In recent issues INTERNATIONAL has taken up the cudgels against the Socialist Labour League over the way in which its youth movement manoeuvred to prevent a genuine debate between itself and the Young Communist League, This arose from the articles on Trotskyism published in the YCL magazine COGITO, written by Monty Johnstone,
We proved, by quoting from the correspondence published in KEEP LEFT, that the SLL YS had made their participation conditional on the YCL's agreement to three demands which were contrary to the minutes of a meeting between representatives of both organisations to arrange the debate.
This met with a furious attack by Cliff Slaughter in the NEWSLETTER of June 10th; following this we sent a letter of correction to the NEWSLETTER which it refused to acknowledge or print.
This letter also challenged the SLL to debate the International Marxist Group on the subject of "Building the Fourth International", Needless to say the SLL has proved to have cold feet over this challenge too. They have also proved rather tardy in organising the public meeting on the issue of Trotskyism and Stalinism which they promised in April's KEEP LEFT.
We therefore make no apology for returning to this subject in the pages of INTERNATIONAL, since we are denied the opportunity of doing so in public and we see the need to take up some of the more theoretical aspects of the discussion,
To Slaughter our motivation is not a desire to have a genuine discussion on Trotskyism and the Communist Parties but a longstanding inclination to "slander the revolutionary Marxist leadership, the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists,"
Actually, we consider that in our long struggle to develop unity in action on the British left, in the course of which revolutionary Marxist ideas and leadership would be vindicated, we have been too reluctant to subject the role of the SLL to extensive criticism, prefering to devote our energies to work of more immediate value to the British workers and the world revolution, This has meant that the SLL has been allowed to get away unchallenged with such accusations against us as Slaughter's in June 10th NEWSLETTER, regarding the role of the Marxist tendencies in the Labour Party youth organisation between 1960 and 64,
"...these revisionists teamed up with the anti-soviet 'state-capitalist' group of Tony Cliff (in the paper REBEL) to provide a counterweight to KEEP LEFT. Not only that, they kept up a barrage of slanders and gossip about the organisation and leaders of the Socialist Labour League which provided a handle for every 'fake left' and every Transport House bureaucrat,"
The facts about these accusations are the following: our small forces in the YS constantly sought to achieve unity between all Marxist and left forces in the YS on a principled basis, to combat the right wing and to develop the YS into a mass revolutionary youth movement, through a process of organic political struggle and internal discussion,
For this reason we participated in the united left youth paper YOUNG GUARD (not REBEL as Slaughter said), which involved, mainly, ourselves, INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM and the group which now publishes MILITANT. We broke from this when disagreement over analysis of the Soviet Union made it impossible for us to continue to participate on a principled basis.
It is rather difficult to fathom precisely what providing "the right wing with a counterweight to KEEP LEFT" actually means, but both during and after our involvement with YOUNG GUARD, the paper defended KEEP LEFT against the right-wing witch-hunt, and was itself viciously witch-hunted by Transport House,
At a later date we formed a common organisation with the group which now publishes MILITANT, to develop further our fight for Marxism within the labour movement, We broke with them when they defended the action of their supporters who voted for the expulsion of KEEP LEFT supporters from Wandsworth Labour Party.
In other words, throughout our fight within the YS, we put principles first, both of Marxist theory and the need for unity against the witch-hunt, We challenge the SLL to prove otherwise, If they cannot do that, they should not insult their readers' intelligence by blustering about "gossip and slander",
We are proud of our role in the YS; despite the smallness of our forces we never succumbed to the temptation to augment them by unity on an unprincipled basis; and had we been large enough to have a decisive independent influence we are confident that our strategy would have proved correct, And we consider that this strategy was negatively confirmed by the operation of the SLL's,
When the history of their methods within the YS is examined the precedents for their manoeuvres over the YCL debate can be seen; from the start they sought to seize the leadership of the YS, irrespective of the political results of their strategy. The YS in 1960 was filling up with youth who had been radicalised in the CND movement and the 1960 engineering apprentices strike. The majority were well to the left of [those who had previous]ly become involved with any of the Marxist tendencies within the YS, It was this sector of the YS which at the same time supported the political line of the Marxists, and was persuaded by the right wing to condemn the tactics of KEEP LEFT at the first and second conferences of the YS.
