Notes on Tony Cliff's autobiography

Notes on Cliff's "A World to Win"
General:
Cliff comments (p.3) that: "Readers may be shocked by the narrowness of my own life story outside politics". That's as may be. But what about the narrowness of his life story inside politics?
After the initial string of anecdotes about Arab suffering in Palestine (all about Arab suffering, incidentally, not about working-class suffering, so they leave unexplained why he became a socialist), Cliff refers to no event in the outside world as impinging on his thought other than:
a) observing capitalist prosperity after World War 2. This account must be somewhat "streamlined", as on Cliff's own account he visited France where children could not get milk. To be sure, British workers were better off. But why didn't he conclude that Britain was exceptional? The ensuing long upswing certainly was not clear in 1946.
b) getting fewer invitations to speak at workers' meetings after 1975, and thus being pushed towards the "downturn" thesis. He does not consider the possibility that the "downturn" in meetings was to do with the IS-SWP trashing its manual working-class base, rather than or as well as broader developments.
Nor does he refer to any book or contribution from anyone else as impinging on his thought. In retrospect he identifies no political mistakes by himself except being too slow in arriving at the downturn thesis (and advocating the "punk paper" in the late 1970s, which he sees as part of slowness in developing the downturn thesis).
His picture of himself is of someone acquiring a bare-bones Marxism in his teens, supplementing it with a "solution" to the tricky question of the USSR, and thereafter operating entirely from stock. Most of his intellectual energy is taken up with the issue of techniques of party-building, the "downturn" thesis being primarily about that. (The other two alleged pillars, dpr and pae, are of little significance compared to Cliff's bureaucratic-collectivism-alias-state-capitalism thesis).

81 - Cliff reports that: "Having worked in Palestine in an economic research institute, I knew quite a lot on the subject [of] how to read a company balance sheet". Where does that work in an economic research institute fit into his story of living on stolen oranges, only one shirt, etc.?

101 - "If you want to know if there is a decline in the rate of profit, if Marx is right, you do not need to go to the vote. The same applies to other questions of principle such as anti-racism".
What about looking at the economic statistics? If there is in fact no clear long-term decline in the rate of profit, what then? By what logic is believing that (an oversimplified version of) a thesis which Marx sketched but never published (tendency of the rate of profit to fall) is a question of principle comparable to anti-racism? This view of Marxism as bare-bones dogma (to be supplemented with empirical tactical recipes) has become central to the SWP's view of the last 25 years or so as being "the crisis".

135 onwards - Cliff discusses the "downturn thesis". Says that Higgins and his friends "accused us of ultra-leftism because we argued that we had to steer left".
Now if Cliff's view that the downturn had already started in 1974 is right, then Higgins was right. But Cliff replies: "No doubt, with hindsight, it is clear that our shifting left saved us from being sucked into the general move to the right that engulfed not only the Communist Party but also many revolutionaries, like the IMG (which dissolved in the process)".
In the first place, the IMG did not dissolve. It split in 1985, but that is not the same thing. Secondly, if "steering left" was the only alternative to being "sucked to the right" in 1975, then why wouldn't it remain the only alternative in the 1980s?

135 - account of the 1977 strike call.

139-142 - account of electoral essays in 1977-8. Cliff says he decided against the electoralism almost straight away, in 1977. Explains it in terms of poor votes and difficulty of holding on to recruits made in election campaigns. Then comments:
"Watching the [Stechford] results on television I was very angry with myself and with the situation the party found itself in. I paid little attention to the Labour vote, Tory vote or NF vote, and was worried only about whether the IMG did better than we did. I thought completely as a sectarian. Unjustified triumphalism and sectarianism are two sides of the same coin".

142 - Cliff alleges that: "It took some two years to win the SWP to accept the reality of the downturn in the industrial struggle", meaning presumably February 1978 to early 1980 (see p.155). He also claims that adjustment was not complete until 1982.
As early as 1979, however, the SWP was sufficiently downturn-minded to dismiss all the LP events as meaningless froth, doomed because of the lack of mass workers' combativity. Even earlier it was sufficiently so to start dismantling the rank and file trade union groups (though the final shutdown did not come until 1981). Page x dates the SWP's adoption of the downturn thesis as November 1979.

146ff - long discussion of the Women's Voice business. "Sadly, although I was in the leadership of the SWP, I was never allowed [by whom?] to be involved in the activity of Women's Voice... The reason rested on the fundamental disagreement I had with the comrades round Women's Voice... I always opposed both... Women's Voice, and also the black workers' paper, Flame". To paint a contrast Cliff depicts Lenin as heavily involved with the Bolshevik women's work. Then he deals with the details by a long quote from Lindsey German.

