all making a killing...' ROGER PROTZ looks at the Jubiles.
THE FOLLOWING front-page Gatbermore:
SCROUNGERS MAFIA MILK THE NATION *A highly organised group of social security scroungers, who more around the country on step ahead of the authoricies, are milking the nation of hundredi of thousands of pounds a week:
dubbed "Scroungers security officials, are a shadowy organisation without known surnames. their leaders are known as Liz and Phil.
•As a result of their massive welfare handouts, the group live in luxury in several secret homes Jotte Sound meant Ha reporters have sported them in London, Berkshite, Norfaik and Scotland *When they feel chat authorities are close on trail, chey slip abroad in a large yacht that is also funded by public money.
'Last night the Tory spokesman on the social services. Geoffrey Yahoo, said: "These disgraceful facts show yet again that while industrious middle class people are heing milked by the taxman, idle ne'er-do-wells are lining their pockets at the expense of the thrifty"! "It is marvellously good for business; the hotels are packed, the purveyors of such tawdry items as 70p Union Jacks, Jubilee tankards and red, white and blue biros are That is fantasy of course, Bat and fantasy sometimes get curiously mixed.
The press has been screeching about scroungers" for years. Af the sane Libe the newspapers, whose editors not have the decency to blush ar their appalling hypocrisy, have sorced themselves into a lather cajoling us into celebrating the rava tubilee.
SCROUNGING The nation 1 in a mess, thei tell us. We must all tighten our belts and pur our nosts to be cliche to bring our battered old nation back onto the right econ omic course.
And yet untold millions of pubic money are being squandered on a mammoth, elebrarion for a tiny group who their represent all rhat is so desperatel wrong with our present system and its twisred priorities.
If our press was truly independent and fearless in when it comes to scrounging and в cool busm, Ine royal drones Jeave the rest of ScandaL The Quest could reach some a thing or two when it comes to self same syncheric pay bargaining. She has a private Jortune Di her own reputed to be one of the richest people in the world screws a tidy sum from its quest Government and is never satisTIEN Last year the Government, affer much private lobbying by us the Queen, ance by E265,000 increase of t3,300 a week. Her allowance £1,665,000 a year. The Gavern ment said the incresse was necesshe is tion' the wage increases being inMation *Orher members of the royal Family did well out of be deal. top. Prince Philip's increased her allow - that is an year, the Queen Mother's from 195,000 to E140,000 and Princess nOw Anne gor an extra £10,000 a year. Princess Margaret gor £15,000 sary to take account of infla- the same Gorernment parent family. prates about rayal attract allowance 220,000 t0 E85,000 a their: more, no doubt to compensate for the fact that she is a oneThis is fine according to the sycophants of the press. The family are part of the nation's stirring history, they overseas visitors, they work terribly hard plancing trees, Inunching ships, packing suitcrises to bove from Buckinghan Palace to Windsor or Balmora or Sandringham or the roya yacht. By jingo, they deserve al that money from the taxpayers.
In sharp discinction sre cor miners, car workers, and the millions of workice people who produce real, tangible value b their labour. Their pay should b savagely pegged by the Govern ment because, unlike the roya Tamily, they are of listle socia value, they have contributed nothing to the nation's history And should they have the misfortune to lose thei: job, then families deserve to branded as scroungers when Lley Seck to recoup some tiny fractica of their contribution to society through welfare henefits. SMOKESCREEN M The jutalee celebrations, des perately conjured into life by the Government and the media through a largely apathetic pop ulation, are a sipantic smoke soreen, a diversion froin our rea probiecos and a crude and naus cating attempe to get us to unite around some clapped-out, socialLy irrelevant totem pole It is marvellously good fo Business: the hotels are packed the purveyors of such rawdry items as 70p Union Jacks, jubilee tankards and red, white and hlue birns are all making a killing But for the million and a half jobless, the million and more without a bome, the million: Lving in deepening poverty, i all a caiculaced insult.
And on this sickening occasion 1 send the Following disloyal greeting to the royal family Please seck the urgent atrention of a taxidermist.
