Line documents adopted by the ISG Conference

Line documents adopted by the International Socialist Group Conference December 1992 | i _ | Contents | Page Title | | | i World Crisis | 8 Their Strategy and Ours | 15 The Next Steps in Building the Party 28 The New Political Situation and Our Tasks 33 Women's Perspectives 39 Positive Action and the Struggle for Women’s Liberation

1. New phase of capitalist crisis Without question the semi-collapse of Stalinism has allowed imperialism a greater room for political mano¢uvre and military intervention. This, of course, has had a negative effect on the political relationship of forces in some sectors of the world revolution. This is particularly the case in the third world, as the ‘Guif war, the threats against Cuba and the developments in central America showed. The danger of Soviet intervention has ceased to be a factor for imperialism. We explain in part 2 of this document the contribution of the Stalinist collapse to the so-called ‘crisis of socialism’.

However, none of this means that the crisis in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe has con~ tributed to an economic and social stabilisation of world capitalism. On the contrary, its crisis is getting deeper. The view that the collapse of the USSR equals a stabilisation of world capitalism could only be the product of an unmaterialist view in which world politics is a cold war zero-sum game, in which the strength ofthe USSR and the strength of imperialism are the only two variables. Such a view is generally called ‘campism’ in our movement.

But as we shall see economic and social instability does not automatically equal a realistic short-term working class challenge to the capitalist world order; such a view is the symmetrical opposite of campism (i.e.

Stalinophobia, in which the only obstacle to the working class is the existence of Stalinism). The crisis of working class leadership is far from resolved. But the fact that capitalism doesn’t face imminent revolutionary defeat doesn’t mean that it just goes on and on; degeneration into barbarism has always been the alternative to eventual revolutionary victory.

In what does the new stage of the capitalist crisis consist? As an economic system capitalism is experiencing further decay and decline into chaos. This can be established at the level of empirical facts and at the level of theoretical-historical analysis. In the third world sections of the population are being forced into greater poverty than has existed since the beginning of the century. Tens of millions currently face starvation in Southern Africa. The living standards of sections of the masses in even ‘advanced’ Brazil are declining not just relatively but absolutely compared with 20 years ago. Whereas few countries are getting absolutely poorer in terms of GDP, the situation of the popular masses is getting worse in all third world countries and some advanced capitalist countries.

Most significant in this respect is the United VORLD CRISIS States. Here sections of the masses are suffering an absolute decline in overall living standards, if basic elements of historically determined levels of civilization like health care, education, housing and education are taken into account. A male worker's wage is no longer sfficient to support a family, an absolute decline since the 1950s. Whole sectors of the inner cities are being reduced to third world standards dominated by the struggle for existence. The revolt in LA and other cities showed that basic elements of the social and political integration of the masses are beginning to break down.

In part this emergence of mass poverty in the advanced countries is the result of a conscious ruling class attack, through economic restructuring, the attack on the unions, the removal or reduction of the welfare state and the creation (recreation) of mass unemployment. But economic restructuring is a response of the ruling class to the long-term economic crisis, the long wave of economic decline which started in most countries at.the beginning of the 1970s. :

This long wave of economicicrisis is not a product of conjunctural events like oil crises, wars in the Middle East, or even instability in the world financial and banking system. These are surface appearances, or rather conjunctural results of underlying trends in the world capitalist economy, namely a prolonged crisis of over-accumulation, of the rising organic composition of capital, of profitability, conform: ing completely with the basic propositions of volume 3 of Capital — the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This is the fundamental Marxist explanation of the crisis; indeed no other explanation in a Marxist framework has been advanced for this crisis, other than speculations about short-term events and bizarre abberations based on the ‘permanent arms economy’.

However, it isnot just a crisis of over-production. World capitalism is in a bind of its own making; in the present long recessionary phase austerity is creating a lack of effective demand, which in turn deepens the recession. One way out of this would be to go for massive ‘pump priming’ of the world economy. But this would have.two effects which cannot now be contemplated — rocketing inflation, and a renewal of the material well-being, and hence confidence and combativity of the working class. — The history of post-war capitalism is basically one of a short-period of post-1945 chaos, followed by a long boom starting in the late 40s and early 50s, and then the sudden ending of the long wave of boom and its replacement by Page 1

of long wave of declining growth rates. The arms- and debt-led boom of the 1980s does not contradict this overall analysis. On the contrary this was a failed inflationary attempt to break out of the recession through Keynesian state spending techniques, which in the end spectacularly failed and was replaced by deeper recession.

The long recessionary wave has now lasted longer than any other since the Great Slump of the last quarter of the 19th century. There is not a single capitalist economy world-wide which is free from the effects of this recessionary wave; indeed the greater integration of world capitalism at every level ensures a heightened “synchronisation of recessionary phases.

The recessionary phase has seen some spectacular developments in the productive potential of humanity, most notably the'information technology revolution. But the most notable thing is the failure of these innovations to generate any new surge of profitability, in contrast to the productive innovations developed between 1920-1950. For the first. time in the 20th century outside a short period in the 1930s there is a tendency of the productive forces to stagnate and even decline. This is particularly the case if the situation of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe is taken into account. The installation of pro-capitalist governments in the republics of the ex-USSR has led to a disorganisation and collapse of production; in east Germany massive swathes of the productive forces have been literally destroyed, and production is decaying in all the other east European countries.

International capitalism is displaying the classic morbid symptoms of decay and crisis.

The enormous drive towards the export of capital in search of higher profits, and the creation of vast amounts of fictitious capital are sure signs of a system in crisis.

There is no way out for world capitalism other than a truly spectacular defeat for the international working class, and that means the working class in the advanced capitalist countries.

The gains by the world workers movement during the long boom, its numerical growth and the development of its organisation and social gains, means that such a defeat cannot possibly be inflicted without world-historic struggles and the imposition of harsh authoritarian governments which would lead to a new decline of human civilization.

Because of the novelty of the long crisis there is a delay and hesitancy of its theorisation in . the Marxist movement. But the signs of chaos and decline in human civilization are too obvious now not to be theorised. In particular, not only the developments in the third world and among the poor masses in the advanced countries are evidence of capitalism's decline, but the chaos in the post-capitalist countries is as well. Events like the break-up of Yugoslavia are evidence of the inability of world capitalism to advance any solutions, to provide the material means, for reconstruction on a capitalist basis. Put more simply, it is the result of a lack of usable capital, again a product of capitalist decline and crisis. 2. Ecological crisis .

The degradation of the environment is a further sign of the morbid state of the world system in decay. Broader and broader groups of activists on this issue realise that ecological destruction is tied to mass poverty and imperialist exploitation. The extent of the threat facing humanity, especially through global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer, points explicitly to the necessity for international co-operation and planning which is impossible in the present world system.

Even from the long-term viewpoint of world capitalism, environmental destruction on the present scale is quite irrational. But capitalism, despite the fact that this is understood by many pro-capitalist ideologues, is utterly incapable of solving this question, because it is a system incapable of foregoing profits for long-term aims, and a system incapable of international planning.

But the present chaos of world capitalism is not simply an automatic run-on from economic and ecological crisis; rather tt is the product of a profound crisis of the system of political domination by the imperialist states, a crisis of the state system which has ensured the stability of the imperialist world order since 1945. 3. Crisis of the state system The crisis of the state system in world capitalism has a straightforward origin - the decline of the United States as the world’s dominant economic power, or rather the contradiction between the role of the US as the absolutely dominant political and military power and its declining relative economic position.

The whole of the post-1945 capitalist political order was constructed around the position of the US as the hegemonic imperialist power. The institutional evidence of this is overwhelming: the role of the US as the leading power in NATO, and subsequently CANTO and SEATO; the dominant position of the US in the IMF and the World Bank; the position of the Americans as de facto the power which controlled (and hosted) the United Nations, despite periodic challenges from the workers states and the semi-colonial countries.

Evidently the rise of the US replaced the British Empire as the dominant force in the capitalist world state system, and this process was finished off brutally by the US during world war two. But the dominant position of the USA was predicated on the dominance of its economy on a world scale; now, thanks to declining profitability, it is being challenged by Page 2

a German-dominated Europe and, especially, Japan. Every economic index reveals this to be the case, and was already obvious from the abandonment of the Bretton Woods system of automatic dollar convertibility at fixed exchange rates in 1971. The crisis of the US economy is a product both of the decline of its technological advantage and the political challenges it faced, especially the debt-financing of the Vietnam war which fatally undermined the dollar. Now the world’s leading exporter of capital is not the US but Japan, and much of that export of inward investment into the US itself.

The response of the United States to the European/Japanese: challenge has been a -. massive, even reckless offensive, against its ‘- allies. The war in'‘the Gulf was a direct result of ‘the crisis:of the state system, and not simply a US attempt 'to teach the third world a lesson.

In this situation ‘ultra-imperialism’, an epoch of growing collaboration and stability between the imperialist states, is a dream and a fiction.

America has reacted viciously against protectionism by Europe and Japan, in particular over the Common Agricultural policy, which is sees as a direct threat to its position as the world’s leading agricultural power. lis get-tough policies have included successful attempts to strong-arm Mexico and Canada into a free trade zone, growing interventionism in Latin America behind the guise of the ‘war against drugs’, growing demands that the other capitalist states financé its world-wide military opera- . tiens and open up their markets. Even the re-direction of the CIA towards industrial espionage is a symptom of this crisis.

The: crisis of the state system will continue because there is no other candidate for the role of the new hegemon; there is no short or medium-term possibility of a united Europe or Japan playing this political-military role. Indeed, the aftermath of Maastricht reveals the difficulty which the European imperialist states have in reconciling their specific interests, of domestic capital and of domestic political systems, with a wider unity to confront Japan and the US. , The ‘no’ vote in the Danish referendum, and the rise of anti-federalist currents throughout Europe (especially Germany) has put the project of European monetary and political union in question. However, for the dominant European power - Germany — there are other options besides European integration. By establishing their dominant role in eastern and central Europe, to compound their economic superiority in western Europe, the German bourgeoisie can maintain and consolidate their position without the Maastricht process.

As we have analysed many times, the outcome of this whole process will be that the United States will attempt to utilise its political and military muscle to compensate for its economic weakness. This is especially so since the conflict between the major capitalist powers involves a struggle for markets.

It is this that opens up the possibility of new wars, and stepped up military intervention. On the other hand, the United States is compelled for these self-same economic reason to withdraw and scale down its world-wide military operations, creating new dangers and instability for its local satraps; its credibility as a global policeman is undermined at the point where it wants to ruthlessly upgrade this very Tole.

The concern of the US to maintain itself as the only world super-power was revealed with the leaking of the Pentagon discussion documents for the National Security Council. These argued that the key to world domination was superiority on the Eurasian landmass, and the attempt by any other power to exert domination in this area {and only Germany and Russia could do so) would be a cause for war. Also any major foreign military intervention by any state in the world would also be causus belli. 4. Rise of nationalism The collapse of the USSR and the crisis of the state system are two key factors in the rise of nationalism. But in fact national conflicts involve a series of distinct types of battles which cannot be reduced to a single factor.

The effects of the capitalist crisis have hit different regions in a very uneven way. This has promoted a sense of oppression especially among national or ethnic minorities. Moreover, a general crisis accelerates and brings to the fore cases of national oppression which have been submerged, often for decades, by relative prosperity or by repression. It is the collapse of the post-war state structure which has enabled these kinds of national struggles, especially in the USSR and eastern Europe, to emerge.

More generally, however, in a period of massive international crisis and in some areas of the world economic and social collapse, broad masses, for want of any alternative, invest their hopes for social progress and stability in the nation, This in part is the responsibility of the workers movement in the west; we can be sure that if there were a higher level of class struggle in Western Europe, and a surge of socialist advance, the national and ethnic struggles in eastern Europe would take a different course.

In analysing all these struggles we have to make our traditional distinction between the nationalism of the oppressor and of the oppressed. This can lead to very complex problems. For example the defensive struggle of Croatia against Serbian aggression we should support; however Croatian repression against their own Serb minority, or attempts to create ethnically-pure enclaves in Bosnia-Herzegovina, are utterly reactionary. Equally, Georgian self-determination we support; but the oppression of the South Ossetian minority in Georgia is reactionary.

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Maintaining a guide to this maze of conflicts means holding on two basic principles. First, that we are champions of the self-determination of the peoples, and the rights of national groups to establish their own nations.

Second, we are opponents of myths of ethnic or national purity. We are against attempts to create ‘ethnically-pure’ nation-states which can only lead to racism and xenophobia. Thus we are for the right to a Croatian nation, but against attempts to expel Serbs, Albanians, etc., from that nation.

Third, we are partisans of internationalism.

For us the nation is historically conditioned; we are not nationalists.: Thus in, the case of op- . pressed national grouping, for us the road of self determination and nationhood is a step towards federation and the unity of the peoples. 5. Developments in the ex-USSR and eastern Europe In the context of this document it is impossible to give a complete account of developments since the August 1991 Soviet coup. However, the following are crucial developments in relationship to the political positions which we have to take.

First in the ex-USSR and all the east European states, pro-capitalist governments have come to power. While the attempt to crystallise a new bourgeoisie includes elements from the new middle classes and the old nomenklatura, in general it is the re-cycled buréaucracy which is in political power. The very lack of an already-existing bourgeoisie or the institutions of capitalist:rule have made this inevitable.

The fundamental problems facing the attempt to restore capitalism are the lack of capital and the resistance of the working class and other social layers to restoration.

We can say that the transformations so far have had the effect of dislocating the old bureaucratic command system, but at the same time have failed to restore capitalism, thus creating a hybrid form of bureaucratic rule characterised by massive theft and parasitism by the old bureaucracy.

In the new situation, large elements of the productive forces are in a state of collapse, and as a consequence there is a massive attack on the living standards and social gains of the workers. While great Russian chauvinism has received a defeat through the conquest of national independence of the republics, democratic rights more broadly are also under attack.

Most importantly, because of the effects of generations of Stalinism, there is utter ideological confusion in the working class, and the new workers movement is in its infancy. In more classic terms, there is a massive crisis of leadership, leaving the masses open to the influence of all kinds of demagogic populist and other reactionary leaders.

The attempt to restore the market means attacks on the workers far worse than have so far occurred, particularly in Russia. We can expect huge convulsive struggles in the next period, and it is out of these struggles that the fight to construct anew workers movement and a new revolutionary leadership must emerge. 6. Political consequences of the economic and State-system crisis The political consequences of the preceding description can be briefly enumerated as follows: 1) there is no short-term solution to the crisis of world capitalism in sight. There can easily be an avoidance of outright slump, and even conjunctural upturns. But there is no evidence of any fundamental breakout from the long recessionary wave. 2) World capitalism, and especially American capitalism is not only not going to alleviate the situation of the third world, but will step up its demands for an increased flow of funds through interest and other payments from these states.

The social situation in the third world will continue to go from crisis te catastrophe. 3) the imperialist states-have no answers, and indeed avoid asking any of the most important questions, about the ecological crisis. The destruction of the ozone layer is stoking up a major international crisis which will impact through the next two deeades, and opens up the possibility of a massive revolt. 4) Obviously, the attacks on the working class and the labour movement will intensify in all the imperialist states. In particular, the European bourgeoisies have to deal with the continued existence of the welfare state (unlike the US and Japan) and a strong organised labour movement.

It follows from the whole of this analysis that the semi-collapse of Stalinism does not, and cannot, be translated into order and stability for world capitalism or an end to its prolonged crisis. It also follows, that the imperialist states cannot stabilise their system through defeating the revolution in Nicaragua, laying seige to Cuba or allowing Islamic gangsters to come to power in Afghanistan. We already have a provisional answer to the questions asked a couple of years ago about the possibility of a boom through the capitalisation of eastern Europe: it is a non-starter, and relies on a new upturn in the imperialist states themselves. 7. The crisis of the traditional workers movement The main feature of the crisis of the international workers movement is the complete bankruptcy of social democracy and stalinism in front of the anti-working class offensive since Page 4

1974-5; and the fact when this offensive started the revolutionary organisations were too weak to be credible alternative leaderships in the eyes of the working masses.

Social democracy is suffering a wrenching crisis in its west European heartland; and this has dealt massive blows to its credibility and weakened the allegiance of broad sections of the working class to it. When the economic crisis exploded, the social democrats collapsed before the austerity offensive and neo-liberal ideology. This collapse has been much worse in France, Italy and Spain, where because of the existence of mass communist parties the links between social democracy and the masses has always been weaker. In northern Europe, countries like Belgium, Sweden, Britain and Germany, the crisis has not been so acute because of a stronger mass base! Nonetheless there is massive working class disillusionment with social democracy everywhere. This is compounded by the weakness, everywhere but Britain, of left social democratic currents.

Stalinism had to cope with both its capitulation to the bourgeois offensive and the explosion in the Stalinist states. This movement is everywhere losing its mass base.

However, with the exception of the Italian Socialist party which is becoming a bourgeois grouplet, the social democratic parties remain bourgeois workers parties. Their future will largely depend on the evolution of mass working class struggle. A big upsurge of struggle could renew their membership of proper new left wing currents. But we are far from that situation today.

The crisis of working class leadership interlinks with the crisis of bourgeois leadership. In most advanced countries there is also mass disillusionment with the traditional right-wing capitalist parties, given their inability to break from the cycle of recession. It is this dual crisis which creates the basis for new neo-fascist or right-wing populist parties of the front national or Lombard League type.

These parties above all find their base in the urban middle class, among the relatively contented and prosperous layers, who fear the effects of the crisis and find the solution in populist, racist and anti-immigrant myths. 8. Relationship of class forces To say there is a massive crisis of imperialism is not at all the same thing as saying that there is avery favourable relationship of forces for the international working class. It is necessary to be utterly sober about this and put it in historiki ns wid Sada sak reper waran gevisie was s put on the defensive and ‘thrown back by a working class upsurge which reached its high points in the Portuguese revolution, the defeat of the Americans in Vietnam and a series of major strike struggles in the major capitalist countries.

However, after the 1974-5 recession capitalism on an international scale began a major fightback, attempting to restructure its regime of accumulation and deliver heavy blows to working class combativity and organisation.

It would be flying in the face of the facts not to admit that this offensive has had major successes, delivering major defeats to the working class. Everywhere the workers are fighting defensive battles, often battles to defend historical gains. This is true in the advanced capitalist countries, the third world, and the ‘post-capitalist states.

But we have to note that the working class has not suffered historic defeats; its retains the core of its trade union organisation in the - advanced countries; and as the examples of the general strike in Spain and the pay strikes in Germany show, an ability to engage in mass struggles. 9. Crisis of the Left As we have noted in previous documents, the defeats suffered by the working class, and the events in the Stalinist states, have generated an enormous ideological offensive against socialism. This has had a considerable effect internationally on left wing forces, generating a flight to the right. In fact, this is much less the case in Britain than in marly other countries.

