BRITAIN
The left, the young socialists and the miners' strike The Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) is the youth wing of the British Labour Party. Its annual conference was held on April 5-8 and as such it was the first national labour movement conference to be held since the end of the miners' strike. It was therefore the first opportunity to judge clearly the impact of the political outcome of the struggle on a section of the British labour movement. Where to stand on the lessons of the strike - the examples of struggle, solidarity, and working class leadership - is the central question facing every section of the British labour movement. The answer to it is now dividing and recomposing the whole of the British left. Inevitably the LPYS is part of this process. Unfortunately the dominant current in the LPYS, Militant, a rightist British centrist organisation, chose the occasion to politically distance themselves from the key lessons of the strike and, in particular, from the record of Scargill. This is in continuity with Militant's hostility to almost every wave of youth and working class radicalisation over the last few years. This 'Marxist' current denounced the Greenham women and failed to oppose sending the British fleet to the Malvinas. The result is the current isolation of the LPYS.
Anne KANE
The decision by Militant to distance itself from the positive political results of the strike is in line with developments across the left since the end of the strike. The left has been riven apart on the basis of where it stands in relation to "Scargillism' . The reason for this debate about "Scargillism' which is now convulsing the labour movement is quite simple. British society has just lived through the greatest class struggle for sixty years. That struggle had the first class struggle leadership with a mass base to be seen in British politics since 1926. It was a leadership which broke from class collaboration, which argued class politics and which showed itself willing to stand and fight in defence of the working class throughout the strike and beyond. As such it was qualitatively different from the leadership the British working class has known for this whole period. other "broad left' trade union leaders. It was different from It supported militant methods of struggle, such as mass picketing, and forged new social alliances with layers of the oppressed. As a result a new social movement began to be created which exists beyond even the defeat of the strike and has put new questions onto the political agenda of a section of the masses. This minority current began to go beyond the labourist framework of
British working class polities.
The choice for the currents who claim to form the left of the labour movement is whether to stand with the lessons of the struggle, with 'Scargillism' ', or against it. It is a fundamental choice and one around which the left is now reshaping.
The debate in all of the major left journals reflects this recomposition. This debate of the
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'new realist left' , and of the realignments on the labour lett.
On one side of this divide, against 'Scargillism' , are Neil Kinnock, the 'soft left' Labour Coordinating Committee, the Eurocommunists of Marxism Today, and Militant. On the other are Seargill, Tony Benn and thousands of militants in the NUM and across the labour movement, the women's movement and the mass campaigns. It is precisely because the miners' strike brought into sharp focus the fundamental political questions the working class has to address - the kind of leadership required to fight in its interests and its accountability, the need to organise mass political action, social alliances with the oppressed outside of the existing confines of the labour movement - that the true colours of every section of the organised left are revealed by where they stand on the miners' strike. This is nowhere more true than in the LPYS. The historic struggle of the miners received the overwhelming support of working class youth. Young miners were the backbone of the strike. As Arthur Scargill put it 'How many times have we heard the saying "young people today are not like their forefathers.
They're too busy making mortgage repayments" tired of the Jeremiahs of the movement . But now we are sick and saying young people will never fight as well as the older generation that built the movement. I say without fear of contradiction, that if those who built our trade union movement could look on this scene today they would salute our young miners. The young women and men who led this struggle in the mining communities dominated every demonstration, rally and picket. They led the support committees and organised fund-raisins and solidarity action. Young people led the building of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners groups, Women Against Pit Closures, and Black solidarity groups. Youth CND [Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament] drew the political links between nuclear power, the attack on the mining industry and youth unemployment much more effectively than the LPYS even attempted to.
The political ideas of thousands of young people were forged in this struggle. All this added to the already existing struggles of youth in Youth CND, the women's movement, the Irish solidarity movement and all the campaigns of the oppressed. The alliances forged between young people active in these struggles and support for the miners raised the political consciousness of many thousands of young people onto a new, higher level. It has helped create a class struggle current among youth. This alliance strengthens the whole working class by struggling around the specific concerns of the oppressed and exploited.
The potential to organise this layer of young people who were inspired by the miners' strike was very great. It was done in limited ways around solidarit actions, campaigniN tick Youth CND and in certain regions of the country. The obstacle to organising them into the main left-wing organisation for youth, the LPYS, was the politics of the Militant leadership. During the strike Militant formally supported the miners, organised fund-raising and attended solidarity actions. But not one national LPYS demonstration of youth in support of the miners was organised which could have drawn together the young people who mobilised for the miners. At no point did the LPYS openly criticise the Labour Party leadership or present a clear political alternative to Kinnock.
