THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

FIll in the form below and send to NATIONAL SECRETARY, SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE, 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON, SW4. Name Address doing it.' Cowboy hats A GROUP of youths with transistors and cowboy hats were hanging about outside the next hall, bored with nothing to do.

Inside a formidable bevy of ageing Tory women, all with hats and identical hair styles, waited expectantly. They broke into spontaneous applause as Mitchell strode through the door.

He took up his position on a platform. Behind him a backdrop of coloured stars.

The same political confusions rattled out. 'His 'argument' is based on a form of free associaTHIS INTERVIEW by an Independent Labour Party member with Leon Trotsky dates from November 1935, at a time when the Stalinists 'had emerged from the "Third Period' (when they called reformist socialists 'social fascists') and were pursuing the new line of 'People's

In Britain, this involved a turn towards the Independent Labour Party, which at that time wielded considerable influence amongst workers repelled by both social democracy and the treachery of Stalinism. (The ILP broke organizationally from the Labour Party in 1931.)

In discussions with leaders of the left wing in the ILP, Trotsky insisted that orientation of the party must be towards the Labour Party as the mass party of the British In this excerpt from the pamphlet 'Once Again: The ILP', Trotsky is dealing with the objectors to a vote for Labour, who argued that only those candidates who stood for a consistent internationalist policy against the Italian invasion of Abyssinia should win the support of workers at the ballot The vote for Labour, Trotsky explains (as Lenin explained in his 'Left-Wing Communism' 15 years before) is not a vote of confidence in the Labour leaders, 'any more than it denotes moral approval of the individual candidate's Whether individual Labour candidates were for revolutionary action against the invasion of Abyssinia, or supported the imperialist League of Nations 'economic sanctions' made not, a scrap of difference to the class nature At the height of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, middle-class pacifists argued that Labour candidates who refused to oppose British possession of the H-bomb should One group even ran independent candidates on the issue of the bomb alone where the Labour candidate was a rightLike supporters of 'anti-sanction' candidates in the ILP 35 years ago, this tactic betrayed a middle-class, subjective approach to the Labour Party, and ignored the struggle of the working class to break free from the grip of reformism.

Trotsky's polemic against the ILP abstentionists applies Blackburn, Jordan and the rest of the blind 'Red Moles' of the International Marxist Group now advance the same argument — only now in a far more degenerate form.

TROTSKY They are for total abstention on June 18—with the wrecking of Labour Party election meetings thrown in for good Trotsky's analysis of the Labour Party, despite its being written nearly 35 years ago, is an excellent counterblast to on the Labour Party As Trotsky once said of the ultra left: 'A sectarian class nature International Socialism' Monday, June 15, 1970 QUESTION: Was the ILP correct in refusing critical support to the Labour Party candidates who advocated military sanctions ?

ANSWER: No. Economic sanctions, if real, lead to military sanctions, to war. The ILP itself has been saying this. It should have given critical support to all Labour Party candidates, i.e. where the ILP itself was not contesting. In the 'New Leader' I read that your London Division agreed to support only anti-sanctionist Labour Party candidates. This too is incorrect. The Labour Party should have been critically supported not because it was for or against sanction but because it represented the working - class masses.

The basic error which was made by some ILPers who withdrew critical support was to assume that the war danger necessitated a change in our appreciation of reformism. But as Clausewitz said, and Lenin often repeated, war is the continuation of politics by other means. If this is true, it applies not only to capitalist parties but to social-democratic parties.

The war crisis does not alter the fact that the Labour Party is a workers' party, which the governmental party is not. Nor does it alter the fact that the Labour Party leadership cannot fulfil their promises, that they will betray the confidence which the masses place in them.

In peace-time the workers will, if they trust in social democracy, die of hunger; in war, for the same reason, they will die from bullets.

BALDWIN

Revolutionists never give critical support to reformism on the assumption that reformism, in power could satisfy the fundamental needs of the workers.

It is possible, of course, that a Labour government could introduce a few mild temporary reforms. It is also possible that the League of Nations could postpone a military conflict about secondary issues— just as a cartel can eliminate secondary economic crises only to reproduce them on a larger scale. So the League can eliminate small episodic conflicts only to generalize them into world war.

Thus, both economic and military crises will only return with an added explosive force so long as capitalism remains. And we know that social democracy cannot abolish capitalism.

No, in war as in peace, the ILP must say to the workers: "The Labour Party will deceive you and betray you, but you do not believe us. Very well, we Will go through your experiences with you but in no case do we identify ourselves with the Labour Party programme?

Morrison, Clynes, etc., represent certain prejudices of the workers. When the IP seeks to boycott Clynes it helps not only Baldwin, but Clynes himself. If successful in its tactic, the ILP prevents the election of Clynes, of the Labour govFront'.

working class.

box.

personal qualities.

and roots of the British Labour Party.

be boycotted at elections.

winger.

with equal force today.

measure.

these revisionists.

frightened opportunist.' That sums up the political Jordan perfectly.