We should be careful how we analyse this: it is acrisis of confidence and of the left, not a ‘crisis of socialism’ in the sense that it is open to question whether Marxism and socialism are the historic alternative; whether capitalism is not a superior system; or whether socialism has answers to the major problems facing humanity. 10. The revolutionary subject; lessons from Germany and Los Angeles No strategic-political answers to the situation of the world movement can be elaborated without an assessment of the strength of the working class forces internationally. In a period of crisis of the world capitalist system, Trotsky’s historical judgement about the crisis of international working class leadership retains all its validity. This is not a question just of the existence of otherwise of revolutionary parties; itis a matter of the overall strength of the world workers movement, and its most advanced layers, and their degree of organisation and consciousness.

The most decisive battalions of the internacapitalist countries; the most decisive battles in the next period will be there as well. This is not a matter of moral judgments, or of longterm historical schemes, but of practical facts about the current world situation.

In the next period imperialism will be compelled to redouble its attacks against the most Page &

organised sectors of the world working class, and against the social gains of even the wealthiest working mass, for example in Sweden and Germany. The strike battles in Germany are a first sign of this.

In the post capitalist states the emergent workers movement is extremely weak, and class independence in the form of mass independent unions has not been conquered. This assessment does not exclude mass working class revolt and the construction of an independent workers movement with a mass base, but this is so far a slow process, as a consequence of the immense damage done by decades of Stalinism. . In the third world there has been the emergence of some important independent workers movements, in particular COSATU in South Africa and the PT-CUT in Brazil. The possibility of some dramatic breakthrough and stiff battles involving these forces cannot be excluded.

But overall the degree of working class organisation, and especially the degree of revolutionary and semi-revolutionary organisation, in the third world is extremely weak. However, this does not at all exclude the possibility of massive explosions, outbursts of anger over IMF-imposed austerity or lack of democratic rights. But almost everywhere in the third world the masses are under attack and thrown onto the defensive.

In any case, it is not our intention to make predictions about where there will be struggles; but rather to emphasise that for imperialism to break out of its crisis it must inflict major defeats on the working class in the advanced capitalist countries which remain the heart of international working class organisation.

In this period it is necessary to re-emphasis that the revolutionary subject is the international working class. That isn’t to deny that it will find important allies in the other sections of the exploited and oppressed. But either the working class will go forward or there will be no historical progress. Crucial here is the ability of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries to resist the next wave of the bosses’ offensive which must start to cut deep into its historically accumulated gains. We are not ina period like the 1960s where relative stability in the advanced countries was matched with big national liberation struggles (Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba) in the third world. On the contrary there is no sign of such struggles today. 11. Some provisional political conclusions What conclusions must we draw for the building of the international revolutionary marxist movement from this analysis? At a _ strategic-tactical level of course a much more concrete discussion is necessary than is atternpted here. But the following conclusions appear to be self-evident.

First, the present world situation far from putting the fundamentals of Marxism in question, only confirms them. Imperialism in crisis can of course degenerate into barbarism, and the victory of socialism is by no means certain.

What's new? But it has to be frontally rejected that the events in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe challenge fundamentals of the Marxist programme like the revolutionary road to socialism, the central role of the working class, permanent revolution, the analysis of the deformed and degenerated workers states and so' forth. Each and every one of these basic propositions has its critics within the Fourth International. A discussion of the tasks of the Fourth International has to start with defence of this ‘orthodoxy’.

Second, the last period has only confirmed the complete bankruptcy of the Stalinist, and especially social democratic parties, in the advanced capitalist countries. Nobody believes that social democracy has any solutions to the crisis or credible programmes to govern. From this viewpoint the election result in Britain is a dramatic confirmation of the lack of credibility of social democracy as a societal alternative.

Third, any realistic perspective for building the Fourth International must start with the crisis and critique of capitalism. Any analysis which is based on the semi-collapse of Stalinism and the eternal stability of world capitalism is bound to draw pessimistic and defeatist conclusions. This is not a matter of optional analyses of the degree of capitalist crisis according to taste* a small group of cadres can sustain themselves on texts and analyses, but revolutionary parties can only be built on realistic perspectives for revolutionary advance. All the organisations which have sustained a vision of capitalist crisis and the central. role of the working class, as well as a stable party functioning, have experienced growth in the advanced capitalist countries in the last period (SWP, Militant, Lutte Ouvriere).

Failure to stabilise and grow in this period, growing doubts about the basics of the role of the working class, the role of the party and the prospect of socialist advance, are the self-fulfilling consequences of scepticism about the extent of capitalism's crisis, or, linked with that, an overestimation of the role of the degenerated workers states in preventing the stability of capitalism. 12. The axes of debate inside the Fourth International The Fourth International is opening a new ' debate on its own construction. In the last period, the debate on building the FI has concentrated on how ‘oper or ‘closed’ the FI should be; and how enthusiastic or otherwise the FI should be about regrouping with other left wing forces.

We should contribute to this debate in an Page 6

organised way, taking it through the participation of the whole membership. However, our intervention should be based on the following positions: - 1) We should continue to defend the project of buildifig a revolutionary international and new revolutionary parties, 2) We should argue in defence of the basic Trotskyist positions on the different sectors of the world revolution, and reject that these have been put in question byzrecent events. 3) We must defend the irreplaceable role of an internationally-organised vanguard organisation in bringing a new revolutionary mass international into existence. “- 4) We Should reject any idea that in the ‘present state of the political vanguard, the ‘growth of the International is primarily premised on fusions with the existing centrist or other left wing forces. Such a hypothesis is speculative and schematic, often involving false generalisations of the experience of the Brazilian PT. However, our attitude to leftward moving currents breaking from Social Democracy or Stalinism is entirely different. We need to orientate towards such currents using whatever tactics — including entryism or fusions - are relevant.

The Fourth, International is not immune from the effects of the demoralisation of wide sections of the revolutionary and centrist left internationally. In general the building of revolutionary parties is closely linked to the fate of the élass struggle, its level and combativity. New ‘mass parties are unlikely to emerge in periods of retreat and the defensive. But that does not mean that vanguard organisations cannot grow in periods of massive turmoil. Such a growth however depends on political and programmatic coherence and self-confidence; and the building of leadership teams which embody a common programmatic and strategic view.

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THEIR STR Summary This document argues that ‘strategy’ is most usefully discussed as strategy for building a mass revolutionary party. It is further argued that there are three false strategies often argued on the British left: i) One-by-one recruitment {the ‘string of pearls’ strategy) of the SWP, deeply linked to that organisation's economism and rejection of the method of the . transitional programme ; ii) strategic entrism _ based on the ‘single LP split’ theory of the Militant/Chartists iii) the strategy of a ‘new socialist party’, a ‘red green patty’ or a ‘new labour party’. All these are rejected. It is argued that a mass revolutionary party can only be built out of political recomposition in the labour movement, but that this notion has no automatic implications tn favour of, or against, entrism or the proclamation of a public organisation. However the idea that it is normal, in the concrete conditions of Britain, for marxists to intervene in the Labour Party is defended.

In addition the idea of the class struggle left wing is also defended against left-sectarian critics. The document also rehearses some fundamental {‘strategic’) propositions about the British revolution, in particular the importance of the national question and internationalism; the majority conception of ‘autonomy’ in relation to the movements of th oppressed is also defended.

Introduction The debate on strategy in the organisation has become bogged down because the term ‘strategy’ is used in different ways by different comrades. The two clear alternative usages are, schematically a) strategy for the British revolution b) strategy for party building. Evidently the two things are profoundly linked; long-terms concepts and projects for party building are never abstracted from our overall conception of how the working class will seize power, and around what political issues the working class and the oppressed will be mobilised to do this. The notion of strategy, as Trotsky puts it(1), merges at one end into programme and at the other end into tactics.

In his classical explanation of this idea, he proposes the definition of strategy as ‘ a combined system of actions which by their association, consistency and growth must lead the working class to the conquest of power’. Strategy mediates between our overall programmatic conceptions and the day-to-day tactical operations of the marxist nucleus.

ND OURS In any case, the debate will become circular and useless if it becomes a debate about ‘what is strategy?.” Any definition is to some extent arbitrary. But I take it that Trotsky’s conception is closer to ‘strategy for party building’ than overall ideas about the character of the Jevolution, which clearly merge with programmatic ideas. The united front is clearly in the realm of either tactics or strategy or both: the national question is based in programme. So I propose that the best way to continue the discussion, and I suspect that this was the original intention of the discussion, is to focus on the long term recomposition of the working class movement and thus the long-term strategy for party building, which evidently has implications for today. The real debate is about how we conceive of getting from where we are to the creation of a mass revolutionary party capable of leading the working class to power; and more precisely, it is about the idea of building the party by ‘splits and fusions’ in the mass workers movement and about the idea of the united front and the class struggle left wing.

The idea that we have solved all these questions is illusory; as on all things, we proceed by successive approximation, checking our conceptions against experience and developments in the real world. Here, we put forward a few basic assertions about our conception of the British revolution which have strategic implications, and then proceed to the heart of the matter, strategy for party building.

Fundamentals 1. The function of our organisation is the mobilisation of the working class and its allies among the oppressed for the conquest of working class power, based on popular sovereignty of the soviet-type. This requires the construction of a mass revolutionary working class party, based on scientific socialism, ie Marxism. Our aim is the economic and political expropriation of the bourgeoisie, and the building of a socialised economy in which the main means of production are in public ownership, under workers self-management. 2. We start from the fact that capitalism is an international system, and that thus the class struggle is international. Socialism is by definition international; socialism in one °‘ country is a contradiction in terms. Thus while the class struggle starts on the national terrain, and the conquest of power involves the destruction of the national bourgeois state, it unfolds on the international terrain. Waging the struggle against capitalism thus requires the development of the highest possible inter- Page 8

nationalist consciousness in the working class and its vanguard, crystallised in building movements of international solidarity, and above all the fight to construct an international revolutionary party, anew mass international.

The need for internationalism is especially interise in'an imperialist country like Britain, with its history of colonial and semi-colonial oppression, and its deep-rooted nationalist, racist and chauvinist myths. 3. The task of Marxists; that of hamanemancipation, requires the uprooting of all forms of capitalist oppression, and indeed those forms of oppression which have their historical roots in pre-capitalist modes of production (eg patriarchy). This means that we seek to build a ‘fighting alliance, under the political hegemony of the working class, of all the oppressed; the objective basis for such an alliance is given by the fact that although the uprooting of manifold forms of oppression (racism, sexism, national oppression) is not a simple by-product of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a necessary precondition for this to occur. 4. The ‘leading role’ of the working class in the revolution stems not from any categorical imperative or romantic idealisation of this class, but from the central role in production which it plays. Only the working class internationally, over this century a dramatically increasing proportion of the world’s population, has the.social weight to exert social hegemony and the collective organisation which is the basis for the development of revolutionary political consciousness. 5. The socialist revolution is the most conscious revolution in history. Alone among insurgent classes the proletariat is a propertyless class, which requires political consciousness and mass political organisation to win power. The basis of Leninism is the understanding that spontaneous struggle alone is incapable of creating that consciousness; rather it requires the intervention of an organised revolutionary political force to mobilise, organise and programmatically clarify the spontaneous struggles of the working class and its allies. 6. The working class can only exert its direct political power through socialist democracy; this requires the maintenance of the conditions of self-organisation and the absolute right for the working class to form whatever parties, unions and other organisations its sees fit. Thus the struggle for revolution requires the fight for democracy in ali the organisations of the labour movement and the oppressed. This is also the precondition for the most efficient winning of all the oppressed to a revolutionary perspective. 7. While fighting for revolutionary leadership in all organisations of the working class and oppressed, marxists defend the self-organisation and autonomy of the movements of the oppressed. Our position on autonomy derives from the fact that these movement fight against specific forms of oppression of which its members are the victims; forms of oppression which are not synonymous with ‘capitalism’, and from which the whole of the working class do not suffer. Autonomy (the right to self-government) is at once an expression of democracy and respect for pluralism, and the most efficient way to mobilise the oppressed against their oppression.

British revolution 8. Each national situation is ‘an uneven crystallisation of the elements of the world situation’(2). This means that while all proletarian revolutions share common features, these are combined with and expressed through ‘national’ characteristics. Some elements of the specific characteristics are the following. 9. Britain has an already established mass labour movement, of a more-or-less unitary character, dominated by social democracy.

Evidently a key task of Marxists is therefore not to propose the building” of a new labour movement, which is the task in some countries, but intervention in the struggles of this already existing labour movement. 10. The ‘United Kingdom’ is a unique staie, embracing part of an oppressed nation ([lIreland) and also two nationalities (Scottish and Welsh) which are the victims of national oppression. Our position on these two nationalities is defence of national self-determination, up to and including independence of that is the popular will. We understand therefore that the national struggle will have growing political weight in the British revolutionary process. 11. More than four million black people in Britain, overwhelmingly proletarians, are the victims of racism. We champion the programme of black liberation, that is the selforganisation of the black masses against the structures and institutions of racism, which are inextricably bound up with the existence of capitalist imperialism. the struggle for black liberation will have a crucial weight in the proletarian struggle for power. 12. As in all countries, the struggle for wo- mens liberation plays a crucial role. Since they are the majority, women constitute the largest oppressed group world-wide. Further, ‘the composition of the British labour force, with women workers comprising about 48 per cent of the workforce, means that this struggle has important consequences for the outcome of the overall struggle between the classes.

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13. In Britain the struggles over lesbian and gay liberation have assumed greater mass proportions and social weight than in any other country with the single exception of the United States. The specific weight of this struggle in the British revolutionary process is not a reflection of the (unknowable) number of lesbians and gay men, but from the size of the lesbians and gay communities, their militancy, and their (historical if not conjunctural) relative openness to alliances with the labour movement, in contrast for example to countries like France. _ 14, Britain is one of the world’s leading . imperialist. powers. This means that the issue “of internationalism; combating the actions and racist-chauvinist ideology of imperial Britain, especially in its direct intervention in Ireland, plays a decisive role in breaking the working class from all forms of bourgeois ideology.

Fighting modern imperialism and its projects also involves a fight against pan-Europea imperialism and its projects 15. The struggle by the bourgeoisie to impose its historic solution to the crisis of British capitalism involves a systematic attempt to crush the embryos of workers democracy which exist. This means not only attempts to legally shackle the organisations of the labour movement, and to crush the space for workers self-organisation and activity, but also an offensive against democratic rights throughout society. The fight to defend and extend democratic rights thus has a permanent and crucial role in our strategy.

The mobilisation of the working class for power and party-building 15. The construction of a Marxist party is a function of the combination of the direct struggies of the class and the oppressed, the intervention of socialists within that, and through this process and (relatively autonomous) forms of ideological, political and educational struggle, the formation of a marxist cadres. 16. Marxists fight for the highest forms of unity in struggle of the working class, and for its political independence from the bourgeoisie. We therefore propose the united front of all working class organisations and the oppressed around immediate, democratic and transitional demands. i) The united front arises from the multiplicity of working class organisations, and above all from the domination of the labour movement by a reformist bureaucracy. Formulated by Lenin and Trotsky at the 3rd Congress of the Comintern, the united front dialectically combines the most effective way to fight the bourgeoisie, as well as a mechanism against the dividers and sabotagers of working class struggle: the labour bureaucracy. ii) Complete political independence can only be revolutionary socialist consciousness. However, we fight for all those political and organisational measures which can help to break the working class from adherence to bourgeois politics, eg for the defence of the organisational independence of the Labour Party and the trade unions from the bourgeoisie and bourgeois parties; against coalitionism; to maintain the organisational link between the unions and the Labour Party; against class collaborationism and business unionism. The fundamental of class independence is the fight to maintain the Labour Party as a party organisationally of the working class; and to prevent the institutionalisation of class-collaborationism in the unions. 17. The fundamental defensive organisations of the working class are the trade unions.

Our strategic task (one of historic proportions) is to break the hold of the bureaucracy on these organisations. This involves an axis of class struggle against class collaboration. This is the fundamental dividing line inside the unions, However, the precondition for pushing forward class struggle policies is the direct struggle of the working class-itself at the point of production. No fight against the bureaucracy is possible without the direct intervention of marxists in this process. 18. The notion of the ‘class struggle left wing’, developed by the trétskyist movement, especially in the USA, in the 1930s, is a subordinate and tactical application of our united front policy. It is not the speculative aggregation of the existing left-reformist leaderships with the designation ‘class struggle’; it is not an already accomplished fact. It merely designates our objective to organise, on a semi-permanent basis, all those forces who can be won to the fight against the bureaucracy on the basis of class struggie and transitional demands. While only revolutionaries express the consistent struggle for class politics, nationally and internationally, the historical experience shows that at various times it is possible to forge left-oppositional movements on a more-or-less clear class struggle basis. To repeat: the class struggie left wing is not the existing Labour and trade union left, although these includes many class struggle forces.

Rather, a class struggle left wing was represented by the Minority Movement and the National Left Wing Movement in the 1920s.

This historical example shows that the construction of an organised class struggle left depends on a) a high level of class struggle and b) the intervention and leadership of revolutionary forces. The denial and rejection of the possibility of a class struggle left, when the Page 10

labour movement is dominated by social democratic reformism, is an expression of left sectarianism. This was of course the case with the british CP which destroyed the MM and NLWM at,the start of the'third period’, with the argument that it was an ‘obstacle’ to the direct bringing of workers to ‘revolutionary consciousness’ and membership of the CP. This criminal leftist policy destroyed years of work, isolated the CP and led to drastic organisational decline. The failute of the CP leadership, a theoretically weak leadership and one of the first in the international communist movement to be thoroughly Stalinised,.to understand the . value of these class struggle formations was in ‘s part a reflection of a misunderstanding of the - dynamics of revolutionary consciousness. It is perfectly possible, indeed absolutely inevitable, that forces will arise which reject class collaboration, which honestly fight for class struggle politics, without understanding the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and a marxist party. It is the task of the revolutionary party to organise these forces and bring them into a dialogue.

This is all a matter of circumstances. In some instances the united front can only be expressed through conjunctural, punctual, alliances depending on the circumstances and the issues. In other circumstances, more permanent and stable alliances of the left can be built on a class struggle basis.

The Party Question 19. Areal mass revolutionary party can only - be built, where there is.an existing mass reformist labour movement, out of a political recomposition; sometimes called ‘splits and fusions’; in Britain this will involve the crisis and decline of social democracy, ie the Labour Party. However, it is important to understand what this means concretely, and what it does not mean.