156 - "I asked myself why I came to the [downturn-thesis] conclusion more clearly and earlier than other comrades". First reason: while other comrades had only partial experiences, Cliff had an overview because of his wide-ranging speaking activity. (Did no other SWPers travel round to speak? Would the people running the SWP office, or dealing with SW circulation, or organising SWP trade union work, not get some overview? Did they not have a committee which pooled experiences and reports? Etc. It makes no sense. Presumably this is a garbled version of beliefs inside Cliff's head of his superior "nose" for working-class moods).

Second reason: "Even when quite young, as in Palestine, I had had to take decisive positions. I had had to do the same later on the question of state capitalism, even though I was only 30 years old. Daring was crucial in all those situations". Doesn't explain in what sense Cliff was more daring than other Trotskyists who joined the movement in adverse conditions (as almost all the European cadres in the mid-1940s would have done - take Mandel as an example), or others who adopted various "new class" theories. Again: self-image.

158 - Labour left upsurge 1979-81. "We in the SWP saw through the phoney radicalism of Labour's left turn. One consequence was that we were able to emerge from the downturn as a credible independent revolutionary organisation. Many other left groups were deceived by the apparent success of Bennism and driven by the difficult conditions of the downturn into entering into the Labour Party, only then to be witch hunted out of existence".
Comment is obvious.

166-7 - the usual line that fascism is weaker in Britain than, say, France because of the SWP. Contrasts SWP with the inadequacies of SOS-Racisme. It's actually a libel on the French revolutionary left. The LCR did, after all, get themselves banned by the state for confronting Le Pen on the streets in 1973. The SWP's talk of fighting the fascists on the streets was mostly just talk. Though - unmentioned by Cliff - they were clearly scared after Lewisham, and launched the ANL as a means to gain "cover" for shifting to more cautious tactics. Other reasons for difference between Britain and France: longer-standing right-wing racist hardcore in France (the ex-OAS etc. represent much more than the Mosleyites and suchlike); much worse legal position of migrant workers in France; the existence in Britain of a strong bourgeois third party, the Liberals, able to channel populist, including racist-populist, discontent; Thatcher's "success".

168ff - the rows in the late 1970s over Socialist Worker, and the "punk paper" phase. Here is the one case, other than his lateness in propounding the downturn thesis, where Cliff criticises himself in hindsight. "The final person to take over the editor's chair was Chris Harman, who consistently opposed my efforts to dumb down the paper".

170 - A revealing comment. "I well remember that someone as loyal to me [NB to me] as Roger Cox was absolutely inflamed by the 'punk paper'."

193 - Cliff claims he came to realise the need for miners' support groups because of Chanie's observation of lack of food in a Yorkshire miners' house.

196 - "The last couple of decades in Britain remind one very much of the situation in France before the biggest strike in world history took place there".

The last couple of decades! Do they remind us of the couple of decades 1948-68? In which case which bit of those couple of decades does the particular situation now remind us of? Or does the whole 20 years constantly remind us of 1967? The latter option is nonsense - there was a sizeable rise in industrial conflict in 1967 - and anyway functions as a way of saying constantly that the situation is "volatile" and "transitional" - not industrially militant now but somehow always just about to be. It's like a debased version of Trotsky's view of the USSR in his later years, in which the actual reality constantly slips out of focus, overlaid by a vision of what is (supposedly) about to come into existence. (In Plekhanov's notes on Ludwig Feuerbach there is an interesting comment on this syndrome of dissolving being into becoming).

198 - "Since the landslide victory of Labour in 1997 the shift to the left has continued".

Cliff defines this as expressed by militancy on the ideological front (anti-racism and whatnot). He even writes of "the ideological nature of the period". The SWP's role is to be "ideological agitators" and "the best 'fighters for reform'." Note the shift from the previous line of "One solution, revolution".
I guess there is a grain of sense here. There is, as far as we can judge, a rise in "molecular" class consciousness - class bitterness unaccompanied by the confidence and organisation for mass struggle - and of awareness and militancy by a significant minority on issues like racism and the environment. Yes, socialists have to gear ourselves to proposing big ideas in a popular way. Yes, being the best fighters for reform on issues like the welfare state and union rights is central.
What's wrong with the SWP's version is the shallowness and catchpenny character of the "ideological agitation".

215ff - long account of the Linksruck turn in Germany. "Having lost all faith in the old SAG leadership, I sought an alternative and found in Ahmed Shah, who had joined the SWP in the early 1980s and moved to Hamburg in 1988... Ahmed and another four young SAG members joined the Jusos in the summer of 1993 and started to set up an organisational structure independent of the SAG..."
This is the same idea of leadership - "creating facts as the priority" - which Cliff praises himself for on pp.75-6 and praises Chris Bambery for continuing.

