Weekly Worker 124 Thursday January 4 1996
Letters
IWCA
This response to Mark Fischer’s article ‘IWCA confusion’ (Weekly Worker 121) is in two parts. The first deals with the article’s omissions, distortions and untruths. The second sets out Open Polemic’s position on the Independent Working Class Association in relation to the project of promoting communist unity.
So firstly, in response to Mark Fischer’s confusion. At one point he says the IWCA is ultra-left and posturing because they “reject reform rather than reformism”; what the IWCA actually says is this:
“From the outset it will be clear that we have rejected entryism and the prospect of reform, be that reform of Labour or reform of the economic system.”
To read this as anything other than a rejection of reformism either takes great stupidity or a tremendous effort of will. It is only by deliberately and gratuitously omitting the context that Mark Fischer is able to so distort the meaning, and present his reader with such a glaring untruth. This is an approach he adopts throughout the article.
Elsewhere he tell us us that it is wrong “to describe the Labour Party as a middle class party”. Let’s see what the IWCA actually has to say; here they are talking about the make-up of Labour’s influx of new members:
“Activists within the Socialist Workers Party who will be campaigning for Labour at the next election already know the answer. ‘All the indications are that the electoral support and possible membership emerges from the thoroughly rattled middle classes and not from the working class at all.’ Former deputy leader Roy Hattersley concurs: ‘We live in the age of the almost universal middle class. What they want from a political party is prudent compassion. The near unanimous support for cautious altruism is an electoral blessing.’
“Labour, a middle class party for middle class people.”
Again we have omission combined with distortion to produce an untruth. It is obvious that what is being talked about here is the electoral constituency which Labour is addressing; in its appeal to the ‘middle classes’ Labour is consciously changing its subjective class identity. And before Mark Fischer leaps back in with his description of Labour as an essentially ‘bourgeois workers’ party’, let him consider how far Labour’s constitutional, programmatic and organisational abandonment of the working class - made manifest in its changed class identity - has to go before he removes the word ‘workers’ from his description.
Rather than going through the rest of Mark Fischer’s confused and confusing article, Open Polemic requests that the Weekly Worker publish the IWCA leaflet in full. This would allow their readers to respond to what it actually says, rather than the partial paraphrases and out-of-context snippets which have been served up so far. This would in turn allow the CPGB-PCC to make a more considered and well informed response.
On a different matter: The Moment of Truth document was circulated and discussed prior to the October 21 1995 meeting; indeed amendments were made relating to the role of the ‘labour movement’. What was agreed at this meeting was that Mark Fischer (and another comrade from the CPGB) would take away the accepted text and lay it up in leaflet form. If the Weekly Worker wishes to check out this account of events, then please feel free to get in touch with the other organisations present. Why, on returning to the PCC, Mark Fischer felt unable to carry out the agreed task may well remain one of life’s little mysteries.
Moving on to Open Polemic’s relationship with, appreciation of and position towards the IWCA: as an initial sponsor of the IWCA, OP as a whole have delegated responsibility for IWCA work to particular editorial board members. We have done so and are happy to do so on the basis of the following points:
- In line with OP’s previously stated position - as a pro-party, Marxist-Leninist project - our primary interest in the IWCA is as a site of communist rapprochement. OP sees the IWCA as a potentially valuable site for open polemic - action in common.
- OP’s support for The Moment of Truth is on the basis of it being an initially accepted - as opposed to finally agreed - position around which to form an anti-Labour, pro-working class, left united front. As such The Moment of Truth should be understood as a point of departure, a beginning; not as a final destination, an end.
- In the specific historical context of the IWCA, OP understands Labourism to be the particular contemporary expression of the general standpoint of social-democracy; a general standpoint to which Marxism-Leninism is opposed.
- The Moment of Truth does not contradict OP’s Marxist-Leninist fundamentals; neither does it endorse them. However, the embryonic IWCA - with TMOT as its founding statement plus the other discussion documents produced so far - is at least a potentially multanimous and historically non-specific organisation. As such it is a possible site of communist rapprochement. Therefore both OP and the CPGB need to be involved.
We hope that all of the above helps clear up any confusion on the part of Mark Fischer, the Weekly Worker or the CPGB-PCC with regard to both the IWCA and OP’s position on it. Once again, what would help even more would be for the Weekly Worker to publish a full transcript of the IWCA leaflet; failing this, readers can get their own copies by writing to BM IWCA, London WC1N 3XX.
Ray Hickman
On behalf of the OP editorial board
Anti-trade union?