It does not mean that we base our perspective in the ‘single historical split’ proposed by the Militant where ‘at a certain point’ the right splits off leaving the Labour Party under the domination of marxists. This is one, highly speculative, scenario. Neither does it mean that all the main radicalised forces which we can address, or even most of them, will at anyone time be found inside the structures of the Labour Party.

Rather the notion that the party will be built through political recomposition means that as the crisis deepens, ina period of radicalisation, iL is inevilable thatthe mass labour miaveme will produce left reformist and centrist currents with a dynamic towards splitting with the bureaucracy. In such a situation it is precisely the task of Marxists to intervene, to help programmatically clarify these currents, and to win them to Marxism. Far from being some hairbrained schema worked out by a few dogmatic super-entrists, this of course is the only way mass revolutionary parties have ever been built in advanced capitalist countries; where exactly did the French, Italian and above all German CPs come from? From vigorous paper sales and proclamations about the need to recruit? On the contrary, they were all built from splits in social democracy; in France the majority came over to the Comintern from the old SP (SFIO). _« However, history never repeats itself exactly..This whole projection would be rendered inoperative if the Labour Party was destroyed as an independent working class party, a development which is a very long way from occurring. Indeed it would require a rapid and crushing defeat, breaking the Labour Party totally from the unions, for this to happen. In the current, and any relationship of forces which can now be realistically projected, the complete destruction of the links with the unions, and the transformation of the labour party into a party like the US Democrats, would lead to a huge upheaval.

But of course it could happen, in time. IF the working class continues to suffer defeat after defeat with no fightback; if the unions continue to decay; if capitalist crisis gives rise only to reaction and the crushing of thé left; then it is of course possible that the class independence of the Labour Party could be de- _ stroyed, turning the Labour Party into a simple capitalist party. That is “theoretically undeniable. In that event there would be nothing for it but to admit that the working class had indeed suffered an historic defeat, a defeat born out of the miners strike and the whole post-1974-5 ruling class offensive. All party building strategy would have to be posed anew in this situation.

In any event, so long as an independent mass workers movement exists, it is inevitable that given a period of massive radicalisation left currents, centrist and left reformist, will arise. The task of revolutionaries would be precisely to intervene within them. Such currents wili not necessarily be permanently internal to the LP. The decay of social democracy in a period of continuing defeats could take the form of simple decline with no left wing currents. emerging; in a period of ascending class struggle or prolonged deadlock between the classes it could take the form of left splits.

This is of course the case today in Italy. The narty of Communist refoundation is nothing other than a left-split from the existing mass workers party, the PDS (PCI) which is in the _ process of self-liquidation. In principle therefore it is quite correct to be within the process of the actual political recomposition of the political organisations of the class, namely the Page 11

PCR - which is exactly what are comrades are indeed doing. The principle of being inside the real political recompositions of the class are precisely what the ‘splits and fusions’ strategy is all about.

The idea of building a mass revolutionary party presumes a period of upsurge in the class struggle, of mass radicalisation. Today this is hardly on the horizon. But without it, without a long process involving new turns and upsurges, a revolutionary pafty will not be built.

Given the specific weight of the organised labour movement, and the absolute ideological domination of a single social democratic party, a period of radicalisation would:inevitably find _its expression, once again, in the development of left currents.

The notion of political recomposition and splits and fusions are about how we build a mass party. What are the implications for today? Our fundamental orientation to the Labour Party is that of the united front; the practical expression of that is entirely a secondary matter of tactics. A united front orientation to the Labour Party is, theoretically, compatible with an open revolutionary organisation, fraction work, or total entry. It entirely depends on circumstances.

It is quite possibile for a public revolutionary organisation to be guided in its general conceptions of building a mass party by a ‘splits and fusions’ conception. This, for example is totally misunderstood by the SWP. In replying to Ernest Mandel, Duncan Hailas says (3} ‘once you say splits and fusions, then you say entry’.

Not true. But the question can be put the other way around: what is the opposing strategy to ‘splits and fusions’? There are basically three: either than what was described by the LCR{4) as the ‘string of pearls strategy’ of individual recruitment, the single split in the Labour Party scenario, or the proposition of a ‘new socialist party’. The first posits that through struggle individual workers, or small groups of workers, will be won by the intervention of the revolutionary party. This, empiricaby, is quite nonsensical {it would take 100 years), and more than that, it is a political evasion.

It says that fundamentally the revolutionary party can be built avoiding contamination in the big battles in the labour movement, and by avoiding a frontal political and programmatic battle with the bureaucracy. In fact a more-orless big propaganda group can be built on that basis, but not an organisation of rank and file leaders of the class. The ranks and file leaders of the class will always be polarised by the big battles in the labour movement, just as tens of thousands of trade union militants were by the rise of Bennism. The ‘string of pearls’ strategy of the SWP should be rejected.

The next strategy which is counterposed to that of splits and fusions is the argument for building a ‘red green party’. That is the choice which effectively redefines the revolutionary subject, and sees the ‘party’ being built from a coalition of social movements, or the social movements plus the ecological movement.

Such strategies see new left or centrist currents arising precisely from these movements, and outside the traditional labour movement. (Obviously I am talking here about proposals for a red-green movement/party). As a strategic choice for Britain this is obviously ludicrous. Indeed it would evidently assume a massive defeat of the working class, and the necessity to retreat to the last bastions of social radicalism. Theoretically, of course, it is not excluded that in certain countries a new form of centrism could precisely emerge as some form of ‘red-green’ party, which marxists could intervene into. This would be a different type of case to the existing Green parties. In such cases the designation ‘red-green’ does not automatically means such formations would be outside the labour movement. In fact, such parties have not arisen and stabilised themselves in the advanced capitalist countries.

At the hour of refoundation?

A variant of the ‘re-green party’ or ‘riew socialist party’ is the proposal for the'creation of a new labour party. Once again, it is theoretically possible that the formation of a mass revolutionary party will take the form of a new ‘labour’ party, through a split in the mass party of the class. Such a party would probably be of a centrist or left sociai democratic character and be inherently unstable. It is highly improbable that such a party could be formed out of the wreckage of the complete collapse of British social democracy. The reason for this is obvious; in such a scenario the vanguard would be unable to pose a ‘new labour party’ as anything more than a propaganda slogan, given that the real, as opposed to propaganda, emergence of a new labour party would require a high degree of class combativity, not a shattering defeat of the class. The one new mass labour party to have emerged in the contemporary world, the Brazilian PT, emerged from the gigantic mass upsurge in the ABC industrial triangle around Sao Paolo in the early 1980s. This hugely propelled the ‘refoundation’ of the labour movement. . By contrast the formation of the party of Communist Refoundation in Italy, dubbed variously centrist or social democratic by different comrades in the International, is not an example of the formation of a new labour party, by of a split inside the existing mass party of the class, to whit the Italian Communist Party.

To base our strategy on the formation of a ‘new labour party’, depite formal disavowels of Page 12

predictions, must in the end actually be based on a prediction; that social democracy will be crushed, that it will turn into a US-style ‘Democratic Party’, and that a left split out of such a process is precluded. In practice the adoption of the new labour party strategy means the fight to alert and win the vanquard Jor the formation of a new party of the Brazilian PT type. In the current situation this project would fall flat on its face, for the simple reason that there is already a mass party of the working class; the working class does not face the historic task of creating a party expressing class independence, but on the contrary the _ task of defending the class independence of the ’ one it has got. We cannot call on the workers to engage in this fight on the basis of the prediction that it will be defeated.

In the current situation, and those which can realistically be projected for the next period, the forces for the creation of a new party of labour do not exist, which is why all propositions for a new socialist party are anachronistic. Indeed the whole idea is suffused with an irreconcilable contraction; on the one hand it posits the likelihood of total defeat for defence of working class independence in the existing labour movement, but on the other that Phoenix-like a new mass labour movement can emerge from the ashes.

Of course, historically we are the bearers of the struggle for a new party of the working class, but not a new ‘party of labour’ but a revolutionary marxist party. It is a permanent task to project propaganda on this question aimed at the vanguard, a task largely synonomous with building our own organisation.

The old Militant proposition of a single split in the mass party is of course a a highly formalised version of ‘splits and fusions’. But like the new socialist party strategy, it is based on a schema, namely that it is inevitable that the bureaucracy will be defeated by a more-orless united left, led by the Marxists, inside the LP at one feil swoop. While this has a strong ‘strategic entrist’ flavour, that the Marxist nucleus maintains itself within the LP until the final split, logically this is not necessarily so.

From a formal viewpoint it is possible to maintian the strategy, but argue for the temporary reinforcement of the marxist nucleus outside the mass party. This is indeed the formal position of the Taaffe leadership, but one which is in the long-term unsustainable. Since it is being which determines consciousness and not the other way round, the de facto attempt to forge a new party of labour on the basis of Militant will inexorably be theorised. 20. While a splits and fusions strategy and a united front orientation to the Labour Party implies no automatic tactical choice, in practice of course so long as there exists a left wing, and a left bureaucracy with decisive weight in the left of the labour movement, it is normal that the revolutionary nucleus will take the necessary tactical steps to link up with that left, to effect the united front, to organise and programmatically clarify the debates and struggles. In practice this means normally a revolutionary organisation in Britain will intervene, in. some form or other, in the Labour Party.

An immense price was paid by the old IMG for the failure to carry this out, largely because of ultra-left schemas about the ‘death’ of social democracy, the prediction that left social democracy would never arise again (cf Alan Jones 1970-72), and then after subsequent corrections a loss of nerve. The choice of buiiding an open revolutionary organisation in Britain after 1968 was arguably correct; the abandonment of an orientation to, and intervention in, the Labour Party certainly was not. 21. The construction of a small vanguard organisation, scientifically a propaganda group, is not the same thing as building amass party. The fundamental task is to assemble and train an initial cadre of some hundreds to make the next steps forward as an organisation with real weight in national politics, hardly possible on the basis of a couple of hundred.

However, contrary to formal thinking, it is impossible to construct this initial nucleus by simple propagandistic means. Even a small revolutionary group must strive, within its available means, to illustrate the method of its programme and strategy in action. This is the way to train cadres and win new recruits. At the same time there are specific and autonomous tasks of party building, for example of propaganda and recruitment and of intervening among students, which do not flow ‘automatically from a correct intervention in the class and the labour movement. The relative weight of these tasks again depends on the size of the organisation and the political period.

The essential point here is that political recomposition is not a function of the united front and the desire to ‘recompose’. The attractive weight of the revolutionary marxist nucleus, it ability to win leftward moving currents, is a function of its size and implantation. Many attempts at party building in the history of the FI have floundered because of a reliance on some. inherent logic that the correct programme would automatically attract other left currents, outside of the organisational weight of the revolutionary marxist nucleus. Other opportunities have been wasted in building large organisations on a ‘spontaneist’ basis, failing to train recruits in the fundamentals of Marxism and opening them up to demoralisation when the mass struggle declined. Still other failures have occurred because of the training of cadre in a particular tactical per- Page 13 y

spective or schema, which became inoperative when conditions changed. In constructing the nucleus of the future party we have to study these lessons: the experiences of the US SWP, the writings, insights (and failings) of Cannon have to become part of organisations’ culture; the successes and failures of building the Intermmational in the 1960s and 1970s have to be studied. In short the party-building culture of the organisation has to be raised, not by mindlessly urging people to“‘do propaganda’ and ‘recruit’, but by a deepening study and discussion of the historical examples of party building, and the lessons we have to draw.

Their Strategy and Ours . The fundamental divide on the British far left is between the strategy of splits and fusions and the propagandist/economist'. strategy of the SWP/ Militant. For these two organisations socialism will be a product of the ‘struggle’ of the working class plus winning individual adherents to their cause. Through struggle the working class is spontaneously united without too much worry about questions of race or _ Sender. Most importantly the bureaucracy is overwhelmed by the miraculous power of mass upsurge (and denunciation), without the need to systematicalluy confront it in the daily fight for leadership in the working class and its organisations.

Our strategy on the contrary posits the need to build an alliance led by the working class, not only in fighting ‘capitalism’ but all forms of oppression. It further stresses the need for a systematic fight against the bureaucracy on the basis of the method of the united fight and transitonal demands, leading to and deeply connected with a fight to recompose and renovate the existing labour movement. It is only out of the latter struggle that the forces, deeply rooted among rank and file leaders of the class and the oppressed, can be assembled for the construction of a revolutionary party, as opposed to a large propaganda group.

This leads us to confront the labour movement as it actually is, rather than attempting to. build a new labour movement on the sidelines, or take our dreams for reality in believing that the birth of a new labour movement is on the horizon.

Notes 1) 3rd International after Lenin, New Park edition p.57 2} See Preface to the German edition of Permanent Revolution, this is included in all English-language versions. 3) D. Hallas, The Socialist Register 1977 edition 4) See: Lutte Ouvriere ou la’ ‘tendance prolaterienne’, published by the Ligue Communiste 1971.

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THE NEXT STEPS IN - BUILDING THE PARTY 1. The Crisis and the Tory Election Victory As one of the imperialist powers with the most extensive outreach, Britain suffers disproportionately from the international recession.

After the Thatcher-Lawson:mini-boom of the -: mid-1980s, which culminated in the speculaitive frenzy of 1987-9, British capitalism has ‘returned to prolonged recession. Although it is possible that, in the event of an international recovery (especially in the US), British capitalism could begin a modest upturn, another boom is excluded in the foreseeable future.

The present form of the crisis has created a massive fiscal crisis of the state; the 1991 public spending deficit was £30 billion. This is the direct product of economic crisis — declining tax revenues combine with increasing social security spending on the unemployed. The inevitable result will be a massive push to decrease social security spending.

This process exploded into the currency crisis in October which resulted in the pound being forced out of the ERM. This left the Tories floundering without a policy folowing an effective 17% devaluation. . From this the Tories are faced with the worst of all financial worlds — devaluation plus continuing high interest rates designed to stop the floating pound devaluing further. Their only answer is another massive round of public spending cuts currently being discussed and to move towards a wage freeze in both. the public and private sectors which will coincide with rising inflation. The upshot of all this is that far from seeing an end to the recession the Tories are seeing the recession turn into a slump.

At the same time this has intersected with Maastricht to plunge the Tories into a profound political crisis only months after the victory at the general election. In fact Maastricht has now split them from top to bottom with open warfare between the pro-Europe and Atlanticist wings at the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, In this situation it is not an exaggeration to say that the only thing which has kept them in office has been the cringing, compromised, policy-less Labour front bench.

The Labour leadership has stripped itself of any kind of response on the economy by its support for the ERM and has compromised its intervention over Maastricht by its switch to support for the EC.

Yet in Parliament the Labour bureaucracy could clearly defeat the Tories if it was prepared to call for a referendum since the call would be unstoppable and the vote would be tio. In all probability the government would fall.

The other factor in the Tories’ favour is their successful crippling of the labour movement over the last ten years facilitated by new realism. Therefore they face this crisis with a much weakened labour movement, strikes at the lowest since records began a hundred years ago, and the new realists still determined that no challenge will be mounted against them.

New stage of the bosses’ offensive The key attacks in the next period will be the following: - @ The all-round attempt to transform the public sector, reducing local and national government to a buying-in agency of privatelycontracted services, with the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. @ Further privatisation including British Coal and British Rail. ® New anti-union laws which will abolish the check-off system, introduce full postal ballots and compulsory cooling*off periods before strikes, as well as further attacking the closed shop. @ The introduction of the council tax. @ New attacks on education and the NHS through underfunding and creeping privatisa-_ tion, leading to big jobs losses. ® The reintroduction of the Asylum Bill intensifying the attack on black people and immigrant workers. ® The introduction of a massive new round of public spending cuts alongside a wage freeze in the public sector and pressure for a wage freeze in the private sector.

Ali these things link-in with the overall attack on the working class through industrial restructuring and the new management techniques.

As in previous waves of the Tory attacks, black people and women will suffer disproportionately through attacks on state benefits and more ‘flexible’ working conditions, and through direct attacks like the Asylum Bill. Attacks on the NHS and education will put new pressure on women as those mainly responsible for caring for elderly relatives and children, and as managers of household budgets. Particularly hard hit are the single poorest section of the community, namely mothers who are sole parents.

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2.The rumbling crisis of the state and its international orientation The uneven regional effects of the crisis have brought to the fore the national question, especially’in Scotland but also in Wales. If the election result has immediately removed the prospect of a national assembly in Scotland, nonetheless it has redoubled the anger of the Scottish people who voted 75 per cent against the Tories, Thus the national question will remain a basic fault line in British politics.

The immediate mobilisations in Scotland around ‘Scotland United’ after the election, on “the ongoing campaign towards the possibility “of an unofficial referendum in Scotland, indicate that this is a struggle which will continue to erupt.

Scotland is thus the sight of a key cutting edge of the struggle against the Tories, and of important vanguard forces who will mobilise around radical social goals informed by the national question. The result obtained by Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow Pollock, the election of Militant councillors, and the left face put on by the SNP, are all indicators of how the national question also promotes social and political radicalism.

The Group sets forward as a key task in the next period of the class struggle the fight for a Scottish Assembly with full powers, and for Scottish self-determination including the right to independence. In this struggle the specific form of the fight for class independence is for the working class to become the leader of the nation, that is for the labour movement to become the politically leading force in the selfdetermination battle. Such an orientation in no way excludes, indeed it necessitates fighting alliances with petty-bourgeois and even bourgeois political forces, such as the SNP. However strategic alliances with such forces are excluded. Our perspective remains that implied by the theory of permanent revolution, namely that the conquest of the national and democratic tasks of the revolution can only be achieved by the working class, in alliance with other sectors of the oppressed.

The fight for self-determination in Wales is at a different stage and has a different scope.

Pro-independence forces are much weaker than in Scotland. Nonetheless, our basic axis is the same as in Scotland: self-determination for Wales, for the right of a national assembly with full powers.

No to Maastricht The crisis of international orientation of British imperialism revolves around the contradiction between the global outreach of British capitalism and the process of European economic and political union, summed up in the Maastricht process. This has involved important debate and divisions inside key sections of capital, which often have different interests.

The stumbling of the Maastricht treaty further intensifies this crisis of orientation, bringing back to life the Tory Atalanticist and right-wing nationalist opposition to European integration.

The Group has correctly campaigned against British membership of the ERM and against Maastricht as a frontal attack on the working class throughout the EC. In the next period we will utilise the crisis to call for:- @ Labour must vote against Maastricht, with the possibility of a big defeat for the Tories. @ Against the Europe of the bosses; Labour must demand a referendum in Britain. @ For a Europe of the workers, for a Europe which champions the rights of women and immigrant workers, and defends the ecology.

In this context the demand for a European congress of the peoples, a Europe-wide constituent assembly, to decide the future of Europe east and west could be a useful propaganda demand.

