Workers' Liberty

By David Broder

It's difficult to tell sometimes whether the CPGB group, when they publish articles that concern struggles in the real world, get things wrong as a result of ignorance or do it deliberately in order to score points.

"What looked like a slightly dull conference organised by Eduation Not for Sale on October 21 suddenly sparked up when a small delegation from the Socialist Workers’ Party came along for the discussion over the proposed attacks on NUS democracy," writes CPGB member Tina Becker on the Communist Students website (see here). Goodness knows whether Tina actually thought the conference looked dull: the point, after all, is to bash others on the left as a matter of principle, especially anyone connected to Workers' Liberty.

(I should point out here that, whether deliberately or because she herself is unable to think except in terms of the organised Marxist left, Tina blurs the distinction between ENS and Workers' Liberty - despite the fact that different people in ENS have very different politics on many different questions.)

In any case, Tina says the gathering soon "sparked up" with her and the CPGB's favourite thing: intra-left group politicking (as distinct from real political disagreement and struggle, which is of course absolutely essential for the development of a healthy left). Here we see how the CPGB strains to turn everything into a question of manoeuvring between different socialist organisations.

Ah, but let us not forget the CPGB's other favourite hobby horse: "On the one hand, it is encouraging to see the AWL and the SWP actually take up a democratic question like this. There normally reigns an attitude of ignorant bliss." It is true, of course, that the SWP's attitude to democratic questions is indifferent when it is not hostile. But Workers' Liberty has a long history of taking up issues of democracy in general (we were doing it when the forerunner of CPGB still regarded the Soviet Union as the centre of the world revolution and supported the crushing of Solidarnosc) and the question of NUS democracy in particular. The CPGB, on the other hand, has just discovered that this question exists: we do not blame them for that, but they should be careful about what accusations they make.

Never mind the facts: Tina has her line. "However, the way both Student Respect and ENS (to a lesser degree) are planning to fight against the attacks is pretty much in line with their economistic politics. Both organisations propose to run a very minimalist campaign that focuses almost exclusively on the “maintenance” and “defence” of the existing NUS structures."

Again, it's not clear whether Tina was only semi-conscious during the meeting, or whether she has decided to throw facts out of the window in order to piece together an attack. The meeting was, in fact, dominated by a fight between the SWP's position of attempting to limit the campaign to a conservative, defensive stance, and the stance taken by AWL members and most others in ENS, which is that a broader series of positive demands are needed.

Don't take my word for it. The statement for a democratic, campaigning NUS launched by ENS and signed by a wide variety of student activists (but not any members of the CPGB sadly), concludes as follows:

"We see the fight to defend and extend democracy in NUS and our student unions as part of the fight for a campaigning student movement that takes on the government, that mobilises its members and wins for students on issues like fees, grants, a living wage and ending privatisation in education, as well as on broader political issues."

Similarly, the leaflet put together by ENS members to advertise the 4 November launch meeting for a united campaign states (downloadable from www.nusdemocracy.org.uk:

"As demonstrated by everything from the debacle over top-up fees to its failure to give a lead to student mobilisations on issues like the Iraq war, racism and workers' rights, NUS has failed the test of being an effective campaigning organisation relevant to its members. But we can only change NUS's direction by extending, not cutting, democracy..."

The SWP's conception of this campaign is what you might call 'popular frontist': unite everyone who opposes these specific attacks, and don't criticise NUS or say anything too radical in case you alienate right-wing sabbatical officers. The ENS position, by contrast, seeks to create a united front with left poltiics, which opposes the cuts on the basis of fighting to extend democracy and transform NUS into a militant, campaigning union.

For Tina, however, the ENS position is only "slightly preferable". Why? Because it calls for "'maintenance' of the existing structures," apparently. Straightforwardly untrue! The only thing the ENS statement called for the "maintenance" of is annual elections for all NUS officers: following a short discussion on the ENS email list, the word was removed so that it now simply says "Annual elections for NUS officers". Tina further argues that the last bullet-pointed demand of the ENS statement, “a major cutting back of bureaucratic waste and redirection of resources to campaigning”, is "simply empty posturing".

Since, again, the CPGB has only just discovered the existence of these issues, they are obviously unaware that ENS has raised this sort of demand for some time, and has documented what it means concretely in some detail. (See the appendix to the detailed briefing which ENS published when the NUS governance review was launched: here.)

To her credit, Tina does raise some alternative possible demands:

1. "We would argue that the students, staff and all university workers are the people who should democratically run educational institution, not the vice-chancellors, state bureaucrats or purveyors of pseudo-market imperatives." Yes, this is something that ENS has been saying for a long time. But strictly relevant to a statement on NUS democracy? One could make an argument to include this, but it is hardly a significant omission from this particular statement.