1950-68: the slide into "Luxemburgism"

1950/ : Supporters of Tony Cliff expelled from the British Trotskyist group in the Labour Party, led by Gerry Healy, and form their own "Socialist Review group".

1958-9: SR group, still weak, votes to merge with the Healyite SLL, which is active and dynamic in the wake of substantial recruitment of Communist Party members shaken up by the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956. Cliff heads this off, and to firm up his comrades' opposition to Healyism writes a pamphlet on Rosa Luxemburg. "Emphatic as she was that the liberation of the working class can be carried out only by the working class itself, Luxemburg was impatient of all sectarian tendencies which expressed themselves in breakaways from the mass movement and mass organisations. She insisted despite her conflicts with it that revolutionaries should remain in the social democracy... Rosa Luxemburg's reluctance to form an independent revolutionary party is quite often cited by Stalinists as a grave error... There is no truth at all in this legend". Further: "For Marxists in advanced industrial countries, Lenin's original position can much less serve as a guide than Rosa Luxemburg's, notwithstanding her overstatements on the question of spontaneity". In 1960 Cliff writes a further article, "Trotsky on substitutionism", stating that "one should not draw the conclusion that there was no causal connection at all between Bolshevik centralism, based on a hierarchy of professional revolutionaries, and the Stalinism of the future". Through most of the 1960s IS will present itself as definitely not Leninist, not Trotskyist, but instead as a more modest, moderate, realistic, easy-going alternative to "the Trotskyists".

1963/03: Tony Cliff publishes his article on "Deflected Permanent Revolution".

1966/01: IS condemns Richard Gott as "a scab" when he contests the Hull by-election as a radical left-wing candidate against Labour. "What is he doing to enhance that [workers'] consciousness? Does he take an active part in his trade union?... Does he play a relevant role in his local Labour Party?... Of course not. What he does is to gang together with a lot of like-minded middle class radicals and indulge in a form of radical masturbation, far away from the dreary arguments, but nevertheless the only real and relevant arguments, which are going on inside the labour movement".

1966/09: Cliff writes an article, "End of the Parliamentary Road to Socialism?", arguing that: "In this situation the possibility of passing resolutions in local Labour Parties of a 'left' variety will increase. But this will still not be the same thing as taking effective action against the government's policies". IS shifts towards an orientation where its stated aim is to provide a link between militant shop stewards in different industries and workplaces.

1968-71: The "turn to the class"

1968/ : New edition of Cliff's Luxemburg pamphlet. The passage about it being a Stalinist slur to think that Luxemburg was slow in pulling together a clear-cut revolutionary organisation is deleted, and the sentence about Lenin's organisational views being inferior to Luxemburg's is replaced by its opposite (though the argument leading up to it is not changed by a single word!). "However, whatever the historical circumstances moulding Rosa's thoughts regarding organisation, these thoughts showed a great weakness in the German revolution of 1981-19".

1968/06: Labour Worker changes name to Socialist Worker (IS is in the course of drifting out of the Labour Party); and launches a call for left unity based on the alleged "urgent threat of fascism" demonstrated by widespread support for the anti-immigrant speeches of Tory politician Enoch Powell. The basis for unity: "Opposition to imperialism; for the victory of all genuine national liberation movements. Opposition to immigration controls and to racialism in all its forms. Opposition to state control of trade unions; support for all progressive strikes. Workers' control of society and industry as the only alternatives to fascism". From 7 September SW goes weekly (previously it was monthly). IS is growing rapidly (the Healyites are self-destructing through sectarianism) and attempting a "turn to the class".

1968/06: Proposal by Cliff for "democratic centralism". "Our group has for a long time been a purely propaganda organisation - publishing books, theoretical journals, holding schools, etc. The structure fitting this situation was a loose federative one; all branches were like beads on a string. Over the last year or two we have moved towards agitation. This demands a different kind of organisational structure. A revolutionary combat organisation - especially if it becomes a party - needs a democratic centralist structure... The federal structure is unstable and inefficient... A revolutionary combat organisation faces the need for tactical decisions - daily and hourly - hence the need for greater centralisation. The most important decision for a revolutionary party - the decision to take state power - was taken by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party; in a revolutionary situation one cannot afford to waste a day (not to say a month - the time necessary to organise a conference)...