It is clear that in the next period the divide over Maastricht and the EC will be a crucial one in the workers movement. There is a growing realisation from a class point of view of the significance of the attack on the workers which Maastricht represents. 3. The Crisis of New + redlism and the Election defeat As constantly predicted in our press, the election defeat has thrown the new realist project into turmoil. The election defeat itself was not simply a product of this or that aspect of the election campaign but of the whole course of new realism, which through its sabotage of the miners strike and other struggles completely undermined the morale of Labour’s base and conceded all the fundamental arguments to market ideology and the Tories.

As in all defeats, only a minority will draw radical conclusions. However, in the short term this has led to a certain reanimation of the Labour left, into which we have correctly intervened with the demand for a united left to fight all brands of new realism. Whether this modest resurgence of the Labour left will maintain itself remains to be seen. As explained below, a new defeat for the Labour left would have major implications for out tactics.

Inside the new realist leadership the virtually unanimous response it to move further to the right. We saw at the TUC the invitation to the CBI, to be followed next year with the visit of the Tory Employment minister. On the question of the trade union link, there are divisions within the bureaucracy. While there is agreement that they are prepared to sacrifice the link if necessary, there are differences about precisely what is necessary and what tempo and precise organisation proposal should be Page 16

adopted. This year’s LP conference again took place under the domination of the right wing and with the left heavily on the defensive but on the other hand it was not just another huge step forward for the right wing project. In fact the project around breaking the union link took a serious setback with the adoption against the platform of a resolution calling the retention of the link at all levels by a majority of 2 million. This does not mean that they will not try to get around this‘resolution, but it will not be easy since it was defeated by the votes of a number of mainstream new realist unions.

The splits that exist at this moment and which will continue to unfold should: make it possible to wage a significant campaign on this matter.

However we should not be under the illusion that this year’s victory means the line can necessarily be held on this question.

For the Group the struggle against breaking the union link, and in defence of class independence, is a crucial part of the fight against new realism. Within the Labour Party the issue of Clause 4 is being raised once again, and this itself is a refraction of the fight over class independence. However in a period of sharp Tory attacks, fighting new realism cannot be reduced to a propaganda campaign or a propaganda bloc over the issue of the block vote and the union link. On the contrary the crucial divide in the labour movement and among all the movements of the oppressed remains the issue of the clash between class collaboration and class struggle, between acceptance.of the Tory attacks and resistance to them. This is the guiding thread of our alliances.

This is.no way prevents us from forming partial tactical alliances with forces tainted by new realism over the question of the block vote and against coalitionism. We will be with Blunkeit in the LP over the issue of Clause 4.

We will be with all those TU leaders who demand a retention of the union link. But we cannot make our key axis a strategic alliance with Blunkett, Sawyer or Edmonds.

Indeed we warn the working class that those who presently take formal positions against coalitionism and in defence of class independence, will through their sabotage of struggies hand the leadership of the Labour movement inexorably into the hands of the likes of Jordan, Hammond and Laird.

A basic characteristic of the new realist project was to argue that the labour movement had to ‘rol with the punches’ of the Tory attacks, while waiting for a Labour government. This option is now entirely unrealistic, and will lead directly to an accelerating shift to the right. It means a more and more direct acceptance by the Labour and union leaders of all the key aspects of the market ideologies of the Tories. Only the battle for the formation of a class struggle left can prevent this process. 4. The current state of the class struggle The current downtum in the level of struggle, with the lowest level of strikes for 100 years, is a product of a combination of interacting factors ~ the lack of confidence induced by the defeat of militant sections of workers, particularly since the miners’ strike, the impact of the anti-union laws, the effect of the recession, | and the refusal of the leadership of the labour movement to build and support resistance to the bosses’ and Tories’ offensive, compounded by the demoralising effect of the election result.

However, conflict between bosses and workers has far from disappeared, as shown by the record number of cases referred to ACAS in the last year, and the persistent recurrence of small-scale strikes, sometimes unofficial, sometimes official but given only minimal and inadequate — backing by the bureaucracy, some of which have resulted in victories, although of too small a scale to impinge on the wider consciousness.

While the class as a whole has not suffered a thoroughgoing defeat, there is a crisis of confidence and consciousness which makes it difficult to foresee where the next major dispute, and particularly one which will inflict an important defeat on the Tories, will come from.

Certainly the potential areas of conflict are predictable, around the Tories’ ‘plans for further privatisation, public sector cuts — which will go deeper than any to date ~ contracting out, as well as the further introduction of new management techniques, involving speed-up and job- losses.

Rather than attempt to predict where the decisive battles may — or may not — be, our task is to produce propaganda. against the bosses’/Tories’ offensive, together with proposals for how to fight them, to build support in the unions and workplaces around such proposals, and to organise around disputes which do take place, both in terms of solidarity work and arguments for taking them forward.

The State of the Unions While union membership has fallen, their basic strength remains, which is why the Tories hope to undermine this with their proposals for the abolition of deduction at source of union dues. Membership has fallen with the destruction of much of manufacturing industry, a traditional stronghold, and high unemployment, without being replaced by any serious campaign of recruitment in new sectors of light and service indusiry.

There have ‘been significant victories for the left in internal union elections, the strengthening of the left majority on the TGWU executive, the ousting of the corrupt right in UCATT, left gains on the NUT executive, the consolidation Page 17

of the left in the NUJ, and of course ongoing support for Scargill and the left in the NUM.

However, these gains have to be sharply qualified. They have not been accompanied by an upturn,in struggle in these sectors and we have to continue to distinguish between left gains “in intra-union elections and a turnaround in the class struggle itself. Secondly, these gains have to be qualified by the limitations of some of these ‘lefts’, particularly in the potentially powerful TGWU, on both the industrial and political fronts.

Other than the NUM, they have been unwilling to mount a challenge to the mainstream ‘new realism’ of either the TUC:or the Labour Party, or to build-a fight against the bosses offensive. The bulk of the TUC unions remain committed to class collaboration, continuing to pursue the vain hope of joint forums with the government and bosses in preference to struggle against the Tories offensive.

They have been fully committed to ‘waiting for Labour’ in the run-up to the election, discouraging and undermining struggle. They have yet to reorientate themselves to the postelection situation, but a total about-turn is the least likely variant.

The support of given by leading bureaucrats to Smith’s candidacy for the Labour leadership is an indicator that they wili, if anything, deepen their collaboration. However, the division, even among those supporting Smith, over the issue of the TU-LP link is not a minor one. Even many of the most ingrained new realist bureaucrats, such as arch witch-hunter Tom Sawyer, baulk at supporting this fundamental change which would mean a qualitative reduction in the influence of the unions over Labour’s policies (although leading bureaucrats would retain influence behind the scenes). The far right of the unions, represented by the EEPTU and now AEEU, has a different perspective to both the mainstream and the left in the union bureaucracy.

The mainstream, while committed to class collaboration, vacillates, sometimes veering towards business unionism, sometimes pulling back {note the decision of the GMB conference, encouraged by Edmonds, not to engage in any more beauty contests to win the right around the AEEU to represent workforces on ‘green field’ sites).

The right have no such qualms, being fully committed to no-strike deals, breaking the TU-LP link, ete. In so far as the mainstream has no answers in the face of the bourgeoisie’s attacks, they leave the way open for the right to make gains, however much they may fulminate against certain of their practices. The continuing drive to union mergers, spurred by their financial straits and loss of membership, is beginning to create a few ‘super unions’, increasing the pressure on those remaining outside to participate.

Within individual unions the left is generally poorly organised, with most lacking any formation with any serious weight at all. In general, left organisation is stronger in white collar unions (NUT, NUJ, CPSA, NCU and NALGO). 5. Tactics for Building the Class Struggle Left Framework For the whole past period we have adopted the tactic of entry into the mass party as the most appropriate place from which to work to build the class struggle left. The entry tactic can be adopted by the revolutionary organisation as part of the orientation to the organisations of the class, including and most importantly, the TUs. This should be seen as a regular option and not out of the ordinary for the revolutionary Marxist nuclei, who cannot at present offer leadership to the class in their own name.

While it should be approached as an always available option, depending on the form of the recomposition of the vanguard, it should not be seen as inevitable. Such ‘deep entry’, sometimes under wrong conditions, can lead to an adaptation to Labourism a la. Militant, who for many years tailored their politics to their long term entry into the LP (combinéd of course with a deep sectarianism towards other’ left forces in the party}.

In Britain Bennism, which grew out of the struggles against the Labour Government, the social contract, etc., provided the conditions for entry. But after its defeat and the defeat of the Miners’ strike, the effects of nearly 10 years of New Realism, the refusal by the Labour and TU bureaucracy to prosecute the class struggle, the refusal to fight Thatcher and the Tories, attacks on the local government and national left by witch hunting and expulsions, combined with lack of leadership by the left bureaucrats, means the left has been reduced to a very small size, especially in the LP. This has made the entry tactic difficult to operate.

However the absence of any significant vanguard, with the partial exception of the antipoll tax movement, since dissipated, means that there is no significant radicalisation to the left of and outside the mass party.

In this situation we have correctly emphasised Trade union and campaign work, and the proportion of comrades active in the structures of the MO has decreased. However, we remain an entrist organisation, ie. far from being an open organisation, possibly with a fraction working in the MO, we retain the belief that being in the MO is the best way that the organisation can relate to developments in the class struggle in the current situation and the current stage of the organisation. On both a national and local level we must have an integrated approach ensuring that issues raised Page 18

in TU work and by campaigns are brought into campaign and solidarity activity, and ‘MO issues’ (e.g. policy, witch-hunt) are taken up in the TUs.

The quantitative and qualititative decline in our MO intervention over the last period has undoubtedly weakened our work in these areas, This has had a knock-on effect in weakening our attempts at relating both to current developments and to the struggle fora fighting left unity across thie labour movement.

This uncoordinated drift out of MO work must be stemmed, in general our MO work must be given the increased resources necessary to carry this out within our overall perspectives. . The resources to be devoted to MO work are not an individual decision. Branches need to discuss the state of the MO, its left, etc., in their areas and allocate resources and comrades as part of their overall work. Such discussions should be held in liaison with the MO commission/fraction.

The fourth defeat in a row for the LP has left New Realism exposed and without a project other than further moves to the right or retreat.

Analysis of the defeat by the bureaucracy has lead to mainly rightward conclusions. The bulk of the LP MPs, CLPs and TU leaders have moved right to deepen the implications of New Realism. In some cases this has meant explicit attacks on the structural links between the LP and the TUs, with proposals ranging from a reduction in size of the block vote to abandoning those.links altogether. The TU and LP bureaucracy are not, however homogeneous on this; not surprisingly some, although deeply implicated in the politics of New Realism, regard some retention of structural links to be in their interests. In any case, even if structural links were broken, the LP would not overnight become a party like the Democratic Party in the US. Rather it would model itself on the German SPD, where despite no formal links TUs like the IG Metal remain the paymasters and therefore very influential. Some TU bureaucrats like Sawyer of NUPE, Edmonds of the G&B, have stepped back from seeking a cleavage between the LP and TUs.

Others have taken a left turn since the election defeat. This is evidenced by the decision of Livingstone and Grant to stand in the leadership contest, and to continue the campaign even after their bureaucratic exclusion from the ballot; by an atmosphere amongst the left of the need to work together without sectarianism; by the large numbers at the Campaign Group Conference of the Left; by the small but significant increase in new and renewed membership and attendance at LP wards and CLPs. There is also some small evidence of activity among TU activists: the “close ballot at Rover, the ballot in RMT, the successful strike by FE lecturers in Lambeth.

This political battle which is reshaping the contours of the left means that for us to leave the LP now and declare an open organisation is at best premature. At worst it could miss out on developments in the class struggle and in the LP which we cannot as yet predict. But it is possible that before our next conference conditions will have worsened so much that our tactic will have to be altered.

What then are the conditions, what are the criteria we should adopt to determine our relation to the LP? a) The central tenet of entryism is that where the workers’ movement is still predominantly controlled by the mass reformist parties, especially here the LP, working class radicalisation is often reflected in these parties and sometimes flows. through them. In the absence of any serious alternative workers look to their traditional organisations and parties for solutions before looking elsewhere (ie to revolutionary Marxists). Therefore an orientation to the mass organisations, both TU and LP is necessary for us to relate to the militants in the working class. b) But the adoption of the entry tactic, as opposed to applying wherever possible the united front-type method, requires other conditions. The existence of left reformist/centrist currents, or the strong possibility, of such developing in the short term will be an important factor in making our decisions. c) With capitalism in crisis reformism can no longer offer the imperialist «crumbs from the table’ used to placate the working class in the past. This has, is and will lead to crises in the mass organisations and can lead to splits.

Evidence in the European CPs in France and Italy with left splits suggests that it is important for revolutionary marxists to intervene into the process to keep the recompositions from moving to the right. d) This continued control over the masses by the existing reformist organisations, combined with their incapacity to deliver is likely to create all sorts of tensions within the mass organisations; tensions which we will want to relate to over the next period.

What then are the questions we should consider when discussing a change in our entry tactic? a) Firstly is there a battle going on which can act as a focus for militants or is there a large developing vanguard outside the LP and not relating to it? Will our presentation as an open Trotskyist organisation facilitate our work?

Will it bring us into contact with, enable us to work among militants which entry makes impossible? b) Has the bureaucracy clamped down and taken control of the LP so that the left is excluded by expulsion or undemocratic practices?

Page 19 merriment ner aneennarp ae ntamwrwinanrannitennnnnelsetisamnne menos orrnananainantitmnenestasntantarnnnnst site

c) Has the left bureaucracy (Campaign Group, sections of TU leaders) failed to build on anger after the election defeat, failed to fight against changes inflicted by the right (e.g. on TU links, pacts, democracy, etc.) failed to make links with any developments in the class struggle (strikes etc.)? Have they failed to organise and lead? d) Are wards, women’s sections, whole parties ceasing to function so that it is impossible for revolutionaries to make an intervention from either a LP or TU position? e) Are large numbers of working class people rejecting the LP as the party of possible govern- -, ment, the party representing their interests in Parliament? so f) On. the basis of the above, should we continue with entry? Will maintaining entry or changing our tactics be the best way of furthering the class struggle and building our organisation? We must also take into account the fact that such shifts can only be made on the basis of medium term predictions, i.e. we can’t change our mind without destabilising the organisation.

It is clear that the recomposition around the leadership campaign, with ripples both in and beyond the LP, into the TUs, means that we should not change our tactic at present. But what are the prospects given the inevitability of the election of a right wing leader?

A tise in the class struggle plus some real leadership presented by the left bureaucracy could mean that the left might begin to grow again in the LP. Alternatively, without developments in the class struggle and if Livingstone continues his project of making accommodation with the right, insisting on voting for Gould etc., the left is likely to disintegrate or at least be dominated by such right wing politics that groups such as ourselves would become hopelessly marginalised. if the left fails to build: if the Campaign Group fails to reorganise itself and relate to the rank and file; if the bureaucracy takes control and excludes the left; if it becomes impossible for revolutionaries to do any useful work in the LP and most centrally of all if there are developments to which we can relate better as a public organisation —then a change in our entry tactic will be necessary. We have to weigh up what we gain and what we lose in such a change.

Any change in the way we present ourselves publicly would have to be decided by a full conference of the organisation.

But at the present time we cannot predict any of these things. What we need to do at present is to put our resources into building the various conferences of the left, including the SMTUC conference, with a clear line of how to build a united, fighting left, both in the TUs and the LP. First and foremost, this means building the anti-Maastricht campaign, providing we can forge the campaign into an adequate vehicle for a mass campaign at this stage for a referendum. However with the current cuts and austerity measures generated by Maastricht and European integration it is clear that the issue will go far beyond a possible ratification in Parliament. It will also involve campaigning against racism and fascism, supporting Scotland United, and fighting to defend the TU-LP links.

What are we trying to build?

Our approach for several years has been to argue the need for democratic organisation of the class struggle left (those who reject the class colilaborationism of ‘new realism’) across the labour movement and campaigns, organising those both inside and outside the Labour Party and explaining the clear need for the left to be based on struggles and campaigns and not merely the fight against the right bureaucracy.

This is the concept we took into the Socialist Movement and argued for socialist to reflect.

We have had some success in building the sectors of the SM along these lines. The SMTUC, particularly through the ‘Unshackle the Unions’ campaign, has been the most successful exploiting the lack of any other centralised campaign in the unions and drawing in many left bureaucrats-as well as lower level officials (branch secretaries etc.).

WfS has suffered from the general collapse of the women’s movement, but has been kept going around particular campaigns, such as Women Against War in the Gulf. LPS has managed to take initiatives around the general election, the witch-hunt and the war, while suffering from the current weakness of the Labour Left, its fragmentation into competing campaigns, the refusal of the Left MPs to organise their base, its association with the SM (which is seen on the Labour Left as reflected in socialist, however inaccurate this may be), and the sectarianism of *O.

The SM (Scotland) also built out of its promotion of the right to self-determination and in particular of ‘Scotland United’ after the election. As we predicted, local SM groups have been less successful because of a lack of focus.

There has been constant tension in the SM, and particularly since the launch of socialist, between our conception, supported by many key independents and by the sectors of the SM, and that of Hilary Wainwright and the Socialist Society. The Socialist Society's conception is difficult to pin down, being essentially a libertarian one of an all-encompassing left, of all parties and none and Jacking any coherence, even a basic class analysis.

At times they have promoted the idea of a new red-green party, at others (due to its rejection within their ranks and to the unfavourable political situation} this has been put on the back-bumer without being replaced by an alternative. In this they have been supported by Page 20

different wings of the Stalinists (both Morning Star and Euros) and by the editorial staff of socialist. Part of this approach has been an antagonism to the sectors of the SM, a refusal to promote them or encourage their participation, a failure to reflect their political views in socialist and an undermining of them by attempting to create privileged relations with other organisations covering the same ground.

Socialist has never since its launch effectively reflected the discussions, activities and decisions of the Socialist Movement, and this became most glaring in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the General Election.

All this has been exacerbated by the refusal of .the editorial staff.to take any notice of the decisions of the movement, and they have been encouraged in this by Wainwright. We took this approach of a ‘United Fighting Left’ around a basic platform rejecting class collaboration into the post-election discussions, both among the left in general, and in particular the Labour Left, and into discussion of the SM-initiated ‘Conference of the Left’.

Our approach was not to fetishise the organisational form of the SM or its sectors, but to put forward proposals to draw in new and significant labour movement forces.

For fighting left unity Our line therefore is for fighting left unity across the labour movement uniting forces inside and outside the Labour Party, in the unions and the mass campaigns. In fighting for this orientation, we face two challenges: a) the Ross/Livingstone project to recompose the hard left to the right and b) the Socialist Society line, which is essentially a continuation of ‘Beyond the Fragments’ networking, and which has downgrades a class struggle cutting edge in the Socialist Movement.

