Workers' Liberty

AWL LONDON AND SOUTH-EAST PRE-CONFERENCE DISCUSSION
12/04/07

ASSESSMENT AND ORIENTATION/ EDUCATION

Mark O: Not a lot has changed since last year. But e.g. our student work has improved despite a generally unfavourable environment: there are openings in other areas too. The student union machinery is relatively open, but has relatively little life. Very poor political culture. So we have a twin-track approach: take the structures seriously, but also orient to students who are involved in greenie/ anti-capitalist activity and not student unionism. It is the same sort of catchment area as No Sweat - a lot of "soft anarchism". It takes a long time to recruit students because of the low political culture. The Oaxaca tour turned up a lot of people. But these people require systematic one-to-one discussion over a long time to recruit them to AWL. Recently we have lost a few people to what they call "anarchism". That tells us something about the environment; and also that to keep people we have to educate properly.

Sean: I've been working on a pamphlet provisionally entitled "The Suicide of the Left". The picture on the left is bad. The historic "left" continues to decline. On one level that is a good thing: the historic "left" was corrupted by Stalinism. But we are faced with reconstructing a socialist labour movement and in the first place an educated Marxist movement. It's not a short haul. Things may happen very fast at some times, but we can't guarantee that will happen soon.
We need a movement in which every member can function as a reasonably high-level socialist educator; where the membership can continue even if the existing leadership were somehow wiped out.
Thus we need a more systematic education. That can also help sustain people by letting them see their role more clearly.
The early Marxist movement in this country was what we would call "sectarian", with a heavy emphasis on propaganda and education. For example the De Leonite SLP before 1914. They educated a broad layer of the labour movement. But we have to start among ourselves. We need to educate ourselves to the point that we all become educators.
I do not counterpose this to other activity. But education is indispensable.
In fact what is wrong with the pseudo-left today is that it doesn't take education among the working class as central. It substitutes manipulation, gambits, opportunism.

Sacha: We can see some new people not being inducted properly when they join, then becoming resistant to education, then dropping out. We have to seize on people properly when they join.

Chris H: I have some concern about the balance of the documents. There is no adequate assessment of some things. E.g. do we really have a consistent profile on the rail through Tubeworker and Off The Rails? It's true that we need to learn from books, and much of the left has at best a newspaper and magazine culture. When the Blairites first got elected, we hoped for, even expected, a big public sector fightback. It didn't happen. Now there seems to be some chance of a public sector fightback over Brown's 2% pay limit. The NUT have voted for united industrial action. PCS is in a national dispute, albeit poorly conducted, over pay and jobs. Another one-day strike is planned for 1 May. Agitating for joint public sector action over pay is a big opportunity. We do have people who can go out and recruit. Again, Labour may lose the next election. That will make people look for answers. In PCS we're in an election campaign against the incumbent "left", and that has made us have many arguments.

Chris L: Tubeworker and Off The Rails are reaching out to new people, as we can see with the 5 May meeting in Birmingham. We've been able to reach out e.g. to DLR workers.

Sean: We had expectations of more mass struggle after 1997, e.g. of more ferment on the anti-union laws. We underestimated the extent of the abolition of political life in the mass labour movement, to the extent that the only living political arena in the LP now seems to be the PLP. We also underestimated the inadequacies of the union leaders, even the new "left" ones. Thus the anti-union laws continue, with a big dampening effect, which we also underestimated. And of course there has been relative capitalist upswing. The abolition of political life in the mass labour movement will not change quickly.
Revival of anarchism? It's a crude, instinctive sort of anti-capitalism. Trotsky argued that there would have been mass anarchism after World War One, as a reaction to the Second International, if there had not been the Bolshevik Revolution. We have a miniature version of that reaction. The SWP's sort of culture has also prepared the way. We have to teach people the history of the movement.
There's a good pamphlet by Plekhanov on anarchism.

FEMINISM

Sofie: We've been doing more feminist work, e.g. the Feminist Fightback conference, the abortion rights march, the Women's Fightback supplement. There's a bit more feminist ferment these days, though a lot is very "cultural" and a-political. We need to put more effort into self-education on these issues. There are moves against abortion rights, and the official Abortion Rights campaign is very passive and "single-issue", so we need to push for a more active approach there. The work so far has mainly been among students, and we need to take it out more into the unions.

Cath: We need to take into account the dramatic change in women's social status in the last 20 years. The big majority of women in Britain now are waged workers. That has to change the way we look at the women's movement. The miners' strike - "Women Against Pit Closures" were fighting as family members rather than as workers themselves. We wouldn't get a comparable movement of women these days. We need to look at what is to be done within the trade unions.

Chris: There is an onus on our trade union comrades to bring some of our experience into this area. In many unions women are the majority of members. We need to look more at the debate about "flexible working". Government talks a lot about it. But in lots of sectors women do not have provision to enable them to combine work with family. And the Government is very resistant to equal pay claims. Fragmented bargaining in the civil service actually perpetuates unequal pay.

