Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 23:48:19 -0400
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-I: Lcmcri vs Cockroch (part 2) #1


Malecki and Cockroach reply!

Thanks Dave for your contribution to this important debate. Unfortunately 
your reply is a combination of of a number of things which hardly show how 
Trotskyists should be approaching the uppcoming election in Britain.
And it still does not get you off the hook for some of the attrocious 
positions that the Lcmcri are defending in your first answer to Malecki and 
Cockroach!

I think the best quotation (from Trotsky) rather then the  formally correct 
position of the thirties in regards to "critical" support to bougeois 
workers parties that you present to try and shore up the rather opportunist 
and rotten position the Lcmcri has taken on the British elections and in 
fact a number of other issues that came out in the first reply by the Lcmcri 
to Malecki and Cockroach is the quotation "Learn To Think!"...

In fact the whole point of this discussion is in fact the very same thing 
that you claim "not to be the issue" in this debate. And that is that the 
"New" Labor Party of Tony Blair has turned his back on the workers movement 
and its mass organisations in order to appeal to the middle class, not to 
mention the bosses and the bankers. By the way the LP always made the 
historic deal with the bosses but always in relation to its reformist 
program linked to its base in the trade unions. There program expresses 
nothing even in the reformist sense even as a bougeois workers party for the 
workers of Britain today! The point Blair keeps making time and again is the 
call for a "modern" labor party. Why even the National news on every channel 
here in Sweden makes it explicitly clear that Tony Blair no longer sees the 
trade unions and working class as its base of support to fight for some 
peaceful road to socialism. But a combination of incorporating the program 
of the Toryies "fighting crime" and "not highering taxes" as the central 
pillars of their election program. Christ even my Social Democratic pals 
here in Sweden see what is going on and link it to what is happening in 
their own party! 

The content of their program reflects foremost the elimination of the 
deformed and degenerated workers states that kept the Social Democracy as a 
reformist alternative for workers and a garantee to the Bougeoisie that 
Communism even in the form of Stalinism would not spread to western Europe 
and Scandinavia. Although on a national level in Britain 18 years of Tory 
rule certainly have created a lot of illusions about new Labor being better 
for the working class then the Toryies. But the point is a split has 
developed in the Labor Party and is represented by Scargill's SLP which 
poses the question quite bluntly. And I think that "critical" support to the 
SLP is certainly a way of deeping this split as a step in creating a 
revolutionary Marxist and internationalist workers party in a reforged 
Fourth International.

In reply to Dave and the Lmcri on the "Spartacists" I suggest that people 
read the following  article. This is produced by Workers Hammer (newspaper 
of the Spartacist League in Britain).  These are the *real* positions of the 
Spartacists and not the stuff presented by Dave.

Finally, if this article does not convince you I suggest going to my 
homepage and reading "The Never Ending Story" which describes the Swedish 
version of "New" Social democracy and why Communists have to learn to think 
and apply the neccessary tactics in given situations of the present reality 
we find ourselves in and not try to quote passages from trotsky which are 
entirely irrevelant in the new situation facing communists today...In fact I 
think the "old man" would be rolling over in his grave if he was watching 
the Lcmcri and Dave trying to find a quote to tail everything that moves 
into trying to pressure them to be more "revolutionary" whether it be 
calling for a vote for "New" labour or the Lcmcri's attempts to clarify 
there support to the "progressive" cops and military cliches of the world 
and not in the least the painting up of General gaulteri's as a fucking 
leader of world revolution! See Lcmcri vs Cockroach at my homepage!

SLP split: fracture in Labour monilith.
Blair kicks unions in the teeth...

At the Backpool TUC conference this year (1996) Tony Blair's New Labour 
launched a union-bashing offensive designed to convince City bankers and big 
business that Labour in power can be just as anti-union as the Tories. 
Blair's attack on tube strikers earlier this year was widely descibed as 
unprecedented for a Labour leader in opposition. Meanwhile, his employment 
spokesman David Blunkett told postal workers to end their strikes and 
conduct yet another ballot of their membership. This followed New Labour's 
pledge to retain the Tories hated anti-union legislation and effectively to 
ban strikes in the public sector by imposing binding arbitration. To top it 
all off, Blair's shadow junior employment minister, Stephen Byers, took the 
opportunity to pronounce what everyone knows is key to the "Blair Project": 
the breaking of Labour's historic link to the unions.

