Workers' Liberty

Outline notes from AWL Sheffield pre-conference meeting 13/05/07

INSIDE ORGANISING

Dan: The sort of jobs and the kinds of industries that we encourage comrades to work in is a political question. Where socialists spend forty hours of their week is a political decision for them. Socialists should be in places where we can have some political influence, where we can organise, where we can intervene in the labour movement.

These decisions and what the AWL says to our members and contacts are important. Many people, especially young contacts - people around things like 'Make Poverty History' and other groups dominated by NGOs - will want jobs where they feel they are 'doing something'/'make a difference'. These people will be easily attracted to work in NGOs. Do we think NGO jobs are the best places for people to organise, where socialists can make a difference? No.

The inside organising document seeks to clarify how we have discussions with contacts and young members.

Caroline: People need to be politically persuaded that the sort of jobs we take and our politics is what we want to do with out lives. If you join the AWL, surely you want to be able to intervene in the most effective way.

Tom: In 6.1 Mark makes some points that really bear little relation to the 'Inside Organising' document. What he seems to be getting at is a re-assertion of some of the political activity we should consider as given. For example, 'Inside Organising' is not counter posed to the sort of work carried out by American Trotskyists in the 1940s. Would we be against - for example - sending C.L.R. James down to Missouri to intervene in low pay campaigns, to write up the thoughts and experiences of striking workers and publish political pamphlets? No. One of the best things the Nottingham AWL branch did last year was during a bus workers strike where we went to speak to the strikers, wrote up what they told us and did a mass leafleting during rush-hour of drivers and travellers. We jumped on and off busses, talked to people waiting at the bus stops, built understanding and solidarity for the strike. Does this cut against the trade union work done by the comrades involved? Again, no. Much of the best work done by the American Trotskyists was about building up union structures, creating the CIO for example, recruiting workers never touched by trade union organisations. To a large extent, this isn't what we're about. We need to fight in the structures that exist and use as much influence as we can. This is best done through colonisation.

David K: Cath F's amendment makes some points about finding a balance between work, politics and family life. I think this is important. Why does the existing paragraph specify just four areas of work? There are many places where it's impossible to get a job in health and in Leeds there's no tube. There are other areas, like local government, where we can do good work.

Camilla and others - (notes become sketchy at this point)

Cath F's amendment replaces a paragraph that has important points outlined. The four specified industries are there because we recognise that we can have a significant political impact in these places or where we've carried out exemplary political work.

Tom and Bruce made comments about degree to which some jobs can restrict political activity. For example teaching - if you do the job 'properly' (ie jump through all the hoops) then it could eat into a significant amount of time outside working hours. These sorts of choices are important too.
anti-fascism

Tom: I'll start by stating the obvious. The relative growth in prominence and levels of electoral support for the BNP should neither be blown out of all proportion nor underestimated.

To do the first would be to relegate all other political activity to the fight against fascism - this time may well come, has come before but we're not there yet. To choose the second option would be to go down the road travelled by some in the Labour Party and trade union movement who think that by ignoring the BNP we can simply starve them of the oxygen of publicity. A strategy that has clearly failed.

The objective circumstances that have allowed the fascists of the BNP to gain a toe-hold in the conscious of many thousands of people, many of them working class, are threefold: (i) New Labour's attacks on working class communities, (ii) the organisational and political weakness of the left in the labour movement, (iii) the political degeneration of the SWP, its front groups and satellites.

We are first-and-foremost concerned with attempts by the BNP to organise support amongst working class communities and those who once voted Labour. This can only be done by fighting for independent working class politics, mobilising more than just the bank accounts of trade unions and where necessary/possible breathing life into LP structures. (example of work done in Brinsley, Notts)

So what's the current state of the BNP? What are they up to and what threat do they represent? Who are they relating to, how are they organising? It's a many layered phenomena (a) Reorganise and consolidate existing fascists, intervention in the international far right. Learning lessons and passing experience on to others. (b) recruiting sympathetic individuals from the middle-class - organising 'professionals' - people with chauvinistic, racist and anti-working class ideas. Those who would have been comfortable on the right-wing of the Tory party. Those who hate the idea of an interventionist state. A quick read of the BNP local election manifesto gives you an idea of who this group of people are and what they represent. (c) Relating to those in working class communities attacked and abandoned for the past thirty years or more. Those who have been isolated from or let down by New Labour. Those outside the reach of the organised left and trade unions. Those looking for answers the BNP are only too happy to provide.

