Martin Thomas' letter in Socialist Outlook 22 illustrates the bizarre obsession of Socialist Organiser (SO) with adopting the mirror-image of the politics of the rest of the left.
This causes gross parodies of reality, such as the assertion that Sinn Fein (SF) demonstrate 'increasingly narrow and HE CODEYS catholic communalism' Thomas' has amnesia with regard to SO's article about the SDLP's 'good news' in the general election (SO 520).
in mus ferrer anomas say that SO do not' • but his owni aper said that the SDLP is 1 ing politics of real frish republicanism are Adams'...'. This sounds rather like supporting, in Thomas' own words, a bourgeois party • You might think this is a single lapse - but no. At the time of Yeitsin's defeat of the coup in the ex-USSR last August, SO hailed it as a bourgeois-demoralic revolution and asserted (SO496) that Yeltsin wants to clear the way for capitalism; but for now he the democracy'.
SO clearly thought that workers must put their faith in the emersins oourseoisie to gain democratic right», abanaorins laes or workers or ganising to fight back against capitalst restoraton Thomas denies supporting Yeltsin-another position that SO had used to try to differentiate themselves from the left. This means that they abandon the need for working class leadership and independence in the USSR until capitalism is fully restored. The consequenfor workers are unavoidable.
Even in their main area of work, SO are now using the courts and undermining independence of NUS - if you can't win in your own move ment, let the bourgeois state help you out. But would SO have supported the invasion of bourgeois forces into the exUSSR if they had pledged aemoctacys Finally, Thomas tries to detend the high proportion of student supporters of SO 'we print artres oy our comrades in the labour movement. But Financial Times do not make up fora lack of implantation in the labour movement Wras come oceane u has been differentiation from the rest of the left. Theory is based on how you can be different; practice on how you can best attract people.
If this means supporting Yeltsin, the SDLP, the use • the courts and refusing to back the rest of the lett over Livingstone, then it is acceptable. Chis political degeneration deserves to be conRod Marshall Nottingham