WHERE WOULD we be without the good old British sectarian? Who can imagine a public meeting without an irrelevant, rambling, point-scoring 'intervention' from at least one headbanger with staring eyes and a carrier bag full of unreadable literature? These unsung heroes and heroines have been a constant factor on the left - while campaigns, issues and organisations have come, split, and • gone. But where do they come from? Are sectarians born or made? Our correspondent JACK DOBERMANN sniffed out the secretive, exclusive Academy which for decades has turned out some of our leading sectarians. "BUSINESS is booming," grinned a smug Professor 'Lefty' Garble, head teacher at the privately-run Academy. "With so little happening in the unions or the Labour Party, we are signing up new students almost every day."
Walking into Professor Garble's Academy - just a few streets from the main road through Hampstead, it is immediately clear that the new influx of students spans the social spectrum. The undergraduates' car-park is filled by vehicles ranging from Porsches and Scorpios to clappedHow are the students grouped and streamed?
"We have no problem dividing them into small groups," said Professor Garble. "They do it almost instinctively. The hard thing is to get them to talk to each other at all, and not walk out shouting abuse"
"Our worst mistake was trying to run a new Teambuilding course, a few years ago," adds his colleague Eamonn Oover, who lectures in Denunciation and Schismatics.
"It was a fiasco. We began with ten people - but within twenty minutes we were down to two feuding pairs. By the end of the first session all of these had fallen out, leaving. just me and the last of the blokes who thought he was Lenin. Never again."
So how does the Academy manage to impart basic training? I was told that all students do a foundation course in Dogmatics. They study 'Labour Party - a Step Backwards' along with 'Unions -Who Needs Them?' and there are compulsory streams teaching Jargon and Nitpicking.
Professor Garble urges all to study 'Democratic Centralism and Ways Around It', with specialist options on alternative internal regimes for smaller and larger sectarian groups: students can choose from Cliques, Clubs, Bureaucracy for Beginnners, and Despotism.
The 'Principles and other Pitfalls' course warns against any fixation on politics, which can sometimes divert from important organisational wrangles and splits.
The popular Allegations and Insinuations' stream examines techniques of avoiding head-to-head political debate while maximising discontent on both sides, drawing on a vast library of examples used successfully by Academy graduates in 40 years of wrangles.
Many students opt for 'Build Your Own International':
"At the last count we had seven students each claiming to lead their own Fourth Inter"Many are held back by their awareness that they have so little to offer. They shrink instinctively from repeating the trite and mundane, leaving themselves gagged. We call them Banal Retentives. And we tackle the problem through our 'Banal is Beautiful' workshops, which encourage students to latch on to unexciting issues, work them to death, and fashion them into a point of split."
How does the Academy measure its success or failure?
"Success? Just look at our track record," boasts Prof. Garble. "When I set up the first 'Wierd is Wonderful' discussion group in the 1950s there was really only one far-left group of any size in Britain to the left of the CP. Now there are several dozen - depending on how small you define a 'group'. Most of them have our graduates in the leadership."
The Prof. was also excited at a new influx of right-wing sectarians.
"Right wing?" I asked, puzzled. "Surely all sectarians are ultra-left?"
"Oh, no, the most important thing is that, like Greta Garbo, they must 'want to be alone', or at least to be in charge. Some of our most successful graduates have right-wing, taking top union jobs, for example. We teach them how to block inter-union links and rank and file control, even while we run courses urging left sectarians to denounce them!
"And lots of steering com1. T A, KRAurE mittees of campaigns consult us - on ways of keeping out left wing political opponents. We help them draft their denunciations. Of course I couldn't name names..."
As I walked back towards the exit, I noticed the impressive collection of portraits of great sectarians lining the wall. There were several images of the now almost legendary Gerry Healy, who founded the WRP, and whose political methods live on long after his death.
"He was a giant, a real guru of British sectarianism," sighed Prof. Garble. "He gave guest lectures here for years. After his death we ran classes in Healyism including roleplay with suitcases of Libyan currency, intimidation practice and mock expulsions."
Healy's consistent rejection of any form of women's liberation lives on in Academy workshops on 'Positive Discrimination and How to Fight It' and 'Feminism: a Bour- CHRISTMAS STORY geois Plot'.
As I left, I passed a large group of recruits wearing lumberjackets and carrying flight bags; many had American accents. Apparently they jet over regularly for special training. Prof. Garble beamed with pride 'The Spartacists have an instinctive flair for crazy slogans. Who else would have run a left candidate on a slogan of 'Smokers' Rights', or picketed the Duke of Edinburgh with placards calling for 'a Scotish Republic as part of the USSR'? Their pro-Concorde campaign Let it Land' was a classic of its type."
While Tory cuts slash regular education to the bone, the Academy is clearly coining it in. At least this ensures that whenever a meeting opens up for discussion from the floor there will be plenty of contenders to use up the time available. • Since filing this report Jack Dobermann has left Socialist Outlook to form a new Croydon-based Seventh International with his friend Martin.
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