A Balance Sheet of the SLP Experience

Chris E.

14 Dec 1999

In November 1995 just as the SLP was first being proposed by Scargill, I presented a "Resolution on the SLP", to a socialist conference in Britain: “The SLP would certainly be a propaganda organisation not a mass party. It should not have delusions of grandeur about its ability to stand in every constituency. It should stand only where it has a chance of gaining a respectable vote, and as far as possible where the risk of letting the Tories/Liberals in is minimised (i.e. very safe seats). We have to balance the pluses and minuses here and be extremely tactical. But we should not, as Trotsky said, boycott ourselves.”

Introduction

The refusal of Scargill to discuss the proposed SLP constitution with anyone outside of his own narrow circle of sycophants was typical of his bureaucratic, Stalinist, methodology. His failure to discuss it with the proto-SSP and the other like-minded people in England and Wales had the effect of cutting off his nose to spite his face. The West of Scotland, historically, has been the one place where socialists have been able to get people elected to Parliament independently of the Labour Party. The Communist Party and the ILP both did best in Glasgow. If Scargill was going to make a breakthrough anywhere it was going to be in Glasgow. Yet, even before the SLP was launched, he managed to screw up his chances there by his arrogant refusal to discuss the constitution of the party with the proto-SSP people in Glasgow.

Early Days in Manchester

The first public meeting of the SLP in Manchester was a strange affair. It was attended by the representatives of most of the left groups in Manchester. It was strange because instead of trying to persuade people to join the new party, the speakers spent a good deal of the time telling the people in the meeting that they could not join the party and that basically they should get lost! Only those who renounced their membership of other organisations could join. This created a disconcertingly Kafkaesque atmosphere in the meeting. This contradiction continued to characterise the party from then on. While Scargill needed the far left as the cadre of the party in order to build it, he was not prepared to tolerate them as an organised opposition within the party. He ended up excluding from membership the very people he need to build the party at the base.

Having said that, I have to disagree with those people in the far left who said that one reason for the failure of the SLP to develop into a mass force was the lack of internal democracy. There was, undoubtedly, from the very start, a serious lack of internal democracy. However, it does not follow that this automatically made it impossible for the party to develop a mass base. There are, unfortunately, many examples in the world of mass reformist, Stalinist, centrist and petit bourgeois nationalist parties with very little internal democracy. And it was perfectly possible for the SLP to become a party of this type.

The initial mood was one of optimism and, in the case of Phil Griffin and the Fourth International Supporters’ Caucus (FISC), delusions of grandeur: the SLP was destined to become a mass party overnight and we had to think big. The FISC argued that we should not speak of the SLP as if it were a revolutionary party. This was true, of course, but the problem with their approach was that they almost seemed to be celebrating this fact instead of lamenting it. So carried away did they become that they even began to speak openly of themselves as being non-revolutionaries. Brian Heron, as you will recall, wrote a bizarre article in Capital and Class, which almost seemed to say that the CP programme, "The British Road to Socialism," was more effective than the Trotskyist programme in impacting on British workers.

In early 1996, there was a 400 strong Scargill public meeting in central Manchester and also lots of smaller public meetings to set up SLP branches in the suburbs of Manchester and the North West generally. In addition to the Greater Manchester branch, there were branches set up in Oldham, Trafford, Bolton and later Stockport.

The SLP attracted a layer of ex-Labour Party people, including a number of former councillors and some prominent trades unionists. The SLP intervention into the Blackpool TUC resulted in Joe Marino, and a number of other full time officials of the Bakers Union joining the party. This included a woman full-time official, from Wythenshawe, who had in fact persuaded Marino (himself from Wythenshawe) to join the party during the course of the Blackpool TUC. Pauline joined the Wythenshawe and Sale East constituency, where I was secretary. She was, like all Bakers Union officials, an elected official. Another notable member of my constituency party was a journalist, who was the Father of the Chapel (union convenor) at a local newspaper. He was later elected to the NUJ National Executive. He was subsequently sacked from his job because the management did not want someone of his stature in the union working for them. Another person who joined was a former secretary of a local Trades Union Council and a long standing Labour Party activist. And we recruited some well respected women Labour Party activists in Wythenshawe Labour Party (Wythenshawe being a vast, neglected, council estate, probably the largest in Europe, near Manchester Airport). An elderly retired Labour councillor also joined the party in Wythenshawe.

