Marxists in Conference

[p011] Marxists in Conference Peter Fryer THE inaugural conference of the Socialist Labour League, held in London at Whitsuntide, demonstrated that the ideas to which a generation of Marxists held firm through three decades of isolation and persecution have struck root in British soil. The Marxist movement has taken shape. It has flung down its challenge to capitalism, to fascism, to Right-wing and Stalinist mis- leaders, to ‘new thinkers’ and ‘new Left’ coteries, and to the various sectarian groupings. Here is a movement that means business, as every witch-hunting attack, every ban, proscription and expulsion testifies; a move- ment that is based on the proletariat in a period of mounting class struggle; a movement that is therefore rapidly extending in size and influence. Compare the analysis, democracy, composition and fighting spirit of the Socialist Labour League’s con- ference with the deliberations and the lineaments of any other political movement or institution in Britain today. A long series of letters to The Times has proved what we all knew: that the Labour Party cannot attract young people, because its leaders fear youth’s radical and revolutionary instincts; and because they have nothing to offer young people. The Communist Party held its congress at Easter: the same set speeches; the same incantations; and now the same aging and dis- credited hacks and hatchet-men are re-elected to the political committee. The Co-operative congress, wrote the special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, virtually expired . . . . this evening. ‘The movement,’ the delegates have explained continually during the past three days, ‘has lost its dynamic.’ The proof of this statement is perhaps to be found in the failure of the congress even to last its appointed course of four days.! The headline to this melancholy report read: ‘Co-op. Congress fails to last four-day course. Tepid discussion about H-bomb.’ Or take Parliament itself. One after another the political commentators have bemoaned the MPs’ listlessness, apathy and poor attendance. “The only subject anybody at Westminster discusses. at all,’ wrote one correspondent recently, is the rigid catalepsy that from Left to Right holds almost undisputed sway within the precincts of the Palace of West- minster. Zombie-like, they go back and forth about their duties . . . If some enterprising lead-swinger should summon up the energy . . . to circularize all his fellow-Members with a suggestion that they should none of them come back at all... the chances are that they would accept the suggestion with joy and unanimity, and that when they put it into effect nobody would notice.2 So little, indeed, can one veteran parliamentary correspondent find to occupy his time that he has begun writing his memoirs—or those of Lord Beaver- brook; one cannot quite make out which. In this drowsy political climate, scarcely ruffled by the murder of a Negro in north Kensington, by the 1 Manchester Guardian, May 21, 1959. 2 Spectator, May 15, 1959. 40 murder of eleven others in a Kenya concentration camp, by a mutiny at a ‘hell-hole’ of a military prison, by the hanging of a young worker alleged to have killed a policeman in a brawl, or by various instances of mal- practice among the police*—in this political climate, which sets politicians slumbering because it is the climate of a moribund social system, the challenge of the Socialist Labour League came with all the shock of an icy wind. Unlike any other movement, the Marx- ist movement bases its policies and programme on a scientific analysis of the real position, tasks and capacity for struggle of the working class. Unlike any other movement, the Marxist movement is attracting to its ranks the best of the so-called ‘beat’ generation: young workers whose imagination is stirred by the revolutionary alternative to the frustration and aimless- ness that is engendered in them both by capitalism and by the quack remedies proffered by the Fabians and the Stalinists alike. And, again unlike any other movement, the Socialist Labour League faces the future with com- plete confidence in the validity of its message and its ability to go forward triumphantly along its chosen path. The Whitsun conference dashed the hopes of all who last November. had fancied that the—for them—- unexpected and disagreeable success of the National Industrial Rank-and-File Conference was a mere flash in the pan.4 It was a conference of a League united, vigorous and ready for battle; determined to take its policy to the workers, determined to give them leader- ship in battle, determined to win the most militant and active workers for the liberating ideas of Marxism. Small wonder, therefore, that the call of the conference —for working-class action, for resistance to wage cuts, for an end to bans, proscriptions and expulsions, and for united defence committees to resist fascist violence against immigrants—touched the British bourgeoisie and its Press on their rawest nerve. Even ‘Cassandra’ had to scrape around in his rich vocabulary of hate- words for some extra-vituperative epithets; thereby (and for this we are greatly indebted to him) informing some 13 million readers of the Daily Mirror for the first time 3 One choice example among many that could be quoted was reported as follows in the Daily Telegraph of May 22, 1959: ‘P.c. gave himself leave to park. Ipswich magistrates yester- day dismissed a summons against P.c. Roy Rushmore for a parking offence. They agreed that when in uniform he could give himself permission to leave his private car in a restricted area for any length of time. P.c. Rushmore said he had to attend Ipswich court as witness. He knew the borough traffic regulations did not allow him to park more than 20 minutes without special permission from a police- man in uniform. “I was in uniform and as there was no other policeman about was in my right to give myself permission.” ’ 4 See e.g. The Times, November 17, 1958: “The composition of the group is so diverse that it would be surprising if they were to cohere for long.’ ' E

