who have left! these groups but to a wide layer of radicals, the labour movement, no are escalate.
Roots basis of understanding the errors of the past.
For many.
ing mass unemployment and eroding living standards.
and their allies. It is by no means, state of disintegration it is in at present.
in Britain on the basis of a clear methodology..
startling shifts in their positions.
a few years later.
momentum slowed up, depth.
for their self-determination.
dramatically revealed today.
Clarity In order to go forward, at present, a group on alahole ations, the left as a whole around burning issues.
LSA.
In the first place, Programme'.
ordanisation can be bullt.
In the second place, Tor unILy in action by and their allies.
It is by firmness in political programme not ignore burning polltical issues.
many left groups grew in both size and influence.
Groups such as IS and the IMG attracted large numbers of radical youth who had seen the limitations of both the Labour and Communist parties and who had begun The dramatic growth of these groups makes the present fragmentation of the which had the heady illusion are now convulsed with inner disputes resulting in 'split-offs', expulsions and growing disillusion.
There can be no doubt that this fragmentation is demoralising not only to those policies of the Labour and Communist parties. It is doubly demoralising that this still seeking an alternative to the reformist fragmentation should occur at a time when the need for a strong alternative is more necessary than ever before as attacks on working people and their allies The task, however, is not to remain demoralised but to uncover the reasons for this set-back in order to ensure it is not repeated. The fragmentation that exists at present can be 'positive' if it leads to further regroupments on the clear the present situation can be explained away as the result of the decline in radicalisation in the broader labour movement which has, alternative strategy, temporarily acquiesced to the government's policy of creatThere is obviously some truth in this since the 'left' obviously reflects, greater or lesser extent, the shifts in mood and consciousness of working people knows not only 'flows' but also lebbs! which do not always throw the left into a however, ine yull answer.
The real answer is to be found within the left itself and its political inability, over the past years, to relate to the complex developments of the class struggle One of the major weaknesses of groups such as IS or the IMG was that their Both these groups tended to 'abstention! on the Labour Party in the 1970 election to one of full support only for example, was able to shitt tron This constant adaptation to the moods of different layers they were working with meant that the composition of these groups was never based on a common understanding of the way forward. While the groups were growing fast, the momentum tended to 'hold together' the internal differences - but the moment thai as at present, these differences burst forth with startling nature of the present radicalisation in Britain. Almost all the groups (above all Lack of political clarity was accompanied by an inability to grasp the complex IS) were unable to grasp the significance of the development of the women's liberation movement, the black power movement or the struggle by the Irish people Refusal to relate seriously to these questions of importance to millions - and refusal to pioneer them inside the labour movement - meant that they, adapted to a narrow 'Economist' view of the class struggle which saw militancy over wage concerns as an end in itself. The fallacy of this attitude has been it is important to learn from these errors.
Short-cut tactics - such as the decision by Workers' Fight to 'unite' with other forces to create the I-CL on an unclear political basis - is no solution. repeats the mistakes of the past and harbours within it the splits of the future.
What is important today is a perspective which, while allowing for building equally allows for the maximum unity in action This is the perspective of the any serious political tendency needs to be built around a clear programme which allows it to respond to the complex developments of the class struggle with a clear method: the method outinen cies on she set the Lia While prepared to discuss with all tendencies on the left, is convinced that agreement on that programme is the only way in which a real while such a debate takes place, there is an urgent need all tendencies around key issues effecting working people Building united actions around the issue of abortion, Ireland & racist immigration laws are concrete examples of this in practice.
and by complete flexibility in building mass actions with all other forces on the left that there lies a way forward out of the present fragmentation which both clarifies political ideas and which does Bill.
however, both inside & outside abortion rights.
which was able, the inks derween abortiul example, 1o d - and which is, in many ways, The class struggle continuing - is not laws to abortion restrictions. Single Issue with MCAPP* course, the living standards Portion rights was, mistake.
its importance It merely the of the working class'.
groups were unity that had been built same time, iveness remains the sole street abortionists.
conference, Last June, over 25000 marched through London against James White's anti-abortion There can be no doubt that this mass opposition instrumental in getting the White threat 'shelved' and putting back the plans of the anti-abortion lobby who had long been campaigning to repeal the 1967 Act. NAC's early success was not due, merely to the Soontaneos outcry that grew up against the reactionary attempt by the SPUC-supported Bill to rob women of their 'limited' It was also due the type of campaign launched by NAC in a few months. tap this potential and draw it onto the streets in mass action against the govonly, Winning NAC to this perspective - to ine building mass action on the streets on a concrete issue of concern to millions of women - was no simple task. It meant a running fight against those tendencies in NAC who were only too anxious to turn it into a 'paper' campaign limited to small meetings abstractly debating and, TOR 'cuts! on the NHS.
