That just about sums up much of the sentiments expressed at the Saturday 28 February inaugural meeting of the Scottish Labour Representation Committee, which also doubled up as the formal launch of the Scottish People’s Charter.
The Scottish People’s Charter (SPC) is the Scottish version of the People’s Charter (PC), currently being touted round sections of the trade union movement as the policy statement which should be adopted in response to the current economic crisis.
Curiously, the only specifically Scottish element in the SPC, apart from its name, is the call for 250,000 new publicly owned homes to be built in Scotland over the next five years. The PC itself calls for three million new homes, presumably for Britain as whole.
Otherwise, the SPC is only a trimmed down version of the original PC. And some of the more specific demands contained in the PC have disappeared in the process of editing. Gone, for example, are the calls for a cut in hours to fight unemployment, and for increasing the national minimum wage to half median earnings.
But the SPC, which appears to be the fruits of a joint effort by the Scottish Labour Left “Campaign for Socialism” and the “Morning Star Campaigns Committee” in Scotland, was certainly not up for amendment at the meeting.
Using a line already employed in other such meetings, Labour Left MP John McDonnell spoke dismissively of there always being “some tosser who wants to be the first to move an amendment.”
The SWP contingent at the meeting certainly saw no need to amend the SPC anyway. They thought that the SPC was “brilliant” – the ultimate accolade in the SWP dictionary of grovelling and obsequiousness.
What was needed now, they argued, was to link up the SPC with other equally broad campaigns, such as the Stop the War Coalition and Unite Against Fascism – not so much a coalition of the willing as a bonding of the bland.
“Socialist Appeal”, by contrast, were argumentative. True, all the changes in the Labour Party over the past two decades have not led them to change their timeless perspectives one iota. But they were certainly in a more combative mood than the SWP.
Who had drawn up the PC, they wanted to know. How long had the meeting lasted at which it had been agreed upon. Why wasn’t it a Workers Charter, or a Socialist Charter? Why didn’t it incorporate the old Labour Party Clause IV?
The most disappointing element in the meeting was McDonnell’s argument that the LRC had “moved beyond” representation, and that the question now at stake was that of “resistance”.
The question of working-class political representation, he stated rather than argued, was off the agenda “between now and the next (general) election.” By which he clearly meant: between now and AFTER the next general election.
In that sense, the LRC’s enthusiasm for the PC and the SPC constitutes a political regression.
On paper at least, the LRC was committed at the time of its creation to grappling with the question of how the working class could secure the political representation which the Labour Party was no longer providing.
But now it now seems to see its role as collecting signatures for a pretty bland PC – or an even blander, if it is possible for there to be degrees of blandness, SPC.
This is not an example of Hegelian transcendence, of “moving beyond” the profanities of working-class political representation to the higher spiritual level of petitioning. It is a political retreat.
It is certainly true that the Left should work together wherever it can do so, whatever its differences on other issues. It is also true that a serious campaign around even limited demands can play an infinitely greater educational role than an endless succession of meetings.
But even allowing for such qualifications, neither the PC nor the SPC provide much of a basis for a fightback, especially given that their role appears to be that of a petition rather than any kind of programme of action. Nor does the “take or leave it” attitude with which they are being presented help inspire any confidence in them.
And it certainly makes no sense to counterpose “resistance” to political argument and campaigning aimed at advancing the cause of independent working-class political representation.