[p012] MARXISTS IN CONFERENCE of the existence of a genuine Marxist movement in Britain. Meanwhile in the News Chronicle, which first discovered a ‘Red Club’ under the bed, the usually blasé Mr Douglas Brown confessed himself ‘surprised’: ‘The Socialist Labour League, surprisingly, appears to be making some impact.> Let Mr Brown take heed. There are many more surprises in store for him. But Marxists never have used and never will use as any kind of yardstick of their successes the number of column inches devoted to their activities in the Press of their enemies, which is stupid when it is not ill-informed, and malicious when it is not stupid. For such a yard- stick we must turn to the conference itself. Examine, for instance, the report of the credentials committee for some idea of the movement’s attractive power and of the tempo of its growth. Two-thirds of the delegates had declared for Marxism in the past year; one-fifth had done so since the launching of the League at the end of February 1959. In the same period, it was reported, the sales of The Newsletter had doubled to ten times what they were when the paper was launched in May 1957. Here are truly remarkable coefficients of growth, which show no sign of diminishing. Or consider another index of the movement’s strength: the seriousness and keenness of the two major debates. In thirteen hours of debate—not counting reports and replies from the platform—the delegates hammered out, first a political resolution covering all major premises and aspects of the League’s activity,© secondly a constitution setting forth the League’s democratic centralist structure and the rights and responsibilities of its members. To the draft of the political resolution, seventy-six amendments. To the draft of the constitution, forty-seven amendments. After the withdrawal or compositing of those that over- lapped, nearly half these amendments were argued out in debate, in a cut and thrust of opinions that fashioned, clause by clause, worthy political and organizational weapons for the new League. Despite the youthful character of the conference, whose average age was 29 years and 10 months; despite the inexperience and im- maturity of a considerable section of the delegates; despite the novelty of the occasion, platform and delegates alike often feeling their way in deciding new and unexpected problems of procedure: nevertheless the debates were distinguished at once by their smooth- ness, by the lack of any platform domination whatever, and by the high level of the majority of contributions. A third outstanding feature of the conference was its overwhelmingly proletarian composition. There was a handful of clerical and professional workers. There was a handful of students—too few, perhaps, consider- ing the recent advances the League has been making in the universities. Nine delegates out of ten came from the basic industries: engineering, mining, build- ing, the docks, the railways.. The general debate on the political report, before the conference proceeded to discuss the political resolution section by section, was a procession of industrial workers: two miners, two 5 News Chronicle, May 22, 1959. On November 21, 1958, the same Mr Brown had written: ‘In my view, it is unwise to overrate the importance ... . of this curious group of Trotskyists.’ 6 See below, pp. 43-9. printworkers, a building worker, a boilermaker, an engineer. Here were revolutionary ideas in the process of becoming a ‘material force’. From this feature of the conference there flows an imperious task: the need for the most systematic and thorough education of the hundreds of militant workers who have come and will -be coming towards the Socialist Labour League, so as to equip them as soon as possible with the theory and method of Marxism and develop their initiative, self- orientation and power of leadership. The League has room neither for Philistinism nor for the arrogance and aloofness that characterize certain kinds of self-styled ‘intellectuals’, The conference brought together the movement’s precious cadre of writers, historians and economists in a consultation with the industrial workers whom they serve and who need their specialist knowledge. The fruits of this and future consultations will, we hope, be seen in LABOUR REVIEW and in classes, schools, syllabuses and books of all kinds. The Socialist Labour League has turned its back on the kind of ‘Marxism’ which looks askance at the workers’ real struggles and problems. For us Marx- ism is a class weapon, and our militants and our intellectuals will together study it, enrich it, develop it and destroy a good many false ideas with it in the battles that lie ahead. But the unity of the conference was expressed im another way, too, without which the historical sig- nificance of this remarkable gathering cannot be understood. The conference represented the definite merging of three political streams. First, the old Trotskyist movement, whose roots go back to the early thirties, when Marxist groups in the Independent Labour Party and Left opposition groups in the Com- munist Party brought Trotsky’s criticism of the Soviet bureaucracy to the attention of the British workers for the first time. Young workers who join the Socialist Labour League should know of the historical continuity of the Marxist movement in Britain. There is an un- broken line of tradition, of work, activity and method running through the Marxist groups of the thirties, the Revolutionary Communist Party of the forties, and the Trotskyist movement that in the fifties did so much to strengthen the work of the Labour Left. The second stream is that of the oppositionists within the Com- munist Party who, after the Khrushchev speech and the Hungarian revolution, broke with Stalinism: not to - go to some neo-Fabian funk-hole away from the shot and shell of the class struggle, but to accept the Marxist. alternative to Stalinism and the responsibility this im-- posed of taking the revolutionary road to the: construction of a real communist movement in Britain. And the third stream is that of the Left-wing Labour Party members, young people for the most part, whose: experiences of betrayals by Transport House and by Aneurin Bevan, and whose desire for a fighting socialist: policy, have led them to study Marxism and to accept it. What all these three streams had in common, and what made possible their convergence into one strong, assured and formidable movement, was regard for theory. The Trotskyists of the thirties respected the books, in which, for the tragically few eyes that read them, truth did battle with Stalinist and social- democratic lies and vanquished them utterly. When in 1956-57 members of the Communist Party needed 4t