1969/07/03: Michael Kidron writes in SW about the ex-Trotskyist LSSP joining a coalition government in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). "If the transition [of Ceylon's economy to exporting manufactured goods] is to be made at all - and it is undeniably necessary - productivity will have to be jacked up and wages held down. There is no alternative. All the LSSP can hope for is that the workers will make the sacrifice willingly... It is a cruel dilemma".

1969/08: British troops go onto the streets of Northern Ireland after large-scale communal violence breaks out. IS, after headlining "troops out" in previous months when the troops have played no role, swings round to effectively supporting the troops on the grounds that they offer the Catholics "a breathing space".

1971/03: SW front page, tagging along behind agitation by the SLL in the movement against the Industrial Relations Bill, calls for General Strike. Inside the paper there is not a word of explanation of what this means, how it can be achieved, or what it might imply. No explanation follows in the next weeks, either.

1971-8: "Building the party"

1971/06: As the Stalinist and Labour-left campaign against Britain joining the European Union (which it would do in January 1972) hots up, IS switches from its previous line, "In or out, the fight goes on", to "No to the Common Market". The shift is first proposed as a tactical fallback (vote no if your internationalist resolution has been defeated in your union branch), but soon the tactical fallback becomes the IS policy and the old internationalist line disappears.

1971/12: IS expels ("de-fuses") Workers' Fight tendency at a special conference. The conference also changes the rules so as in future to outlaw any generalised opposition. Factions are permissible only on particular issues at particular times.

1972/03/11: An editorial reply by Duncan Hallas to a critical letter in SW following the paper's denunciation of the Official IRA's bombing of the Parachute Regiment's officers' mess at Aldershot explains: "For every army officer killed in Britain, the Tories have a thousand replacements".

1972/07: Mass strike movement forces the Tories to release the "Pentonville Five" dockers, jailed for picketing under the Industrial Relations Act. SW fails to call for a general strike in the special issue it puts out after the Five are jailed, and does so only in the next issue, after the movement has subsided! They explain it is "propaganda, not agitation". They had put "general strike" on posters halfway through the movement - when the TUC called for one - but without any leaflet or other literature to explain.

1973/04: The "Right Opposition" is expelled on the following grounds: "This National Committee believes that the undeclared Right grouping within IS is fundamentally out of consonance with IS politics, programme, strategy and tactics. Its activity, flowing from the political differences, is inimical to the building of the organisations along the lines laid down by Conference. The NC therefore resolves to expel the main proponents of this grouping [named]. The NC further calls on all other supporters of the right to decide in one month to cease all factional activity based on the right platform or to leave IS". The explled grouping will, over the years, mutate and split, throwing off people to Militant and giving rise to the RCP, the RCG, and a secret discussion group which remains invisible until it surfaces in the columns of the Healyite Labour Herald in the early 1980s.

1974/02: Tories fall, Labour government elected. SWP swings to policy of "steering left" - publishes book by Cliff, "The Crisis: Social Contract or Socialism?", as if those are the immediate alternatives. (The "Social Contract" was the unions' deal to restrain industrial action in return for the Labour government supposedly improving social provision. Neither side of it was very successful).

1974/03: IS organises first national Rank and File conference, with a good attendance. According to Socialist Worker: "An additional resolution moved by Geordie Barclay (GMWU branch at Stanton Workers of the British Steel Corporation) [an AWL member] called for more specific commitment on racialism, abortion, contraception and expropriation. It was defeated by more than two to one [i.e. by the "whipped" IS vote] after Ken Hume (TGWU, Coventry) asked conference to concentrate on the minimal demands which could unite the maximum number of rank and file trade unionists".

1975/03: Pre-revolutionary crisis opens in Portugal with the defeat by mass workers' action of a coup in which General Spinola attempts to break the radicalisation and organisation developing since the officers' coup of April 1974 overthrew the old dictatorship. IS aligns closely with the ultra-left, semi-syndicalist, soft-Maoist PRP in Portugal, and with politically similar groups elsewhere (Avanguardia Operaia in Italy, Révolution in France).

1975/05: Referendum on European Union membership. IS runs shameless demagogic campaign for "vote no".