The BNP is an increasingly sophisticated political machine. Ready to do long term, community based, door-to-door campaigning. Picking up on local issues, intervening in community groups and structures. The sort of work once done by local LP activists. By virtue of their relatively small size, this is only done in a minority of areas. But where it is done it is successful in the BNP's own terms. This community campaigning is combined with the sort of strategy employed in the last local elections where they appeared to seriously over-stretch themselves. Standing many hundreds of candidates where they had no hope of replicating intense campaigns. In electoral terms they suffered as a result of this. They didn't benefit from any significant surge in councillors, they are about where they were. Why did they do it? Well, they've now established themselves - even if in name only - in many areas. They have established a political presence that they can and undoubtedly will attempt to build upon. They now have the time to consolidate this before the next set of elections.

What sort of campaign do we need? As with many political questions, the AWL has a distinctive approach. The sort of campaign and the kind of literature we put out in Notts: working class politics, organising where the BNP are rather than bussing activists in from the city etc- could act as a model. It's the sort of work alien to UAF and Searchlight. The fact that we worked with the LP was a major problem for the SP, far more so than student anarchist-types.

Dan: What about working with UAF. In many places - Norwich for example - we have one or two comrades who can't possibly pull off what people did in Notts but there's probably a local UAF group. We need to resolve this question first raised last year.

Mark: In Burnley the BNP started in the sort of way described by Tom. One person - a rather marginal figure who used to parade up and down the road with a sandwich board of BNP propaganda - managed to build a group, a base by knocking on doors and doing some hard work. We ended up with twelve councillors in Burnley.

Caroline: There are probably many areas where people are already doing anti-fascist work and we can relate to them. What happened in Nottingham could become the basis for a model campaign where we produce leaflets for others to use, model motions etc- give some idea of a positive campaign. When I raised the BNP at a recent LP meeting, people didn't want to talk about it. Some in the LP are definitely avoiding the discussion.

David G: could someone quickly describe the anti-fascist scene in Britain.

Bruce: described the various existing groups.

Tom: I'd be in favour of us working with UAF groups where they actually have democratic structures and have non-SWPers involved. Otherwise, it'll be like knocking on the door of the local SWP branch and asking politely for them to listen to us. We won't get very far.

LABOUR PARTY

Martin: presented Maria's document on "devil's advocate" basis.

The poor results of independent left candidates on 3 May were just the latest proof that all the various efforts at running independent left candidates over the last ten years have failed.

Equally, all the talk of unions running union-backed candidates against the LP has come to nothing. GMB used to talk about that, but did nothing, and has now stopped talking. All that came of all that talk was the FBU disaffiliating from the Labour Party and the RMT provoking its own expulsion. Now we see the FBU in Scotland giving money to the SNP, and the RMT also working with nationalist parties.

Meanwhile there are real battles in the Labour structures. At a low level? Maybe, but you don't give up on work in your union because the branch, or even the union generally, has a low level of life. You plug away.

The key fault-line in labour-movement politics is the one between majority opinion in the trade unions, and the Blair leadership. We should plug away at that.

It is important that all our comrades are geared into that central task, and understand it, so all (so far as is possible) should be active in their CLPs. Activity which contradicts that central orientation has been proved by experience to be fruitless play-acting on the fringes, a sectarian diversion.

Caroline: I've checked out my ward. The LP members there are very insistent that they have a lively CLP; but by comparison with the 1980s or early 90s, there is very little life outside elections. Can't see any sense in heavy engagement. However, I am working on getting delegated to CLP from my union (problem: get Unison Labour Link to do the necessary).

