infantile disorder public identify with the 'alternative' The RCP - an strongly The consistency of the RCP's ultra-leit Mike Freeman, a leading theoretician of the RCP explains that 'the labour movement approach goes right across the spectrum. should leave it to the capitalists how they want to run their own industries and ser- vices. Our only concern is that in both the private or public sector, workers' interests are safeguarded.' Fortunately, workers have up to now shown a lack of reverence towards the RCP's theoreticians and have kept insist- ing that they don't agree that it's the bosses' firms or their really reaches rock bottom when the same author writes: 'middle class left wingers who work as sa- 'hardly enough for a social, never mind a party' This ultra-left posturing prerogative to run their hospitals just as they please. "Crumpet" Lemard in 1986 Firm advocates of such a course are the Revolutionary Communist Party who say what the workers require 'is an independent party' * Having reached such a conclusion its head. You can hardly describe a group or programme that can challenge the Labour be developed in total opposition, both politi- cal and organisational, (my emphasis) to this tive to the Labour Party. Only another party noring the norms of political nomenclature, Party' and claim 'this programme can only the RCP was then compelled to turn reality on even a league, as an organisational alterna- can be seriously considered as an organisa- hardly enough for a social never mind a party - immodestly appointed themselves as the the members of the RCP, strangely enough it tional alternative to Labour. So blithely ig- the RCP found itself in alliance with the SDP, logical in arguing in 1981, a couple of hundred people - Party. While this deceived the leaders and left the rest of the Labour movement un- Since then the RCP has stuck doggedly to its self-appointed role as the alternative lea- dership. When the Tories brought in legisla- tion which was designed to stop workers paying the political levy to the Labour Party, the Liberals, the Tories and the employers who were all against a 'yes' vote. The RCP against the 'yes' vote; after all you can hardly be in favour of giving money to something to which you have decided you are an imme- diate alternative . The fact that the conse- quences of not voting 'yes' would have meant funds to run political campaigns was by the that the unions would have been of course being moved.
and file level is on the wane and the process of depoliticisation of the working class' accom- panied by a decline in rank and file res- Commenting on the workers attitude to the last Labour government they say they were a rejection of 'the consequences of the government's policies, rather than a rejec- tion of labourism itself. Accordingly the RCP considers there has been no significant break from labourism, that the resistance at rank for a ballot in the miners' strike. istance. disorder. The RCP campaigned vigorously POLEMIC An infantile RIG GAY FOR FIGH
analysis is correct, and things are as bleak as most propitious time to launch a new organ- depoliticisation has not been halted. If their that in the labour movement it is hardly the For a party to constitute an organisational isational alternative.
be in a position to change the relationship of vanguard does not exist at present - it has to alternative it should lead a significant section of the working class and the oppressed, and forces in the class struggle. None of these qualifications are met by the RCP, but such realities do not deter them, they explain: 'the be created'. They add: 'the form of organisa-
3S modern Britain is the propaganda party. The RCP is such a party'. So while the rest of the workers' movement carries on its pointless the RCP will get on with the main job of tions of the working class are effective. Presu- form a real party. This schema boils down to the interests of the working class, but rather how it can arithmetically increase its mem- touchstone is necessarily how can it separate itself from other far left organisations, who also like the left leaders in the unions have equally to be exposed. The 23 January issue sectarianism. Apparently papers like Socialist Worker have been crossing class lines on the article entitled The dangers of safe sex' it accuses the left of by advocating the use of condoms. This it tion appropriate to building a vanguard in The description of itself as a propaganda party means that its work will be concen- trated not on widening and extending the struggles of the masses, but on explaining that neither the leaders, nor the organisa- mably when enough workers have suffered sufficient defeats at the hands of the capitalist class, because of the bureaucratic role of their leaders, the RCP will become big enough to saying 'when they have seen the light they will join us' and can only lead to disillusion- ment and demoralisation; it will never create Like all sectarian organisations the RCP doesn't start from how best it can advance of The Next Step is a bizarre illustration of this endorsing the Tories' targeting of gay men claims means the 'left has fallen for the Tories' presentation