Workers' Liberty

AWL PRE-CONFERENCE MEETING, NOTTINGHAM 08/05/07

ANTI-FASCISM

Pete: Note there's an amendment missed in DB 272: Pat Murphy's.

My article in current paper overestimated BNP's success. They won about 10 new seats, but also lost 8. However, they got a lot of votes and promoted themselves. In some places, they have used pseudo-working-class rhetoric. This would have been impossible without the unions' complete failure to fight in the Labour Party, and the self-subordination of some of the left to a communalist agenda.

BNP are trying to follow strategy of French Front National - promoting an image of respectability.

SP avoided the Brinsley campaign because of their focus on SP candidates in Leicester and Coventry, but if they had been involved it would not have helped, because they refuse to work with Labour.

We have to find a way of working which avoids the popular-frontism of UAF and Searchlight.

Sam: BNP did worse than they expected. But Pete is right, their number of candidates exceeds the active membership of AWL and SP combined. We should have a clear set of demands of our own. We should study the BNP's material and see how to answer the social issues they pick up on. We need to do anti-BNP work as a routine activity, and orient to getting local people in areas targeted by the BNP to self-mobilise.

Tony: BNP website has an "electoral pack". It is quite hard to pinpoint what separates them from right-wing Tories or UKIP in terms of policy points.

Tom: I read BNP's local manifesto. They have stuff oriented to middle-class people. They have quite advanced stuff about "local democracy". BNP stuff is difficult to differentiate from UKIP, but then, take away a few things about immigrants and Muslims, and it is difficult to differentiate from what Labour puts out in many areas. But within BNP there is a strong fascist hard core.

Problems: politics of much of the left; and low ebb of the labour movement.

Apparently, there is a fair bit of localised anti-BNP activity, and we may be able to organise a network with them.

Pete: A big problem in Brinsley: party organisations had disintegrated. The Labour Party didn't exist there before the election campaign started. In Cotgrave Tim Cooper and others did some anti-BNP activity, though the leaflets were poor. But the BNP are well entrenched there. You see them claiming that they have won over old Labour people.

Our clear position: for a working-class united front against fascism. Details are flexible. But neither the SWP pure "we hate Nazis" stuff nor the SP "only the SP can beat fascism" stuff.

Liam: The difficulty is separating out how to relate to local Labour Party where they exist and our hostile attitude to New Labour. We're not talking about a united front with Blairites, but a united front with Labour rank and file.

Pete: In Brinsley I was trying to leaflet and found a postal worker who would not take the leaflet because it was Labour Party. You can't answer the BNP without being sharply critical of the government.

Sam: Don't worry too much about the left. Worry more about the tens and hundreds of thousands of ordinary working-class people who want to do something.

LABOUR PARTY

Martin: Maria's argument as I understand it.

Liam: In Nottingham, where are the opportunities to do what Maria is talking about? Where are the functioning GCs? The LP in Nottingham did very well in the elections, as in Leicester. They even seemed to have a reasonable number of people out campaigning. But there just isn't much life in the CLPs.

Pat: Arguing with people about why we vote Labour... I explain to people about the links with the unions, and so on. But then e.g. with Unison members it comes down to a discussion about the APF. The link is extremely bureaucratised and people just don't see how they could use it.

If e.g. the APF structures actually functioned in any open way, then people could see the argument much better. But they don't.

Tom: New Labour in Nottingham won four seats from Tories and Lib-Dems on an openly Blairite programme. There is almost no internal life in the LP in Nottingham. Where there is life, it is either on an openly Blairite basis, or on a communalist clientele basis.

I have sympathy for some of the things that Maria says. But the motion calls for a drastic change in orientation - proposed in an off-hand sort of way. Maria and Chris may be extrapolating from some positive openings they have found locally in their areas - but in an unrealistic way.

Pete: What Maria has done in her union on the LP question is the best that anyone in the union movement has done on that question in the past ten years. But she extrapolates from it in an unrealistic way. I think Maria is too formalistic. The business of union resolutions is meaningless unless it translates into real life in the working class. You can get too caught up in it.

Sure, it's possible to move a motion here and there. And then Blair ignores it. So what does it mean?

Affiliation of the AWL to the Labour Party? You might discuss it as a gambit at a particular time, as the SLL applied for affiliation in 1959 knowing it would be rejected. But it is doolally now.

Tom: Maria and Chris say we should not support SP candidates and should not stand independent candidates ourselves. But look at Nottingham East. The Labour establishment there is totally impervious, even to Labour Party members. Why wouldn't we want to support John Illingworth there as an independent socialist candidate? We could mobilise a lot of people around ideas we could build from. There is no opportunity to do within Labour Party structures as they are.