They were persuaded to do this because of the methods KEEP LEFT supporters used in their attempt to achieve ascendency within the YS, At the first YS conference they totally misjudged the situation and attempted to lead a rush on to the platform in order to eject the Transport House imposed chairman. This was a complete failure since the vast majority of the delegates were too inexperienced to understand fully the role of the bureaucracy. Combined with this the complete hostility and factional attitude towards other left tendencies, which KEEP LEFT expressed, alienated them from this sector of the YS, This factionalism, for which to be fair, KEEP LEFT was [illegible] young workers and students, The result was that [illegible] out of the [illegible]
Thus it was that KEEP LEFT scraped together a majority in 1964, not by politically winning over the YS as it existed in 1960-61, but in a much reduced movement of which they were the most active elements, They have tried to build up a legend of their fighting to make the YS a mass youth movement, but the lobbies of Parliament in which they involved large numbers of unemployed youth, their social and sport activities drew only a small number of youth into the YS, The plain fact is that the YS in 1964 was a much smaller movement than it was in its initial phases.
The subsequent evolution of both KEEP LEFT/YS and the League itself has, on the one hand, increased the isolationism and factionalism of these organisations, and on the other hand made them rely more and more on the tissue of mythology which they have woven about their experiences within the YS, in order to justify their attitude towards other Marxists, This explains their reluctance to debate outside the pages of their publications, where awkward arguments can be selected, in order to conform to the needs of one or other stereotyped "answer", precisely as they have done with INTERNATIONAL,
It is for this reason that Slaughter throws such pathetically weak arguments as [illegible] Bob Rowthorne's article in BLACK DWARF, on the National Convention of the Left. Comrade Rowthorne is not a member of the IMG, and while we would not accept Slaughter's interpretation of his article, neither would we associate ourselves with all of Rowthorne's views, Slaughter, however, claims that this article is the basis of our attitude towards the LEFT/YCL debate, [illegible] of our members edits BLACK DWARF: in fact Tariq did not edit the issue to which Slaughter refers, since he was in Pakistan at the time. He also tries to back himself up by claiming that "all through last year the NEWSLETTER pointed out the way in which Purdie's group (working through the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign) capitulated to the Stalinists on the spurious grounds of a so-called "united-front." Slaughter is referring to the work for the mass demonstration of solidarity with the Vietnamese Revolution which took place last October 27th. The IMG independently, and as part of VSC, took a major part in organising this, and participated on the Ad-Hoc Committee which co-ordinated the work for the demonstration, This committee was made up of representatives of a large number of organisations, among them the YCL and the Communist Party National Students' Committee (though not the CP itself).
By no means did these latter organisations dominate the committee. In fact it is no secret that the YCL pressed hard for the route of the demonstration to encompass Grosvenor Sq., but this was voted down by the committee, How [this] squares with accusations of [illegible] particularly since the YCL's participation represented a political somersault on their part, (Until about six months previously they had been denouncing as splitters those who stood for the principle of expressing solidarity with the National [illegible]
If Slaughter disagrees with Trotsky, and, considers it wrong in principle to co-operate with the Communist Party or its youth organisation, on any basis whatsoever, he should have the courage to say so; failing that he should explain just what was wrong with our work for the October 27th demonstration, or we can only conclude that his objection has no political basis and is simply factional sour grapes,
But, of course, these other issues are secondary to the central theme of the NEWSLETTER's criticism, which is that the IMG, by condemning the methods used by the KEEP LEFT YS over the YCL debate, is expressing a revision of Trotskyist ideas about Communist Parties, and attempting to achieve an unprincipled alliance with the CP. We must, therefore, explain our motives in taking this attitude and our theoretical position with regard to the Communist Parties and their youth movements today.
to be continued in the next issue