With her sterling defence of Bongani Mkhungo in her letter, ‘Leaflets controversy’, in the Weekly Worker 123, your readers could be excused for thinking Dot Gibson is a true champion of workers’ democracy. She says, “Every member of a trade union and political party has the right to voice, and campaign for, their opinion.” We assume she means minority rights here.
In our 21 years of existence the Building Worker Group has always unreservedly supported and fought for the democratic rights of all workers, as well as members of trade unions and political parties.
This to the extent of five Building Worker supporters being prepared to go to jail in defence of the democratic right and freedom to picket, meet with and speak to other workers; in defiance of a high court injunction and the anti-union laws used against us in the Laings lock-out of October 1985-April 1986, which were meant to remove these rights. We successfully defied these laws, this injunction. This is still our current policy.
However Dot Gibson’s commitment to workers’ democracy disappeared and is clearly seen for the sham it is, when she writes of the Building Worker Group and the two sacked building workers in Southwark in a letter in a recent issue of Workers Press. With no consultation or contact whatsoever with Building Worker or the two sacked workers, she accuses us and them of mounting “a fraudulent ‘picket line’ at the Frensham street depot of Southwark Direct Labour Organisation against the democratic wishes of the workforce”. She then goes on to class the picket a “provocative action”. She uses the term “sectarian”, but does not explain. Does she mean we are Rank and File and they are Broad Left?
An anonymous report - again with no contact or consultation with the sacked workers or us - was published in the following issue. It ends with the classic Stalinist-type ‘smear by speculation’ in asking whether the Building Worker Group is an “anti-trade union organisation or what”.
It is basically a continuation of what is obviously a disgusting and vicious smear campaign against the Building Worker Group and the two sacked workers by Workers Press and its allies. The readers are told an interview with one of these, Tony O’Brien, Ucatt convenor steward of Southwark DLO building works, would take place in the next issue of the paper.
The interview must have begun in Dot Gibson’s letter and the anonymous article, as O’Brien’s contribution was but an enlargement on, and vicious embellishment of, the poisonous drivel in the earlier material. He boasts of leading the workers across the picket line. He’s even lying about this. He in fact cajoled some and bullied and forced many others across. What a scab! The SWP publicly supported O’Brien in this!
As you have covered the dispute in the Weekly Worker, for the record I will outline the most important facts - completely, deliberately and conveniently ignored by O’Brien, Workers Press and the SWP, both past and to date.
1. The picket was only put on on November 13 after the council ignored a week’s ultimatum given by the two sacked workers to reinstate them and their grievance procedures, which the council had unilaterally dropped before they’d been fully processed.
The two sacked workers asked the Building Worker Group to support their picket. We did so wholeheartedly. The workers did not take any decision against the picketing! Neither they nor the sacked workers could get a mass meeting of all the building workers to decide on anything!
2. O’Brien and the other two full-time officials, Hehir of Ucatt and Rouse of the TGWU, went along with the sackings and refusal to fully process the grievance procedures.
3. A mass meeting and the inclusion of the sacked workers for the whole of this was promised for November 14. The picket was lifted as a result on November 13.
4. The promise was broken and no mass meeting took place and thus there was no movement from Southwark council.
5. After a week the picket was reinstated to try to force the council’s hand once more.
6. The two sacked workers and the Building Worker Group lobbied the Ucatt London and South East regional council meeting on December 11. The lobby called for a mass meeting with the right to vote and for reinstatement of the grievance procedures and the two workers - which reinstatement of the procedures must entail.
7. We were told Southwark council had given the union 10 days to get the picket lifted or they’d take out a high court injunction to enforce this. This was undoubtedly meant to force the regional council completely into line with the council and O’Brien.
8. It completely backfired. No doubt remembering the Laings lock-out, the regional council decided in favour of a mass meeting which the two sacked workers would attend and participate in and for reinstatement of the grievance procedures. This was quite an astonishing decision, as it overturned the positions of the convenor and two full-time union officials.
The regional council also called for the picket to be lifted. This was done because they had agreed with the two key demands and not because of the threat of a high court injunction.
The mass meeting took place on December 20 and essentially voted for the reinstatement of the grievance procedures of the two sacked workers. The TGWU/EPIU and Ucatt now officially support this. All await developments from the council.
The question was asked: “Is the Building Worker Group an anti-trade union organisation or what?”. O’Brien and Workers Press supported the sacking of the two workers by the council and their refusal to reinstate their grievance procedures. The defence rests - between that picket line and the next one.
Incidentally I am more than willing to do an interview with Workers Press to fully explain what the Building Worker Group is and the difference between us and the Broad Left.
Brian Higgins
Secretary, Building Worker Group