Liam: Affiliation of the NUT to the Labour Party? We have advocated it in the past, and rightly. But since the Blair counter-revolution, it would be nonsense in relation to the perceptions of trade unionists. Affiliation of the AWL to the Labour Party in Where We Stand? That's something from a different world.

We are nevertheless trying to create some turmoil in the Labour Party where we can. Where we see sparks, we try to throw petrol on it to create flames. But from Maria's motion you think there was a raging inferno already. We should not get caught up in formal structures at the expense of real activity.

Linking up with contacts through the Labour Party? Makes no sense. Looking that way would make us look away from contacts.

Sam: The unions have become more bureaucratic. So what do we say about it? A good contact of mine left his job just because he was so fed up with Unison.

Pete: GMB probably has better officials than Unison. But GMB has never had an organised left wing. It has always been controlled by the regional secretaries, only the regional secretaries are willing to have to some leftish organisers.

We have to work to rebuild trade unionism and rank-and-file networks.

IRAQ

Tom: We now have a counter-document from David and Dan. They raise some important questions. But I disagree.

The NC document covers developments in Iraq since 2003, and concludes it is now in a civil war. The Maliki government is in crisis. The Shia sectarian militias have heavily infiltrated the official Iraqi army and police.

And the number of attacks and deaths continues to rise. The government survives only because of the scaffolding provided by the US troops. The militias are well able to challenge the government if the scaffolding were not there.

So our focus: solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement against both the US and the sectarian militias.

The Iraqi labour movement is in a very weak position. Its sheer survival is a key question. There seems no way of short-term improvement.

So we uphold a programmatic position of self-determination - which is not the same as troops out now - and opposition both to the occupation and the sectarian militias.

The programme should fit with the assessment. Unlike the SWP, where everything flowed from the slogan "troops out now", and the Iraqi labour movement is just not in the field of vision, and neither is the nature of the Iraqi "resistance".

David and Dan want to use the troops out slogan as per SWP, but then fit it into the majority assessment, which they agree with.

They don't even argue that troops out now means self-determination. The slogan seems to be something of a fetish for them.

Immediate withdrawal of troops will throw the question of power up in the air in Iraq. Each militia will aim for power, i.e. all-out civil war and the destruction of the Iraqi labour movement in a very short space of time - and the disappearance of any prospect of self-determination for many years to come. It would also have an impact on the wider Middle East.

Comrades should read Clive's recent contribution on the e-list. Clive says - David and Dan argue that the Iraqi workers' movement can build only by being the best fighters for troops out now. But that would mean the workers' movement going into alliance with the reactionary militias. It's nonsense.

Pat: I have sympathy with Dan's position, but not on the arguments he has spelled out. If the Iraqi labour movement strengthens itself, it will come into conflict with the US army. The Americans never repealed Saddam's bans on unions in the public sector.

Martin: Sure, the Americans are a problem for the labour movement. But the sectarian militias are also a deadly problem, and not a smaller one. We should not have any slogan which suggests that getting rid of the American "problem" and fully unleashing the sectarian militia "problem" is a step forward.

Compare Iran 1978-9: in hindsight, we should not have had any slogan which suggested that getting rid of the Shah and unleashing the clerics was a step forward.

Liam: But the Americans may pull out. The conflict is already much worse than in Northern Ireland. The Americans could be overwhelmed. Nevertheless I disagree with David and Dan.

Pete: The idea that we can hegemonise the anti-US struggle by posing sharp demands against the occupation is ridiculous. The sectarian militias are heavily armed and extremely hostile to the labour movement. David and Dan are inaccurate in drawing an equivalence between the US troops and the sectarian militias; it's just not true that the US troops are on a fascist-like offensive against the labour movement. Yes, the US troops shouldn't be there. But sloganising it is a different matter.

Martin: Unlikely that the Americans will pull out soon. Read Hussein Agha's article in the Guardian. It overstates, but the gist is right: almost everyone in Iraq detests the Americans, and the Americans themselves want out, but even the Sadrists are explicit that they don't want troops out now. A general wish for troops out if it can be done leaving any stability is universal, from Sadr to Bush. The only way we could "outbid" on troops out is by joining the "troops out now, regardless of what follows" ultras. That would be wrong.

"INSIDE ORGANISING"

Pete: This is about what used to be called "colonisation"; that as far as feasible comrades should get jobs which are good for trade-union work, and we discourage the drift to NGO and full-time union official jobs.

Being in a full-time union official job, accountable to your employer, namely the higher-rank official, puts you under adverse pressures

However, there are amendments to remove the list of target areas. Amendment seems to say there should be a consistent policy, but without saying what it is. And seems to misunderstand the policy: it's never been one of compelling people, but of encouraging and persuading them.

Another amendment about full-time officials, broadly saying that we should not discourage people from being full-time officials.