but also for the left candidates (like Sheridan or Nellist) who have some social basis. In May 97 WP rejected its previous vote for any socially-rooted left candidate.

It even campaigned for a bourgeois Tory minister who was running on the Blairite ticket against Scargill. It claimed that Burns stood on its programme. However, Burns said that his party and his programme was the Scargill’s programme and he openly advocate an entirely opposite line to WP voting Yes in the Welsh referendum and advocating a no-vote for Labour. After May, the same Cardiff branch and Burns stood in a council election. This time, inexplicably, WP called for a vote for the government against Burns.

These disastrous zigzags discredited the SLA. It couldn’t influence anybody. Its demoralised supporters did not want to appear in the SLP’s opposition movements. Desperately, WP instructed them to provoke their expulsion. SLA comrades asked the SLP members to expel their Stalinist counter-revolutionary leadership and publicly attacked Scargill. Despite all its bureaucratism, the SLP didn’t sanction the SLA.

Today, the SLA say that they are going back to a revolutionary and democratic group. However, WP is no longer a healthy organisation. The incredible and vicious zigzags that we saw on the SLP question are also happening on Scotland and Wales, on former Yugoslavia, on the state question, on the character of the period, on Eastern Europe, and in every important issue. Its internal regime is no better than that of Scargill.

From the first moment when the left opposition tried to build a faction, its organisers were suspended and immediately later expelled without the right of defence or appeal.

WP is becoming an intolerant sect whose members have to be unconditional "loyalists" to their leadership’s U-turns.