Brian Behan goes to university

FOR THE MARXIST movement, the evolution of those who desert it is of great educational interest. It can often throw considerable light on the social forces which pulled them away from the struggle for revolutionary leadership, and clarify the theoretical issues posed by the desertion.

A report in Tuesday's 'Daily Mail' is headed: 'A Behan goes to university at 42'. It quotes a student magazine article by Brian Behan, announcing that he is going to study history at Sussex University.

Behan, brother of the late Brendan, was in 1958-1960 associated with the Socialist Labour League and before that with the Communist Party.

The article quoted by the 'Mail' shows that he is now moving very rapidly to the extreme right.

He thinks that Universities need a cross-section of attitudes and prejudices, says the report.

'You need some of these skinhead people and these dockers who shout "Ho, ho, Enoch Powell". Otherwise you get a false society.'

Later he says:

'The universities seem to have replaced the old trade unions and radical movements as centres of discussion.'

In ten years, Behan has covered the entire political spectrum, from ultra-leftism towards implied support for Powellites and he has by no means stopped moving.

But an examination of his political history shows that he has remained consistent in a very fundamental sense.

Behan was part of a group of syndicalist workers who co-existed with Stalinism inside the Communist Party.

As with all representatives of this tendency, he opposed the struggle for Marxist theory in the working class, substituting blind militant action for the development of revolutionary leadership.

Once described by Harry Pollitt as a 'model Communist', Behan began to raise disagreements with CP policy in the building industry in 1956.

He put up no real political struggle against Stalinism, but, after he was removed from the CP Executive in 1957, he left the Party.

About the same time, other leaders of the CP trade union groups were breaking with the Party, or beginning to break, also without a theoretical fight.

Indignation

John Horner of the Fire Brigades Union and Leslie Cannon of the Electrical Trades Union were two examples.

Each of them found a path towards the established machinery of the labour movement, after parting with the CP in a wave of moral indignation.

Behan, however, joined the Trotskyist movement.

But although repeatedly urged to study its programme and theory, he refused to do so.

In 1958, he was involved in the strike on the MacAlpine Shell-Mex site, but he saw this only as a syndicalist dispute, not in terms of the lessons of political leadership to be learned from it.

He was criticized within the SLL for this action.

Towards the end of 1959, Behan's differences with the Trotskyist movement began to come out in the open. In particular, he wanted us to turn away from our work in the Labour Party, just as the Young Socialists was being formed.

As in every aspect of syndicalist and sectarian politics, the outcome of such a line, if we had adopted it, would have been to prevent the struggle for Marxism being carried out against the labour bureaucrats, and the training of the young forces which were to take the battle from the Labour Party into the trade unions.

Discussion

As the very full discussion on these issues developed inside the SLL, so did Behan's political views.

Before the 1960 Conference of the League, Behan had attacked the leadership in public and broken important decisions of the leading committees of which he was a member.

For this, he was expelled.

Meanwhile, he had begun to oppose all centralized revolutionary leadership as inhibiting the spontaneous movement of the working class.

Above all, he ever more decisively rejected the need for Marxist theory and history.

'Don't rattle the old bones of Trotsky at me!' he said in one discussion.

This break with the SLL was welcomed by two groups of people.

The revisionist groups, the Pabloites and 'state capitalists', saw him as a great gain for themselves, Pablo making a special trip to see him.

It is worth noting that, while, at that time, Mandel was on paper diametrically opposed to Behan's views on the Labour Party, his followers, Blackburn and Tariq Ali today, echo Behan's sectarian and irresponsible ideas when they tell workers not to vote Labour on June 18.

Anarchism

But Behan was not interested in Mandel's type of politics. Moving on towards anarchism, he soon denounced trade unions, as well as the Labour Party, as 'capitalist organizations'.

But it was not only the revisionists who noted Behan's break with the Socialist Labour League.

Fleet St was also very interested. His rejection of theory they saw correctly as a weapon to weaken the working class.

In 1963, a magazine called 'Twentieth Century' published an article by him under the title 'Why I am an agitator'.

Among other things, Behan declared himself against nationalization and trade unions, and in favour of the House of Lords and John Bloom—the washing machine manufacturer.

Amid much clowning, Behan declared himself for 'local consumer-producer alliances that will develop mutual aid as the motor force of society'.

This idea will be recognized as resembling the 'corporations' advocated by Mussolini's Fascist Party.

Biography boost

This was followed in June 1963 by the appearance in the 'Daily Express' of a boost for his autobiography, which came out in 1964.

Commenting on the 'Express' article, G. Healy wrote in 'The Newsletter' (June 29, 1963):

'Behan never really broke politically with Stalinism. His criticisms against it were always confined to emotional outbursts of anger and demagogy.

'This explains why he has moved so rapidly to the right to the point where he has gone from being a member of the Communist Party right through the Socialist Labour League and now occupies a position to the right of the Tory Party. And he has not stopped travelling.'

This is certainly confirmed by Behan's latest phase. He moves into the university when the fight against Marxist theory there is very strong.

In the trade unions, the fight against the type of blind militancy represented by Behan in the 1950s begins to win ground.

The battle for Marxist theory and political clarity, so vital in the unions today, is attracting thousands of workers towards Workers Press.

Warning

The evolution of Behan from the super-proletarian syndicalist, worshipping the 'spontaneity' of the working class, to the student, defending the rights of Powellism in the colleges, is a warning to all those who belittle the role of theory.

Behan has certainly not stopped his evolution to the right.

He will reappear in even more reactionary movements as the crisis develops. We warn all workers and students to watch him closely—and learn from his fate.