"ISM leaders desert the CWI" was the page 4 headline in the Socialist Party's paper The Socialist of January 19.
This was the Party's response to the decision the International Socialist Movement (ISM) formerly Scottish Militant CWI Labour, and the key component of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), to leave the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) the SP's international organisation.
The article, by Hannah Sell, argues that the split has taken place on the basis of "a number of fundamental dif- of ferences". It followed a press release to the media on the same subject.
These two statements denounce the leaders of the ISM, Alan McCombes and Tommy Sheridan, for:
Handing the resources of the Scottish section (of the CWI) to the SSP. The • Failing to recognise that the SSP is a left reformist party with a left reformist the SP. programme.
• Failing to remain organised as revolutionaries inside such a party.
Abandoning the strug- real tacts - which gle for Marxism in its modern form, Trotskyism • Rejecting the entire history of the of the ISM in the the SSP • Using methods (in the negotiations with the SWP rift between Peter to join the SSP) which "bear more resemblance to those used by the Labour party right wing against us in the past than to the methods of Marxism".
• Proposing the adoption laalle was InTera! broccolic formation within the SSP (internal referendums on constitutional issues) which are the methods of the right wing. otherwise.
Proposing a coalition with the SNP • Calling Cuba socialist.
• Abandoning the struggle for internationalism leaders of the ISM have issued a detailed rebutSocialist Outlook web site: www.labournet.org.uklso International Socialist Group: www.3bh.org.uk/ISG tal of the charges made by These rejoinders But it was a short-lived demonstrate that the accusa- shift, and tions against them are either retreated and completely baseless or at best Socialist Party back into its a massive distortion of the are well bunker The SP began calling for a known to the Socialist Party new 'mass party' of the workleadership either directly or ing class (which was not on through their loyalists inside the cards at the that time of course and is still not) in a This split had been a long propagandist way. time coming. The deepening same time they refused the Taaffe's kind of collaboration with Party and its other left forces which would organisation goes be the only way back to tne decision to lorIn towards such a party. the SSP out of the Scottish Line opposed Movement, and other groupings, in 1998. Those in Scottish Militant hostile to the Labour never accepted the of the SSP, back to the bunker' although the public position and continued to work in of the Socialist Party was to and build the support it - it could not do Socialist Alliance - whilst in England the SP allowed the He had briefly opened up alliances they had set up to the Militant to work with wither and become semi- WITHer broader forces at the time of dormant. the formation of the SLP in The announcement of the 1995 - the change of name creation of the from Militant to the Socialist Parliament after Party was a part of that. came to office in 1997 with a form of proportional representation (as political implications of new Labour) was the spur which brought the SSP into existence in September 1998. Taaffe resented this development since it cut across moment of crisis.