In the Stockport branch, there was a comrade who was an ally of the FISC, a veteran of the Revell and George printworkers strike, who subsequently became a member of the National Executive of the printworkers union, the GPMU. In Ashton under Lyne, an ex-SWP secretary of a large TGWU lorry drivers branch joined the party. Apart from ex-Labour members joining the SLP, there was also people from a CPB background, several ex-SWPers and ex-Militant people.

In order to help me organise my constituency party, I was given a copy of the SLP North West membership list. There were 160 names and addresses on it at this time in the Spring of 1996. Branches were being built on Merseyside and in several towns in central and north Lancashire, and even in Cumbria.

By contrast, the initial internal meetings of the Greater Manchester SLP branch were characterised by a disappointingly low attendance (20-30) and factionalism. The factionalism was between the alliance of Phil Griffin, the FISC and their supporters on the one hand and an alliance of the CPGB, the Bullites (before they fell out with each other), and their supporters, who dubbed themselves the "revolutionary caucus", on the other. This culminated after a few weeks in the closing down of a Greater Manchester branch meeting by the chair and the dissolution of the branch on the basis that it was necessary to build constituency branches to prepare for the elections. Although the real reason for dissolving the Greater Manchester branch was factional, the result of this was that people turned outwards to build in the constituencies, which was good, and the atmosphere of factionalism in the party receded a little, although the CPGB was expelled shortly afterwards with the connivance of Phil Griffin and the F1 people. The FISC set up constituency parties in Gorton and Withington. A group of people, who were not aligned with any particular faction, set up a constituency party in Blackley in north Manchester and I helped to establish a constituency party in Wythenshawe and Sale East in south west Manchester.

In Stockport, the CPGB, the Bullites, a group of ex-CPers and Geoff S eventually organised a constituency party. However, the CPGB and the Bullites (who were based in Stockport, Royston Bull and Steven Johns being local journalists) quickly fell out with each other and Griffin and the Bullites colluded with Scargill to expel a key CPGB supporter.

Fortunately, most people in the Wythenshawe and Sale East CSLP opposed the witch hunt and we sent several resolutions to Scargill demanding a fair trial for the accused CPGB supporter was invited to speak at one of our meetings even though he was no longer an SLP member. This prompted an angry exchange of correspondence between our CSLP and the neighbouring Stockport CSLP, which had expelled him.

Founding Conference

The Founding SLP congress took place in May 1996 in London and I was able to make an intervention into it since any individual member could submit motions. I submitted 17 motions on a wide range of issues. With the exception of one on women, which disappeared without trace, they were all printed in the conference document and I was able to move them without any problem. These included motions in support of "no platform" for fascists, opposition to all immigration controls, opposition to the peace process in Ireland, opposition to import controls, for a strategy of revolution and not reformism. The congress was wide open to intervention by Trotskyists and I really do think that Socialist Outlook missed a golden opportunity to set out its programme in front of 600 delegates plus several hundred observers. The CPGB was bureaucratically excluded by Phil Griffin, F1 and the Scargillites. However, the fact that the CPGB had gone at it like a bull (no pun intended) in a china shop in the SLP meant that they shared some of the responsibility for there own inability to intervene in the congress. As is well known, the F1 comrades played a scandalous role in the congress itself and I found myself having to argue, for example, against my old friend Patrick Sikorski, who was supporting the peace process in Ireland, and Trevor W, who opposed my motion to scrap all immigration controls. The F1 comrades got a roasting from the left of the congress, however, for this appalling line. My motion opposing immigration controls received a lot of support in the congress. People got up to the microphone to speak in its favour. On the coach going back to Manchester, a woman in her 70s, whom I thought perhaps might have been shocked by my contribution on the need to physically smash fascism and to impose "no platform", turned out to be the daughter of a woman anti-fascist militant in the 1930s who had been active against the Mosleyites. She fully approved of what I had said in the congress!

