At a recent meeting of supporters of the journal Socialist Review, the quostion of the attitude to be adopted towards the Labour Party was discussed. A proposition that supporters must be members of the Labour Party was defeated by one vote. Many of the people around Socialist Review are young people who find the routine work in the Labour Party irksome and seemingly unprofitable.
It is important to point out that there was no formal decision to pull out of the Labour Party a la the formation of the Socialist Labour League. However the danger of such an attitude is that it wi give all those who do not like Labour Party work and who find Committee of 100° wofk more attractive a blank cheque to individually pull out of the Labour Party.
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Fortunately owing to recent devolopments and the consolidation of Young Guard, there is not much likelihood of this paper being disorientated by the above tendency. However it will be necessary for comrades to be very clear on this question and to work out their ideas, POSTSCRIPT ON THE SOCIALIST REVIEW AND THE CONGO
Comrades will remember an article by T.li. on the above question in issue number 9 of the Bulletin. Additional weight to comrade T.li.'s criticism of the Socialist Review position was given by the quotation from Waterhouse in the last issue of the Bulletin. From the latest issue of the journal it emerges that among the supporters of Socialist Reviow there are critics of Macintyre's line. Comrade Tony Young has written in expressiny his disagreement with the article's conclusion. He bases his argumonts on the proposition that ' because eoeetho ingredients of a human, socialist solution are lacking from some situat= ions' one should not adopt the '"realistic' view of history and politics, which is quite forsigh to the marxist’s concern for increasing the consciousness of the working people of the world! and concludes that liacIntyre 'would do better to concentrate his main fire on exposing the motives of the U.N. operation! because there are more ill4¥Sio4S in the labour movement about this.
One can agree with the conclusion of the argument but not the method of its “tay 1. Marxists have the duty of supporting whatevor movement, no matter confused, %bresses tho aspiration and the future development of the revolution in any colonial country. Lumumba and his successors oxpress ° in a very elementary way the future of the Congo revolution. Marxists can intervene in the Congo affair in this way. Concretely this means supporting the campaign now being waged to savo Gizenga from suffering the fate of Lumumba.