AWL Scotland

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By Peter Burton

As I write - 1 Sept 2000 - the discussions appear close to completion between the leaders of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) and the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP), on the groundrules for allowing the SWP's Scottish membership to join the SSP.

The SWP has been prepared to work with the SSP on specific issues over the last couple of years, while continuing to criticise the SSP as electoralist, and as having accommodated to Scottish nationalism. The SWP's London leadership seem, however, to have concluded that the SSP's high profile in Scotland and relatively open structures, necessitate a change in tack.

The possibility of the SWP's Scottish members joining, has presented a problem to the leaders of the SSP, most of whom are aligned to the (ex-Militant) Socialist Party in England and Wales. Even allowing for the fact that the SWP greatly inflate their membership figures (they claim 600 in Scotland) and have a very loose definition of 'membership', there are undoubtedly enough SWP members in Scotland to swamp the core of SSP. The SSP has, perhaps, over 1,000 members, but most are inactive or not directly organised by the SSP's central group.

The SSP's leading group is also hampered by the divisions and general political state of their own 'CWI' caucus - a minority are loyal to Peter Taaffe's London-based Socialist Party; the majority strand, who run the SSP's 'machine', seem to be backing away from 'hard', 'Leninist' politics. The SSP's leaders have attempted to get the SWP to 'dissolve' into the SSP, and abandon selling their paper, Socialist Worker. The SWP have been resisting this - and reasonably so, why should they have to? (Other tendencies in the SSP sell their own publications - for instance selling the paper of the Solidarity tendency, Solidarity).

However, at the SSP National Committee meeting in Edinburgh held on Sunday 27 August, Alan McCombes, editor of the Voice, announced that the SWP had agreed that there be only one 'public' paper. Either there is one (unreasonable) rule for the SWP, or this new edict applies to all the tendencies in the SSP and has implications for democratic rights across the board.

So, perhaps, we are all now expected to sell in public a (badly produced and irregular) paper, Socialist Voice, which does not print what are seen to be dissident views (I've had all the articles I've submitted binned). And this change has been - formally - justified in the name of presenting a united front to the working class (who, apparently, are just too daft to understand the differences in political line presented by the different socialist tendencies.)

Moreover, the leaders of the 'CWI' caucus are using the possibility of an SWP 'takeover' to shore-up their position against all oppositions, with other anti-democratic rule changes. And they have lined up some of the SSP independents behind their moves, using the threat of the SWP to press ahead. Also proposed are delegate conferences (which the leading group calculate will give them more power, and which was rejected by SSP conference, in favour of all-members conferences, only six months ago), and moving back the scheduled AGM.

A Dundee branch amendment to delete this set of proposals was defeated. The real villains of the piece here are the 'CWI' group. Their talk of how little the SWP has changed, and the SWP's undemocratic methods is - although true enough - almost laughable in circumstances where even the slightest threat of losing control or influence within the SSP has resulted in proposals for a clampdown on internal democracy.

It also shows how little the Socialist Party/'CWI' grouping have changed. Democracy is fine as long as all the decisions are going their way. The consistent democrats within the SSP must fight to retain pluralism in the run-up to the Special Conference set for November to ratify the entry of the SWP.