I did find that nearly the whole of the Sheffield LP opposes Academies. Lots of teachers and ex-teachers in the ward, quite right wing in NUT terms but anti-Academies.

There's a danger of our people not being educated in labour-movement politics as they were in the 1980s; a danger of a sectarian drift.

Tom: I'm opposed to Maria's document. It's a bit like entering an Olympic swimming contest when using only the doggy paddle. Yes, we should take up TU delegacies to CLPs; but Maria's document claims that LP structures are the only, or the best, game in town, the best way to reach out to workers, etc.; and that is not so. The document seems to be based on some very good examples of the work which the authors are involved in themselves but which simply are not possible elsewhere.

I joined the LP when I was 14 and spent 7 years active there. It was a left wing CLP, relatively active. But you can't find those openings everywhere. Yes, we should investigate. It's good that Sheffield LP opposes Academies. We can't find anyone in Nottingham LP who opposes Academies. Beeston LP is a bit more lively, but what would be the point of immersing ourselves in Nottingham LP when the only activity is distributing leaflets which are right-wing crap?

David: I'd support more effort directed towards the LP. I'd agree with affiliating more unions to the LP. But I can't agree with Maria's document where it says we must review all other activities to fit in with activity inside the LP.

What we should do is try to gain influence without getting too immersed in the official mechanics, through groups like the LRC.

Dan: Maria's document makes no attempt to take into account the huge antipathy to the LP among organised workers. Yes, the SP is opportunist and demagogic in its disaffiliation arguments, but they have a lot of appeal among trade unionists. That body of opinion is wrong, but you can't pretend it doesn't exist, or that things are still the same as they were in 1986. Go on an estate in Hackney, and tell people that their way into politics is through the LP, and you'll get incredulity, and a lot of it based on healthy class instincts.

Caroline: In 1994-5 we used to put a big effort into arguing for LP affiliation in CPSA. That was very unpopular, but we argued for it. Some of it was healthy class instinct, but some of it was just depoliticisation and the legacy of left sectarianism.

Tom: Our decisions on what we do about the LP have to be based on calculations about how we can make things happen. Obviously the LP is a big force in politics, so we have to pay attention to it. But the question is, where do you find the points of leverage, and how? It's no longer primarily through attending the ward meeting. It is primarily through the TU link.

At NUT conference there was huge applause for Serwotka in the left fringe meetings when he claimed how great it was that PCS was unaffiliated to the LP. We pointed out that it would be better if PCS could confront the LP leaders month after month e.g. in the LP NEC.

We should think about raising the question of NUT affiliation to the Labour Party.

IRAQ

Martin: summarised the argument as in the "letter" in Discussion Bulletin 273.

Daniel: We don't replace the assessment of what the practical meaning of "troops out" would be? I would accept that the snap withdrawal of troops would make things much worse. Just as they would have got worse if the same thing had happened in Northern Ireland in 1969.

But our politics are not just based on that sort of assessment. Our politics are based on how to affect the independent action of our element in the situation.

If we applied the method of the majority to the invasion of Iraq? If the invasion had not happened, that would have galvanised Saddam Hussein's regime. But we still opposed the invasion. Our slogans are about developing the ability of the workers' movement in Iraq to hegemonise a movement for democracy and self-determination.

Sharp opposition to the presence of troops, focused in sloganistic form, is necessary for that.

We're not saying that the troops out slogan should be primary. It is all subordinate to the slogan of solidarity with the workers' movement.

We're about giving focus to the idea of a labour movement drive to change the balance of forces so that we can get troops out without tipping Iraq into the hands of the militias.

Imagine that you are a dock worker and the union boycotts munitions to Iraq. Maybe those munitions are going to a British unit engaged in a firefight with a vicious unit of the Mahdi Army, and a victorious Mahdi Army is going to kill trade unionists.

Imagine that you are an MP and there is a parliamentary motion for troops to withdraw. How do you vote?

Imagine that you are a FWCUI trade unionist in Iraq. There's a vote at the FWCUI congress about troops out. How do you vote?