This debate which took place in NAC still unique. It reflects a wider debate taking place in radical circles as to the most effective way of carrying forward defence of living standards and democratic rights against attacks ranging from racist immigration One of the major weaknesses of NAC, in the eyes of such tendencies as the IMG, was precisely the fact that it was organised around the single issue of abortion rights. As early as June 19 Red Weekly was trying to remedy this by encouraging NAC to '.. link itself which aims to unite all those forces fighting for a full and comprehensive health service based on the needs of the working class'.
Struggling against NHS cuts is, an important way to challenge the government's attempt to undermine of working people.
The attempt by the IMG, among others, to force this position on those who had united around the need to defend abhowever, a serious It was a serious mistake because dissolving NAC into an attempt to combat the NHS cuts - downplaying left, - ettectively cut across the maximum unite campuggling against ability of the campaign to create the real threat facing women through government's anti-abortion moves.
While those forces who built NAC were quite willing to unite around the issue of abortion rights, many were not.
yet, convinced of the need to fight for a 'health service based on the needs By trying to extend the programme of NAC into a 'multi-issue' campaign, such in reality, endangering the up and, at the the interests of masses of women for whom the campaign's effectsafequard between them and a return to the backIn their paper following the October the ex-Workers Fight tendency wrote that the LSA 'always single-mindedly insisted on the most.
narrow campaign!. Keeping NAC to a single issue was not, as Workers Fight infer, a 'fetish'. It was simply the 1 - called by NAC - was directly to repeat the sectarian error of the left which constantly tries to dissolve the concrete issue at nand - sUCh as the struggle tor abortion rignis - into paper resolutions on all and sundry understood only by a few 'initiated'.
Consciousness Widening NAC's programme would not in this respect, have endangered unity of the left on an issue of key importance to masses of women. would equally have destroyed NAC'S potential for boldly moving out & drawing into action inousands of people who were beginning to identify with its concrete objectives.
This is precisely the advantage of the single-issue campaign since, by taking up a concrete issue that faces people in their daily lives, it can begin to araw them into struggle at their present level of consciousness to change the situation. in NAC who were so eager to 'extend' This is not unimportant. nose torces the programme should ask themselves why the Working Women's Charter (a campaign organised around a series of cemanes was. a mass opposition to the government's itself, unable to launch anti-abortion moves. The reason was of course, that being based on a multiit was limited in its appeal only to those who were already convinced women's liberationists or socialists.
The significance of NAC (unlike the Charter) was that it was able to break through this 'elitism' and involve only the committed but the uncommitted. This was a welcome step forward since the only force capable of stopping the government in its tracks is not a few ¡convinced' socialists but masses of people who have begun to struggle on an issue seen as important to them.
It has been the left's inability to grasp this simple fact which has held back the building of effective opposition on democratic rights & living standards.
Racist immigration laws remain on the statute books and the troops remain in Ireland because of the inability of the over the years, to launch effective movements which can relate to the understanding of masses of people.
mass action perspective is unrealistic.
Workers Fight, writing on ireland at ironically enough, when over 60% of people had shown in opinion polls they were in favour of withdrawing the troops, pointed out:.." is utopian to believe that TOM can become a mass movement'. Such pessimism merely cloaks, in reality, the fact that the politics of such groups are not even directed towards drawing layers into struggle (which remains the only way to concretely aid the Irish people in their struggle for self-determination).
This orientation, which rules out the possibility of mounting any effective opposition around key issues, stents in large part from an inability to grasp how people begin to radicalise. It fails to understand that people cannot be
----- pull-quotes -----
to grasp the need for an alternative to the left of 'reformism'. left all the more ironic. Groups such as IS, competing with the Communist (if not Labour) party,
Mistakes growth was never accompanied by clarity in ideas.
the streets to the increasing attempts by successive governments to erode
Mass Action For many groups on the left, such a