SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE SPECIAL CONFERENCE

the experience of a plains the reason why. calling the special conference. • are have to examine at this conference all the experiences of the organisation and the theoretical conclusions which flow from them sinto er 1964 took the power in OUT NOW Fourth Intervational Pho ONT ENTS Editorial An Evaluation of John Maynard Keynes by G. Pilling NGERINTODAY by J. Kiomenesekenegha Rosa luxemburg diyye! Slangh LOMOPDAY CAPITAL Be sure of nour copy of this journal of International Harxism by oritingsto.

186a, Clapham High Street, 14. 2 IT IS IMPORTANT to understand that the reformists did ive me dat pere ath working cas British capitalist which was during the last shoulders of the working class.

challenged 500 st reformist treachery 1963 youth me tor socialist ment campaignec lems facing them were coll. ines had little or no Irom Lne duum movement as is usual with reformist an a opportunist and the trade Labour Party unions concentrated their efforts exclusively on the election of a Labour government.

The tendency towards reformism was tnerclote rampant mn une period wuere the 1 Oung Socialists had to was wilson and the [neir suarDest swuggle agains. stuation cia not become tavourable immerate v aer te eec mon ol a Labour government.

When the Young Socialists formed their • WI gamisduon and began campaign for mobilising the adult worKers caey sull had and nave toady to content reluctance on the part of man workers. even though critical of D 9s the latter part of 1964 tan campaigns such issues as the old are ben.

mcrease in vin some sympathy from th *We hadra limited nad success, walen. turn encouraged Young Socialists to continue vine ThIs orientatior towards the But the tempo was slow The Young Socialists themselves had not completely broker mom ene to reformroutinism underSocialists in tie their fight against Young They was and still haecisive iney have. understand that the constructior veryday activity they lave to carry ou The adults.

thich began in octo Base a montredly che can. The high this camtrom it tivitas those it was stantial Van Sonated! the that serious organisation supported, even sion, the acu vraes ists against the anti-trade union HAU adult he sation high tree ou many important lessons.

• The one of Brot south Yorkers anar amary leaderstablishin During 1966 also, Young Socialists gradually to wear of.

• demonstra This as be in de umionists.

demonstrated now having ame gst motor cases to have through different experienass These experiences on the surqualitative development has had to pass and will have what to be repetitive forms de Jur NOVEMBER 26-27th 1966 though each form brings to the surface something new. This something new cannot be understood without analysing periences which wean from each form of activity in great detail from the standpoint of our political perspectives.

It is most necessary to understand that in an old-established working-class movement like we have in Britain great changes, at least in appearance, cannot and will not take place at this stage speedily.

There is a very consistent process at work behind the class struggle which entirely verifies the Marxist method but which cannot be understood or utilised by Marxists unless they apply this method continuously.

WE HAVE now reach entirely new stage i lopment of alternative revo. nary leadership. We

BRITISH

PERSPECTIVES the first to recognise the impoxtance of the political strike. Our understanding of the history of pre-revolutionary Russia emphasises how important this period is.

We are now able to educate and train our members in direct contact with the class struggle under conditions where it is possible to prepare them for alternative leadership in the Labour Party and in the trade unions under entirely different conditions from that which we have experienced in the past.

This politically qualitative development the Socialist Labour League is not just something which altects our organisation but which gradually begins and enter tee species Walter the perspectives for the working class.

There are, for example, the political implications of the struggle which is now developing in Britain.

For many years internationalism has been a pious word used on occasion to denote some struggles that were happening outside Britain.

However, on the eve of another attempt to enter the Common Market it has been possible through the Young Socialists campaigning for internationalism in relation to the struggle against the war in Vietnam and the reformist Labour leaders, to establish the closest working relations with revolutionary youth in Western Europe. fore, e strug in rain, wil have. therea direct bearing on the struggles in Western Europe, just as the struggles there will greatly assist us in Britain.

Internationalism is no longer a holiday word for socialists, it is a practical reality which will greatly strengthen the qualitative nature of our work in the coming period.

Alternative revolutionary leadership, therefore, is not a national form of leadership but one which seeks through the struggles in the country in which it is developing to forge the closest relations for political and practical forms of activity with the international movement. The way forward to the building of strong revolutionary leaderships is through a thorough-going understanding and the application of our international perspectives.

4 OUR SPECIAL conference must set out to achieve a clear political understanding of what is meant by alternative leadership.

We do not see this as something separate from the working class but as a qualitative development within the working class, a development which in the case of Britain requires the most painstaking, penetrating and patient analysis of all the work of our organisation.