1975/04: Stalinists win the long war and take power in South Vietnam. IS hails "the revolution" with great enthusiasm. "Victory in Vietnam", SW 5 April 1975. "Victory in Vietnam" again, 12 April 1975. "The imminent collapse of the Saigon regime shows that the world's most powerful ruling class, that of the US, has been unable to defeat a determined struggle by the people of one of the world's smallest country. The implications are immense... Vietnam shows that those who own and control the most massive concentrations of wealth and destructive power in history are not all-powerful. Their power rests upon feet of clay that determined, organised popular action can sweep away". SW also notes: "We do not believe that a PRG victory will make Vietnam into a socialist paradise. Indeed, we believe there will be more sharp struggles ahead for the Vietnamese people". But that is very much small print. (Our coverage was not much better. We did note however that: "The new regime in South Vietnam will not be a revolutionary workers' democracy. Far from it. Any forces in South Vietnam fighting for such a programme will find the regime an enemy rather than an ally. Certainly such measures as a ban on publications other than the regime's (reported by the Cuban news agency) and a prohibition against 'gathering information' (reported in the Morning Star) are not those of revolutionary socialism..." (WF, 3 May 1975).

1975/09: IS applauds the "Revolutionary United Front" formed in Portugal by left groups and the CP around support for the programme published by the left faction of the military (Copcon) and support for the current left-military government, and its demonstration with slogans including "Down with the Constituent Assembly". IS further endorses the decision of the "United Front" to expel the CP a few days later on the grounds that it has had talks with the Socialist Party. (See SW 30 August 1975, 6 September 1975).
Cliff publishes "Portugal at the Crossroads". This contains no criticism at all of the "Revolutionary United Front". It endorses the soft-Maoist PRP in the following terms. "The PRP is an authentic revolutionary marxist organisation which argues for the need for armed revolution, stands squarely for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and believes in the need for autonomous organisations of the proletariat - councils (soviets). The PRP is very clear in grasping the nature of the Communist Party... It understands the need for a united front in defence of workers' organisations. The healthy emphasis on self-activity by the proletariat, however, is accompanied by a certain lack of clarity about the relations between the revolutionary party and the proletariat". (This last point is accompanied by a footnote referring the reader to a later chapter. That later chapter makes no direct criticism of the PRP at all, but hints by implication that Cliff reckons that the PRP is not giving enough attention to developing its press and recruiting large numbers).
Cliff asserts repeatedly that the situation in Portugal will lead immediately "either to victory of the proletarian revolution or to the victory of fascism. It is a void between two dictatorships". (This is the basis on which the PRP has been developing slogans like "Down with bourgeois elections"). Cliff on the Armed Forces Movement: "As the Bonapartist and Communist Party roads proved illusory, the MFA has been polarised between Right and Left... The MFA will increasingly be pushed out on a limb, as it mirrors the divisions in society". I.e. he defines out of existence the prospect of a left Stalino-state-capitalist military regime, and also the one that actually eventuated, a pro-SP military faction restabilising the country for bourgeois parliamentary democracy, by asserting that the MFA will fly apart between the poles of workers' revolution or fascism.

1975/10: The Left Faction is expelled when it refuses to disband after IS conference. This faction has developed under the influence of the AWL tendency (then called Workers' Fight), and fuses with us after expulsion, though later a chunk of them will split off again to form a group, Workers' Power, which still exists. A bit later IS also expels the larger IS Opposition, led by a large chunk of the old leadership (Jim Higgins, Stephen Marks, John Palmer, etc.) A large proportion of IS's leading manual trade unionists leave with the IS Opposition or just quit individually.

1975/12: After the Eanes coup in Portugal, Cliff issues a pamphlet retrospectively accusing the PRP of "ultra-left adventurism" and insufficient attention to everyday economic struggles. (The criticism does not name the PRP, but the target is fairly unmistakable).

1976/: Heavy shift of emphasis to "Right to Work Campaign" and appealing to "raw youth who want to rip the head off capitalism". SW redesigned as a "punk paper".

1976/09: IS stands in a by-election in Walsall. In 1977-8 it tries in other by-elections, but drops the electoral tactic after it scores much worse than IMG [now Socialist Outlook] in two by-elections in Birmingham. In the 1979 general election it will not stand, saying it has other things to occupy its members, and Paul Foot will say that he is "a very strong Labour supporter" for the duration of the election campaign.

1976/12: IS proclaims the Socialist Workers' Party. "Despite our small size, we have been forced to act as a party, not as a small propaganda group. That was why we stood candidates in the Walsall and Newcastle by-elections. We recognised that if we did not use the occasion to put forward fighting, rank and file, socialist responses to the crisis, no one would. Consideration of all these points led the national council of the International Socialists, meeting last weekend, to agree overwhelmingly to change the name of our organisation to the Socialist Workers Party in the New Year. Events have forced us to behave like a party. We have to recognise the fact and work as fast as possible to build up our puny resources to deal with the tasks that confront us... Join us and help build the alternative, the Socialist Workers Party" (SW, 18 December 1976).

1977/08: "The battle of Lewisham". SWP prominent in a demonstration where local black youth unexpectedly take to the streets and give the NF a thrashing. The next month, the SWP offices are firebombed.

