Wing people against each other.
The inability of the left to relate to & pioneer the rights of women or Blacks - or that of the Irish people for self-determination - is an accomodation to the backwardness of the labour movement. Above all, it shows an inability to grasp that fighting for such issues is key not only to pioneer the interests of the doubly-oppressed but also to root out those prejudices in the labour movement that the ruling class will play on ever-more forcibly to split and divide working people.
Secondly, this 'economism' of the left was complemented by an inability to view these as part of a broader strategy of struggle within the labour movement against its reformist leaders. Groups such as the IMG - and still, today, the IS - believed it was possible to. 'bypass' the labour movement without building a serious opposition in the unions and Labour Party against its present This perspective, which isolated these groups from the mainstream of the labour movement, has shown itself to be increasingly illusory. As everwider layers look to the Labour Party as a tool to fight in their interests - a process reflected in the shift left at recent conferences - it is more vital than ever that socialists should intervene in the mass organisations of the labour movement to build there a class-struggle left-wing against the present leaders, left or right. Unity While growing numbers have begun to come to grips with these limitations, the present frag -mentation will not be easy to overcome, Short -cut tactics (such as that by the IMG calling for unity at any price) offer no solution. Unity on no clear programmatic basis, while 'attractive!, can only repeat the mistakes of the past and lead to the splits of the future. The recent split in the I-CL (a fusion of the old Workers Fight with the Left Faction of IS) is clearly indicative of the dangers unprincipled unities can bring.
What is needed today is a perspective of debate which can lead to regroupment on a basis of programmatic clarity. Such a process should not, of course, prevent the unity in action of the left around burning issues, such as fighting to defend abortion rights, to repeal the racist Immigration Act or oppose the cuts. While obtaining unity on these issues of importance to millions, there is however the need for a serious debate on those key questions of strategy facing the marxist moveIt is here that Socialist Action feels that it has a role to play. The journal will, of course, Tina sciti LSA Statement of Aims.
continue to report and analyse the key issues in the class struggle nationally and internationally. Most important, however, will be its attempt to present a clear position on the central questions facing the left today and introduce some 'clarity! into the existing confusion.
Tradition Such clarity is not produced from a hat. The LSA is convinced that understanding the complex and constantly changing developments of the class struggle means arming oneself with a clear method. the method embodied in Trotsky's Transitional Programme. It is only by basing itself on such a method that a serious political tendency can begin to elaborate a clear programme for intervening in the different forms of For 1o0 long the Trotskyist movement in Brit'ain has been represented by the sectarianism of groups like the WRP or the chameleon-type politics of groups like the IMG. The errors of both these groups resides precisely in their inability - despite their pretentions - to grasp the method of the Transitional Programme and to apply it concretely in Britain today.
It is necessary now to re-assert that method - to re-assert what is vital and living in the Trotskyist tradition. The LSA, which is in pol¡tical solidarity with the Fourth International -or, more specifically, with its Leninist-Trotsky minority - feels that it is in a position to go some way in this respect.