The politics of Peter Fryer

"THE PRESS WE DESERVE', which was published in June, is of interest only because of contributions to it by certain left-wingers', namely:

Raymond Williams, writer and academic who was to the fore of the recent campaign for a 'Convention of the Left'; D. A. N. Jones, contributor to 'Tribune' and the 'New Statesman'; and Peter Fryer, author of several books about pornography, prudery, scandals, etc., but of special interest to us because, after leaving the 'Daily Worker' and Communist Party in 1956, he joined the Trotskyist movement for a short time and was the first editor of 'The Newsletter' forerunner of 'Workers Press'; and John Palmer, leading member of the International Socialism group and is economic GET THIS STRAIGHT, MORGAN PHILLIPS!

IT is high time that Morgan Phillips and the bosses of Birmingham Labour Party, and all other witchhunters and would-be witch-hunters, got a few thinzs straight. For a start, the expulsion of Councillors Finch and Taylor stinks in the nostrils of every socialist. What was done was a scandal. And the way it Supporters of The Newsletter in the Labour Party are going to fight for their position in the party We commentator for 'The Guardian'.

Jones is just a journalist with a smattering of radical and socialists ideas earning his living.

Williams bemoans the power of the commercial press empires and wants to be able to write as an intellectual for the working classes within capitalism but is, naturally, finding it hard going.

Palmer's political ideas we deal attempt its greatest betrayals.

with in other articles in Workers Press; his chapter in this book on "The Financial Press' is a mild criticism of the fact that the press functions on behalt at big business.

The ideas of such men are of less and less relevance to the real political situation and the state of the press, because we have long been in the stage of monopoly capitalism which affects the press like every other field of investment, and because the age of reforms brought about by 'radical' pressure is long since past.

together with Fryer, they provide a certain definite service for the press and for capitalist ideology as a whole.

To have any • sort of consistency and ability to keep its ideological grip, capitalism today cannot rely on those who are open and uncritical supporters of its everyday imperialist abominations.

From the remnants and fringes of 'left' and even professedly Marxist tendencies near the workers' movement, capitalism constantly must nourish middle-class ideological servants.

Williams, Jones, Palmer and their like are useful to show that capitalism has a conscience, to demonstrate that 'criticism' is possible.

At the same time, there is a division of labour.

Behind this smokescreen (in England, thickened by traditional bourgeois hypocrisy) the ruling class concentrates its power and sharpens its knives and political counterparts of Williams and company prepare to betray the working class in historic defeats, if only they are able to do it.

special place in all this.

And the job he has been given in this particular book typifies that place.

Having spent some years in the Communist Party, and a much sharter time in the Socialist Labour League, he is paraded as the expert who can prove that there is no revolutionary alternative.

His skills are put to use in order to bring together all the middle-class hatred and slander for the Trotskyist movement. The vehicle is his chapter's subject: 'Fringe Press and Naked Emperor'.

Although Fryer devotes more space to 'Black Dwarf' (the paper of Tariq Ali, of the International Marxist Group, until they left it to form "The Red Mole') than to any other paper, he dismisses the grounds on which he does so are very revealing.

Referring to the Workers Press (then "The Newsletter') and "The Morning : Star' (then the "Daily Worker') he writes:

Two papers • I used to work for are omitted from this survey, not because I used to work for them (though that might well alloy my objeotivity) but rather bold clanesh es independent ite iconoclastic or revolutionary in anything like the ways the others 'Their irreverence towards existing institutions, for instance, is highly selective. To be sure, the "Morning Star" has lately ventured to disagree with Soviet policy towards Czechoslovakia.

'A similar limitation impairs the claim of the infant Workers Let us stop here. When Peter Fryer was working with the Trotskyists who founded 'the

But Mr Peter Fryer I would like information about 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 Socialist Labour League, he was extremely meticulous in analysing the sleight of hand by which other writers often created an impression without really bringing forward any evidence (for example, Fryer's reply to Edward Thompson's attack on Leninism in the New Reasoner' in 1957: 'Labour Review', September-October 1957, 'Lenin as Philosopher.

But now see Fryer's own method of creating an amalgam, in the old Stalinist style!

He says the Workers Press is 'highly selective' about who it criticizes, in the same way as the 'Morning Star' Distortion This implies that bath Workers Press and the 'Morning Star' are tied to some interest group on whose behalf the truth must be distorted or suppressed. He then, by his remark on Czechoslovakia, indicates that he knows that for the 'Morning Star' it is the Kremlin bureaucracy which stands in the way of truth.

And there it nests! Is the reader to assume that the to the Stalinist bureaucracy? (Though without even the pat on the back for Czechoslovakia!)