1977/11: SWP launches Anti-Nazi League, with showbiz stars, Labour MPs, etc. At its founding press conference, Neil Kinnock announces that the ANL is "an alternative to street-fighting". In contrast to the SWP's previous orientation, the ANL is studiedly cautious about confronting the NF on the streets. Paul Holborrow of the SWP, speaking as ANL secretary, welcomes police bans on (all) marches, though SW quietly demurs. Later Kim Gordon, another SWP organiser in the ANL, will insist: "We'll have Winston Churchill, if he's still alive". But the ANL does good work in rousing broad opposition to the NF.

1977/11: Third national Rank and File conference declares a one-day general strike (or at least "day of action") for 7 December in support of the firefighters, then on strike. "But on 7 December the penny dropped. Nobody came out on strike!" (Cliff, Socialist Review, May 1982. At the time, SW of 3 December carried a front-page call, "Strike for the firemen: Make 7 December a national day of action"; SW of 10 December carried no report at all).

1978-88: "The downturn"

1978/04: Cliff starts insisting that the trade union movement has become bureaucratised right down to shop steward level. This argument later expands into the "downturn" thesis, and is dated back to 1974 as the beginning of the downturn. Cliff's autobiography lists "November 1979: SWP conference accepts 'downturn' thesis" as one of the major political landmarks in his life.

1978/09/24: The ANL, under SWP leadership, insists on going ahead with a Carnival in East London on the same day as the National Front is marching on the Bengali neighbourhood of Brick Lane, East London. SWPers oppose socialists who leaflet the crowds going to the Carnival to try to persuade them to join the defence of Brick Lane, as several thousands do. Paul Holborrow tells the crowds that the police have promised that the NF will be kept away from Brick Lane. Afterwards Cliff says that the SWP made a mistake.

1980: Rank and file left-wing rebellion explodes in the Labour Party. The SWP's comment: all the agitation in the Labour Party is meaningless froth, doomed to failure, because there is no militancy in the workplaces. Socialists should instead build round the small, concrete struggles that do exist; recruit students; make propaganda. "Small is beautiful" is one of their slogans. "More important than the votes in Blackpool [Labour Party conference] are the plethora of little battles over redundancies and wage rates and manning levels and productivity and hospital closures... Nothing would be worse than if thousands of working class activists were drawn away from the all-important task of building resistance in these battles towards time-consuming wrangles in local Labour Party that at best are going to lead to a Shore or a Silkin ["soft-lefts" of the time] taking over the Party leadership. In the months ahead it will be the task of revolutionaries to try to combat such inward-lookingness". (Socialist Review, October 1980). "Honesty forces us to say that the constituency delegates who voted for the left at Wembley [special Labour conference] represented very little. They do not have organic connections with groups of workers involved in struggle. All they represent, in fact, are small caucuses of 20 or 30 like-minded individuals in the areas from which they come... To reverse [its weakness] the left has to stop going on about 'reselection' and 'electoral colleges' and to start talking about how you fight redundancies..." (Socialist Review, February 1981).

1982/03/05: Bermondsey by-election. Left-wing Labour candidate Peter Tatchell is defeated by the Liberals after a huge witch-hunt by the media and the Labour Party leadership. SW's version of the lessons: don't bother with elections. "The left cannot deliver the goods electorally in the present period. And the Labour Party is an electoral party... Five years of sustained effort enabled Peter Tatchell and the people around him to build up the individual membership of the Labour Party. But when the election came these socialists found themselves a small minority in the constituency. In electoral terms they counted for next to nothing... The same minority of socialists who showed how ineffectual they are electorally in Bermondsey can be very effective indeed if they relate to struggle..."

1982/05: SWP officially abandons the policy of building rank and file movements in the unions. For the next period, up to 1985, they will also reject standing for any union office - even shop steward - on the grounds that those positions mean becoming "bureaucratised".

1984/04/14: Tony Cliff writes on the miners' strike, then in its fourth week and still on the up and up. "The strike has been running for four weeks and we are still waiting for a decisive breakthrough It is like a car that stalls at every set of traffic lights... The miners' strike is an extreme example of what we in the Socialist Workers' Party have called the 'downturn' in the movement".

1984/10: SWP reorients and enters miners' support groups - though it still denounces calls for a general strike as baseless.