We are therefore engaged in a major battle to reorientate the Socialist Movement. We attempt to use the Conference of the Left to forge a new framework for the hard left which could take a number of organisational forms which cannot be determined until it is clear which forces are involved. If we fail, the capital accumulated in the SM will be wasted, and a major lever to build a class struggle left will be lost. if anew left formation comes about launched by Livingstone-Morning Star type forces, and if our fight to redirect the SM fails, we would be compelled to orientate toward the former.

However, this could only be done on the basis of a fight against the Livingstone/Ross type line which itself is an evasion of building a class struggle left. In no circumstances can we accept without a fight a left which sees itself primarily based on the dwindling forces in the constituencies.

In debating the Socialist Society/HW type of forces, we cannot make the ‘party question’ a central item of debate. There is no basis for the creation of a new party which challenges for the leadership of the class; in fact to open this debate would be to raise the issue of a ‘redgreer party. It is a total ihision to imagine that the basis exists today for the formation of a new party, a centrist workers party, to which we could appeal to groups of workers like OILC to join. An attempt to set up such a formation would fall flat on its face; if we tried to do it, we would have egg on ours.

Tactics in the unions -Our tactics in the unions are governed by the general considerations of building a fighting left which challenge new realism, promoting struggles against the Tory attacks and the bosses’ offensive, and the fight to generate the political conditions for a challenge to the Tory anti-union laws. Key to carrying through these tasks are the following:- ® Promoting resistance to the attack on the public sector. The Tories plan a huge new offensive against the public sector in which a million workers could lose their jobs. The line of the bureaucracy is to roll over and play dead.

We have to build the broadest possible alliances across the public sector to co-ordinate resistance to these attacks. @ Leading the fight against the new management techniques. This is a- key part of the bosses’ offensive, which is being used across industry and the public sector: This attack in little understood on even the left, and we can be a key force in explaining and building resistance to so- called ‘Japanisation’ and other attacks. * @ Continuing to deepen the campaign against the anti-union laws; these have now moved from harassment of workers to a situation in which they are a crucial material factor in holding down the level of strike struggles. ® Fighting to build broad-left type fighting organisations in the unions in opposition to the new realist bureaucracy. The situation is very uneven here, given the pure weight of new realism and the sectarianism of other left forces. However, without such formations the domination of the new realists will remain unchallenged. @ Building up our trade union fractions. - @ Continuing to build the SMTUC as a crucial organising centre against new realism and the sole force which has mounted a sustained challenge to the anti-union laws.

The evolution of the ieft and regroupment The main factor on the left, in addition to the decline in the weight of the Labour left has been the continuing decline and crisis of Stalinism.

The Democratic Left is way to the right of left social democracy and is an aging and declining force. the Morning Star on the other hand retains an important base in the unions, especially in the lower levels of the bureaucracy.

This current is in ideological confusion, but in Page 21

general remains a current with its sights fixed on the left bureaucracy; it is not as a current _ based ona consistent class struggle approach.

The far left remains dominated by the Militant and SWP. The split in Militant saw the overwhelming majority, including the younger and more dynamic forces stay with the Taffe leadership. Militant have had important successes in their electoral interventions. While it has made a substantial turn on the question of the oppressed, its oriéntation is fundamentally sectarian in the strictest sense; it remains a large sect, capable of building important bases, but: incapable of propelling a united challenge to new realism, - “, It seems too early to draw definitive con- “clusions about how the Grant Socialist Appeal wing will evolve. Certainly there seem to be some possibilities for joint work with this current.

With the SWP nothing has changed. It retains, through its strong apparatus and press, an ability to attract hundreds of students and young white collar workers. However its political weight is out of all proportion to its size — ic. much weaker than an organisation of 5,000-6,000 should be. 6. The Offensive Against the Specially Oppressed and our Tas In the face of the offensive by the ruling class to make the working class pay for the economic crisis, the specially oppressed are particularly vulnerable to attack and liable to suffer more hardship with the rundown of the Welfare State. Women, seen as ‘natural’ carers, are expected to take over where the Welfare State fails, looking after the young, the sick and the elderly, as well as continuing to work both inside and outside the home. The importance of the family in the Tory ideology will mean continued attacks on lesbians and gay men.

Although the election of another right wing Tory Government means that there is less likelihood of a growth in organised fascist groups, in a situation of economic recession the rising tide of racist attacks is likely to continue, as well as attacks by the racist state in the form of the Asylum Bill and continued police harassment.

The attack against Women and the State of the Women’s Liberation Movement The ruling class project of deepening the exploitation of women as a cheap and flexible labour force combine with but are sometimes contradicted by attempts to buttress the family and use the unpaid labour of women.

Although women have not been expelled from the workforce as the ‘Reserve Army of Labour’ theory suggested, they have been pushed into low paid, part time and temporary jobs, including widespread homeworking, both in the traditional garment industry and increasingly within areas of new technology — a ‘flexibility’ which their structural position in the family makes possible. With the traditional areas of male labour ~ heavy industry, etc. - © smashed up, there has been an increase in the service sector, traditionally a female area of employment. Fhere have been some tokenistic recruitment drives by the LM in these areas and the LP Manifesto promised equal rights for part time workers, but overall this sector tends to be non-unionised and open to great exploitation.

The ideological attacks on women during the Thatcher years, bolstering the family as well as blaming it for social evils was balanced by the needs of the economy for women workers.

Major seems even more of a pragmatist on these issues and it seems unlikely, though not impossible, that the Government would for example support anti-abortion measures.

The response of the women’s liberation movement to the Thatcher years was characterised by ideological and organisational fragmentation. While there is a residual but widespread belief in women's ‘rights’ (the right to work, to choose over reproduction etc.} we can no longer say that the Women’s Liberation Movement is even in fragments, such that it might be possible to rebuild-them.

There has been an almost total ‘division between feminist theory and practice and while there has been an upsurge within the feminist academy, with women’ ‘8 studies courses proliferating, women’s libération practice is in the doldrums. The dominant force throughout the ‘80s was radical feminism, of a very right wing form, influenced especially by US feminism, while socialist feminists who initially entered the LM, have seen their position eroded by New Realism.

There are some small rays of hope, however.

Some TU Women’s Committees still exist as in the NCU and RMT. There has been an increase in the self organisation of black women (Southall Black Sisters, Women Against Fundamentalism etc.), and some women's organisation around international solidarity, including during the Gulf War. There have been defensive struggles against the Alton bill for example in which there were small numbers active but quite widespread support for the ideas of women’s rights. Another success has been in the criminalisation of rape in marriage and increased understanding of the problems for women of male violence. Militant’s orientation to this, albeit in a sectarian manner, was correct and we should make a self criticism that W4S did not give it greater prominence.

Tasks In the present situation in the class struggle, with the low level of militancy, including on women’s issues, and with a smaller percentage of women in our group than previously, we Page 22

need to make very clear priorities and ensure that we carry them out. First and foremost we need to ensure that our women’s fraction and commission are organised and meet regularly.

The fraction and commission should lead our intervention into campaigns around women’s oppression/women’s liberation, and discuss with other fractions the ‘women’s angle’ to their campaigns and areas.of work. Over the next few months we should prioritise work on abortion, in particular in solidarity with the Irish Repeal the 8th campaign and the forthcoming referendum in Ireland. Secondly we want to prioritise education and propaganda on women’s liberation. — oe Internally ali branches should have a series of women’s’ liberation educationals, open to contacts if appropriate, as preparation for next year’s summer school which will take that as its central theme. For our external intervention we will produce a women’s liberation pamphlet containing our strategic understanding of its importance for the socialist revolution: It will include our critique of the family, the question of women and work and the issue of abortion and reproduction rights. The pamphlet should be used to win contacts to our organisation and should be used alongside forums on the issue.

Both internal and external education and propaganda are necessary in order to reverse the declining percentage of women and to reeducate the whole group on questions of women’s liberation.

Our campaigning priority will be the question of abortion, especially in solidarity with Irish women. We have already organised a tour of an Irish comrade on the question, and we will continue the solidarity work, especially in colleges and universities, in liason with NAC.

With the referenda now agreed in Ireland this will become a major issue over the next few months.

Other areas we will continue to work in will be Women for Socialism, Women in TUs (with the SMTUC), Women against Fundamentalism, and groups organising in support of women who have killed their violent partners.

It is important to integrate women's liberation work into all areas of work, to be taken up by both men and women. For example in our anti-racist/anti-fascist work, in our work in the TUs and LP, we should always look for ways of raisng the women's angle.

It is as yet very difficult to predict where the present recomposition of the left will lead.

Equally we cannot say exactly where or how any future radicalisations by women will take place. What we can say from our experience in the 1980s is that in any struggles women will come to the forefront and it will be necessary for us to rebuild the women’s liberation movement out of these struggles. To maintain any existing forces is therefore of paramount importance if the experiences of the ’70s and ’80s are not to be lost.

Black Liberation, Anti-Racism and Anti-Fascism Unlike in the US, where a significant layer of black leaders were bought off in the ’70s and ’80s by the ruling class, resting on a small but real layer of black bourgeois, in Britain the black population as a whole are working class and in their large majority vote Labour.

Any recomposition on the left ignores the issue of racism and black self organisation at its peril. At the same time, as was shown during the Miners’ Strike, black people will readily identify and support the struggles of the working class, including the struggles for Irish self-determination. - Despite the level and success of black selforganisation in the LM achieved in the 1980s (LP Black Sections, the selection and election of black MPs, Black NALGO, Black Workers’ Group in the T&G and the election of a black TU General Secretary in the T&G, etc.), like other gains of the oppressed this has been badly undermined by the hegemony of New Realism in the LM. Although the LP has accepted the idea of a Black Society, this has no profile and as yet, no visible organisation.

There is also a whole generation of black youth, men and women, who have grown up under Thatcher, who feel excludéd from society - education, work and the LM. They are a potential force for radical change, but without leadership and organisati6én could go in the opposite direction.Their interest in the life of Malcolm X is an example of the contradictions of their politics. Some emphasise Malcolm X’s Islamic affiliations, others, a minority, his socialist ideas.

In the situation of economic crisis, racist attacks, by individuals and by the state, will continue to increase and there is the possibility of violent reaction from within the black communities. It is, however, very difficult for a small organisation like ourselves, to relate to such developments other than through support committees and LM bodies. We must however be aware of such possible developments and relate to them when possible.

The responses of black youth in Camden, E.

London and Thamesmead to racist murders and attacks prove the necessity of the right to self defence: ‘Self Defence is No Offence’ remains the slogan.

The Asylum Bill, cut short by the election, will be resurrected by the new Tory Government. It fits neatly into the racist immigration policies being introduced across Fortress Europe, making even political asylum an almost impossible thing to prove. We should prioritise work in the campaign against it, though as last time we will be well outnumbered by the SWP!

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Anti-Racist/Anti-Fascist work The election of another Tory Government means that in the short term it is unlikely that the organised fascist groups will increase dramatically, whereas in the continuing recession racist attack will continue to increase. In that situation it is likely that ARA will be conjuncturally the most useful organisation and its recent convention proved that it organises real forces. But,in the longer term it is possible that fascist or neo-fascist groups will grow and so the ANL may then come into its own. In any case we should continue our line of calling for affiliation to both, especially in the “face of witch hunts against the SWP in for -example NALGO, ‘stress the importance of ‘building a united movement and continue to work in both. In reality, in local areas, we may have to relate to one or the other, or even to AFA. In the face of the SWP’s sectarian and ultra left approach and against the bureaucratic manoeuverings of SA we should try and build a LM orientation at local and national level. Locally we should be making links between the communities where attacks are taking place and Labour Movement organisations including LPs, TUs and Trades Councils. In the longer term despite being a more difficult approach than organising a squad of street fighters, or having paper support from the great and the good, this approach will pay off.

The Anti-Racist/Anti-Fascist Commission should continue its work both at the theoretical and practical levels. We need clearer definitions of what is fascist or neo-fascist and what is a far right, racist grouping, as well as guidelines on No Platform.

Lesbian & Gay Liberation and our Tasks Following the massive movement against Section 28, subsequent Tory attacks on the rights of lesbians and gay men met with much less response. The apparent invulnerability of the Tories combined with the new realist framework of the LM has led to depoliticisation, along with political confusion amongst the activists. Both leftist and rightist forces have emerged in the movements, united by a failure to understand the role of mass action, and by hostility towards, or contempt for, the labour movement.

Throughout this period, under our leadership, LCLGR has maintained a steady line of continuing to work for labour movement solidarity with lesbian and gay struggle, to promote constructive political campaigning in the lesbian and gay movements, including around issues such as Donor Insemination and Paragraph 16, which were completely ignored by the white, male-dominated movement. The success of the Campaign's strategy was illustrated by the inclusion of much of its programme in Labour’s 1992 Manifesto.

After the General Election, with lobbyist strategies rendered patently worthless and ‘Outrage’ media stunts. running out of steam, LCLGR has adopted priorities proposed by our comrades. The Campaign will continue to maintain a vigilant watching brief within the LP, while making new priorities of: a) developing a political role in the TUs in conjunction with existing lesbian and gay TU groups, such as LAGIM in MSF; b) spearheading an anti-racist campaign, the necessity of which has been demonstrated by _the racist tones of the 1992 ‘Europride’ festival: c} promoting campaigning in the community through the Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition which is planning a national demonstration.

In addition we will use LCLGR as the vehicle for promoting debate in the movement around issues such as the arrival of ‘queer politics’, a libertarian current reflective of discontent at the movement’s failures and existing self-appointed leaders.

It is vital to integrate this work with other work of the organisation, such as specific projects around the SM, LP work, anti-racist work, and this integration must be deepened if the organisation is to benefit from the effective work of the fraction. 7. The Attack on Higher Education and our Student Work The Tory Government continue their attacks on Higher Education through underfunding and privatisation. The next phase is a huge increase in student numbers, up to 20% next year in some cases, combined with continued cuts in revenue of 5% each year for the next five years. This revenue has to be made up by the institutions themselves, and is leading to increasing dependence on fee paying students, and money-making ventures. Those unable to increase their income are nearing bankruptcy.

The aim of producing more, cheaper graduates is leading to serious overcrowding, and inadequate resources from lecturers and library space to lavatories. This is combined with an ideological attack on the type of education provided and ‘accelerated’, that is two year degrees, are being piloted. This is a way of undermining the time students spend in developing critical ideas, and instead producing students with crammed ‘knowledge’ without any ability to distance themselves from the material.

The next period will see an increased attack on universities. With the abolition of the binary divide between polytechnics and universities, a unitary national funding body will force universities to compete with the much cheaper polys.

The likelihood of any militant response from lecturers is remote. The defeat in polytechnics Page 24

over the imposition of the new contract has lead to demoralisation and. defeatism along with cynicism with NATFHE. With the abolition of the divide between institutions of HE we should be increasing our argument for a single TU for FE and HE.

Our Student Work Much more likely is a response from students faced with massive overcrowding, lack of basic resources and lack of financial support.

Already students from Oxford Poly have been Sitting in against these conditions.

The organisation must take advantage of the likelihood of increased'student militancy if it is ‘to grow significantly in the next period. The ‘situation students. will find themselves in will force them to take action in the next couple of years and all other currents on the left will take advantage of this. We need to take a longer term discussion of the possibilities and our tactics. With the WM we have a real advantage over other groups and our ability to introduce an international dimension should not be underrated.

At present we have a small, but experienced student commission. The leadership must continue to resource this and make sure that comrades teaching in the area are also used.

In the face of the different fronts of other left currents we have a strategic line of the need for a united left organisation, based on action and class struggle politics. At present this is not in our sights so that student comrades are working in whichever independent left organisation exists in each college.

In the face of Government attacks on the NUS by introducing individual membership, anti-democratic attacks on the union by its own leadership, in trying to close down the December conference and with *O taking them to court we are trying to organise an Oct/Nov conference to take all these things up. But we should also take up the frontal government attacks on the quality and conditions of education. These last are the issues which will mobilise the mass of students in the next few years.

All branches of the organisation must take student work seriously, keep a watching brief on their local institutions of HE and discuss how they can intervene into any militant action which develops. 8. The fight against the New World Order and British imperialism Britain remains still one of the most militarily powerful imperialist states. Its willingness to eagerly share its role in the crushing of the third world was vividly demonstrated by its role in the Gulf war.

In the next period NATO has to redefine its role. The next enemies in the gunsights of this imperialist alliance is the third world; indeed the possible formation of a European strike force outside the control of NATO is also aimed at striking the turbulence in the oppressed countries.

The present state of the economic crisis and decay of world capitalism, and its break-up into competing blocks based on the US, Europe and Japan, inevitably means a renewed upsurge of militarism. It also means, out of the desperation in the semi-colonial and oppressed countries, major revolts against impérialist rule.

Socialists-in Britain have particular responsibilities in campaigning against militarism and imperialism, and of solidarising with all the fighters against the new world order. This means in particular:- @ Solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles, such as those of the Palestinian and Kurdish peoples. @ the fight against a new European strike force ® Solidarity with working class fighters and socialists building a new labour movement in the ex-USSR and eastern Europe.

In the particular conditions of Britain, and our resources, the conditions exist to do serious solidarity work with the Irish national struggle, the Kurdish struggle; and to continue to render what help we can to the building of WOSA in South Africa. , The fiasco of the Earth Summit stressed once. again that part ofthe aggression of imperialism is the destruction of the environment. It highlighted the fact that defence of the ecology involves defence of people directly threatened by environmental destruction; and that no sustainable ecological solutions can be found outside the framework of international planning, and major steps to eliminate poverty in the third world.

The fight against imperialism and in defence of the ecology are directly linked. However, damage to the ecology, especially the destruction of the ozone layer and global warming, pose what is historically a short-term threat of the human habitat and civilisation. The Group will therefore set as an objective in the next period the deepening of its activity on ecological questions, specifically campaigns of solidarity with third world struggles in defence of the environment and campaigns to win the labour movement to the goal of defence of the ecology. The campaign against the third world debt is an example of the kind of campaign we can mount. ; The fading of the weight of the Green Party is directly related to its shift to the right. It is yet to be seen what role it will have in campaigns which challenge the ecological aggression of imperialism.

Britain is no nearer to solving its Irish ‘problem’. However, there is a contradiction Page 25

between the irreconcilability of the nationalist community and the steep decline of the mass struggle. the Republican movement is more and more dominated by the military struggle, while Sipn Fein’s politics have moved to the right.

