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Scattergun defence
Ian Donovan
Andy Newman's comments regarding the CPGB in his article 'In Defence
of the SWP' seem to be spot on regarding the CPGB's ropey and
ill-informed polemics against the SWP and Respect. These in fact
contrast quite unfavourably with the well-informed material they
produced in the past regarding the SLP and the Socialist Alliance, where
they were able to present a positive vision that pointed the way for
these projects to succeed. Lately, because of their own latent political
flaws, they have been reduced to crass sectarianism regarding the
Respect project.
However, some of Andy's characterisations of the CPGB suffer from the
same kind of problems - and appear equally ill-informed and scattergun.
As the CPGB's one-time leading exponent of a proper, constructive
engagement with the Respect project, I have to say that some of the
alleged flaws he cites from people who have left them on both sides of
this argument are incompatible with each other.
For instance, he criticises the CPGB for expelling John Pearson after he
deliberately voted against their public position at a meeting of the
SADP,
claiming to be subject to a binding mandate by his local SA. In fact, he
and a
co-thinker/non-member were the authors of this 'binding mandate' - this
was a
transparent excuse for simply refusing to accept the position the
organisation's
elected bodies had put forward. He had the right to challenge these
positions
internally in the CPGB, but instead he chose to publicly vote against
them in a
meeting when the CPGB's organisational weight was in the scales
vis-à-vis other currents.
I cannot believe that the SWP would allow a prominent member of their
organisation to behave in this manner with impunity - indeed in the past
whole
groupings have been expelled simply for expressing dissident views *internally*
- the RDG and earlier Workers Power spring to mind - let alone voting
against the SWP leadership position in a national united front-type
meeting. Maybe if some junior figure did that they might get away with
it, but a prominent representative who did that would be out on their
ear. And rightly so!
Likewise, comrade Newman criticises the CPGB for ceasing to publish the
Red Platform's anti-Respect column in the Weekly Worker. My criticism
would tend in the opposite direction: in my view the CPGB leadership
bent over backwards to accommodate this rightist faction, to the extent
that, as well as their column, this grouping was allowed to publish
material in the guise of ordinary reportage that aimed to undermine the
CPGB majority position during the Respect election campaign. Ultimately,
it was because of criticism of their opportunism and complicity with
these breaches of democratic centralism that the CPGB leadership moved
against the previously extensive party democracy that had existed prior
to these events.
In my view, the CPGB's breaches of democratic centralism, in indulging
the Red Platform/Party grouping, were what led them to attack party
democracy. But acts of blatant indiscipline and contempt for the
majority viewpoint as expressed by the likes of John Pearson and Manny
Neira do not constitute any kind of defence of party democracy. On the
contrary, they were attacks on that democracy.
If you sign up for a democratic centralist organisation, then you sign
up for
restrictions on the right to publicly criticise the party majority. The
SWP have
a rather different version of democratic centralism than the CPGB - I
cannot
believe that a minority faction hostile to Respect (had one existed),
for
instance, would be able to run a column attacking Respect in Socialist
Worker
during the Respect election campaign (or any other time, come to think
of it).
In fact, one could argue that according to the norms I signed up to, the
Red
Platform should have been barred from running such a column *during* the
election campaign, but be allowed to resume it afterwards (as the
'action' was
by then over). But irrespective of these subtleties, I have never seen
anything
remotely like this come from the SWP. But one thing I certainly did
*not* sign
up for was restrictions on the right to criticise *in private*, which is
what is
involved in the introduction of pre-moderation on the CPGB's internal
discussion list. This was another breach of democratic centralism, and
led directly to my resignation over a point of principle.
The point being, that if you join a democratic centralist organisation,
you
should take these norms seriously. The relationship between majority and
minority currents that is mandated under democratic centralism may be
right or wrong.
But if it is considered wrong, it would be better to argue explicitly
*against*
democratic centralism in principle, not pay lip service to it while at
the same
time working to undermine it. The latter is the misdeed that comrade
Pearson,
comrade Neira and his followers, and indeed ultimately the CPGB
leadership
itself, were guilty of. Comrade Newman's criticisms of the CPGB over
these
events are in this sense too indiscriminate, and come over as badly as
the
CPGB's recent somewhat flaky attacks on the SWP.
December 2004 |
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Read Andy Newman's article
In defence of the SWP
here
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