Fryer deliberately does not say; and he does not say any more. Fryer cannot accuse the 'THE PRESS WE DESERVE' Edited by Richard Boston Routledge and Kegan Paul. 36s. to ruthlessly and objectively criticize every section of the ruling class in Britain and throughout imperialism and every agency of that class, including the counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy.

In the course of our task of building up the alternative leadership to defeat the ruling class and the Stalinist bureaucracy, we have fought always for the political independence of the working class from all bourgeois and bureaucratic forces. Fryer gives no evidence, because he has no evidence.

The 'Morning Star', subservient in its political origins and oontrol to the Kremlin bureaucracy, is also, because of that, unable to take a revolutionary position on any of the political questions of the struggle against the capitalist class.

This is because the 'Morning Star' serves the Stalinist policy of collaboration with imperialism. It is not just a question of their needing to be able to 'criticize' Soviet policy Czechoslovakia or some other tain'.

movement leaving the 'Daily Worker' in 1956, Peter (see book, this, but cism to help class.

Remarkably, exactly They too discovered, after Czechoslovakia and in view of the 'reasonableness' of rightwing CP spokesmen like Monty Johnstone, that Stalinism was no longer Stalinism' and that some sort of 'left unity' over-rode all principled differences.

What is to be noted is that Fryer comes full oricle, back to the fringe of the Stalinists, just at the time when the class struggle in Britain against the background of world crisis, rapidly approaches the greatest confrontation since 1926, and when Stalinism prepares DO accused of serving press lords or advertisers.

All this happens to Fryer, no doubt, while leaving him with the impression that he is a freethinking and urbane gentlemanjournalist and freedom-lover, arriving at his own conclusions on the basis of long experience and pure reason!

To be self-deceived in this way is precisely the fate, and the role, of such an ideologist.

It is a serious warning to Marxists, particularly in a coumtry like Britain, that Fryer could, 12 years ago, be 'convinced' of the case against stalinism and philosophical argument against " bourgeois idealism, but that these changes were superficial, leaving actually entrenched attachment to the basic idealist attachment of the petty-bourgeois individual to the institutions and traditions of the capitalist class.

There is no individual solution to these basic historical questions: they are the task of the revolutionary party of the proletariat.

It was on this point, the building of the independent revolutionary_party, that Fryer broke with Trotskyism; his present thoroughly idealist position, serving reactionary ends, is the result.

It is no longer possible, at this to say scious'. He is fonced by his own logic to launch into an attack he is not going to deal with it. He says nothing further about the •Morning Star', but is viciously anti-Trotskyist:

*A similar limitation impairs the claim of the infant Workers Press - whose immediate pretraitors, including the "rat on the left used to be known in the SLL.' Instead of four quarto sides, circulated by correspondence weekly, as in Fryer's day, we have now a daily paper which can present news, theoretical, historical and cultural material, and above all guide the members and supporters of the SLL in the day-to-day struggles of the working class. And Fryer objects that we are no longer a news-sheet!

What is of interest is that, decessor "The Newsletter" I had the doubtful honour of founding in 1957—to be included among the free press as here understood.' 'Free press' Fryer has explained in a previous paragraph that by "free press' he means: '... free from press lords, free from rich advertisers and their influence, and free from too crippling a regard for the laws concerning sedition, obscenity, and libel'.

We certainly act with the greatest possible responsibility towards our supporters and towards the working class for whose victory our paper was established, by not giving the class enemy the opportunity to put us out of business with libel proceedings.

We put this struggle to exist and grow higher than the feeling of freedom some anarchisticallyinclined individuals may get from uttering libels.

We 'freely' choose to avoid obscenity.

And Fryer knows as well as we do that should the ruling class feel strong enough and sufficiently threatened, it would take any single issue of the Workers Press and 'prove' its seditions Freedom, as Fryer himself once explained at some lengtr ('Freedom the Individual, "Labour Review' ', October 1958) comes from the unconsciousness of what must be done and not from the assertion of the individual's freedom with as few restrictions as possible.

Thus 'consciousness of necessity' is a process of struggle to build the revolutionary party and conquer working-class power, and not a mental exercise.

Once again we are back to Fryer's point of departure from the Trotskyist movement. It was, after all, a basic and principled question, and not at all a question individual peculiarities and incompatibilities.

To justify his position, Fryer strings together all anti-Bolshevik charges he can find against the Workers Press and "The Newsletter'.

'Originally intended as a newsletter for those who quit the British Communist Party after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, "The Newsletter" long ago ceased even pretending to be a news-sheet. Instead it preferred through barren fields Trotskyist heresy-hunting. The "The Newsletter's" singular preoccupation with enemies Where Is Britain Going?

