JOHNSTONE TRICT on everybody expelled being taken back, whereas Sillars will want individuals to return, fragmented and isolated, without an effective voice in the party.
Clear It is also becoming increasingly clear that although the left formed and was expelled on the question of democracy, the bulk of the expelled members are also against the chief plank of Sillars political programme, the Jobs and Industry document. of the policy differences will also illuminate the extent to which Sillars is SNP-bound.
If this is done the first step will have been taken towards a strong, openly socialist organisation with a campaigning membership which is capable of building the SLP in the working class.
was in this task leadership clearly failed.
Curious
Inose WnO believe in with him The clarification apologist is also more confused. ently in entitled 'Exit the "entrists"", implied was unable the old Workers democracy, for which we struggle throughout the labour movement, is certainly not a luxury an optional extra. It is a vital part of the struggle for a socialist democracy. That is why the way organisations act and behave today is seen by the most advanced workers as an image of the Ascherson is correct when he states that the IM's supporters fatally underestimated the party leadership's resolve to smash them at almost any cost.' They, poor naive souls, imag ined that in 1976 the methods of both Stalinism and right-wing social democracy had been sufficiently discredited within the workers vanguard for them 1o De able strugcle tol socialist polcies. They made an error of judgement.
Ascherson and friends are guilty of a much graver sin: that of covering up and providing the rationalisations for the bloodletting inaug urated by Messrs Sillars, Neil and Robertson. By so doing they have connived at ending the possibility of a real democratic regime within their own party. Whether they realise it or not they have also consigned themselves to acting as radical covers for the right-wing politics of the leaders.