Nonetheless, the sectarian murder campaign and the provocative actions of the British military continue to generate an intractable hostility of the oppressed Catholic community to British imperialism? And the British state has suffered numerous reverses through the exposure of its judicial frame-ups, and the role of the SAS, MI5 and other. repressive state bodies. | -. The group will continue to campaign for ~ British withdrawal from Ireland, in defence of Irish political prisoners, and victims of legal frame-ups and repression.

It will also actively campaign in the labour movement in support of the struggle for abortion rights, and against state and church - repression, in the 26 counties. 9. Party building The Group requires a renovation, indeed a cultural revolution, inits attitude towards partybuilding. Whereas limited steps have been taken in the last period, especially through increasing the profile of the Group through the newspaper which has led to important results in recruitment; and in launching the periphery organisation; and in holding the annual summer school, these steps are by no means adequate.

In the present political situation with a low level of class struggle, we should. take advantage of the possibility to concentrate more than we normally do on educating ourselves.

The success of the two summer schools shows both the desire and the need to provide education at all levels of the group. As mentioned above women’s liberation will be the main theme of next year’s school. Branches should start to prepare educationals on this topic, as well as both basic education for newer comrades and more advanced education for all comrades on our programme and politics. This will serve to centralise the experience of the group at a time when political activity is both rather disparate and at a low ebb.

The fundamental task of a small organisation is to recruit and get bigger, without which political recomposition of the labour movement is impossible. The following is a synopsis of the steps which must be taken in the next period; the incoming CC is instructed to prepare a document towards the implementation of these tasks:- 1) Branch routines: CC and PC must give a lead to the organisation in organising branch propaganda routines, of paper sales, contact work and public forums. branch officers must be appointed to supervise these functions. A branch which is a centre of discussing ‘united front’ work in the labour movement, but which fails to develop contacts or recruits in operating in a one-sided way. 2) Public events: the incoming CC and PC are instructed to ensure that a weekend national public event is held each year without fail. 3) The incoming CC must ensure that branches have their own programmes of education in addition to national events organised by the Education Cssn. While many branches do have their own educational ‘programmes, others are too weak to ensure it themselves. The CC must discuss with the education cssn how to solve this problem, 4) Finances: the fundraising and merchandising activity of the group is entirely inadequate. The incoming CC is instructed to ensure that there is a functioning fund raising committee at all times, supervising national fund drives and raising money outside normal dues payments and donations. The incoming CC will conduct a review of dues levels. 5) Publications: In the next year the group will commence a programme of pamphlet publication,‘ for which we have all the technical requirements. We are virtually the only left groups that doesn’t do it, due entirely to the neglect of resources for this activity. 6) Students and youth: the long term viability of an organisation depends on the recruitment of young people, whole fundamental political training is by our own tendency.

This of course crucially involves the recruitment of trade unionists, but in the shorter term also of students and youth. The incoming CC must prioritise student work, and is instructed to open a discussion on the CC about youth work.

The functioning of the leadership and centre The financial difficulties of the organisation mean that the centre is inadequately staffed.

This has a major negative impact on the work of the organisation. Whole areas which need full times resources and detailed attention, go unattended. The service provided by the centre to the organisation is thus inadequate.

This raises directly the whole issue of the functioning of the leadership. The size of the CC in relation to the group as a whole precludes extracting CC members form branch and local work; indeed it would be unhealthy to do so. However, a precondition for membership of the PC must be a willingness to prioritise tasks allocated by that body above tasks allocated by branches, orlocal work. This should include a willingness to undertake practical tasks at the centre.

The volunteers who staff the centre have a collective responsibility for the work and leadership of the organisation. Thus the Group has a right to expect stringent norms of work, including regular attendance and normal Page 26

working hours. All volunteers must expect to be allocated work over and above their normal tasks, depending on time and circumstances.

The f/t volunteers also have a collective responsibility to maintain the centre as a working office fit for human habitation. 10. Key priorities An important failure of past perspectives adopted by the organisation has been the failure to prioritise. Saying that everything is a priority is the same as saying nothing is. A group of our type, in the present phase of the class struggle; inevitably. has militants . engaged in a wide range of activities; the task c here is to define those priorities which are the -centralising tasks for the organisation as a whole. these we define as the following:- A) We will continue our fight for a united left, that is to say for a left united in fighting new realism and the bosses’ offensive: Fighting new realism inolves building the broadest possible campaign in defence of the Labour Party/trade union link. Key to this task is the building of the campaign against new management techniques and the anti-union laws, embodied in the SMTUC. It also involves deepening of trade union implantation, and maintaining our entry fraction.

B) We will attempt, through strengthened branch. and leadership organisation and the measures outlined above, to renovate the party functioning of the organisation, towards stepped up recruitment, a bigger public profile and stabilising our finances.

C) The organisation will turn towards increased prioritisation of the national question as a campaigning priority for the organisation as a whole. The corollary of this is specific leadership attention to building the organisation in Scotland. In line with our analysis of the central attack on the working class implied by Maastricht, we will participate in building the broadest possible campaign for a rejection of the treaty. ** D) The organisation will continue to build its anti-racist work, especially on the issues of the new Asylum Bill, racist attacks and black selfdefence, opposition to the fascists and our programme for black liberation.

E) The incoming CC must insure stepped-up attention to renewing our womens liberation work and to developing positive action for women in the organisation.

F) The organisation will devote more attention to the task of renewing itself among young people, and in the short term this means towards national resourcing of our student work.

These priorities already constitute a formidable list. Carrying them through systematically we see the organisation at its next conference politically and organisationally strengthened.

Our Key campaigns 1) The campaign against Maastricht and for a referendum 2) The campaign against state racism — principally through the ARA 3) A united democratic campaign around the union links centrally promoted by the SMTUC and LPS 4) Unshackle the Unions 5) Support and work in Scotland United Page 27

THE NEW POLITICAL SITUATION AND OUR TASKS Introduction This document is a necessary addendum to the document ‘The Next Steps in Party Building’ adopted by the CC and distributed to the organisation in June. The whole political framework of that document Temains correct put since: it was drafted in May, dramatic ‘developments have taken place which require ‘to be integrated into it. (Both the document and the addendum will be put to the vate.) The scale of the changes are such that they are, in our view, better dealt with as an addendum rather than detailed amendments since it allows the key sections affected to be properly refocused.

The sections of the document which place the economic crisis of British capitalism with the general context of the crisis of the system internationally and the crisis of European integration in particular need no revision. Nor do the sections which deal with the national question or conclude that the upshot of the crisis will lead the ruling class in Britain to redoubled their attacks on the working class. The same can be said of the section on the crisis of new realism and the election defeat and the section on the current state of the unions.

The section which is most dated now is the one on The current state of the class struggle’.

This has been superseded by the events following the coal crisis, the recent mass demonstrations, the new round of hospital closures, and the new depths of the Tory crisis over Maastricht and the economy. In the same way the section on key campaigns needs revising to include building support for the NUM and campaigning against London hospital closures. 1. The background to the new Europe-wide crisis is the inability of world capitalism to shake loose from the deepening international recession which developed in 1989-90. This has deepened the contradictions between the main imperialist states in a period when the project of capitalist integration was going though a key stage in the Maastricht process.

With monetary union the cornerstone of the next stage of integration, the disarray of the ERM is a massive blow to the capitalists’ plans.

This situation is worsened for the west European capitalists by the deadlock of the GATT Uruguay round of trade talks which now threatens to produce an open trade war; this could throw the world economy into slump.

In turn this crisis has also been worsened by the ‘no’ vote in the Danish referendum and the very small margin of victory for the ‘yes’ vote in the French referendum. 2. As the newspaper has consistently explained, the Maastricht process means devastation for sections of capital throughout Eirope and huge attacks on the welfare state ‘to reduce state budget deficits to prepare for monetary union. The Bundesbank plays a central role both in subordinating other capital to its domination and in carrying through attacks on German industry, and particularly on the German working class, in order to meet the costs of reunification. These attacks on the working class have had an immediate impact in Greece and Italy with proposals to destroy historic gains of the workers’ movement leading to huge defensive mobilisations of the working class. In Italy and Greece this has involved not just political protests but mass strike action, These have begun to change the character of the class struggle and political mobilisations in Europe in the opposite direction to the racist mobilisations in Germany this summer. The anti-Maastricht fight-back has begun. 3. Black Wednesday and Britain's withdrawal from the ERM have torpedoed a central plank of Tory strategy, namely the ‘Europeanist’ option adopted after the ejection of Thatcher. While torpedoed, this has not yet sunk. Major is continuing the preparations for pushing the Maastricht treaty through parliament, But it has revived the bitter faction fight inside the Tory party, with the Thatcherites on the rampage against the Major-Heseltine leadership. War was declared by Thatcher's key lieutenant Tebbit at the Tory conference. 4. Major’s government continued the savage deflationary policies adopted by Thatcher after the collapse of the Lawson boom in the late 1980s. This is deepening the effect of the world recession on Britain, itself interacting with Britain’s historic economic decline. The consequences of this are devastating for manufacturing capital. The recession is tending towards all-out slump. Real unemployment is more than 4 million and next year will probably be 5 million. The recession and Maastricht have combined to create the biggest governmental crisis of the Tories since their accession to power in 1979. Despite recent statements by Major, it is most unlikely that the Tory government can perform a ‘U-turn’ on the economy by a substantial reflation, outside of an upturn in the world economy. While Japan is embarking on a major reflationary Keynesian project, it is at least doubtful whether this could pull the world economy out of recession. The most like- Page 28

ly development then is that the British economy will fall further into recession, with inflation rising because of the devaluation. of the pound. The resulting cuts and attempts at wage fregzes are potentially disastrous for working class living standards.

While the Tory claim that it is possible to finance a programme of capital works from private sources borders on fantasy, socialists of course are in favour of a reflation of the economy. We should demand a massive programme of public works financed not from increased VAT or income tax but from massive taxation of the rich and cuts,in arms spending. ., §. The gonsequences of Maastricht for the British economy and the welfare state are hor- “rendous. This year the public sector borrowing - requirement is £33 billion (compared with £18 billion last year), next year it will be more than £40 billion. However, on a GDP of around £500 billion according to the Maastricht rules it cannot be more than £15 billion. With the present level of unemployment, this means devastating cutbacks in social security spending, a huge attack on claimants and all on state -benefits, a wage freeze in the public sector, massive cutbacks in every aspect of government spending. This is forced on the Tories by adherence to Maastricht; for the public sector in particular is means devastation. 6. The one alleviating factor in the situation for the Tories has been the pathetic response of Labour and TUC leaders. In this political crisis Labour could already have created desperation and near-collapse by demanding a referendum on Maastricht, stating their intention to vote against the Maastricht Bill, and demanding a general election. Meanwhile the TUC has responded to the new sharpening of class struggle by calling protest actions while deepening its class collaborationist line. Its Day of National recovery on 9 December represents a classically reactionary popular frontist approach, highlighting a national conference including church and business leaders, alongside workplace meetings around the country involving bureaucrats and bosses in the quest for ‘partnership’ for the expansion of each firm!

However, the mass mobilisation in defence of the mining community can potentially change this situation. The resurgence of political activity around the miners and the improved morale as workers see the obvious political weakness of the government creates more favourable conditions to confront this approach within each union and press for a perspective of linking up the various struggles into a common, generalised assault on this government.

The orientation of socialists in this crisis must start with the demand that the Labour and TUC leaders mobilise to kick out the Tories. In building this we call for a one-day general strike.

The timid bleatings of the new realists that this would ‘break the law’ can be tackled by insisting that every. section of workers with a claim or grievance outstanding should take action at once, preventing the employers picking off workers section by section; we will also argue for solidarity action with the miners and other sections under attack.

Because of the way the TUC.and Labour Party have advanced a programme of national recovery on the basis of ‘social partnership’ and in alliance with dissident Tories, there should easily be a resurgence of demands for import controls, particularly given the state of the GATT talks, and there are already demands to ‘support British miners’ which racists and fascists could latch on to. We have to argue strongly against such ideas and for an internationalist working class answer to the crisis. 7. The huge demonstrations in support of the miners and against the Tories have marked the spectacular re-emergence of the trade unions onto the political scene. Politically the demonstrations have comprised the unions, the Labour Party and the far left. The 25 October demonstration witnessed the largest mobilisation of Labour Party branches since the CND demonstrations in the early 1980s.

At the same time the political leadership which has ernerged to head the mobilisations is precisely the old Bennite leadership, in particular {of course) Scargill, Benn and Skinner.

This dynamic has for the moment marginalised and relativised Livingstone and the ‘Socialist Forum project. The attempt to straddle the soft and ‘hard left will only have purchase ina period in a period of extreme ebb in the class struggle. Thus the future of the Livingstonetype project depends.on whether the mobilization against the Tories is sustained and turns into a new phase in the class struggle.

However, in a period of political polarisation and rising class confidence we can predict that this will feed into the Labour Party itself. A key task of socialists is to take the struggle of the miners, the hospital workers and other workers in struggle into the Labour Party to raise the demand that the Labour leadership backs the workers fightback and prepares to kick out the Tories. We should seek to build support at the base of the Labour Party for all workers in struggle, and support for a campaign to defeat the Maastricht treaty, as a key mechanism for rebuilding the left. In fighting to utilise the present crisis to regenerate and reorganise the Labour left, socialists will orientate to the building of the Socialist Campaign group network which came out of the Leeds conference, and is crystallising into the key alliance of the Labour left. 8. Labour movement mobilisation against the Tories and in defence of the miners has so far been limited to mass political protest action.

While this is creating a new mood, and regenerating confidence, the key contrast with the 1970s is the lack of industrial strike action.

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The anti-union laws have made this much more difficult. The key contradiction the workers movement faces is between the development of a new mood, a new preparedness to take mass action to confront the Tories, and the continuing domination of the labour movement by new realism, holding the movement back to protest action and arguing that strike action will alienate ‘public opinion’.

While in the medium term only mobilisations of the class will create the basis for throwing off the new realist shackles, the historically low level of strike.action and new realist sabotage remain massive obstacles to a resolution of the Crisis in the interests of the working class. “.. However mass industrial action to defeat the Tory attacks remains the central requirement in the situation. There are now only the first inklings that ‘industrial action against redundancies may be beginning, with for example strike action throughout the summer by NALGO local government workers, the occupation of the Lyons Maid plant in Kirkby, votes in Coventry factories for strike action, and a new ballot on the Tube against announced redundancies and rationalisation.

In addition, the limited strike action by power and construction workers, and by teachers, to join the miners demonstration on 21 October was a good sign, especially as the law was certainly broken to carry out this strike action. This creates a new situation to demand action to break the union laws, and that Labour pledges to repeal the laws on secondary picketing.

Socialists must demand: strikes, occupations and work-ins to defeat redundancies.

They must begin to popularise a working class alternative to the flood of redundancies: worksharing with no loss of pay, open the books! 9.Tory plans to close 10 London hospitals and two major hospitals in Birmingham are just the tip of the NHS crisis. The Thatcherite ‘internal market’ has triggered a fresh round of cuts and closures affecting almost every health authority — not only in England and Wales, but in Scotland the Six Counties.

Already there are signs that big campaigns can be built in defence of the four London teaching hospitals and six other hospitals threatened with closure under the Tomlinson report Over 20,000 NHS jobs are under immediate threat in London, in a plan which would close over 4,000 beds treating 200,00 inpatients a year. More than half the jobs threatened are nursing staff, 80 per cent women.

Trade union support for the campaign in growing, but a political campaign is needed in the Labour Party to force NHS spokesperson David Blunkett to drop conditional support for closures and declare unequivocal opposition to Tomlinson. There is huge potential for a properly resourced campaign that would denounce the wretched market system that is bankrupting hospitals around the country.

This dramatises the overall attack on the public sector and immediately involves of course the privatisation of BR and the Royal Mail. The objective basis exists for the creation of a public sector alliance to resist the Tory attacks. Socialists must intervene to demand a public sector alliance based on mass industrial action. At the same time socialists will push forward the demand for united action in thé public sector dnd beyond to defeat any wage freeze. 10. At the time of writing it is difficult to foresee the twists and turns that the present crisis will take; but we can predict that it will not easily be resolved or finished. The general orientation towards mass action to finish off the Tories must be topped off with the demand for the preparation of a general strike to kick out the Tories and the demand for a Labour government. The preparation for class-wide action to defeat the Tories must start with the immediate demand for a one-day general strike against Tory attacks. The best way of creating a focus for this is to campaign to turn 9 December from a day of class collaboration to one of class resistance.

In this situation of intense governmental crisis socialists, while demanding a Labour government, must also step up their propaganda on a political programme to solve the crisis in the interests of the working class.

The intense crisis of bdurgeois leadership has some parallels with that in 1931. If the Tories suffer devastating defeats, for example over Maastricht, the danger opens up of calls for a national government to deal with the emergency. Socialists will propagandise against the danger of a national government, in defence of class independence and for a Labour government. 11. The economic and state budget crisis will be translated into an attempt to impose a pay semi-freeze in the public sector, at the same time as putting up taxes through a massive hike in VAT at the next budget. The effects of the devaluation of the pound mean that inflation will begin to rise again. The government will attempt to impose pay increases below the rate of inflation; and this will be matched by employers in the private sector, as for example we have already seen in the six-month pay freeze at Rover. Socialists must demand: no wage freeze, strike action to defend workers living standards, cost-of-living indexation of pay increases, 12. The immediate task of the class and its vanguard is mobilisation in defense of the miners. While the government is in difficulty with its whole closure programme, nonetheless it is immediately preparing for the shutting down of the 10 doomed pits. Industrial action Page 30

by the miners, including occupation of any mines immediately faced with closure, is a vital part of galvanising class-wide action to save the industry.

Socialists must be at the forefront of building support groups to defend the miners in every area.-In this situation the tasks of the miners support groups will differ from that during the miners strike, being concentrated not on material support but on the function of building political support for thé miners struggle. We argue for support groups to link up with other sections in’ struggle, e.g., local government workers, hospital workers, Burnsalls, etc., and _to argue for days of Action like that being called . by the North West TUC for 17 November.

Socialists will support the National Miners Support Committee initiated by the Bennite leadership through the Campaign Group. We will campaign for a national conference of support groups to be held. 13. Defence of the public sector and the building of mass industrial action must now become the central focus of the Socialist Movement Trade Union Committee. Socialists will work towards the building in the new year of a conference of the SMTUC to bring together workers in struggle in defence of the public sector. The extent to which the Socialist Movement itself in this period can survive will depend on its ability to situate itself firmly in the perspective of the fight to bring down the Tory government, in support of mass workers mobilisations and (much more problematically) in the fight against Maastricht. This poses frontally the question of whether the SM can base itself on a class struggle perspective or remain limited to the ‘networking’ ideas of the Socialist Society. While Benn remains linked to the SM, it is a matter of fact that the initiatives from the Bennites on the present crisis have come through the Campaign Group and not the SM, a reflection (at least in part) of the lack of a class struggle orientation and clear political cutting edge imposed on the SM by Wainwrightism. 14. Defence of the miners must now be taken by socialists into the movements of the oppressed which were mobilised during the miners’ strike. This must be based on the political understanding that the attack by the government on the public sector constitutes a huge attack on the specially oppressed, and particularly women. Immediately and correctly Women for Socialism and LCLGR have turned towards support for the miners.