Socialist Perspectives and the 1997 Congress

About a year later I read in the Weekly Worker that a group of comrades had broken from the FISC on the issue of internal democracy in the SLP. Soon afterwards I received a circular from them which contained their platform on internal democracy. I collaborated closely with the ex-FISC people over the establishment of Socialist Perspectives from then on and I managed to get Wythenshawe and Sale East CSLP and a neighbouring constituency party, Stretford and Urmston, to sponsor the publication. This caused a certain amount of tension for the first time in the Wythenshawe and Sale East constituency party since it polarised the membership around the question of internal democracy. The majority voted to sponsor Socialist Perspectives, but a minority of ex-WRP Scargill loyalists and Bullites reacted against what they saw as the far left making a move to split the party.

The intervention of Socialist Perspectives into the 1997 SLP congress was a reasonably effective attempt to present an alternative to the Scargill leadership. This oppositional grouping had managed to build up quite a lot of sponsorship from SLP constituency parties in the run up to the congress. It stood a slate of candidates against Scargill which achieved a respectable result. Several other slates stood in the elections for the NEC indicating that there was sufficient latitude in the party regime to present an alternative leadership. The appearance in the congress of the infamous North West, Cumbria and Cheshire Miners Association block vote quite understandably destroyed many people's hopes that things could be changed in the party and much of the support gathered by Socialist Perspectives crumbled away during and after the congress.

The congress revealed the growing influence of the IWA as it successfully scuppered the black section at the point where Neville Lawrence was about to join the SLP. The sustained attacks on the left throughout the congress which were carried out under the smokescreen of opposing "factionalism" went largely unopposed as the left either resigned from the party or boycotted the proceedings, licking its wounds and discussing its options in fringe meetings. Many good motions on Ireland and immigration controls etc, fell because the movers were not on the conference floor. This mistaken abstentionism was an unfortunate waste of an opportunity to at least put the arguments, even if the result was a forgone conclusion given the existence of the block vote. My constituency moved a motion condemning the anti-gay bigotry of the Bullites and I gave out leaflets exposing Bull, who was standing for Vice President against Patrick Sikorski, at the congress. Peter Tatchell spoke on this issue at a well attended CPGB sponsored fringe meeting.

A post-congress meeting of the SLP left took place in Reading on the 10^th January 1998. Most of the Socialist Perspectives people had already decided to leave the SLP. The 1997 congress was their parting shot. Many of the people who argued for remaining in the SLP had already been expelled! (CPGB etc). I was one of the few who was in favour of remaining in who had not been expelled. So, just at the point where the SLP left had got itself organised, it decided to leave. I thought this was a mistake, although I understood why they wanted to leave.

Electoral Failure and Eclipse of the FISC

The electoral record of the party, predictably, was proving to be less than the overnight success that the FISC were anticipating, given the absence of substantial financial backing and the near total media blackout. The SLP staggered from electoral failure to electoral failure on a shoestring budget. The constituencies were left to their own devices to raise the large electoral deposit and other expenses for the General Election. While the Labour Party had millions to spend, the SLP had pennies. To make matters worse, the crass bureaucratism of Scargill's dealings with the proto-SSP meant that the party was weakest in precisely the location where it was best able to succeed, as the SSP proved later with the election of Sheridan to the Scottish Parliament.