Harry POLLITT

ernment, and so prevents their exposure before the masses. The workers will say: 'If only we had Clynes and 1 Morrison in power, things would have been better?

It is true, of course, that the mental content of Clynes and Baldwin is much the same except, perhaps, that Baldwin is a little more 'progressive' and courageous. But the class content of the support for Clynes is very different.

It is urged that the Labour Party already stands exposed by its past deeds in power and its present reactionary platform. For example, by its decision at Brighton.

For us-yes! But not for the Stafford CRIPPS in 1947 with Harold INTRODUCTION evolution masses, the eight millions who voted Labour. It is a great danger for revolutionists to attach too much importance to conference decisions. We use such evidence as our propaganda—but it cannot be presented beyond the power in our own press. One cannot shout louder than the strength of his own throat.

Let us suppose that the ILP had been successful in a boycott tactic, had won a million workers to follow it, and that it was the absence of this million votes which lost the election for the Labour Party.

What would happen when the war came? The masses would in their disillusionment turn to the Labour Party, not to us.

If Soviets were formed during the war the soldiers would elect Labour Party people to them, not us. Workers would still say that we handicapped Labour. But if we gave critical support and by that means helped the Labour Party to power, at the same time telling the workers that the Labour Party would function as a capitalist government, and would direct a capitalist war—then, when war came, workers would see that we predicted rightly, at the same time that we marched with them. We would elected to the Soviets and Soviets would not betray.

As a general principle, a revolutionary party has the right to boycott parliament only when it has the capacity to overthrow it, that is, when it can replace parliamentary action by general strike and insurrection, by direct struggle for power.

In Britain the masses have yet no confidence in the ILP. The ILP is therefore too weak to break the parliamentary machine and must continue to use it.

As for a partial boycott, such as the ILP sought to operate, it was unreal. At this stage of British politics it would be interpreted by the working class as a certain contempt for them; this is particularly true in Britain where parliamentary traditions are still so strong.

Moreover, the London Division's policy of giving critical support only to anti-sanctionists would imply a fundamental distinction between the socialpatriots like Morrison and Ponsonby or-with your permission-even Cripps.

Actually, their differences are merely propagandistic. Cripps is actually only a second-class supporter of the bourgeoisie. He has said, in effect: 'Pay no attention to my ideas; our differences are only small'.

This is the attitude of a dilettante, not a revolutionist. A thousand times better an open enemy like Morrison.

Lansbury himself is a sincere but extravagant and irresponsible old man; he should be in a museum not parliament.

The other pacifists are more duplicit — more shifty; like Norman Angell, who demands more sanctions now, they will easily turn into social patriots as war develops. Then they could say to the workers: 'You know us. We were antisanctionists. Even the ILP supported our struggle. Therefore you can have confidence in us now when we say that this war is a just war'.

No, the ILP should have applied the same policy of critical support to the whole of the Labour Party, only varying our arguments to meet the slightly varied propaganda of pacifist and social- patriot. Otherwise, illusions are provoked that pacifism has more power to resist than social patriotism.

This is not true; their differences are not fundamental. Even among the Tories there are differences on sanctions and war policies. The distinction between Amery and Lansbury is simply that Amery is more of a realist. Both are anti-sanctionist; but for the working class, Lansbury with his illusions and sincerity is more dangerous.

Most dangerous of all, however, is the Stalinist policy. The parties of the Communist International try to appeal especially to the more revoluPAGE tionary workers by denouncing the League of Nations (a denunciation that is an apology) by asking for 'workers' sanctions' and then nevertheless saying: We must use the League when it is for sanctions'.

They seek to hitch the revolutionary workers to the shafts so that they can draw the cart of the League.

Just as the General Council in 1926 accepted the General Strike but behind the curtains concluded a deal with the clergy and pacifist radicals and in this way used bourgeois opinion and influence to 'discipline' the workers and sabo tage their strike, so the Stalinseek to discipline the workers by confining the boycott within the limits of the League of Nations.

The truth is that if the workers begin their own sanctions against Italy, their action inevitably strikes at their own capitalists, and the League would be compelled to drop all sanctions. It proposes them now just because the workers' voices are muted in every country.

Workers' action can begin only by absolute opposition to the national bourgeoisie and its international combinations. Support of the League and support of workers' actions are fire and water; they cannot be Because of this, the ILP should have more sharply differentiated itself from the CP at the elections than it did. It should have critically supported 'the Labour Party against Pollitt and Gallacher.

George LANSBURY

It should have been declared openly that the CP has all the deficiencies of the Labour Party without any of its advantages. It should have, above all, shown in practice what true critical support means.

By accompanying support with the sharpest and widest criticism, by patiently explaining that such support is only for the purpose of exposing the treachery of the Labour Party leadership, the ILP would have completely exposed, also, the spurious 'critical' support of the Stalinists themselves, a support which was actually wholehearted and uncritical and based on an agreement in principle with the Labour Party leadership.

PRICE ONE SHILLING

PAGE POUR Monday, June 15, 1970