Obviously, the amount of news is not his complaint. It is the political content of the paper that upsets him and makes necessary his attack, unequalled by anything else in his contribution to this book.

We m.! no apology for dealing at length with every revisionist attack on every aspect of Marxism.

The sentence reduced to a fine of f5 four-page quarto-size correspondence And it does not worry us even for one split-second that our reply to Fryer will be interpreted by him and his like as 'heresyhunting' and 'preoccupation with enemies and traitors'.

We do propose to track down every enemy and traitor, to diagnose his treachery, to prepare against others like him.

Our fight against revisionism is a theoretical fight, which analyses and exposes every last ideological barrier to the achievement of revolutionary consciousness by the working class.

was done was a scandal, too. shall fight tooth and nail, every inch of the way. using every rule, every syllable and comma of our democrate I denitel rights in the course of the fight we shall strive to show the members who is loyal to Labour principles and who is belraymg them But we are not going to let the real issues at stake be obscured by these cheap red herrings of Red Clubs'. "code names' and all the rest of the red-baiting paraphernalia that the News Chronicle is thrusting into the witch-hunters' hands We shall fight on policy On programme On principle And we shall expose this dirty conspiracy to kick real socialists This struggle for Marxist theory is not just a matter of words: it sharpens the instrument, the party, for penetration of the objective struggle of classes, from which a development of Marxism can then again be made.

The purpose of our paper is to fight through this process, not to 'express ourselves'.

In other words, two opposite class conceptions of what is freedom are here involved. Fryer is on the other side. Like every petty-bourgeois, he cynically rejects the fight for theory as 'heresy-hunting' For good . measure, Fryer finishes his single long paragraph with a collection of the middle-class 'criticisms' common to all our 'radical' enemies, and built up out of years of carefully cultivated gossip, the material THE NEWSLETTER 180 Claphom High Street, London, S.W. 4. Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspoper Vol. 3. No. 90 Sixpence February 21. 1959 I KENIS | CROYDON TENANTS DEMAND OVERTIME BAN TO STOP TORY EVICTION PLANS By David Finch AnckY Croydon tenants want effective action against the Tory-dominated council's attempts to evict tenants whose income is above £20 a week Last Friday. in the Civic Hall, 150 people heard a haltery of Labour councillors and parliamentary candidates speak on answer on the scope of our publication schedules. We have already shown this, during the general election campaign.

of which provocations are made:

'Costing sixpence per week, it claims to be "the daily organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League"; in fact it appears five times a week. Even so, its production and independent distribution must La colossal strain on the SLL's meagne resources. Its publication is a considerable achievement, attributable more to commercial acumen and long hours of work than cesses of any kind, Palitical suc.

As for the 'strain' on the League's 'meagre' resources, we have been told by the revisionists that every step forward we have made would • overtax our exhausted membership. We have gone from strength to strength while these relaxed gentlemen have failed to build anything whatsoever.

This is because we stant from scientific analysis and definite political objectives. These objectives are defined as part of the strategy of the struggle for workers' power, and they are fought for at every step by the training of Marxists to overcome all problems in a principled way.

When we decided to stant definite work for a daily paper in the summer of 1964, that was done on the basis of the developing situation and the opportunities of resolving the crisis of revolutionary leadership. Our members accepted every political light and every sacrifice along the road. 'Commercial acumen' and 'hours of work' have nothing to do with it.

The petty-bourgeois enemy of Marxism cannot understand the Bolshevik way of resolving problems and he hits back at it with this hoary old lie.

Was it 'commercial acumen' that raised the financial resources for the Workers Press, including one single fund of £25,000? Is it 'commercial aoumen' that gets us a fund of £1,000 every month, besides revenues from sales, SIL subscriptions, and other special funds?

And what lies behind

Fryer will soon have his money raising?

Only definite political campaigns and support in the warking class for these campaigns.

They are carried through, and have been ever since 1961, by a developing team of young Marxists who are carrying out the injunctions of Trotsky at his death: to go forward to build the Fourth International.

Fryer's horizons are those of the petty bourgeois.

He can see publications and papers only as the product of private enterprise, of 'commercial acumen', of long hours of work'.

The revolutionary daily paper, built in every way only on political successes', and on the lessons learned from political difficulties and problems, i.e., as part of the development of Marxism: this he cannot understand, blinded as he is by fear or hatred of the revolutionary working class and its demands on the intellectual.

Fryer and those like him will continue to carry out this kind of attack. But we have their measure.

We can expose to more and more workers and intellectuals the class content of the evalution of renegades like Fryer.

From deserting his post on "The Newsletter', ITs toNe, blt the has eihily taken up his post-firmly and steadfastly on the other side, at a class forces can only force him time when the polarization of even farther to the right.