But this support must also be extended to the NHS struggles. The NHS is the biggest employer of women in the country, and tens of thousands of women’s jobs are under threat as a result of the market reforms. Women are also the main victims of the NHS cuts and of the community care reforms which will axe jobs, remove services from older women, and force millions of adult women at home to act as unpaid carers for elderly adults. 15. To top off the Tory attacks, at the same time as it brings forward its attack on the miners and the public sector, the government ‘is now again bringing forward a re-vamped and utterly vicious Asylum Bill. This is linked to new proposals from the EC ministers to tighten up the definition of a refugee to exclude, for example, those fleeing from civil wars. For socialists campaigning against the Asylum Bill is a crucial part of creating unity of the class in the fight against Tory attacks.

If the anti-Tory mobilisation is sustained, then we can predict that this will marginalise the fascists; however a huge crisis of bourgeois leadership, together with a massively rightwing Labour leadership, can create a space for the fascists to intervene. We can be sure, for example that the fascists will demagogically ‘support’ the miners. Thus our anti-fascist work in this period must be sustained. 16. The Tory crisis and the anti-government mobilisations create a new opportunity for bringing the national struggle in the British state, in particular in Scotland, to the fore. The demonstrations immediately after the general election and the formation of Scotland United have not been sustained into mass mobilisations for a Scottish parliament. Our line should be that this government, now rejected by the overwhelming majority of the British people, has. now absolutely nil legitimacy in Scotland; the leadership of Scotland United should bring forward plans for a referefidum and mobilisations for a Scottish Assembly with full powers.

At the same time we will argue for a social solution in Scotland, pointing out that selfdetermination alone will not provide the answer. 17, The depression and government deflationary policies have a devastating effect on youth in general and students in particular.

Paradoxically, the government has decided upon a giant extension of higher education, bringing more than 100,000 extra young people into universities, to keep them from the unemployment registers and as a mechanism of social control. This will create a highly volatile situation in an ever-more massive and impoverished higher education sector, with pitiful facilities, over-crowded lecture theatres, and a student housing crisis. This is bound to lead to a new politicisation of universities.

While maintaining our labour movement orientation, it is vital that we intervene in the politicisation of the students to reinforce our ranks. We shall ignore this sector at our peril; an explosion there, a new round of mobilisation as occurred late last year and early this year, will just reinforce all our competitors unless the incoming leadership ensures the continuation of Liberation Now! and the reinforcement of our work.

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18. The new political situation of course creates a stepped-up opportunity for building the organisation. It precisely confirms that the orientation to the labour movement, and in particular in relation to entry, set out in the original text was correct.

The massive labour movement mobilisation, the propelling of the Bennite leadership to the fore, the Labour Party turnout on the demonstrations makes clear that now is not the time to consider ‘the proclamation of a public organisation. On the contrary, the turn in our orientation that this would imply would be a diversion from the tasks outlined above. | Neither is there any dynamic. in the situation -,, towards the creation of a new mass party of * labour; on the contrary a mass mobilisation of the class strikes against the logic of new realism, and if sustained, will impact in a strengthening of the left in every section of the workers’ movement. 19. However, this is precisely the time to up the profile of the organisation and seize the opportunities for party-building. All previous experience of British far left organisations (for example, variously the IMG and the Militant) show that a party-building profile is primarily a function NOT of whether a formal public organisation exists, but of political line and a practical orientation to making propaganda and recruiting as an integral part of our intervention in the mass movement; and a proper conception and understanding of what a Leninist organisation is. This involves sharply tightening up the norms of functioning. Key aspects of propaganda and party-building in this period must include:

A) Our main public face is the newspaper. We have to seize all the opportunities for steppedup sales of the newspaper, not just at demonstrations and public events, but through making sales of the newspaper a regular part of branch routine. Through sales and fund drives we must urgently generate additional resources for the paper, which is barely surviving on inadequate staffing and a shoe-string budget.

More political and organisational resources are badly needed to promote sales, distribution, collection of money and other basic administrative tasks.

B) We need a thorough-going redefinition of the role of the branches. Too often, especially in London, the branches’ role is de-prioritised because of the political and geographical dispersal of the intervention of our comrades in the mass movement. This can only be resolved politically, not by trying to administratively turn every political intervention through the branches — impossible in London ~ but by making the branches centres of political discussion, education and recruitment. Every branch meeting must have a political discussion or educational, as a norm one to which close contacts can be invited. This does not mean that branch meetings should not organise the political work of their members, but that such discussions should be better prepared, in most cases by Branch Committees and presented in a more political way.

Branches should organise forums which can involve a wider layer of our periphery and where possible public meetings to engage in debate with the rest of the left.

Upping the political level of the organisation cannot be left to an annual school or pre-conference discussion. It has to start with the “political life of the branches; and the branches ' must have a genuine political and educational role which will serve as a motivation for comrades to attend and bring contacts. To push through this reorientation of the branches the leadership needs to revive the national meetings of branch organisers and other officers.

C) As explained above, the new stage of the crisis also involves a major attack on students and youth. The labour movement orientation of our organisation is of course one of our strengths; however, it is vital that in the next period the organisation is reinforced by a new layer of young people. The incoming leadership must allocate sufficient resources to strengthening what is a newly emerging student and youth leadership in the organisation; this can make vital gains for‘us. We should aim to have a delegation of 50-60 people at next year’s youth camp, including a minimum of 30-40 people under the age of 30.

D) The lack of (and weakness of} public events hamstrings our attempts to bring new people into the group. The incoming leadership must push forward the organisation of an at least one-day event in the late winter/early spring.

E) Finally, all our work in the last period has been seriously affected by the lack of finances which impacts on the full-time resources which are totally inadequate to sustain the organisation’s needs. The completion of the fund drive is vital, but the structural problem will be solved by recruitment and holding larger and more successful public events.

F) In the period which we are entering, if the organisation is to respond to events and not be knocked sideways by them, we need a bigger full-time staff. There is no way out of this conundrum; dissatisfaction in the organisation with the ‘performance’ of the centre is often based on complete illusions about the resources which we actually have. But at the same time there has to be a redefinition of the role of the leadership, starting with the Central Committee. The CC has to be a collective leadership, not a two-monthly assembly which has moreor-less interesting discussions. That means that the CC has to make the major decisions about our work; and then it has to go out and fight to mobilise the organisation and the resources to carry out those decisions.

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WOMEN’S PERSPECTIVES Introduction This document attempts to describe and analyse, in outline, the current position for women in Britain in order to provide the foundation for a discussion on tasks and perspectives for the Group’s "Women’s Liberation Work". The focus is, therefore, not on the situation as a static phenomenon, but on the dynamics within it — on the trends that have emerged over the last ‘period and:which can be expected to continue and develop. The document is divided into three sections — the ruling class project; the response of the women’s movement; and the tasks that follow. 1. The ruling class project -~ the intensified exploitation of women at home and work.

The two central elements of the ruling class project for women have clearly emerged during thirteen years of Tory rule. They are the deepening exploitation of women as cheap and flexible waged labour and the buttressing of the nuclear family with its increasing reliance on women’s unpaid work within it. The causes of both are complex and interconnected, but the economic crisis, the social situation and the political priorities that underlie them have not fundamentally altered, making a change in direction unlikely in the short to medium term.

It must, however, be said at the outset that these elements have sometimes come into conflict, with the bourgeoisie divided as to which should take precedence. These divisions have been reflected at a parliamentary level in the Conservative Party.

Contrary to the traditional understanding of women as a reserve army of labour, women have not born the numerical brunt of redundancies or job losses in recent or current recessions. Instead there has been a steady increase in the numbers and proportion of women in the waged workforce over the last period - between 1971 and 1984 the percentage of women in the labour force rose from 33% to 45% . It is atrend that continues today, given impetus by two, interwoven factors. .

In the process of the demolition of British heavy industry and the relative expansion of the service sector, traditionally male areas of employment have been destroyed while traditionally female sectors of employment have experienced some growth. The sexual segregation of the workforce has demonstrated its enduring strength and thus operated in favour of woinen’s increased participation in the labour force, as has systematic de-skilling. In addition, ongoing demographic changes have also drawn women into employment. The second, and perhaps more significant, reason behind the expansion of the number of women in waged work is the fact that their entry into the labour force is mediated by their place in society and, in particular, their place in the nuclear family. Women are cheap - the average female wage has declined compared to the average male wage over the last decade, particularly acutely in the area of part-time work. It currently lies at about 66% (69% for full time employment, 59% for part time) having risen to over 70% following a series of struggles in the wake of the Equal Pay Act. And, increasingly importantly, women are flexible — willing or compelled to work irregular hours, part-time, short time or as part of a rapidly expanding population. of home workers. Both of these factors are very attractive to employers, with the added bonus of the traditional lack of unionisation among many sectors of the female labour force and the denial of even minimal legal protection to parttime, temporary and home werkers.

The efforts of the bourgeoisie to claw their way out of crisis have involved both a frontal assault on the working class and a more subtle restructuring of working practices and the composition of the waged* labour force itself.

There has been a shift from high-wage, secure employment to ill-paid casualised work. Both aim to increase profits at the expense of the workers and women workers in particular have played, and will continue to play, an essential role in the latter process. A fact which is also linked to the intensified exploitation of men in employment who are working increasing amounts of overtime which provides a tension in the family counteracted by women working flexible paid hours and extra unpaid hours in the home to compensate. Many employers would now rather employ women than men, and women are forced by economic necessity and compelied by their family responsibilities alongside the lack of union organisation and militancy to accept employment on the bosses terms.

This phenomenon has thrown down a gauntlet to the labour movement, which it has so far largely side-stepped. Unions have launched recruitment drives aimed at women, in part, especially more recently, in an attempt to staunch a haemorrhaging of members, and issues of women’s rights at work, eg. minimum wage, sexual harassment, rights for part-time workers, have been pushed onto the agenda.

These are both positive moves, driven by the Page 33

twin motors of pressure from women within the unions informed, in however indirect a fashion, by feminism and the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, and by the survival instincts of the union leaderships. This has also impacted on male workers’ attitudes to women in employment. Overall it is an acceleration and evolution of existing trends. After the Second World War, women’s integral position in the workforce was only partially reversed, particularly in the key industrial sectors where male chauvinism remained strong. A flood of women into the.general workforce followed during the post-war boom in the fifties and sixties, along- _ Side immigrant labour. This ‘acted to suppress “the labour market for the capitalists and kep wage levels relatively stable for a period. However, women’s work, even though low paid, rapidly became transformed from ‘pin money’ (never universal anyway), into an essential component of the family income, which it remains today. This is an overall change from before the war when this situation affected a small layer offamilies. Shifts resulted in the consciousness of sections of the male workforce, given added impetus by the struggles of the women's liberation movement. The view of women’s labour as cheap competition for men’s jobs and as a downward pressure on wages, was increasingly rejected, as families often relied on two wages, in favour of support for women’s demands for equal pay etc.

Two additional features of these shifting patterns of employment must also be sketched in to complete this brief overview. One is that the majority of the women currently entering the workforce are white, married women or women living within some kind of family context.

Black women, and "single" women {ie women not economically linked to a man) have formed an important part of the labour market for many decades, leading the expanding number of women workers since the war. Thus there is a change in the composition of the female workforce as well as ofthe workforce as a whole.

The second is that some women have done very well for themselves in the eighties. These are women at the top end of the scale, and more within the private sector than public sector where conditions of employment have been continuously eroded.where salary differentials have decreased, promotion prospects improved and combining career and motherhood has become both more acceptable and more possible as private companies open workplace creches while local authorities close nurseries through lack of funds. Of course, even the privileged few are discriminated against, but the fact that the gulf between rich and poor has widened under the Tories is not unaffected by divisions of gender.

The second element of the ruling class project for women - the offensive on the family - came explicitly into the foreground at the start of Thatcher's third term. A range of factors, often irrevocably intertwined, conspired to push the issue up the political agenda. At the fundamental level the mass integration of women into the workforce and: the resultant moves towards their economic independence both shifted the contours of the household directly, and, underlay the explosion of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s, with its ideological attacks on the family. The erosion of ‘family values’ was expedited, from a different perspective, by the growth of the lesbian and gay liberation movement. In the late seventies, further economic pressure came to bear on the family unit, from recession and the governments attacks on the living standards of the working class. The dismantling of the welfare state both relied on the family to pick up the pieces and strengthened the bonds of dependency upon which it rests. The strain on the fabric of society caused by poverty and demoralisation increased. the need for the family to act as a unit of social control, a problem made more acute by the existence of a layer of radicalised young people in YCND, the student movement etc. And finally, the reasserting and marketing of Victorian Values, the;reactionary social package offered by the Tories centrally involved the family, alongside burgeoning jingoism, chauvinism and authoritarianism.

Thus the long term and immediate interests of the bourgeoisie clearly and strongly con- ‘verged, pointing to the necessity of bolstering the nuclear family. The government took up the task with gusto. A series of legislative measures ~ from Section 28 of the Local Government Act to the abolition of benefits for 16-19 year olds; from the Housing Acts to student loans and many, many in between -— all contained an element aimed at economically and/or ideologically strengthening the family. This was supported by an unrelenting barrage of propaganda, most obviously the government campaign around AIDS, but also including high profile speeches from ministers, policemen and bishops.

The impact on women was no less inevitable for being left largely unstated and implicit. As the rock on which the nuclear family rests, women have felt the full force of the shift of the burden of caring for the sick and elderly from the public to the private sector. They have been left to try and hold the situation together under the pressures of redundancy, poll tax and dwindling state support. Women’s unpaid work has been increasingly exploited both economically and ideologically. The double day is almost universal and the statistics demonstrate the contrast between women’s increasing role Page 34

in the workforce and men’s unchanging role in the household. The rise in the average amount of time spent by men on domestic tasks per week over the last decade is measured in minutes. Particular groups of women have been atthe sharp end of this offensive - lesbians have been- targeted by Section 28 and the Embryology Act.as well as being involved in a series of highly publicised custody and fostering "scandals"; and both young women and women with disabilities have had their choices heavily circumscribed by deepening economic and logistical dependency on their families. . The tightening of the immigration laws and _,Tegulations, alongside the continued criminali- “sation of the black communities in the British state are clear exceptions to this drive to reinforce the bonds of the family. However, even these policies do not simply undermine the nuclear unit. State racism is one of the pressures on the black communities which fuels religious fundamentalism; which has strong, reactionary views on women and the family.

For example, immigration law and policy try to force the extended families of those coming from South Asia into the nuclear model.

The conflict between the two elements of the ruling class project were apparent from the outset..On the one hand the contingencies of the capitalist crisis created a momentum pulling women into the workforce, on the other hand this tended to undermine women’s role as full-time workers and carers in the family.

For the-more pragmatic sections of the bourgeoisie,- for whom the short term economic advantages of employing women is the overriding concern, the two factors were reconcilable to the extent that the parameters of women’s waged work are determined by their role in the family. Part-time and flexible working patterns, backed up with pro-family measures was a mutually beneficial compromise, squeezing women from both directions. For the far-right, this situation is not a stable one, but one that contains dangerous dynamics. They take a more long-term view, judging the strength of the nuclear family to be the paramount consideration.

This division has been most clearly manifested in debates about reproductive rights.

For the pragmatists some control of women’s fertility is necessary (but not by women themselves), to the far-right it is anathema. The splits on the Alton Bill and the abortion amendments to the Embryology Act, a discussion that was further complicated by the contradictory implications of embrys research and new reproductive technologies, revealed this underlying conflict as well as the way in which the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s has been able to shift the framework of the debate and the value of specific campaigns. However, the perspectives converge on, for example, the questions of access to donor insemination and the “promotion of homosexuality".

Major is firmly situated in the pragmatist camp, though a continued offensive on many other aspects of the family can be expected.

There is also a threat posed by the narrowness of his majority-which could give the hardliners a lever, if and when the anti-abortionists recover from the severe blow dealt to them by the defeat of their amendments around the Embryology Act, or another reactionary imperative -éccurs to them.

Several programmatic points are raised by the shift in social and economic patterns which demand discussion, even if to resolve them at this point would be premature. Firstly, the traditional concept of women as a reserve army of labour must be reinterpreted and reformulated as a result of developments over the recent period in Britain and across the imperialist world. It clearly retains its relevance for the situation in which it originated - for a nation at war which drafts women into the workforce for the duration and then rudely expels them back into domesticity when the men return. However, the orthodox generalisation from this has been to project the migration of women from the labour force in times of economic crisis, when, in fact, women have proved ta be a "reserve army of labour’ to be ‘drafted into the workforce in recession, on terms dictated by their gender.

In late capitalism the ifitegration of women into the labour force has massively increased both in size and scope, although déep inequality continues. The greater exploitation of labour (despite the actual increase in living standards of the masses during the post war boom) has been partly facilitated by the exploitation of female labour which is now essential to capitalist accumulation (as well as essential to the reproduction of labour power}. The wage labour of women is also essential to the family income. These factors represent a major structural change in late capitalism and have gradually eliminated women from the traditional reserve army of labour. These changes also lay the material conditions for the future liberation of women.

Secondly, the idea that women’s incorporation into the waged workforce would automatically bring their liberation has been more and more conclusively rebutted. Though it has been an essential factor in the advances that have been made. The articulation of women’s posi- Lor, BL Berek gaa her lying at the heart of v women’s oppression, it is only distorted by reductionist approaches. Also to be rejected is the idea, favoured by eurocommunists and assorted other revisionists, that the feminisation of the workforce spells the end,

or at least the diminution of the working class.

The working class has never been restricted to men who work in heavy industry (and perhaps their wives).and such an understanding is both profoundly un-Marxist and sexist.

Lastly, the whole question of the family in crisis-ridden capitalism merits deeper scrutiny.

Whilst prophesies of its imminent demise are wildly exaggerated, and family ideology remains crushingly powerful, the realities of peopie’s living situatiors have changed over recent years. A shift given impetus both by people’s choices and by material necessity.

