“Each sectarian wants to have his own labour movement. By the repetition of magic formulas he thinks to force an entire class to group itself around him.”
Leon Trotsky wrote those words (Writings 1935-6, p.72) as criticism of Hugo Oehler, an American Trotskyist (and a skilled and energetic trade-union activist) who opposed the French Trotskyists joining the then-fluid French Socialist Party, or similar tactics elsewhere.
Alan Woods and Rob Sewell, the main writers of the Socialist Appeal group (“Revolutionary Communist Party”) are now set on creating an “instant party” by flyposting, impromptu street speeches, and saying anyone who is “a communist” (whatever they mean by it) should join. Never mind the actual labour movement.
For decades, though, no-one repeated Trotsky’s contrary thought more than Woods and Sewell, and with a crude and mechanical interpretation.
They were in the “Militant Tendency” in the 1960s-80s. From 1968 and through the early 1970s, tens of thousands of students and a good few young workers were open to revolutionary ideas. The SWP and the “Healyites” (now defunct) were more energetic than the Militant, with maximum-profile, quick-recruitment turns, though not (even with the “Healyites”, by then very sectarian) quite the “instant party” line of Woods now. The forerunners of Workers’ Liberty were then a tiny group: we joined the SWP, then IS and much livelier and more open than today, as a tendency from 1968 to when we were expelled in 1971.
Militant dismissed us all as “sects on the fringes of the labour movement”. They counterposed “perspectives”. Capitalism would soon enter crisis; then workers would “flood into” the Labour Party and the trade unions; then a semi-revolutionary left would come to the fore within Labour; finally, “the Marxists”, having stuck to plodding advocacy at base level of a “full socialist programme” (in fact, usually just “nationalise the top 100 monopolies”) would triumph. Later, in the early and mid 1980s, and thanks less to skill than to twists of luck, Militant grew rapidly within the Labour Party, claiming 10,000 supporters. They adopted some “instant-party” type excesses — on the big demonstrations supporting the miners’ strike, they collected money for “the daily Militant” (which never appeared), garnering cash from many who thought they were contributing to the miners — but they still had a “perspective” of “keep your powder dry, prepare for the day after tomorrow”.
After Militant led a fiasco in Liverpool in 1984-5, in the late 1980s the Labour leaders saw a chance to oust them and thus to intimidate the whole left.
The Militant majority, which became the Socialist Party, moved towards declaring the Labour Party dead forever, and saying it was straight ahead to a “new mass workers’ party”.
Woods and Sewell kept something like the old “perspective”, and Militant expelled them in 1992. Labour’s purge had been small-scale, and they had no trouble keeping activity in Labour.
Woods and Sewell have been through four distinct phases since then. Along the line (we plan another, longer article on that) they have lost almost all the “theory” they prided themselves on in 1992.
At first they had a group mainly of older trade unionists, and were most visible at union conferences. From about 2002 to 2009-10, they put almost all their effort into a Hands off Venezuela campaign, based on uncritical support for Hugo Chavez. They said Chavez had been inspired by Woods’s writings. Then Socialist Appeal turned its efforts to university campuses. In “theory”, they still had their Labour Party perspective, but did little there. They developed a routine of “Marxist societies” offering well-advertised though stilted meetings on general Marxist ideas.
As other left activity on campuses declined after the 2010-1 fees explosion, they grew. Their recent dismissal of all their old “perspectives”, and their adoption over recent years of ideological leftovers from the SWP (“one solution, revolution”, and such), seem to show them thinking that a hyped-up version of the campus tactic can now get them an instant party.
Maybe they’ve found a new donor, and think paying for posters and full-timers will suffice. But one thing for sure. If you’re looking for Marxist consistency over time, for solidity despite the ebb and flow of passing moods, for “memory” of debates and theories, then cross Socialist Appeal off your list.