The failure on the electoral terrain was to some extent counterbalanced by some successes in the unions. The election of an SLP member as the general secretary of ASLEF on local elections day 1997 forced the press to momentarily end the media blackout. The Reclaim our Rights campaign had the potential to do well, but it became a victim of the SLP's general decline and loss of momentum.

The lack of overnight success impacted on the internal regime of the SLP in a negative way. The performance in the General Election had been underwhelming. Faced with the prospect of failure in terms of establishing the SLP as a credible electoral challenge to New Labour, i.e. an (old) Labour Party Mark II, Scargill appears to have decided to crystallise the party out as a Stalinist rump, i.e. an (old) CPGB Mark II. The FISC was ill-fitted for this new project and the ultra-Stalinists of the IWA fitted the bill admirably. From that moment on, the FISC’s days were numbered in the SLP.

In Manchester, three years of working together closely in the SLP helped break down some of the antipathies between myself and the FISC, which had developed in the aftermath of the Sheffield Miners' Support Groups conference fiasco. Although the role played by the FISC in the SLP was very much a continuation of the same opportunist politics that were evident at the Sheffield conference, it was possible to see in their activity in the SLP a positive aspect. Whatever might be thought of their ill-judged expectations of overnight success for the SLP as a mass alternative to New Labour, there was certainly no doubt that they were prepared to work long and hard to try and make it a success, and to present workers with an alternative to New Labour. In many ways their opportunism was a product precisely of this, of their impatience with the seemingly petty world of small group, far left politics. They wanted to achieve something that would make a real impact, something that would make a difference to the lives of working people instead of just playing at it. If that meant cutting a few corners and making a few political compromises along the way then so be it.

In Manchester we worked together to raise the money for standing an SLP candidate in every Manchester constituency at the General Election. And we succeeded in this. The good thing about the SLP was that it obliged us to go out to places like Wynthenshawe, a vast, rotting council estate that had been neglected politically for decades. Every other house seemed to be boarded up. Militant Labour had done some work there at their height, but it had been left untouched for some years. Some of the people who had worked with Militant were now working with the SLP. After the General Election, the F1 people and myself continued to campaign there against New Labour's privatisation proposals. This campaign involved a lot of work leafleting a huge chunk of the estate several times over. Fortunately, the Manchester Housing Unison branch helped out physically and financially. Although our campaign failed to stop the privatisation in the face of a slick, well-financed privatisation propaganda campaign, everyone knew where the SLP stood and we established the party in everyone's minds. No other left party went anywhere near the estate during this whole period.

1998 Congress

The exclusion from the agenda of nearly all motions from constituencies and the election of Bull as Vice President in place of Patrick Sikorski at the 1998 congress indicated a new low for the party. The ousting of the Sikorskyites from the leadership (with the single exception of Carolyn) and their replacement by openly anti-gay bigots was the final straw for those of us who had struggled on after the Socialist Perspectives people had left the party. But the continuing exposure of the Bullites as bigots finally paid off when Bull's elevation to the Vice Presidency proved to be very short-lived.

A rearguard action continued over control of the women's section as the Scargillites, IWA and the Bullites attempted to seize control. In Manchester, a lot of effort was carried out throughout this period driving round ferrying women to the meetings to maintain their majority in the Manchester women's section. After the rigged national AGM, however, this struggle also became untenable. But the Scargillites were given a good run for their money.

The SLP is now an empty shell in Manchester with a few odds and sods here and there.

Some Conclusions and Summary

The SLP was never going to be a mass party overnight as some expected. It was a ripple rather than a wave and its true significance lay in the fact that it was symptomatic of something going on in the vanguard. It is possible that a bigger wave will follow. The SLP was not so important that it required all of a Trotskyist organisation’s resources and members being put into it. But equally, it was important enough to justify some resources and a small fraction of the membership intervening into it. As it was, I was very conscious, at various points during the past years, of how even a few more Trotskyists working in the SLP could have led to a better result, especially during the Socialist Perspectives intervention into the 1997 congress. There was a 70 strong fringe meeting with a lot of youth and I do not recall seeing many Trotskyist papers being sold there. The SLP, unlike the ILP in the 30s, has a substantial trades union base in a number of key manual union leaderships, which gave it an importance beyond its relatively small membership. That is what kept me hanging around in the party for so long. That base could still be important. I have not completely written off the party. Of course, this base is not big enough to swing real union affiliations and resources over to the SLP. But it is a real base.