If you vote in favour of the boycott, in favour of the troops out motion in parliament, and in favour of the troops out motion at FWCUI, you should back our text.

Camila: Overwhelming majority of the population in Iraq opposes troops and favours withdrawal? Not all those who oppose the troops favour immediate withdrawal. Look at the opinion polls. One I looked at yesterday. 53% said they thought the situation would stabilise if there was troops out. But are they right? Do they have access to information about what is happening outside their local areas?

Daniel seems to be saying that we pick a slogan which "fits the mood" in Iraq. That seems a bit SWP-ish.

The Third Camp is not about sitting in the middle. It is about saying that the immediate apparent choices are not the only one.

The demand for troops out is essential for the Iraqi workers' movement? But you're adopting a slogan for its supposed agitational merits without taking responsibility for its actual meaning.

Tom: The dockworker? Who is proposing the strike, and on what basis? If you're a MP? What's happening? You can't give simple snappy answers to simple snappy questions without knowing the background.

The Iraqi labour movement must pose itself more sharply against the occupation? Means what? They launch a single-handed war against the Americans and get massacred? They ally as subordinates with some less extreme element of the "resistance"?

Bruce: There's an old adage, differences in politics can be brought down to differences in method.

We hear Martin saying: here's the assessment, do you agree? (Broadly, I do). And then saying we can deduce our slogans from what is.

Then David and Daniel saying that we deduce our slogans from our perspective, from where we want the Iraqi labour movement to go, from where we want to get to.

There are problems with their reasoning, for example in going straight from what they want as a perspective for the Iraqi labour movement to what should be our headlines in Britain.

I've tried in recent years to reconcile the two approaches. I've more or less come to the conclusion that it is impossible. Still, I think our coverage tends to be more the "what is", plus the uncontroversial stuff about solidarity with the workers' movement, without much connection. And maybe at times we have not said enough about the occupation.

So my conclusion: "none of the above".

Caroline: I think Daniel's questions reflect problems in his position. E.g. on the dockers. You could have a strike motivated by reactionary "let them all kill each other" ideas. You might still vote for it, but that's not all there is to it.

Daniel seems to think that unless you have the troops out slogan, it means that you are assessing the troops as progressive. But that does not follow.

The trouble is, for the left in Britain, troops out or troops out now has become the default position. But over Ireland we have explained that our opposition to the troops out slogan does not mean troops in.

David K: In the next few months the British army in the South of Iraq is going to be drawn down. After January 2009 there will probably be a draw-down of US forces.

Problem with the majority view: it implies that the workers are a passive force. The logic of that position is that we would fight against withdrawal. And then we would oppose demonstrations and strikes against the occupation by the Iraqi working class.

The organised Iraqi working class is agitating against the occupation. It is not a leading force in Iraq. It will not become that while the occupation continues.

Daniel: The British troop presence is being scaled down. What do we say? Don't leave? Of course not.

The oil workers are striking against privatisation. But if the Iraqi labour movement's existence depends on the US troops tying up the militias enough, then you can

But David is wrong that it is impossible for the Iraqi labour movement to become hegemonic while the occupation continues. Our policy is about making it hegemonic while the occupation continues, and in the struggle against the occupation.

Broadly speaking, I don't disagree with the analysis. But it's about taking that analysis and getting from there to where we want to be.

The dock workers' question is crucial. I'd vote for the strike even if it was proposed by a "let them kill themselves" type.

We don't take responsibility for the practical meaning of our slogans? That is not a fair comment. Our position is not about snapping fingers and making the British troops withdraw.

What about taking responsibility for the "stop the war" slogan in 2003?

We are in favour of the Iraqi labour movement arming itself. In 99% of cases that will be defensive.

Our amendment is about a labour-movement-based drive to get the occupation out without tipping the country into the hands of the militias.