Families are ruptured by poverty and homelessness, and the new choices which women - thay, and do, maké-to divorce, to have children without marrying etc — do not confront the nuclear family head’ on, but slip, around the side. This is particularly true if the statistics are taken in the context of increasing rates of remarriage and the fact that the rise in “illegitimate" births (now i in 4) has been matched by a rise in the registration of fathers - where illegitimacy once meant unmarried mothers it now signifies unmarried families. Lesbians do remain incompatible with the nuclear family, but political pressures have been at work here too, with the libertarian morass of "queer politics" and the focus on gay marriage. The contours of the nuclear family are being subily altered, and its ideological periphery eradicated and recreated, but the core remains untouched. No successor to the nuclear family is emerging, just a widening gulf between the ideals and reality of people's lives. 2. The response of the women’s movement - one step beyond fragmentation.

The recent period has witnessed the continued fragmentation of the women’s movement, both at an ideological and organisational level.

The shared conception of liberation which was the theoretical foundation and strength of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s despite the deep divisions over strategy has all but vanished, replaced by a residual, though wider, belief in rights and equality. There is no longer anything which can, in any form, be described as the heir of the women’s liberation movement. The fragments are too dispersed, too diverse and too limited in size and outlook to lay claim to that title, either singly or collectively.

The principle of women’s self-organisation has also been eroded. The argument for autonomy has become harder, not easier, in many places. The fictions of the "new man" and the "crisis of masculinity" both reflect and contribute to this weakening. In the labour movement this trend has been expressed in a shift from self-organisation to proportionality. Quotas are counterposed to women’s groups thus rendering them unaccountable and often powerless.

This continued disintegration is linked both to the advance of right wing parties and politics over recent years, together with the buckling of many radical and left wing forces under the pressure, and the success and failures of the women’s liberation movement itself. The Tory offensive, the collapse into new realism, and the revisionist project of the Marxism Today types have all played their part. the partial victory of the women’s movement has created a post-femihist perspective, both explicit and implicit. _ The positive assumption of the right to equality among young women, for example, is combined with a demobilising assumption that it already exists.

The ideological fragmentation has also accelerated against this background. The eurocommunist current that had always existed in the movement, however muted, strengthened and contributed to new realism. Radical feminism has, except for some small pockets of lesbian separatism, lost its radical edge. The rhetoric often remains, but it covers reformism and sometimes simple reaction. Even the separatist enclaves have gone further down the road of censorship, dubious alliances and sexual authoritarianism. Spiritualism and earth mothers | are on the rise. We should openly acknowledge our debt to radical feminism — its strength lay in its powerful description of the reality of women’s lives, the actuality of women’s oppression, not in its flawed analysis cf the causes of or solution to the problems — but also understand where it has ended up.

The socialist feminist current of the women’s movement initially survived much better.

Women were active in their unions and increasingly involved in the Labour Party. Bennism, CND and municipal socialism with its attention to equal opportunities ali played their part as the Labour Women’s Organisation took off in an exciting and radical direction. Women’s sections grew in size and activity and women’s conference consistently adopted positions to the left of the leadership and began to fight for its autonomy. But, though not the first left wing aberration to receive Kinnock’s attention as the new realist project gathered momentum, the women’s organisation did not escape, and defeats and demoralisation took its toll on activists. Also, the partial victories of the women’s movement led to a layer of activists become “professional feminists” or a “femocracy", linked often with the labour movement and local government. Women’s issues have been pushed onto the agenda, but have attracted a bureaucracy to keep them under control. The existence of such a layer is in a sense a step forward in what it represents and in providing Page 36

a possible avenue for positive change, but it is also a brake on progress.

Overall feminist theory disassociated itself from activism, becoming the province of academics, many of whom are moving towards theories ‘Of difference and post-modernism.

That-vital link between programme and practice has become so attenuated as to be almost invisible. The lack of interaction has been debilitating to both sides of the theory/practice equation, and makes these small islands where some dialogue still occurs ~ Women for Socialism, Women.Against Fundamentalism — more valuable for their rarity. While women’s groups and campaigning organisations have foun- _,dered, women’s studies and the feminist acade- ‘ “my have grown dramatically in size and stature. .

Groups have soldiered on, focusing around specific issues or broad areas. A series of defensive struggles have been fought with varying success — around the Alton Bill, the Embryology Act, Gillick ete — but the constituency which is mobilised seems to be dwindling in size rather than growing, despite increased support from union bureaucracies, and a broad, diffuse support and assumption of women’s right to equality. Some gains have been registered ~ black. women’s self-organisation is stronger and more assertive ~ propelling issues of race and international solidarity onto the feminist agenda. And the impetus given by the women’s liberation movement to ideas of legal equality have finally percolated through to that most conservative layer of the British state - the judiciary — rape in marriage has recently been given a legal existence, and with the added momentum of the campaign and liberal outcry around Sara Thornton, a way round the sexism of the law regarding manslaughter is being found. 3. Tasks — last but not least. itis important to approach the Group’s tasks with realism. Our resources are limited and overstretched. The phrase "women’s liberation work" is in a sense an anachronism. We are still determinedly working for women’s liberation and continue to assert its relevance and necessity, but the vehicle is no longer a collective movement offering a central project but an array of fragments, situated firmly within a defensive and/or rights perspective. Often we are simply fighting for a feminist perspective within a larger, male dominated organisation.

These disparate areas of activity must be brought within a common organisational framework, not in the over-ambitious and thus largely fictitious way of the recent past, but in a limited but achievable manner. Comrades should be clearly assigned to priority areas of work, lines of communication and responsibility must be created.

In such a situation, education and propaganda take on a more important and specific role.

They must provide a framework in which our weakened and dispersed activity operates, and ensure that the “liberation” does not evaporate from our women’s work altogether. In addition, particular attention must be paid to the relationship between national projects, and local situations and work, between the leadership and the branches, to prevent the separation that has occurred in much of the movement being mirrored and magnified within our or- Banisation.

The primary task, on which other work must be founded, is the re-establishment of a women’s commission and functioning fraction.

Essential to this is the assignment of women to the bodies and work as a priority, not just alongside many other responsibilities. This does not remove the need to make discussion of women’s liberation and our work in this area a more central part of the functioning of the leadership as a whole. Indeed, more attention must be paid to the conscious integration of women's liberation perspectives into all areas of work.

The following is therefore predicated on such internal organisation, and is an outline of tasks. The detail must be filled in by discussion with the women involved in the different areas of work. Also, specific campaigns may arise, whether around reproductive rights, women and the law or whatever, and we must be able ‘to respond quickly, both 6n the ground and in the press. It is essential that the organisation continues to actively build and continue to intervene into even fragments of fragments, or we too will contribute to the separation of theory and practice and the further weakening of feminism. But a shift in emphasis is inevitable.

Education and propaganda This area is a key priority for the new women’s commission in liason with the Education Commission. This includes a systematic approach to the internal education of the organisation on women’s liberation, currently in an uneven state, both disoriented and made more important by the collapse of the movement. The next Summer School should be an effective focus for this process. Externally, the production of a pamphlet on women’s liberation setting out our understanding of women’s oppression and the strategy for liberation would be an enormous step forward. In addition, the paper, has to play a more consistent role in the building and publicising of our perspective.. , NAC and Irish Solidarity NAC is an important surviving and thriving organisation, key to continued work around abortion and other reproductive rights and an obvious focus for future campaigns. We should Page 37

attempt to regularise our involvement in the campaign. Comrades should be members of NAC, and should try and get union branches, CLPs, student unions, etc., to affiliate. In addition a comyade should be assigned to liaison with NAC, supported by general mobilisations for the AGM and other events. Solidarity with Irish women over abortion must also be a central part of our work. We aim to organise a tour on the question, in liason with NAC and concentrating on colleges. Ii general this area of work is of particular importance in the student movement.

Women for Socialism | .. Women for Socialism remains a central pro- _ ject for the organisation. It may be the remnant of a fragment, weakened by the collapse of its base in the Labour Women’s Organisation and unfocussed hyperactivity, but is avaluable one.

The attempt to rebuild a socialist feminist current, linking activists in different areas of work and providing a forum for theoretical discussion is a vital one which has continued to gather around itself an important core of activists. It is a part of our perspectives surrounding the socialist movement and the regroupment of the left.

However, it cannot be a centralising project, at least at its current stage. It is too weak and too London centred. Several comrades should be specifically assigned to the work with a more general mobilisation for AGMs etc, and it should be used generally to both take ideas and campaigns from and into. Comrades involved in the work should lead a specific tasks discussion for WfS, as an organisation that clearly needs both a clearer focus and a higher profile.

Anti-racist and anti-fascist work Within the context of our overall perspectives for these areas of work it is important that issues of gender and areas of importance to women are taken up. This operates on a number of different levels - women are particularly affected by the tightening of immigration rules, which is focussed on by the Asylum Bill returning to parliament soon, and also the criminalisation of the black communities. A number of questions are also raised by issues of fundamentalism and the response to that on the left and in British society more widely — some of which have led to confusion in the past eg around grant aided Islamic schools, and the veil incident in France. We need to have a clear perspective on these issues, looking at the intersections of gender and race in more depth than up till now.

ARA has a women’s group which needs some participation and a more consistent involvement in Women Against Fundamentalism should be redeveloped. The campaigns of black women’s groups such as Southall Black Sisters must also be supported and publicised.

Women in the Unions Conference The coming conference alongside the overail development of this area of work is a clear priority, flowing from the objective situation, the overall priorities of the group and the areas of work women are actively engaged in. There needs to be more discussion about how this project is resourced, alongside what focus it should have to built -a broader participation and involvement. ye Labour Party There remains a layer of women activists in the LP who could loosely bedescribed as socialist feminists, who are often involved in a variety of campaigns, and whom we must not abandon. Also, though many women’s sections have collapsed, some continue to be strongholds of the left. Perspectives for LP work wili have to examine this in the longer term.

POSITIVE ACTION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S LIBERATION Without the participation of women, who make up more than half the world’s population, the struggle for socialism cannot be successful, “Women can only bé liberated through the “process of overthrowing the private property ‘relationships in which women’s subordination is reproduced.

The struggle for socialism and'the struggle for women’s liberation are therefore inseparable while the organisation as a whole has a political interest in ensuring a high priority is given to women’s liberation work and the recruitment and development of women comrades.

The revolutionary party has to relate to the struggles of all the oppressed, bringing together the forces which can overthrow the capitalist system. The revolutionary party has therefore to relate to the particular oppression of women, drawing women into activity, fighting for the whole of the working class to take up the demands of women, drawing on the experiences of women, integrating women into its ranks, educating them and promoting them to positions of leadership.

Neglecting to take seriously the specific needs of specially oppressed groups e.g. women and Black people, would be, in the words of the IEC document on The case for Positive Action and Party Building Among Women ‘like fighting to end inequality by failing to liberate the motor force necessary to carry out the task’. From the founding of the First International Marxists, have sought ways of drawing women into the struggle for socialism.

Marx argued in the General Council for the setting up of special working women’s branches. Until 1908 in Germany it was illegal for women to join political parties, so the SPD established separate women’s organisations.

The Third International established an annual International Women’s Day and called special women’s conferences. In the Fourth International the discussion on women’s liberation was pushed to the fore around the 1979 World Congress, in response to the rise in Western Europe and North America of the autonomous women’s liberation movement.

The Group has attempted to organise our work amongst women through a women’s fraction and women’s commission (both these bodies have functioned badly over the last year, with no clear women’s commission existing).

We have tried to ensure that the specific problems women face within the organisation ‘are discussed through women’s caucuses (sometimes called as separate meetings, sometimes as part of the discussion at a women’s fraction); and to ensure that conscious measures are taken to integrate women at every level of leadership within the organisation.

We now need to draw an assessment of the organisation’s work amongst women, of the specific problems women face within the organisation and of the experience of women on leadership bodies. We also need to draw up a plan for the next year or so based on our assessment.

The organisation’s work amongst women The downturn in the mass activity of the independent women’s movement has led to a deprioritisation of the women’s liberation work and to the marginalisation of feminism within the organisation. It is important that prioritisation of women’s liberation work is consciously fought for within the organisation and that the struggle to 'feminise’ the organisation is reasserted. Women continue to make up almost half the workforce in Britain and their presence is clearly seen in trade union and community struggles e.g. in defence ofthe NHS and education. Amass feminist consciousness continues to permeate society and even young women, who have grown up after the decline of the women’s liberation movement, continue to believe that they should be entitled to equal pay, childcare, contraception, abortion if they need it.

However the decline of the independent women's movement means that it is more difficult for the organisation to intervene into and build, mobilisations of women around issues which very directly raise issues of the nature of women’s oppression and the role of the family in the way that the abortion question did from the late 1960s on. Our experience of working with women in the Miners’ Strike shows us, however, that women who mobilise initially around community issues tend to become conscious of their oppression as women through the struggle for seemingly unrelated demands. ; The organisation must prioritise relating to

the few campaigns around women’s issues which continue to exist (e.g. NAC) while consciously seeking to direct its general political work to women and to finding the women’s ‘angie’ jn its general campaigning and propaganda (as was done for example, around Women Against War in the Gulf}. The women’s fraction and women’s commission must be rebuilt. The demands on comrades’ time and energy are huge. The regular functioning and political prioritisation 6f the commission and fraction can only be assured through assigning leadership comrades to this area of work. The work of the commission should be to lead the | ~ development of the organisation’s theory and -; practise on women’s liberation; prepare educa- -' ttonial and ‘propaganda materials, and to convene a regular fraction to discuss all aspects of the work. ‘Those who wear the chains are best suited to break them’. Women should lead the development of the organisation’s theory and practice on women’s liberation, while our understanding of the inter-relation of women’s oppression and class oppression shows us that male comrades must also be educated and able to agitate on all questions of women’s oppression and struggle for liberation. There has been a decline in the political level of debate and education on women’s liberation within the organisation. The ‘stream’ on women’s liberation at the Summer School was a step forward as has been the involvement of comrades from the organisation in the International Women’s Secretariat, Schools and fractions. The Education Commission should be asked to organise further development of debate and discussion at the Summer School next year.

Position of Women within the organisation Given limited resources and time pressures, the organisation tends to reproduce the sexual division of labour within society. Revolutionary organisations are not immune from such pressure and conscious steps need to be taken, particularly when the feminist movement is weak. Often skills are fragmented along gender lines (organisational/theoretical) with the skills which fall into ‘women’s sphere’ being devalued. At every level of the organisation collective teams must be built which integrate and draw on the strengths of all comrades while allowing individual comrades to develop new and different skills. Both the skills of abstract theorising and the skills of working collectively must be built into criteria for the selection of leaderships at all levels of the organisation. Both skilis need to be learned by all if the organisation is to develop in the most healthy direction. The stress on individual initiative and competition within leadership bodies, rather than collective discussion and team building, is often reflected in our terms of debate where ‘success’ is marked by the winning of arguments and the smashing of opponents rather than the resolution of differences, or the moving forward of discussion, through debate carried out in an atmosphere of genuine respect. Such methods of functioning prevent the organisation from fully benefitting from the multiplicity of experience and ideas contained in its ranks. The origin of our organisation, in the fusion of groupings which originated themselves from splits, means that many of the comrades in our leadership were Schooled in factional debate. Faction fights often demoralise women and our organisation was formed with a lower percentage of women than either of the two organisations it was formed out of. Many women who were part of the original leaderships have since left, for a variety of reasons. The competitive atmosphere in leadership bodies has often led to a lack of self-confidence in women and/or the tendency to adopt ‘male’ methods of behaviour to survive. All bodies of the organisation should consciously assess their division of labour and ensure that as far as possible the traditional sexual division of labour is not reproduced. In particular women comrades must not be so overburdened with organisational tasks that they do not have the opportunity to develop themselves politically throtigh study and discussion. Women should continue to have recourse to the calling of caucuses to discuss problems of collective functioning and women’s full and equal integration into the organisation.

All comrades must be given encouragement and space in which to educate themselves politically, including on the question of women's liberation. Women comrades in particular must be given sufficient freedom from day to day political activity to give them time to study and politically develop themselves. As revolutionary Marxists we understand the link between theory and practice but also understand that political development necessitates the opportunity to study as well as to intervene politically. Women comrades should be encouraged to play a fuil role in educating other comrades as well as themselves.

Financial pressures within the organisation have resulted in a lowering nationally of our commitment to fully integrating comrades with responsibility for childcare. Branches, fractions and leadership bodies need to ensure that childcare is consciously considered and discussed when planning internal meetings and public forums. The needs of individual carers and children will vary greatly while carers may also want time off from political commitments to spend with children.

Recruitment of Women into the Organisation As noted above the organisation was formed with under a third women, and this has since Page 40

dropped to about 27 per cent of the membership. Some women comrades are the only worman in their branch. The decline of the women’s liberation movement presents us with objective. difficulties in recruiting women.

During the highpoint of the WLM many women were recruited to revolutionary organisations while women comrades gained experience of leading mass struggles through assuming leadership roles within the Movement. With the working class in an extremely defensive position the taks of recruiting women become even harder. Only concious attention to recruiting: women will.stop the. drift . ., downwards in the percentage.of women in the «organisation. The fewer women in the or- ' <ganisation,. the harder it becomes to recruit more, All branches and fractions of the organisation must ensure that they consciously address the question of the recruitment of women. To do this they must discuss how to direct their general campaigning and propaganda work specifically to women, with branches campaigning around specific issues of women’s liberation. ‘ Women must be seen to have a high profile within the organisation: leading debates and educational discussions, writing for the paper, speaking at public events. We should consider holding women. only educational forums to draw women towards us. integration of Women into Leadership Bodies At the last conference of the organisation we put forward 50% women on the incoming CC as a target. It was not achieved even though all woren who were nominated were elected. In the run up to the next Conference, the problem of women’s integration onto the leadership bodies must be discussed as part of the pre- Conference discussion. Women comrades must be discussed with about their willingness to be nominated. Are there steps which could be taken to relieve women comrades of some tasks to allow them to take on a leadership role? Do women feel unconfident because of the percieved mode of operation of the leadership bodies, and how can these be changed to make women feel more willing to commit themselves to the responsibilities of being on the CC? Are women comrades clear about the. role of CC members?

The CC women’s caucus has met over the last year or so to discuss the functioning of the leadership and should continue to do so.

Women on the incoming leadership should continue to use the caucus for this function, as well as a resource for women members of the CC to share concerns and observations about the functioning of the CC and their integration into it.

While the percentage of women inside the organisation remains so low and with a large number of women comrades feeling they are still too inexperienced to be on the CC, we should continue to pose 50% as a target, rather than a quota and should be aware of the difficulty of achieving it at this time. However we should continue to be cong¢icus of the effect on the organisation as a whole:of not achieving this target. A lower precentage of women on the CC makes it harder to prioritise women’s liberation work. It makes, it more difficult for the women present to collectively challenge the sexual division’ of labour on the CC and to argue for a way of organising debate which is collective and respectful rather than competitive and damaging. It also make the struggle for women to play leading roles in all spheres of the organisation’s work more difficult.