What were the factors limiting the development of the party?

a) The bureaucratic Stalinist politics and methodology of Scargill cannot be held up as the sole cause of the SLP's failure to grow, but it certainly didn't help; it was a factor, but it was not the be all and end all.

b) The failure of the far left to respond adequately to the emergence of the party or to intervene into it.

c) The inept, sectarian provocations and posturings of sectarian entrists compounded the problem of the bad internal regime; they both fed off each other in fact.

d) The opportunism of the FISC provided left cover to Scargill and his bureaucratic methods and exclusions.

e) The failure to reach an agreement with the proto-SSP comrades led to the stunting of the party in a decisive region.

f) The failure to create an inclusive party and the ultimatistic presentation of the constitution alienated significant forces, which could have helped build the party on a grander scale.

g) The timing of the launch of the party was not ideal. But once the party had been launched it was necessary to intervene into it rather than bemoan this fact passively from the sidelines.

h) The honeymoon period of the Blair government has been longer than might have been expected.

i) The failure to call for a Labour vote in constituencies, where the SLP was unable to stand, needlessly alienated the Labour left from the party

j) The failure of the SLP to develop Labour Party fractions, where possible and relevant, limited the impact of the party on the Labour left.

k) Scargill's crazy policy of standing "loyalist" SLP candidates against "non-loyalists" in union elections helped to slit the party's own throat in unions where it was strong, e.g. RMT.

l) The very effective media blackout

m) The continuing pattern of defeats of long, drawn-out, bitterly-fought strikes, e.g. the Liverpool dockers, continues to create an unfavourable climate in the class struggle generally, although there is a tendency historically towards alternation between periods of trades union upsurge and periods of vigorous action on the political plane. Thus, the ILP in the early 30s followed the defeat of the General Strike. Although the SSP has been more successful than the SLP, even this success has been limited by the unfavourable period.

n) The unfavourable period on the international level since the collapse of Stalinism and the petit bourgeois nationalist movements in the world's hotspots creates its own subjective and psychological limits.

o) The economic situation also impacted on the fortunes of the SLP. There was sufficient growth in the economy to continue to buy off the petit bourgeois layers and skilled workers, while leaving the non-unionised, and the atomised underclass, to rot in their own misery.

I am still in contact regularly with the Socialist Perspectives people and I collaborate with the new trades union publication Solidarity. I had not really known these people when some of them were in Socialist Outlook. I have been particularly struck how a different context can impact on relations between people during my time in the SLP. This was true of both the F1 people and the Socialist Perspectives people. It was possible to relate more positively to people in the wider context of the SLP in a way that was not possible in the narrower confines of the Socialist Outlook. Perhaps that is because, when set against the problems of reformism and Stalinism, the shortcomings of Trotskyists are seen in their true, and more balanced, perspective.

The crisis and virtual collapse of the SLP has impacted on the people I was working with in my constituency. Some, mainly the ex-Labour types, are still in the SLP because they see the need for some kind of electoral framework to challenge New Labour and because they think that the SLP is better than nothing. Others, mainly ex-far left, look at it less from an electoral viewpoint and seem to attach more importance to the absence of democracy. They tend to operate as independent activists now. And the ex-CPers and ex-WRP people are still Scargill loyalists.

I finally resigned from the SLP a few weeks ago and since the SLP was the only issue that gave rise to my resignation from the Socialist Outlook, I felt there was no reason why I should not apply to rejoin the organisation.