1985/03: Student Jewish society banned at Sunderland Polytechnic because it will not disavow Zionism. (Many similar bans, or attempted bans, will follow in the next years). If pushed to say yes or no, the SWP says it is not for banning Jewish societies. However, the main drift of its comment is represented by SW (30 March 1985): "The banning of the Zionist Jewish society at Sunderland Polytechnic has provoked claims that to oppose Zionism is to be anti-semitic. But until recently the majority of Jews were not Zionists. Dave Glanz looks at what Zionism really is and argues that opposition to Zionism is an important aspect of fighting racism...." The article continues about the crimes of Herzl, the Israeli state, etc. No mention of opposing a ban on Jewish societies, and it hard to see how the average reader would conclude other than SW supported the ban.

1985/05/11: SWP launches campaign demanding Militant join them in a united organisation. They also devote much effort to selling papers outside Labour Party meetings (after spending 1979-81, when the left was buoyant, saying the Labour Party was a waste of time).

1986/10: SWP publishes pamphlet, "Israel: The Hijack State".

1987/07: USA sends warships to the Gulf to stall the risk that the US perceives of Iran scoring a victory in the Iran-Iraq war which has been raging since 1980. At first SW condemns the US intervention, but retains the line it has had since 1980 of opposing the war on both sides. "Should we then have been supporting Iran [in the war] as a way to defend the Iranian revolution? You cannot defend the Iranian revolution by backing the present Iranian regime. It will be more concerned with maintaining the oppression of national minorities, such as the Kurds and Arabs, with keeping women in subjection, with smashing the Iranian left and with stepping up its exploitation of Iranian workers..." (Socialist Review 17 October 1980). "The Gulf War between Iran and its neighbour Iraq is a struggle about who will dominate the Gulf... The superpowers back first one side then the other - just enough to guarantee that no one emerges as a powerful victor capable of denying them what they want in the region..." (John Rees, SW 1 August 1987). But then SW gradually shifts towards support for Iran. "The American intervention now means that the war is much more than a struggle for regional hegemony between local powers. Socialists must sharpen their attacks on the role of our rulers - the American and British ruling class... Socialists will be happy if Iran gives the Americans a bloody nose" (idem John Rees, SW 12 September 1987). "In conflicts between imperialist powers or local 'sub-imperialisms' such as Iran and Iraq, revolutionary socialists in the contending countries have not joined the camp of the 'enemy' bourgeoisie but have called for peace without annexations. In Iran, this is no longer possible. The US and its allies are in the Gulf precisely in order to impose a 'peace' on UN terms - that is, on Washington's terms. Such a deal would be seen in Iran, in the Gulf region and worldwide as a victory for the West... Iranian socialists must therefore take a new approach, calling for support for Khomeini against the current imperialist offensive, while retaining their independence of the regime" (Phil Marshall, Socialist Worker Review December 1987). By 1988, SW will have blotted out the fact that it ever did anything but support Iran, and in July 1988 it will claim that socialists "cannot rejoice" at the end of this long and murderous war, because it's a victory for the USA.
In 1982 the SWP had refused to follow most of the left in supporting Argentina in the South Atlantic war of 1982. "In Argentina itself it is an open question as to whether Galtieri falls and, if he does, who replaces him... The possibility undoubtedly exists that the Argentinian working class will settle the issue. That depends on how far Argentinian revolutionaries have been able to argue their own revolutionary defeatism" (Socialist Review, May 1982). But from 1988, the SWP makes a general turn towards "Third Worldism". From autumn 1990 (IS Journal 2/48) it develops the idea of a "new imperialism".

1988-2000: "Crisis, crisis, crisis, volatility, volatility. volatility"

1988/07: 1988/06: SWP announces the end of the "downturn" and its replacement by the "new mood of anger". (Main evidence: health workers' strikes earlier in 1988; but at the time the SWP was very pessimistic and derided efforts to build a national health workers' shop stewards' committee). "We are living through a period of global capitalist crisis [stock market crash of late 1987?] in which socialist ideas have to be translated into practical intervention in the struggles of the mass of people". More and more they describe the situation as "transitional" and "volatile" (meaning, true, there aren't many big workers' struggles, but there could be any minute now).

1989/04: Poll tax starts in Scotland (in England, from April 1990). SWP initially (early 1988) calls for people not to register for the poll tax. Then (later in 1988) it denounces non-registration as a useless diversion. It emphasises trade union action, and (early 1989) argues that any organising on the estates for non-payment is hopeless. By early 1990 they will swing round again to supporting non-payment, and recruit substantially from the poll tax campaign. Their experience here probably played a big part in shifting them further away from the "downturn" orientation. "For socialists, the starting point must be that we live in a period of global economic crisis" - Alex Callinicos, SWR, March 1987. "A crisis of historic proportions... a triple crisis - of British, European and world capitalism... a world recession worse than any since the 1930s... ideological and political crisis at the centre of every government" (SWP conference document, late 1992). "Capitalism is in a much deeper crisis now than it was in the 1970s" - Cliff, SR, February 1995. "The last couple of decades in Britain remind one very much of the situation in France before the biggest strike in world history took place there" - Cliff, "A world to win", p.196.