Introduced at conference by The Pabloites and state capitalists bury themselves in the Labour Party and succumb to all its reformist pressures. We participate in the youth movement and the trade unions in order to lay • the groundwork for a real onslaught on the opportunists of the Labour Party.

This is the period where we prepare to do real battle with Wilson and his allies. But this cannot be done without a strong revolutionary organisation firmly based in industry and the trade unions and with large masses of young people developing politically to supply it with leadership and above all else numerical forces.

We have now arrived at this stage. Henceforth we can transform entirely the work of our organisation in relation to events in the mass movement; but that means, we insist, constantly thinking over the experiences of the SIL and the YS, especially over the past two years.

5. TWO YEARS of Labour government have witnessed an important polarisation to the right of all the centrist forces; that is the old-type centrists, and the newer ones who were elected in 1964/66.

These people have proved themselves utterly incapable of providing any sort of leadership.

They are so thoroughly imbued with reformism and opportunism that at this stage they absolutely refuse to make the slightest break from Wilson.

All the little groups, Pabloites, state capitalists and others, who in one form or another, hang on to the coat-tails of these gentlemen are now moving in the direction of the Communist Party.

The British Stalinists are making a great bid for what they call 'leadership of the left. In reality this is, of course, nothing more than an attempt to reproduce a new type of centrist leadership in the British working class movement at precisely the time when this movement is face to face with revolutionary struggle and revolutionary decision.

The Stalinists aim to be the leaders of the new betrayal and all those organisations who live off the crumbs from the reformist table but who have no real contact with the working class and who, in practice, reject the role of the working class now line up in one way or another with the Stalinists.

For example, during the abortive lobbies of March 1 and June 22, the state capitalists and the Pabloites supported the Stalinists.

Again, they supported the Stalinists at the motor car lobby in Brighton on October 3.

They now actively campaign for the Stalinists' so-called 'Industrial Conference' on December 3.

Needless to say they constantly fight against the Labour League.

Naturally their counterparts in the USA, the SWP, support the arch-Stalinist Aptheker in the Congressional elections. At Liège they ganged up with the Stalinists to have the banner supporting the Hungarian Revolution removed.

All this happening at a time when the Stalinist bureaucracy is seeking ways and means to join hands with Johnson strangling the Vietnamese revolution.

The emergence of the working class into political activity has completely laid bare the "left' pretensions of the centrists and their allies in the revisionist groups. Class knives are coming out and they run for cover.

The Socialist Labour League alone bases itself on the power of the working class and on the ability of the working class, given revolutionary leadership, to electively change the whole course of history.

The activity, therefore, of the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League since October 1964 has, in fact, forced the centrists, their hangers on and the Stalinists into a corner.

This is one of the most important qualitative political sides what we have succeeded in doing. It is not only a question of whether or not we have given successful leadership in terms of being able to force the government to abandon its anti-trade union legislation.

We have been able to prepare for the future by clearing away the confusionist and centrist debris of the past.

In turn, we have demonstrated the strength of the Socialist Labour League as a revolutionary workers' organisation, which produces its publications regularly and which has greatly improved the standards of its youth work since the expulsions in the Autumn of 1964. 6 OUR CONSISTENT international orientation towards the working class and our struggle to learn from the experiences of the class constitutes our main strategy.

By pursuing this course we are learning how to apply our Transitional Programme and how to mobilise the working class political issues which will directly lead to the taking of power. We are today, therefore, working in an entirely different political situation than that which we were forced to work im the period before October, 1964.

Our trade union activity must above all else take into account this fundamental change.

Syndicalist-left politics in the trade unions can now lead only to disaster. It is not a question of left groups of trade unionists coming together to fight out issues like they have done in the period before the Prices and Incomes Act.

Each struggle today has to be seen as a political struggle and prepared for politically. This at once puts an end to 'left' trade unionism.

Those trade union members of the Socialist Labour League who cannot grasp this important fact leave themselves open to grave dangers. 'Left' trade unionism is essentially reformist trade unionism in a period where the basis of reformism has virtually disappeared.

Revolutionary trade unionism is one that prepares its work within the trade unions by politically educating the most advanced workers. This means active participation in all struggles of the working class whilst at the same time patiently explaining to those with whom we struggle the essentially political meaning of what we are doing.

That is why the publication of our booklet on the seamen's strike is of such enormous importance for the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists It is the only political analysis of the most important industrial event in Britain since 1926.

The Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists must concentrate on building up groups within industries and unions who will be able to create the political climate for big changes in these unions in so far as leadership and policy is concerned.

To change the present corrupt and bureaucratic leadership the trade unions is not possible unless the political groundwork for this change is realised. Such change is not a simple question of putti i up alternative candidates programmes. What is called for is an all-round development of the political consciousness of the rank and file, under conditions where Marxists will be able to demonstrate' the kind of leadership which the unions require.

In drawing these conclusions we do not in any way want to lay ourselves open to allegations that we are purely propagandist in our approach. We are noth. ing of the sort.

We start from our political understanding of the present crisis of British capitalism and the counter-revolutionary role of its Labour lackeys. From there we proceed to lay the foundation for doing battle with the representatives in the workers' movement. Ceylon LSSP (Revolutionary) expels Karalasingham Newsletter Correspondent MR. V. KARALASINGHAM, a member of the Central Committee of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) of Ceylon has been expelled from membership of the party.

Karalasingham was a direct agent for the Paris Unified Secretariat on the CC of the LSSP (R). He attended their international conference in December 1965 and worked in close collaboration with Ernest Germain and Pierre Frank, the leading Pabloite organisers of the conterence. It is believed that on his return to Ceylon he remained in close contact with them. The secretary of the ISSP (R) Comrade Edmund Samarakoddy, announcing the expulsion, said:

Mr. Karalasingham has been removed from membership of the Party by the Central Committee, as the Central Committee is fully satisfied that he has been disloyal to the Party and has secretly applied for membership of the LSSP (Reformist)?

Since the ISSP (Reformist) joined the Bandaranaike coalition government in June 1964 this is the second major desertion of an agent of the Pabloite Paris Centre to their ranks.

The first was Mr. Osmund Jayaratne a personal, as well as a close political friend of Germain, who on his return in August 1964 went over to the coalitionists.

It is believed that right-wing leaders of the Socialist Workers' Party such as Art Sharon, who met Karalasingham in Paris in 1965, and who gave critical support to the Stalinist Apthecker in the recent Congressional elections, would support such a move.

The present right-wing policies of the revisionists are moving steadily towards a rapproachment with the LSSP (Reformist), hence Karalasingham's desertion.

We await with interest the issue of World Outlook, a weekly house organ of the SWP, the United States' Pabloite revisionists which will report this interesting event.

Joseph Hansen, who was is editor of this newsheet.

for of l close matter how small, but we do not contine that to left, syndicalist explanations; we try to relate all the struggles of the the working class in the coming period to the need to build the revolutionary party for the purpose of taking power.

In our political work we are preparing to orientate contingents of Marxists towards the Labour Party in order to head oft the Stalinist orientation towards the centrists and to assist further in the exposure of the retormist political machine.

THE SPECIAL conference should, therefore, consider adoption the following series anoposals :

In the pre-conferenre discussion we must thoroughly examine our work during the past two years and its relationship to the development of Marxist theory and the construction of the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League. (b) We must examine our trade union work and make more precise its realisation in a Marxist way within the trade unions basing this on the trade union resolution adopted by the 1966 Conference of the Socialist Labour League.

We must go all out to build up the Young Socialists as a mass youth organisation; on the streets, in the factories, at the Labour Exchanges and. in the turn towards schoolleavers. (d) We must work towards the launching of a mid-week issue of The Newsletter; a smaller issue to begin with but one which will analyse politically the problems which will now be constantly emerging inside the trade unions and the factories.

We must organise a series of public meetings in the main centres and in local areas in which representatives of the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists will participate. These meetings should help us towards recruiting and be orientated towards industry in the areas in which they take place.

Local study classes are. now extremely important not only for the youth but for all those trade unionists coming towards the League. • The coming publication of three major works by Leon Trotsky are extremely important in this respect. The National Education Department should be charged with the production of two basic study courses on philosophy and economics by April 1967.

Our conference should instruct the incoming Central Committee to set up a History Commission for the purpose of drafting a history of the Trotskyist movement in Britain. In the course of its work the Commission should be charged with arranging the publication of a series of papers on various aspects of the history.

8 THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE believes that this programme should provide the basis of our work up to the next annual conference of the Socialist Labour League at Whitsun, 1966. Within this perspective the 1967 conference of the Young Socialists at Morecambe in mid-March leading to an international assembly of youth early in the autumn of 1967 will play an extremely important role.

Adopted unanimously.

December, 10, 1966 THE NEWSLE Page fareé