Martin: Daniel's hypothetical questions: Having made all the qualifications in speeches, put amendments and so on, I would vote yes to the dockers' boycott (unless this was a docks workforce dominated by Islamists, and pursuing the boycott for Islamist reasons), and yes to the troops out motion in Parliament. Both on similar grounds to the vote against the military budget in the Spanish Republican Cortes recommended by Trotsky - to express class opposition to the incumbents.

In the FWCUI meeting I would push the "third camp" formula the FWCUI sometimes use, and vote against "troops out" as counterposed to that.

On method (Bruce's point): I believe the right method is to start from what is. The difference between Marxist socialism and pre-Marxist socialism is that we start from the reality and the contradictions in it, and pre-Marxist socialism started from a vision of the future and worked backwards from that.

Qualification: our assessment of "what is" sees things as they are in movement, takes account of the contradictions within them, is not a flat "still" photographic snapshot.

Obviously Daniel has been reading the pamphlet we published against the IS/SWP majority on troops out and Ireland in 1969. That's good. But:

(1) That debate was skewed by being fixed between two poles - the IS/SWP leadership line of (shamefaced) positive support for the troops, and the "troops out" slogan. We did not at the time see a third alternative. "Troops out" was fixed in people's minds as the way to express anti-imperialism, because of Vietnam.

(2) We faced the argument about the practical consequences of "troops out" head-on. We argued that in the case of everything being let rip, the workers in the South would come to the aid of the Catholic minority in the North; the Northern Ireland unit would become unsustainable; and it would be impossible to consolidate a reduced Orange statelet; so the outcome (with bloodshed, to be sure) would be effective self-determination for the people of Ireland as a whole, probably with some federal arrangement for the Protestant-majority areas. The demand for secession of the Catholic-majority areas from Northern Ireland, which we raised tentatively around the same time, was based on the same calculations.

The assessment was wrong, though by no means as far-fetched as it seems now. But it is not that we considered assessment of practical consequences to be irrelevant.

PUBLIC SECTOR PAY

Alison: The document is about concretising our approach, developing an approach which has potential for organising the best sections of the labour movement and recruiting.

Brown is imposing pay cuts in the public sector alongside privatisation and outsourcing.

The recent union conferences have given us the possibility of fighting for a united struggle. The policy is there. But the union leaders can't be relied on to push it through. So the document talks about us building up local rank and file committees.

We have to pose our policy in terms of attacking the bosses and deduce criticism of the union leaders from that.

Martin: The problem is not just that the general secretaries cannot be relied on to respond to the members' demands for action, but that in many areas the level of awareness and mobilisation on this issue is still low. In many ways this issue has come "down" from the general secretaries rather than "up" from the rank and file, and the bureaucratic sin of the general secretaries so far is not in holding back rank-and-file demands for action but rather in thinking that action can be sorted out by agreements at the top without discussion in the rank and file.

We should try to direct union activists (a) "up" through their union structures, towards pushing their union leaders into calling ballots, etc,; (b) "out" into the schools, hospitals, offices, etc.

Tom: Pay is an issue among teachers. If we don't get a reopening of the pay settlement, teachers will be £273 a month worse off by 2010. Only, they don't know it at present.

Pay was a big issue at NUT conference, but it has not got out effectively to the membership yet. CDFU say we need a long slog at that before talking about action in September. I think that is a recipe for any momentum from conference to be lost, and the issue to be overshadowed by performance-related pay. On the other side, SWP and STA seem to think that a series of rallies with Serwotka and Sinnott will do the trick immediately.

Answer: turn to cross-union organising meetings locally, which can campaign on several issues and not just pay.

Alison: Pay was a dominant issue at health conference, but in the workplaces most people are most agitated about banding under Agenda for Change. However, the Unison health conference decision has had an effect, and news of it will have got into most workplaces.

Notes: first part Tom U, second part Martin T. Tom writes: You should probably attach a note explaining that some contributions may have been left out and/or not noted fully. Also it's rather skewed towards my contributions because I have fuller notes for those - nothing to do with my over-inflated ego (I hope). [Much the same applies for the bits minuted by Martin T, except that I have omitted altogether some of what I said, since I couldn't minute it at the time and have no notes].