James Baldwin
The progress of a class toward class consciousness, that is,
the building of a revolutionary party which leads the proletariat, is a complex
and contradictory process. The class itself is not homogeneous. Its different
sections arrive at class consciousness by different paths and at other times.
The bourgeoisie participates actively in this process. Within the working
class, it creates its own institutions or utilises those already existing to
oppose certain strata of workers to others. Within the proletariat, several
parties are active at the same time. Therefore, for the greater part of its
historical journey, it has remained politically divided. The problem of the
united front, which arises during specific periods most sharply, originates
therein. The historical interests of the proletariat find their expression in
the Communist Party when its policies are correct. The task of the Communist
Party consists of winning over the majority of the proletariat, and only thus
is the socialist revolution made possible. The Communist Party cannot fulfil
its mission except by preserving, entirely and unconditionally, its political
and organisational independence apart from all other parties and organisations
within and without the working class.
Leon Trotsky-Bureaucratic Ultimatism (1932)
Socialist Workers Party member Geoff Brown is the author of
the new book A People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League. The ANL was launched
in November 1977 to counteract the growing threat from racists and fascists who
were spurred on by sections of the ruling elite who saw the fascists as a
battering ram against the increasing radicalisation of the working class.
As the 2010 statement by the Socialist Equality Party stated,
“The global crisis plunged Britain into a period of intense class conflict,
which brought it closer to revolution than at any time since the 1926 General
Strike. As a major financial centre, it was especially vulnerable to the
sweeping capital movements that occurred following the breakdown of the Bretton
Woods system. The Wilson government was forced into a series of devaluations
and major spending cuts. In 1969, it brought forward the White Paper, “In Place
of Strife”, to enforce legal sanctions against strikes.
The orthodox Trotskyists in the Socialist Labour League
(SLL) warned that the Labour left's refusal to lead a struggle against Wilson
was paving the way for the return of a Conservative government and the
imposition of even more savage measures against the working class. In 1968,
Conservative MP Enoch Powell was sacked from the shadow cabinet after
delivering his notorious “Rivers of Blood” speech, which sought to whip up
anti-immigrant sentiments. But Powell’s remarks were only the initial
expression of a right-wing shift by the Tories, who, by 1970, had adopted a
radical, free-market agenda. Based on the monetarist economic policies of
Milton Friedman, they advocated an end to the “bailout” of inefficient
companies, the curtailing of social provisions, and a legal offensive against
wildcat strikes.[1]
It must be said from the outset that the formation of the
ANL had nothing to do with Trotskyism or Leon Trotsky’s advocacy of the United
Front. According to the SWP, the “ Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky conceived
the idea of the united front, which unites groups that are very different, such
as reformists and revolutionaries.”
What Trotsky wrote on the United Front is opposed to what
the SWP did. He wrote, 'In entering into agreements with other organisations,
we naturally obligate ourselves to a certain discipline in action. But this
discipline cannot be absolute in character. If the reformists begin to put the
brakes on the struggle to the obvious detriment of the movement and act counter
to the situation and the moods of the masses, we, as an independent
organisation, always reserve the right to lead the struggle to its conclusion,
and this without our temporary semi-allies. It is possible to see in this
policy a rapprochement with the reformists only from the standpoint of a
journalist who believes that he rids himself of reformism by ritualistically
criticizing it without ever leaving his editorial office, but who is fearful of
clashing with the reformists before the eyes of the working masses and allowing
the latter to appraise the Communist and the reformist on the equal plane of
the mass struggle. Behind this seemingly revolutionary fear of 'rapprochement'
there really lurks a political passivity which seeks to perpetuate an order of
things wherein the Communists and reformists each retain their own rigidly
demarcated spheres of influence, their own audiences at meetings, their own
press, and all this together creates an illusion of serious political
struggle....