2. "We should fight to abolish the direct election of the NUS president and other officers, who should be elected and recallable by the executive." You can see what the CPGB is getting at here - the need to subordinate executive positions to democratically accountable bodies - but they also display their ignorance of the set up in NUS. Such a system would in reality mean the election of officers wielding wide powers by a very small number of people. Do they call for the abolition of balloted elections for trade union officers? (As distinct from the abolition of the legal requirement for postal ballots, and their replacement by workplace ballots following mass meetings - not that the CPGB says much about these things either!)

3. "Salaried officials should receive no more than an average skilled worker." Again, this is something that ENS - and ENS alone - has been saying for some time: so loudly that one of our leaflets was banned at this year's NUS conference for making this point (which allegedly violates NUS's "staff protocol"). You can certainly make a case for including this (its non-inclusion was a judgement call about how to build a broad campaign): but again, you'd think that this is something no one else had thought of.

4. "There must be full transparency - especially in all dealings with government ministers and commercial concerns." This is certainly a reasonable point, though again, one which ENS has been making for some time.

There is no mention of the live demand which was, deliberately excluded from the statement on the basis that is now controversial - the restoration of a second, winter conference - because Tina and her comrades have no idea that such a thing ever existed. Incidentally, when the statement was being discussed on the ENS list, which includes several CPGB members, none of Tina's proposals except the election of officers by the executive was ever raised. A shame, as the point about transparency, for instance, is an important one which no one thought to include.

Thus, instead of a legitimate, constructive debate over what the exact basis of this united front should be, what demands should be included in the overall statement, and the balance between organisational breadth and political sharpness, we have the artificial construction of a position which the article a priori sets out to take: a plague on both the SWP and the AWL. So much more conducive, it seems, than making suggestions for improving the ENS statement when it was being written, before it was signed by numerous and people and difficult to change.

We then get a string of inaccuracies including the claim of a squabble over who should be "in the driving seat" of a united campaign, with ENS allegedly citing the existence of a website as evidence of its primacy; and the claim that there would be an informal chat between ENS and Respect "over how the launch meeting would be carved up". This is simply not true: it was agreed that Sofie Buckland of ENS, Rob Owen of Respect and two others would meet to further discuss the shape of a meeting on 4 November (a commitment which Rob later wiggled out of so that he could just do his own thing). No one, including Tina, objected to this - but then the accusation of a carve up fits so much better with the CPGB's "take".

Tina's article finishes with a critique of NUS's conservative, purely defensive "Keep the cap" slogan (again, something ENS has been saying for literally years) and a plug for their demand of a £300 a week (minimum) maintenance grant. The demand for a non-means-tested grant, which is at the cutting edge of the left-right struggle in the student movement, is not mentioned: instead, the CPGB garners its radicalism from the level of the figure its sets.

Currently, no student gets a grant of much more than £50 a week: and, due to stringent means-testing, only a tiny handful get that. (Two parents working full-time on the minimum wage and you earn too much to get the full amount.) Simply declaring that grants should be set at the level of the minimum wage we want has no grip whatsoever: it is yet another example of how the CPGB has no interest in the real movement around these issues, but is very concerned to strike a radical pose. That's why ENS has raised the immediate demand for a non-means-tested grant of at least £150 a week (as well as the right to claim unemployment benefit and housing benefit during the holidays etc etc). There may be a case for updating this figure, but the basic approach is clear.

Let us finish with a perfect example of the CPGB's approach. "Strangely", writes Tina, "while both [the ENS and Respect] statements mention the question of student fees, their abolition is not part of either organisation’s set of proposed demands." Of course, ENS is seeking to hide its support for that oh-so-radical demand! Never mind that ENS has produced numerous very detailed proposals on fees, grants and education funding. (See, for instance, here and here.) No, the important thing is to find a foothold from which the CPGB can launch its attack - even if they have to invent it...

Footnote

The CPGB's ignorance of the issues involved here is demonstrated by a demand not raised in Tina's article but which they suggested later in the same week. The argue that they want "a unified national election day, when all universities and colleges elect their delegates to national conference and the local union executive. This could help to counter poor turnout, increase student participation in union structures and politicise campus politics."

Leaving aside the fact that student unions, and not NUS centrally decide when elections are, different term dates between different institutions, particularly between FE and HE, would make this almost impossible. Notably, the CPGB does not raise other demands about local union democracy which do make sense, such as the restoration of regular general meetings as the governing body of SUs. Again, they are concerned to demonstrate their uniquely democratic radicalism, not to contribute to sharpening and strengthening the building of a left alternative in the student movement.