INSIDE ORGANISING

Sacha: The emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself. Therefore we have to base ourselves in the struggles of the working class. When comrades go to work, their eight hours at work should not be wasted time from the point of view of politics. We fight for "Marxism at work". We try to get into sectors which are better organised, more combative, more political, more strategic. It's relatively easy to get people to go into teaching; harder to get them to go onto the Tube or the railways. Hence the need for a policy. The document is about doing that more systematically. It is based on what Solidarity-USA has done. Solidarity-USA is a very loose group, and yet it works systematically to get young people into "inside organising". They have succeeded with 30 or 40 young people.
Counter-arguments? This is a substitute for recruiting within the workplaces and the labour movement? Not so. There is no counterposition. This is bludgeoning people, exerting too much pressure? Not so, again. This is about persuasion. Not everyone will do it, but we should encourage it. This is parachuting middle-class young people into the labour movement? What do you mean by middle-class? Ex-students will get jobs. The question is, will they get them where it is politically useful or where it's not.

Mick: My objection is that this is about moralising, not strategy. Historic examples? Minneapolis in the 1930s. But they had a strategy. None here.

Charlie: Socialist Caucus in PCS has extended its influence by people moving out of London into key jobs. If we have people into jobs where we have some organisation, that's good.

Chris L: I don't think it is moralising. I'm looking for jobs at present. The ones I'm going for in line with the "Inside Organising" policy are actually better paid than the ones I have done before, as well as giving more political possibilities.

Cath: There hasn't been enough systematic discussion of the experiences of "colonisation". We need to review the history. The balance sheet on Lutte Ouvriere? Why do they not get ex-students into manual jobs? On NGO jobs, I don't disagree. I do disagree with what the document says on full-time union official jobs. If we want unions to run organising drives, why don't we want our comrades to take up such jobs?

Clive: Why this discussion now? And doesn't the political effectiveness of anyone depend on how happy they are in their job?

Robin: What can "moralising" mean here?

Jean: I think it's political, not moral. It makes sense. If we have our ideas, where do we want to take them? Look at the miners' strike. We could make an impact because of what we had done in the workplaces. Where else can we get our ideas across other than in the workplace?

Duncan: On one level there is something moral about this. I think the document should be stronger. We are drifting too much to a culture where members see revolutionary politics as something for odd evenings rather than something central in their lives. Mick and Cath? Do they not think that working lives are part of politics? Or do they have a better place to put our efforts? From saying that unions should make organising efforts, it does not follow that we want our comrades to become full-time union officials. We cannot bring political leadership to struggles from a position as full-time union officials.

Anita: I agree with Jean. If we have people who have strong personal reasons for not doing a job in one of the areas we recommend, we should not force them, but we don't.

David A: Not everyone does the job they wants to. The real problem is that the organisation needs to be bigger. Political work in workplaces and unions is not that easy. Sometimes union branches are inactive. It would be good to have some left-wing full-time union officials.

Martin: It is better to sell papers on a lively working-class estate than on a deserted street corner in Mayfair. Getting jobs in workplaces where there is union and political life, etc., is better than other places. It's "better" in that sense, not moralistic. And you can see the results, e.g. on the rail, in the civil service. A general balance-sheet? It's a bit like a "balance-sheet" of selling papers: you may make no or small progress in adverse periods, but you know that you would do worse without it. Strategy? We're too small for that question to make sense, to have a "plan" where we aim to take over e.g. the rail industry first and then another, etc. LO? They have strict policies about where people work. Why now? Because there's a drift of many, maybe most leftish young people going to NGO or full-time union official jobs. Is that good, or what? The document proposes positive measures to encourage and help people taking "inside organising" jobs, not any bludgeon.

Mike R: Being in a workplace where you can do lots of class-struggle work is better than being in one where you can't. But I don't intend to be "colonised". I don't intend to work on the Tube because I wouldn't be any use there.

Chris L: I worked as a full-time official for the GMB for a while after leaving school, and politically it was wasted time. It's not a good idea for people without workplace experience to become full-time union officials, either. Union officials should come from the union movement and be elected by the workers.

Mick: Maybe "moralising" was the wrong word. Yes, you can get working-class jobs that are reasonably well-paid. I should write something about work as a union organiser. You can be political as a union organiser. Some of the organisers I work with are former workplace activists. Workplace union organisation is very poor.

Sacha: Some people might be no good on the Tube? Fine. We can still have a general policy. Sure, we should not romanticise workplace union organisation. But we don't. We don't tell everyone to go to work in biscuit factories. That's not because biscuit factories aren't important. But it's better to go to areas where there is already relatively good organisation, life, etc. Balance-sheet? You can make a bit of one. Strategy? You can do that a bit, too, pick strategic areas. But that does not contradict the general policy, either.

LABOUR PARTY

Adjourned to next meeting.

IRAQ

To be taken at next meeting because David Br, who has a distinctive viewpoint, was unable to attend this meeting (representing ENS at a French student conference).