[p013] LABOUR REVIEW guidance in their search for ‘what went wrong’, the guidance was there, in the shape of books. Some had been passed from hand to hand till they fell to pieces. Others were so rare that the whole of them had been cyclostyled. But the books were there. When, during the fifties, young members of the Labour Party have seen the failure of Centrists of fifty-seven varieties, the books have been there to show them that Marxism alone keeps faith with the working class and is prepared to go with the working class to the very end—the conquest of power. The Socialist Labour League, therefore, has two firm bases: close links with the workers’ struggles; and a powerful theoretical armoury. These links must be strengthened. And these theoretical weapons must be sharpened and, above all, used in battle. There is no time to be lost. The witch-hunt that has hitherto greeted the activity of British Marxists is as the patter of spring rain. compared with the storms that are going to be hurled against the movement by those who are seized with fury at its very existence, and whose dearest wish is to destroy it before it becomes the recognized leader of tens of thousands of workers. A vigorous campaign against bans, proscriptions and expulsions; an all-out effort to bring the message of the conference to print- workers, railwaymen, miners, dockers, building workers and all other sections in battle or likely to be in battle; the building of powerful branches of the League, rooted in industry; the education of League members in Marxist theory and method: these are the tasks now facing the Socialist Labour League. If these tasks are accomplished, the League can make a contribution of incalculable importance to the defeat of the employers’ offensive and to the mobilization of the British working class for the overthrow of capitalism. * * * The important task now before members and supporters of the Socialist Labour League is to rally support for the National Assembly of Labour called by the Editorial Board of The Newsletter for November 15, one day before the first anniversary of the National Industrial Rank-and-File Conference. The Assembly, unlike the Conference, will be open to the political as well as the industrial wing of the Labour movement. The broadening of the basis and composition of the rank-and-file gathering, so that it will be more than simply a recall of the 1958 Conference, reflects the changes which eight months have brought about. What was said at the 1958 Conference about the employers’ offensive and the need to prepare the working class to resist it is now being confirmed in the experience of the printworkers. There have been clashes between ageressive police and pickets reminiscent of the scenes on South Bank last autumn; Martell has made plain his intention of producing “black” newspapers with scab Jabour and under heavy police protection; like the 42 July-August 1959" London busmen before them, the printers are bearing on their shoulders the entire brunt of the struggle. At the same time as the industrial fight goes forward, with the need for strong rank-and-file movements becoming more obvious all the time, there is growing disquiet among active members of the Labour Party about the failure of their party’s leaders to help the printers, and about such trickery as the ‘non-nuclear club’ scheme. As a straw in the wind, the anti-H-bomb decision of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers came as a shock to the Right wing: all the more so since it showed that the very policies for which Marxists in the party are being witch-hunted do correspond to the thinking of a significant, and growing, section of the rank and file. The National Assembly of Labour will enable the threads of revolt against Right-wing betrayal to be drawn together in one mass movement. The pro- gramme which the Assembly will be invited to discuss has purposely been kept simple, in order that the greatest possible number of working-class represen- tatives can find common ground—and, most important of all, can take, on a basis of principle, decisions for united action on the major fundamental questions of common concern: (1) the fight against the hydrogen- bomb; (2) the fight for shorter hours, higher wages, the defence of jobs and the protection of shop stewards; (3) the fight for the extension of nationalization; (4) the fight against oppression in the colonies and racialism in Britain; (5) the fight for democracy in the Labour Party, against witch-hunting, bans, proscriptions and expulsions. An Assembly of this kind will provide a meeting- place for all who, in different ways, at different speeds and with as yet different degrees and forms of con- sciousness, are moving into action against capitalism— even where, as with some sections of the anti-H-bomb movement, many of the participants have not yet realized the social and political implications of their policies and activities. Such an Assembly could unite the rank and file of the Labour movement around a common policy of industrial and political struggle. Such an Assembly could be a spring-board for a vigorous mass movement against the Tories, and could help to alter decisively the balance of forces in the Labour movement against both the present leaders and the fake ‘Lefts’ who in practice support the Right in its efforts to stifle all advances of the real Left. In calling this Assembly, the Marxists are once more showing their confidence in the strength of the organ- ized workers to break through all barriers preventing them from launching a counter-offensive against Capital. Between now and November 15 every branch, every member and every supporter of the Socialist Labour League has the responsibility of undertaking planned, systematic work to gather support for the Assembly and ensure the widest possible representation.

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