By the Editorial Board MILITANT last week carried a full page article by Phil Hearse, previously editor of Socialist Outlook, and Cathy Kirkham, previously a long time supporter of Socialist Outlook, announcing their sudden decision to join Militant Labour.
In making this abrupt exit they are abandoning the principled politics they have defended for over turning their backs on the Fourth International, and collapsing into the politics of Militant. They have pushed serious political questions under the carpet, adopting an attitude which can best be summarised as 'never mind the politics, feel the width'.
They insist that the future of the far left in Britain will be decided between the two organisations currently the largest, the Militant and the SWP, and claim that it is therefore necessary to be in one or other of them.
This same superficial argument in the early 1970s would have led them to choose between joining the SWP and Gerry Healy's WRP. In other words, the same logic applied then would have led not only to no International Marxist Group, but to no Militant, either!
Hearse and Kirkham say they reject the SWP because it is "a large propaganda sect", based on "habitual sectarianism and narrow minded factionalism" and with an "authoritarianeinternal regime".
Explusions
But Militant Labour, they have been assured - (by Militant!) -from this. It has, they tell us, a 'democratic' internal regime, an 'open' debate, SOCIALIST OUTLOOK and the ability to contain differences.
They have clearly not spoken to anyone recently expelled from the organisation!
They admit they do not have 100 percent agreement with Militant, and say that Ireland and the national question in ex-Yugoslavia are examples of difference.
But these are not incidental questions. Ireland is a central factor in the British revolution itself. Militant's historic accommodation to British imperialism on Ireland is one of the scandals of the British left. two decades, Nor is the national question in Yugoslavia a minor point. It is one of the central questions of European politics, which has already left 200,000 people dead, 3 million refugees, and 70 percent of Bosnia occupied by Serbian forces. Yet here, reflecting a campist position on the break up of Stalinism, Militant accommodates to greater Serbian nationalism.
But it is inconceivable, even given their willingness to downplay programme and ideology, that these are the only serious differences that Hearse and Kirkham have with Militant. is different On the surface Militant Labour appears very different from the old Militant tendency before the split which led to the expulsion of Ted Grant, Alan Woods and others- and the organisation's exit from the Labour Party. But it is not clear that all the changes are for the better.
Nor, despite these changes in tactics, is it clear that there has been any fundamental change - or any change at all - in Militant's political programme.
Is Militant Labour saying, for example, that its previous position of insisting that there could be a parliamentary road to socialism in Britain is now wrong?
Under that fanciful scenario, we were told for many years by Militant that a provided a new central heatTed Grant, expelled Militant editor. he may be gone, but the politics linger on City, through an expropriate the bourgeoisie. capitalist state? throw of the state? some way to go. and to allow us to refurbish Marxist dominated left-Labour government would use its parliamentary major'Enabling Act', to rience.
If Militant Labour has now rejected that line, then this is real progress, but we have yet to see any evidence of it.
Will Militant Labour now drop its conception of the police and the army as merely workers in uniform, and adopt a situation. Leninist understanding of the role of the Will it develop a revolutionary programme based on the development of dual power, the fight for a workers' government, and the revolutionary overProgramme Other programmatic issues are also at stake. Militant does not share the Fourth International's understanding of pluralist socialist democracy, of the unity of the sectors of the world revolution, or of the self-organisation of the oppressed.
Although they have improved their positions on women's and black oppression from their previously awful economism and workerism, they still have Militant has a fundamental difference over the key tactic of the united front.
They fail to see the real dynamics of the construction of a revolutionary international based on real international expeIt is impossible to build a real international (particularly for Militant which is a very British organisation) on the basis of transplanting one set of national experiences and tactics onto every national The strength of the Fourth International is that it has built a programme based on the needs of the working class, not their reactionary prejudices.
Of course we think numbers are important, internationally and in Britain. In fact we think it is very important (though it should be remembered that the Militant have suffered the biggest relative decline of any of the far left organisations in But numbers are not everything.
Trotsky taught us that principled politics are important as well; and we have seen that without that foundation stone, organisations far larger and more influential than Militant (the POUM in Spain in the 1930s) have played a seriously disorienting and damaging role in the class struggle.
We think these comrades have made a big political mistake.