“On the question of the united front, we see the very same
passive and irresolute tendency, but this time masked by verbal
irreconcilability. At the very first glance, one is hit between the eyes by the
following paradox: the rightist party elements with their centrist and pacifist
tendencies, who … come simultaneously to the forefront as the most
irreconcilable opponents of the united front. … In contrast, those elements who
have … held in the most difficult hours the position of the Third International
are today in favour of the tactic of the united front. As a matter of fact, the
mask of pseudo-revolutionary intransigence is now being assumed by the
partisans of the dilatory and passive tactic”[2]
The SWP said it had “no secret agendas. What we say is what
we do. We were running it as a united front. We couldn’t do anything that would
undermine the agreement; we had a basic agreement that we were focusing on the
NF.” Alongside Stalinists and reformists, the SWP had the backing of other pseudo-left
parties that broadly supported the ANL, with the political scoundrel Tariq Ali
writing “Hats Off to the SWP”
However, the real purpose of the SWP’s ANL United Front was
to develop a pseudo-reformist alliance, aimed at deflecting a revolutionary
confrontation between the working class and the British ruling elite. While
from the outside the ANL was seen as an adjunct to the SWP, it was, in reality,
directed by the top leadership, with SWP’s party leader, Tony Cliff, pulling
the strings. Cliff was the ideological founder of the SWP, and his organisation
rejected every basic tenet of Trotskyism; however, this did not stop it from
using elements of Trotsky’s perspective or analysis to suit its own political
objectives. Throughout his life, Cliff sought to associate the SWP with Leon
Trotsky as a historical figure. But in reality, it opposed Trotsky’s analysis
of the Stalinist bureaucracy and denied the viability of the Fourth
International that Trotsky founded in 1938. Trotskyism was “a cul-de-sac”,
Cliff wrote, while “Trotskyists suffered from the psychological need to believe
in miracles.”[3]
The SWP’s perversion of the United Front tactic was also reflected
in its work within the trade unions. As Paul Holborow relates, “one of the most
significant considerations regarding how the ANL was established so quickly and
widely as a grassroots organisation is what the SWP or the International
Socialists had done industrially, particularly since the first miners’ strike
in 1972 and before. Crucially, we had 22 rank-and-file papers that were an
essential part of our industrial strategy for developing a rank-and-file
movement that could fight independently of the trade union bureaucracy.5 This
enabled us to very quickly establish sizeable groups of manual and white collar
workers in their places of work—firefighters, car workers, civil servants, bus
workers, dockers, teachers, engineers, council workers and many others. Perhaps
the most impressive example of this was when miners’ leader Arthur Scargill and
I spoke at a 200-strong delegate conference, and the following Monday, 60,000
Yorkshire miners went to work with the yellow ANL sticker on their helmets.”[4]
The purpose of the Socialist Workers Party’s rank-and-file
committees, then as now, while providing tame “left-wing” criticisms of the
labour and trade union bureaucracy, was to work might and main to politically
block any independent movement of the working class. One problem for the
pseudo-left groups is that they themselves now make up a significant faction of
the trade union leadership at national, regional, and branch levels. They have
been responsible for numerous betrayals and are now calling on rank-and-file
members to rebel against the same bureaucracy to which they belong.
The publication of Brown’s book this year coincides with the
SWP’s resurrection of the United Front campaign. According to Holborow, “When
John McDonnell said last summer that we need to build an ANL-type movement, I
think he was entirely right in spirit, but the context today is so different
from what it was 40 years ago. Then, there was a militant rank-and-file
movement. Britain was in turmoil, and the opposition to the ruling class was
much more extensive and articulate. We are building in a completely different
time, in the era of neoliberalism and all the ravages that this has produced
for the labour movement. This makes it in many ways more necessary than ever to
have an ANL-type organisation, but also more complicated.”[5] In August, McDonnell had declared, “It’s time
for an Anti-Nazi League-type cultural and political campaign to resist” because
“we can no longer ignore the rise of far-right politics in our society.”
This is the same McDonnell who, despite being expelled from
the Labour Party by its right wing, grovelled before Starmer and begged for
re-admittance to this right-wing party of big business. He wrote 11 op-eds in The
Guardian, capitulating to Starmer and his right-wing allies. The SWP and its
pseudo-left allies have offered him a means to resurrect his “left” reputation.
As Tony Robson and Chris Marsden point out, “There is,
however, a significant difference between the 1970s and the present day.
Whereas in 1977, the SWP acted with the benediction of the Labour and trade
union lefts, today it speaks as the officially designated representative of the
Trades Union Congress. The SWP has, over the decades, integrated itself into
the highest echelons of the trade union bureaucracy, assuming leading positions
in several unions to complement the niche it has established within academia.
It speaks today not merely as the bureaucracy’s apologist, but as its
officially recognised spokesman on the left.”[6]
[1]
The mass movement against the Heath government-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-uk/32.html
[2]
Trotsky, The First Five Years
of the Communist International, vol. 2, New York and London, 1953, pp. 91–96,
127–128].
[3] Tony Cliff-Trotskyism after Trotsky-www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1999/trotism/ch03.htm
[4]
The Anti Nazi League and its lessons for today-https://isj.org.uk/the-anti-nazi-league/
[5]
The Anti Nazi League and its lessons for
today-https://isj.org.uk/the-anti-nazi-league/
[6]
The significance of the British Socialist Workers Party’s call for a new “left
alternative”
