THE RECENT SPLIT in the International-Communist League has a much wider significance than is suggested by the small number of comrades involved. The fusion between the Workers Fight grouping and Workers Power which gave birth to the I-CL late last year was hailed by the new organisation as a breakthrough in overcoming the fragmentation of the British far left. The split casts doubt on both that claim and, more seriously, the whole project of regroupment of the scattered forces of the far left. For these reasons it is essential that the lessons of this split are understood and not merely dismissed as a negative experience. As the first step towards such an understanding, Red Weekly is printing the press release of the Political Committee of the I-CL and a reply from the Steering Committee of the 38 comrades who constitute Workers Power.
International-Communist League
AT A meeting on 19 September, 21 comrades, led by D.Hughes and D. Stocking [two former leaders of the IS Left Faction/Workers Power], decided to desert the I-CL.
As Trotsky wrote of similar dead-end splits in his period: 'They split from us not because we are intolerant or intolerable, but because they themselves did not and could not go forward.'
The split has no foundation in revolutionary-internationalist principles. In the course of the five months prepatory debate for the forthcoming I-CL conference, Hughes and Stocking came forward with only relatively minor differences on national tactical questions.
Their chief argument centred round the view that the I-CL gave insufficient priority to 'industrial work' and claims that the I-CL majority tended to 'sectarianism' or 'propagandism', or concessions to Labourism. [Only one of those participating in the split has claimed that the political differences were large enough to justify it].
When the other Political Committee members protested against the unprincipled factionalism inherent in the workerist demagogy about 'industrial work' [when Hughes and Stocking were unable to earmark a single actual difference as to what concretely should be done in relation to 'industrial work'!] and in the usually caricatural presentation of the majority's arguments Hughes and Stocking set up a hue and cry about the minds of the membership being 'poisoned' against them. They were eventually to demand — as an ultimatum — that the other PC members disavow their political assessment of Hughes' and Stocking's methods.
It appeared virtually certain that Hughes and Stocking would be in a minority at the forthcoming first I-CL conference. [At the August National Committee their documents had received only a tiny minority vote.] At the Political Committee on 10 September, Stocking and his co-thinker S. King suddenly declared that they did not recognise the authority of the conference and that they would not undertake to abide by its decisions if they were in a minority.
Stocking, King, and later, Hughes, reiterated over three days their position of not recognising the authority of the conference. It was put to them that if they considered conference preparations unsatisfactory, they should propose postponement, alteration of the agenda, reference back of documents, etc. They made no such proposals, but adamantly held to their position of non-recognition.
The PC majority was then obliged, in defence of the most elementary democratic rights of the I-CL membership, to suspend Hughes, Stocking and King. At the same time, the door was left open to them by a provision that they would be completely and immediately reinstated, even onto the PC, if only they agreed to recognise the authority of conference.
Hughes, Stocking and King remained obstinate and went on the path of split.
They present the split as a 'de-fusion', a reversal of the December 1975 fusion between Workers Fight and Workers Power which formed the I-CL.
This is a dishonest trick. A large proportion of the ex-WP comrades [including leading ex-WP comrades] remain loyal to the I-CL. In a special appeal, they condemned the invocation of the 'ex-WP' label: 'Its aim is to advance the fortunes of a narrow circle... It is an attempt to appeal to comrades on the basis of past friendships, loyalties and allegiances as opposed to political programme.'
The split represents the revolt of circle politics against party spirit. As a result of fusion arrangements, Hughes and Stocking had a degreee of power in the leading committees of the I-CL corresponding more to their former pre-eminence in the Left Faction/Workers Power than to their real influence in the I-CL. A declaration signed by most members of the NC majority had already committed its signatories to support the granting of places on the Political Committee to Hughes and Stocking [in contrast, Hughes and Stocking, in the last period before the desertion, announced a programme of removing all members of the PC majority from the leadership!].
However, the perspective was one of Hughes and Stocking being a subordinate part of a collective leadership, not emperors in their own circle. They could not tolerate that. And so they took the course of split, appealing to old loyalties rather than to any politics. They bolted rather than subordinate themselves to the work of party-building.
The Hughes-Stocking grouping has no political future. It will either expire or gravitate to a large group — most probably the IMG, in whose chronic factional dog-fighting they will feel at home. Its main platform inside the I-CL was 'more industrial work' —but Hughes himself has already admitted that outside the I-CL his grouping will not be able to do any serious industrial work and will orientate to 'lots of work' in the mass reformist party.
At the Hughes-Stocking meeting of 19 September, a group including the only serious proletarian element at the meeting [the I-CL cell in an important Midlands factory] argued an anti-split line. They maintained that if Hughes and Stocking were serious about their politics, they would form a faction in the I-CL to fight for them. They declared that they themselves would fight for their positions — which are close on some issues to those put forward by Hughes and Stocking in the pre-conference debate — inside the I-CL, probably by forming a faction.
The I-CL entirely upholds the right of these comrades to form a faction. It leaves its doors open to any comrades who took part in the split but have second thoughts. They will be entirely free to argue their positions within the democratic centralist framework of the I-CL, and to receive proportional representation on the leading committees.
The Political Committee of the I-CL has in any case guaranteed that the Hughes-Stocking documents on I-CL orientation will remain on the agenda of the conference to be debated by the membership.
The I-CL will not waste time mourning over the desertions.If comrades wish to commit political suicide, in the last analysis they cannot be stopped. The I-CL will learn the lessons from the example Hughes and Stocking gave us of circle politics, and go forward, continuing our programme of publications, intervention in the working class, and international dialogue, debate and collaboration.
POLITICAL COMMITTEE, INTERNATIONAL-COMMUNIST LEAGUE