Militant did mis-lead Poll Tax campaign

I would not be surprised if the letter from Lawrie Coombes on Militant and the Poll Tax (WL63) raised hackles.

My major experience of the Militant was during the anti-Poll Tax campaign in Southampton. I found their activities wholly negative on the prosecution of the campaign. Their internal democracy was a front for hatchet jobs, squandering political gains, malicious propaganda and contempt for local activists. People who were introduced into the campaign who were almost destructive of any gains made. On a major demonstration in March 1990 not one Militant supporter found her/himself in the cells by late afternoon. The only time their megalomania abated was when they came under the direct control of local anti-Poll Tax activists.

To the very end local people were being misinformed of how to fight their cases in court and each defeat there was hailed as a great victory! Nationally, even the "Victory March" was technically corralled and stewarded by them despite their well-known "fingering" of other activists.

Militant were not alone in such antics. Individuals known in the local trade union movement sided with the local authorities against the campaign (including watching the arrest of campaigners with amusement!) or at best sat on their hands while a few "lesser mortals" worked continuously to further the destruction of the Poll Tax. In the face of of such massive handicaps it was only the groundswell of public opposition to the tax and the personalised hatred of Thatcher which isolated these sectarian politics. As we all know, the Council Tax which replaced the Poll Tax still benefits the well-off and has caused the continuous cutting of publicly-funded services throughout the country. In the struggles ahead I hope the corpses of the like of Militant are buried deep where they may not rise, and at least feed the worms.

John Bryn Jones

Good Friday Agreement is no solution

Roger Clarke claims (WL63) that the guiding principle of those of us who refuse to endorse Britain's Good Friday Agreement (GFA) for Ireland is "saying 'no' where the British state says 'yes'", or "opposition to any British state proposal".

I think not. The GFA does not address the right to self-determination of the Northern Ireland Catholic minority trapped in the Six Counties unit by the British-imposed partition of 1921-2. It leaves the all-Ireland Protestant minority with "their" Six Counties state for now, but recognises no collective rights for them if demographic change should make Catholics the majority in that erstwhile "Protestant state" (as it may do).

Instead, it sets up an elaborate system of "balanced bureaucratic sectarianism" on the untenable basis of the Six Counties unit, institutionalising politics as a game of rival communal pressures to squeeze homeopathic doses of reform from the British overlord.

The GFA is not a step towards what Workers' Liberty has advocated for many years - consistent democracy, a federal united Ireland with regional autonomy for the Protestant majority areas. It runs in quite a different direction. Yes, we want peace and working-class unity. We advocated our old programme because we thought it was the only basis to unite workers for those causes. We still think that. That is why we still argue for the same programme, and therefore against the GFA.

Colin Foster

Whither Blanqui?

Please, don't overdo it! "Past Labour governments - or at least the 1945-51 one - pushed against the power of the ruling class", said a recent WL leaflet. Really? I've been reading a fairly conventional academic book about Britain's nuclear weapon programme and Labour's gross imperialism glares through like the X-rays they released.

Also, it's good to see WL are reprinting long-neglected critical texts; but do you intend to include anything by Auguste Blanqui, colleague of Marx, progenitor of Leninism, and critic of Marx's strategy for the International? Blanqui best represents the link between 1848 and 1917.

Of course, we can never dismiss Trotsky entirely, but he comes across (to me at least) nowadays as intellectual and commentator, rather than as a practical politician; after all, his abrupt change of position in 1917 means his theoretical legacy is permanently dichotomised, and, sorry to say, it seems to be the Trotsky of 1905 that appeals to WL. But what about Kautsky? What on earth prompted WL to defend his legacy? "Renegade" Kautsky, whom I thought Lenin forever condemned? Does it really matter that the soldiers he sent to their deaths died non-chauvinistically?

Fleur du Mal

To march together you have to march

Nothing new under the sun, argues Neil Murray in WL62. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Blair is right wing, but then Labour has always been right wing. The activist left is uniting to challenge New Labour in elections.

For "small far left organisations" to stand candidates in elections is to "lose all concept of the united front in their approach to the Labour Party".

United front means marching side-by-side with separate banners. It requires some marching. Today, it seems to me, the "united front" in the form of the old, pre-mid-90s, routine of Marxist work in the Labour Party is like "marching alongside" someone who is held fast by a ball and chain.

Blair has changed the Labour Party. The trade unions' say within it has been reduced to a sort of "emergency power", usable only if the union leaders are really determined to confront the Labour leadership. The Constituency Labour Parties' say has been reduced to zero. Lots of wards and GCs scarcely meet.

At this stage in every previous Labour government, there was a Labour left - mostly reformist, but with a noticeable Marxist wing - visibly challenging the government, at party conferences for example. There is none now, although as Neil says "this Labour Government is pursuing policies well to the right of any previous one".

It is still very important to try to engage politically with the large numbers of trade unionists grudgingly loyal to Labour. We must seek whatever united action we can, even on the most limited aims. But to show the road to a new workers' party we have to do some marching ourselves, and forwards, not marching on the spot in the name of a "united front".

Martin Thomas