Militant's problem was counterposing building an open mass socialist youtn organisation to building its own organisation. Party-building, Militant paper sales and Militant fund-raising were put above the opportunity to win many thousands of young people to the LPYS.
However the real problem Militant faced was a political one. This was most graphically represented at LPYS conference. The conference was much smaller than last year, with 69 less
REVOLUTION BUILDING THE SOCIALIST PAPER FUN YOUTH 20c LABOUR PARTY YOUNG COCIALISTS 19
branches sending delegates — remarkable for a socialist youth movement in the aftermath of the greatest working class struggle in Britain for sixty years. There was virtually no presence of miners or women from the mining communities.
There was no attempt to identify with the political lessons of the strike.
The key event was a speech by
Militant's top spokesperson, Ted Grant, to the Militant rally at conference.
The core of this was an attack on the
Scargill leadership of the NUM. Grant's view was that Scargill had been wrong not to organise a national ballot [on the issue of strike action] and that this proved that Scargill lacked faith in the working class' • This of the leadership of the longest and most political mass strike in British history. For Militant the problem was not the Thatcher government, the betrayal of the labour and trade union movement but the
Scargill leadership.
The function of this attack was to distance Militant and the LPYS from the crucial lessons of the miners' strike and the forces which supported it.
The whole course of the strike was in sharp contrast with Militant's political framework. The miners and their supporters organised in ways and in support of issues which Militant did not support. This was shown most clearly at Labour Party conference in October where the NUM took positions to the left of Militant on women, Black sections, lesbian and gay rights and Ireland. Militant aligned itself with Neil Kinnock [leader of the Party] on all these ques- Deader of the Dol 1 1 tions. Whereas the NUM used its weight in the Labour Party to support the left and thus build its own struggle, Militant ran away from using the strong lever of the LYS to support left policy or organise youth in support of the miners.
To fully identify with the NUM would have started a dynamic which could only have started to unravel Militant's political framework. Instead Militant confirmed its isolation from the left in the labour movement by opposing those issues around which the left is now inevitably going to organise.
However the political lessons of the miners' strike were also positively 20 atells
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PICKET Two generations: NUM pickets (DR)
reflected at LPYS conference, in the form of the emergence in embryo of a current to the left of the Militant leadership, linked to the left of the
Labour Party and inspired by the miners' strike. The resolution on the miners' mentioned everything Militant omitted: strike supported by these forces unequivocal support for the class struggle stance of Scargill, for the organisation of women, black people, lesbians and gay men in support of the miners, and open opposition to the betrayals of Kinnock.
The best example of the potential of this left was a huge fringe meeting of the Labour Party Black sections and Liverpool City Black caucus. Here over 300 people heard of the capitulation to racism of Militant in control of Liverpool City Council. (1) The deep divisions created in the working class through Militant's refusal to recognise black self-organisation contrasts with the strengthening of the working class through the NUM's support for Black sections and the organised support of Black people for the miners.
A further meeting of the left to discuss an alternative way forward for the LPYS attracted over one hundred activists and argued that the way forward to building 1 mass socialist movement was to identify with the record of the miners' strike. The miners had shown what kind of novement could be built by an incompromising stance, by not fudging fernes with int with Kinnock, and by
N.U.i, OFFICIAL PICKET 319AV2 supporting the self-organisation of the oppressed.
These meetings represented the existence in embryo of a small but important left current which has the potential to rebuild the LPYS in the only way possible - in the image of the social and political alliances created during the miners' strike. The only other choice for the LPYS is to continue to stagnate under its present political leadership, isolated from the forces in the left in the Labour Party, the NUM and across the labour movement, and hostile to the political issues that the left is organised around. This would only increase the vulnerability of the LPYS to the threat of serious organisational restrictions by the Labour Party leadership which understands exactly the choices facing the LPYS and the threat of a youth movement which mirrored the forces brought together during the strike.
The fight to build a mass, campaigning LPYS, behind a leadership which also 'stands and fights' has taken one small step further at this conference. dominated dominated Liverpool city council entered In January of this year the Militantinto a dispute with Black organisations and local government employees, over the council's decision to employ one Sampson Bond as a race relations officer for the council. It was argued that Bond, a Militant supporter from London was not familiar with the community and was not supported by local Black organisations who should have been consulted about the appointment. Militant supporters spread opposition. spread opposition. persisted in the ne persisted in the appointment despite wide-
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
WOMEN'S LIBERATION_