What we think: 'The Times' and Brian Behan

LEADING the Tory lynch mob against the power men has been 'The Times'.

Every conceivable reactionary measure has been invoked in its letters column.

This intimidation campaign has been supplemented not only by physical attacks on and abuse of the power workers, but also, and more deviously, by the Labour leaders' predictable refusal to support the power workers.

Yet even this was not enough for 'The Times'' campaign to break the strike.

Something was missing which neither committed Tories nor bankrupt Labourites like Lord George-Brown and Jim Callaghan could make up for.

It finally got it in the form of a letter from Mr Brian Behan, ex-Stalinist, ex-Trotskyist, ex-syndicalist, ex-anti-intellectual and now a rather ageing student at Sussex University.

Mr Behan's letter is, predictably, given great prominence in 'The Times', because it puts forward a 'solution' to the present crisis which can only be called one name—corporatism.

In the past, Mr Behan has been known to attack the trade unions and parliament and the Socialist Labour League viciously. Now this trend finds its consummation in a demand for the virtual abolition of parties, in an outright attack against the Communist Party, a shameless defence of Toryism and the replacement of parliament by the system of referendums.

In short a plebiscitary dictatorship.

'Strikes', writes Behan, 'are the most logical outcome of a free-for-all society.'

What is even more intolerable for him is the existence of the CP even in its reformist-Stalinist form.

'Add to this the mischievous antics of the Communist Party and we get a disturbing situation [sic].'

To Behan, the Tory Party is preferable to Stalinism. 'Many workers forget that if the Communist Party were in power then the measures of Comrade Heath would seem like rampant radicalism.'

It is very clear, is it not?

The political crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy, resting on progressive social foundations, are of greater magnitude than the criminal policies of counter-revolutionary imperialism whose foundations are completely rotten and whose superstructure is crumbling!

Not accidentally Mr Behan remains silent on Tory policy in Ulster—and the entire bloody record of Toryism in the colonies and the trade unions in Britain.

'The Times' and the Tories will and do give wholehearted support to Mr Behan. This, after all, has been their mode of discrediting communism for decades: to use the crimes of Stalinism to obscure the progressive conquests of the October Revolution.

Nobody should confuse the counter-revolutionary anti-communism of the lumpen proletariat and the petty bourgeois, which Behan typifies, with the theory of revolutionary Marxism which is expressed in the Socialist Labour League programme and policy.

The correctness of the struggle against Behan's anti-Trotskyism and his expulsion from the SLL in April 1960 is completely vindicated by what he now advocates.

The only alternative to a strong state, writes Mr Behan, is 'the development of a social conscience'.

The corollary to Mr Behan's argument of a 'social conscience' is an extremely sinister and reactionary one.

A 'social conscience' can only be expressed by an individual who epitomizes such a conscience and abolishes the institutions of Mr Behan's 'free-for-all society'.

Whether you call him 'Der Fuehrer' or 'Il Duce' is immaterial—he will represent the naked dictatorship of capital.

In order to develop this so-called 'social conscience' which is supposed to be above classes, Mr Behan urges the introduction of referendums on all major industrial and political questions.

'Referendums', he writes, 'have on the whole a progressive history. For example, de Gaulle used it in France to halt the Algerian war and block the right.'

Yet the Algerian war referendum was framed in such a manner that those who voted 'yes' automatically voted for an increase in the powers of the president!

The extension of this retrograde principle and its generalized use in Britain would mean the end of all working-class parties and the reduction of parliament to a rubber stamp for plebiscitary decisions.

Why does Mr Behan draw the line on de Gaulle? What about Hitler? Didn't he too base his policies, such as the annexation of the Saar, on plebiscites?

Those who advocate referendums today will have to advocate concentration camps tomorrow.

Mr Behan is not a fascist but the logic of his argument must lead ultimately to dictatorship in Britain.