of Aids as a medical problem requiring a technical solution'. Now you know, it's not a condom that's needed for protection against the Aids virus, it's a * Mike Freeman "The Road to Power': Confronta- tion (RCP theoretical magazine) no. 1, Summer 1986. Unless otherwise credited, all quotations struggles - all guaranteed to be betrayed - the basis for a mass marxist party. from the RCP are from the same source. creating the vanguard. copy of the Next Step! Aids issue. In an Philip Gordon/Reflex another sections' jobs away. But the RCP ...the only way to challenge the class collaborationist strategy of the stent thread through all the interventions of So determined was the RCP to oppose the from the miners support groups claiming From the outset they failed to begin from the consider there has been a ...longstanding tors' are the exception among national union premise of how best to aid the strike and Scargill and Heathfield and thus win some This type of exposure politics is a consi- - these "class collabora- leaders, in that they actually wanted to win NUM leadership, they decided to withdraw such groups helped the NUM bureaucracy. widen its support, instead they saw their task as being to 'expose" the left leaders like individual miners to the RCP. No wonder at the height of the strike (in what I can only assume was a Freudian slip) their paper the Next Step carried a banner which read 'RCP hits the Pits' — what more can I add to such the RCP. It stems from the fact that they 'Workers don't have the same RCP...fortunately' prejudices as the political eloquence? union leadership' claimed this was RCP in action conceptions and get into step with the RCP, miners and dockers, along with the prin- solidarity action in defence of the NHS must learn to stop pursuing their own misguided This ultimatistic approach showed itself For the miners and their supporters the main issue was how to stop pit closures. This could only be done by the miners taking strike action; by a campaign aimed at getting solidarity action in other sectors of the labour movement and by building up financial and political support in the working class and among the oppressed groups. Those tasks overrode all else and they had to be the first concerns of every militant. The stakes in the dispute were high. Victory for the miners would have shown jobs could be saved by class-struggle methods, it would have stimu- lated the confidence of other workers and without doubt would have strengthened the left forces inside the unions and the Labour mine confidence in class-struggle methods and strengthen the right wing inside the nonsense. It knew what was best for the miners and had its own prescription for them - a campaign for a national ballot. This would have disrupted the strike and given one group of workers the right to vote Party. Defeat, as we have seen, would under- with disastrous results in the miners' strike. who after all know what's best for them. tworkers and others who have 33 Socialist Outlook No 1 May/June 1987 unions and the Labour Party. But the RCP was having to ban
require uniformity and rigidity? the soft option which these ideas their increasing influence inside represent; namely, that nothing the women's movement. There among some feminists to go for Segal is correct to single out This thinking has informed much can be done apart from these ideas and warn against is an increasing tendency spreading feminist ideas. goes on to assert that ideas and She points out that there are women is not simply a product emphasis on femininity versus of ideas or language 'but of all the social practices which give men power over women'. She masculinity. First, that men's language interact with other tensions and struggles'. She greater power in relation to several problems with this largely a most welcome polemic quite the thing for any right-on THE TITLE of this book poses a feminist to say, but the book is the negative. The future is not mistakenly been referred to as question which she answers in The future is female. But author movement. It has sometimes female. This may sound not Lynne Segal sets out with a question for the women's future Is the female? JUDITH ARKWRIGHT
the debate around the activities men that have been responsible for war but as Segal points out, women whilst disagreeing with means war and aggression and love. It is true that it is largely many women have in the past femininity means peace and supported this. Wars do not any notion that masculinity of the peace women. Segal courageous action of these correctly takes up Dale Spender who says that 'feminism refers forward by feminists' and that competition. These values are constantly see the struggle in security, nurturance, peace, to alternative meanings put aggression, destruction and versus the male values of language itself determines Spender and others issue in particular with Andrea in the women's movement and increasingly become the norm taken out of them. Segal takes some affinity with traditional radical feminist precepts but with the more 'radical' tinge Dworkin, Dale Spender and Many of these ideas have which Segal identifies as with ideas which have Lynne Segal, Is the