In the midst of this orgy of union bashing, Arthur Scargill stood out as a 
focal point of opposition to New  Labour at the TUC conference. Earlier this 
year Scargill split from the Labor and launched the Socialist Labor Party 
(SLP) "in response to New Labour's betrayal of the commitment to common 
ownership, bandonment of socialism and open support for the 'free market' 
and capitalism" (Socialist News, September 1996)

Despite the very clear intentions of Tony Blair, the Labour Party remains a 
bourgeois workers party, ie based on the trade unions but saddled with a 
pro-capitalist leadership. For communists, breaking the stranglehold of the 
Labour Party over the working class is a key strategic task. Although the 
programme of Scargill's SLP is at bottom simply that of "old"  Labour as 
against the New Labour Party of Tony Blair, this split from the Labour Party 
offers the possibility for a fundemental realignment of the political 
configuration in this country out of which a revolutionary Marxist and 
internationalist workers party can be constituted.

At Blackpool, Blair reminded the TUC leadership that "in the end we govern 
for Britain". Under New Labour, he proclaimed, British imperialism can 
"regain infkuence abroad" and "compete in the new global market". With the 
Tories deeply devided over Europe, Blair is presenting New Labour as the 
party of "the business world" and of Maastricht austerity. In " Fortress 
Europe" Maastricht dictates union busting, privatisation, massive attacks on 
welfare and increased social oppresion, racist terror and attacks on women.

Blair is indicating his willingness to deliver what the imperialists think 
they can get in today's world--a more naked form of class rule. This is what 
is behind Blair's project to turn the Labour Party into a bougeois party--a 
version of the US Democratic Party. We stated in the International Communist 
League's (ICL) January 1996 "Perspectives and Tasks" memorandum:

  "Today much of the world's bour-
   geoisies drunk with glee over the col-
   lapse of the Soviet Union, has been
   seized with a deep ideological passion to
   return to the imagined halcyon days of
   unfettered capitalist freebooting. Irration-
   ally, from their own class standpoint,
   they are thus dismantling or privatizing
   everything from government bureaus of
   scientific standards to transportation and
   communications infrastructures. Imagin-
   ing the 'red menace' behind them they
   are also dumping the intermediiiaries and
   brokers (parlimentarists and trade union)
   they previously maintained and culti-
   vated, the better to contain and control 
   the working class. To the extent this
   project is realized we can expect a pattern
   of protracted passivity punctuated by
   violent upheavals and outbursts of class 
   stuggle."

Tory/New Labour union bashing...

A great deal of social tinder has accumulated during the long years of Tory 
rule, which have brought devastating attacks on the NHS and welfare 
services. Despite the Tories boast of "no-strike" Britain, this summer 
(1996) there was a series of one-day strikes in London Transport, the Post 
office and the fire brigades. The public sector unions are made up of some 
of the most oppressed sections of the workforce--blacks, Asians, women--many 
of whom have worked for decades for extremely low pay. These strikes have 
been defensive battles against the ravage of privatisation, which attempts 
to destroy the unions, to atomise the working class and to impose 
scandalously low wages and working conditions reminiscent of the nineteenth 
century. But even such limited and episodic strikes were too much for New 
Labour, who are vying with the Tories for the reputation of being "tough on 
unions".

New Labour's declared commitment to union busting rankled with even the most 
slavishly pro-Labour union bureaucrats. TUC General Secretary John Monks 
complained that delegates in Blackpool "were shaken by the wild talk of 
Labour severing all links with us". They may be shaken by Blair's deliberate 
kick in the teeth, but the TUC bureaucracy's "New Unionism" accepts New 
Labour's basic political premise: the trade unions must not pose a challenge 
to the "free market" of capitalist greed. These leaders cannot mount a fight 
against Blairism. Indeed by the time of the Labour Party conference all the 
TUC heavywheights had knuckled under. TGWU leader Bill Morris spoke for all 
of them when he said "unions would now concentrate on helping Labour to win 
the general election". The message to striking workers is go to hell -- 
comply with the anti-union laws, and elect a union bashing Labour government.

This is what lies behind Morris treacherous efforts to knife the 
13-month-old battle of the sacked Liverpool dockers, he refuses to give the 
strike what is desperately needed to win. The Liverpool docks must be shut 
down through militant mass picket lines that nobody dares cross and the 
strike extended to all other ports in Britain as part of the drive to 
reunionize the docks. As we noted in our January 12 1996 leaflet ("Time for 
a working-class counterattack!"): "mass rallies in support of the dockers 
have brought out thousands of supporters from across the country...Strike 
action alongside the dockers at Vauxhall Ellesmere Port and Ford Halewood 
would make Merseyside a launching pad for the working-class fight -back we 
so sorely need"

Morris even denounces those who do want to show their solidarity. On 30 
September the cops viciously attacked a demonstration at the Liverpool docks 
supported by the "Reclaim the Streets" protest group, arresting 41 people. 
Morris lambasted the "violence and unlawful action" of the cops victims and 
demanded that the dockers must "disassociate themselves" from the 
demonstraters. We say: drop all the charges!

continued in #2

The entire exchange can be found at my homepage.
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