1991/01: US war in the Gulf against Iraq. SWP starts with support for Saddam Hussein on the grounds that he is playing an "anti-imperialist role". "His call for Israel to 'get out of the occupied territories of Palestine' will increase his standing among those Arabs who have supported the intifada... So, the more US pressure builds up, the more Saddam will play an anti-imperialist role... This means he will increasingly have to rely on one of his few remaining strengths, the Arab masses' hatred of imperialism. In all of this Saddam should have the support of socialists... Socialists must hope that Iraq gives the US a bloody nose and that the US is frustrated in its attempt to force the Iraqis out of Kuwait... " (18 August 1990). The SWP starts off by calling their own SWP demonstration against the war, but once the fighting actually starts they dive into the Stalinoid-pacifist Committee to Stop the War in the Gulf (slogans: peace, negotiate, etc: it pointedly excludes agitation for US and British troops out of the Gulf).

1991/03: SWP reorganises. "Since the end of the Gulf War there has been a clear shift in the political situation.... which provides major opportunities for us to grow as a revolutionary party... deepened discontent among many sections of workers.... deep bitterness..." SWP abolishes National Committee and branch committees. "Spending time consulting the members as to whether this or that initiative is correct would inevitably mean missing opportunities and turning the organisation into a debating club".

1991/06: Croatia declares independence, and Serbia invades. SWP declares a plague on both houses. This will also be their stance on the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995.

1992/ : Anti-Nazi League relaunched, but on the basis that its local groups must never meet, coordination instead being done by the local SWP branch.

1992/10: two big demonstrations (but practically no strike action) against sweeping new pit closure plans. SWP dumps the downturn thesis with a bang, calling for "General Strike Now/ TUC must act". They make no attempt to get any workplace out on strike. Their practical action for a General Strike is getting people to sign petitions for one.

1993/ : SWP steps up the frantic party-building turn. It reorganises into small branches, on the grounds that they can grow faster. It decides to build district committees - but appointed from above, not elected from below. This turn is extended internationally. Over the following years the SWP's affiliated groups in Germany, France, Belgium, South Africa, Canada, and Australia are split or quit completely. The German pro-SWP group, previously called SAG, is pushed into "entry work" in the Social Democratic Party. On Cliff's account in his autobiography, Linksruck turn in Germany: "Having lost all faith in the old SAG leadership, I sought an alternative and found it in Ahmed Shah, who had joined the SWP in the early 1980s and moved to Hamburg in 1988... Ahmed and another four young SAG members joined the Jusos in the summer of 1993 and started to set up an organisational structure independent of the SAG..." This turn is later extended to France and Belgium, where it causes splits.

1993/07: AWL member Mark Sandell beaten up for petitioning and selling outside the SWP's "Marxism 93" event.

1993/11: SWP takes leadership of Sheffield UNISON no.2 branch. This is a big break from their previous general policy of studiedly remaining oppositional so that they can always denounce branch leaderships for insufficient militancy. Having taken the leadership, they pursue much the same industrial policy as the old right wing they replaced, only with more militant language. Over the following years, some foolish ultra-left ventures in branches they take control of (like Islington UNISON), but more generally their policy of ruthlessly exploiting union positions to get funds and sponsorship for SWP initiatives, help open them up to the witch-hunt by the UNISON right-wing now in full swing.

1994/02: SWP intervenes in 20,000 strong student march organised by the Campaign for Free Education to demand that it "march on Parliament". They hint that this would bring the Tory government down. In fact they pull a couple of hundred students away from the demonstration, march towards police lines but avoid confrontation, and then tag along behind the main body. SWP placards say: "Paris 1968, London 1994".

1994/04: After spending the years since the 1980s arguing vehemently against the call for a mass workers' party based on the trade unions in South Africa on the grounds that this party would be "reformist", the SWP supports the ANC (allied with the National Party) in the first post-apartheid elections, instead of the Workers' List.

1997/ : SWP repositions themselves as those who "hate the Tories but have doubts about Blair". Turn to local welfare-state and "tax-the-rich" agitation.

1999/ : SWP joins London Socialist Alliance, agrees a joint left slate for the Euro-elections, then pulls out to support Arthur Scargill's slate.

2000/05: SWP participates in London Socialist Alliance joint left slate for Greater London Assembly elections.