THE COMMUNIST PARTY leadership will carry the vote on the new Draft of the British Road at the Party Congress In November. But it Is not so clear that they will be able to carry the membership as a whole behind It after the congress. The pre-Congress discussion is burst- Eastern Europe. ing through the formal channels of what is called 'inner Party Democracy' within the Communist Party. There is even talk of the danger of a split. The spectre of the split in the Swedish Communist Party is being roused.
Charlie Doyle, an old and respected worker militant in the Party, has written an alternative to the British Koad New Draft. He submitted it 10 Marxism Today and Comment who rejected it on grounds of length (though it is not even a quarter of the lengil of the leadership's draft). So Doyle published the piece as a pamphlet.
Then the Executive Committee banned its distribution, saying that the E.C. meeting in July will discuss whether lather action should be taken. Meanwhile, there are reports of some Party members being suipended for selling the pamphlet: Gordon McLennan contirmed two such suspensions in Yorkshire to Socialist Challenge. Yet the pamphlet is still being passed around 'clandestinely and its supporters have started sending it anonymously through the post to likely sympathisers (a tactic used by the Trotskyists bureaucratised Soviet Party during the 1920s).
PARTY RULES An even more menacing event is the planned mass meeting of opponents of the draft at Merton Civic Hall on 9 June. This meeting drives tank through the Party rules, but many members are expected to attend.
Socialist Challenge is printing the summary contained in Charlie Doyle's pamphier, not at all because we agree with his general views. Bur because we think that a vital practical principle of Leninism is involved in the banning of his pamphlet, a principle of concern to all socialists, inside and outside che Communist Party. As one writer in Comment said: "Socialist Democracy of course means all things to all Communists." (Joho Holford, Comment, 25 December 1976) Hence the necessity of spelling our what we mean by "democracy".
Leaving aside minor, subsidiary currents, there are two main factional groupings inside the Communist Party today. The differences between these two groupings are pretty deep.
SURREY DISTRICT One, sometimes called the Frenchites after Sid French of the Surrey District Committer, calls the new draft a "left social democratic programne" (Comment, 30 April) while at the same time backing the bureaucratic regimes in The other grouping, around the leadership, combines what is indeed a lett social democratic programme, with correct, though very partial, criticisms of bureaucratic crimes against the working people of Eastern Europe.
UNEASY FEELING The Party members are thus effeclively given a cholce between a left social democratic strategy for Britain und a grouping that backs bureaucrutic dictatorships in the East.
Some members Teel uneasy about backing either wing, though they agree GORDON MCLENNAN with aspects or what both say. Some might take the view of Socialist Challenge and back a revolutionary Marxist strategy in Britain while at the same time wanting militant solidarity with those in Eastern Europe fighting against the burcaucracy for socialist democracy The leadership of the Party has come down in favour of the right of a plurality of tendencies and parties after principle of workers" democracy. They are also for maintaining the army and bourgeois state machine throughout the revolution. This machinery is designed to crush the real political participation of the mass of workers, principle directly opposed to workers' democracy, but that is the subject of another discussion. Why are we in favour of the right for a multiplicity of currents functioning after the revolution? To be nice to everybody? To show how 'unstalinist" we are? Because we have become worshippers of democracy first, and socialists only second? Not at all: workers democracy is vital for purely practical reasons. There is no other way of deciding between the difference choices of popular opinion and the decision of the majority. Any other view invoives an abandonment of materialism as well as a petty bourgeois contempt for the judgement of the mass of working people. Formally the rules cannot be changed at this stage in a pre-Congress discussion. But if the CP leadership was genuinely concerned to get thorough discussion before the Congress and avoid a confused split it would waive formalities at the July Executive Committee meeting and immediately grant the right of tendencaes and factions and the other measures suggested there. If the membership didn't support this action it could always censure the outgoing E.C. at the Congress. But this is hardly likely since all members of the CP would surely be in favour of maintaining the unity of the Party.
SIMPLE ANSWER Any Party member who reads this article will probably be saying to himself or herself: what the hell has the situation inside the Party got to do with people outside the Party? Above all, why are the Trotskyists sticking their nose into the CP? The answer is quite simple.
Of course, we have particular political reasons for concerning ourselves with the debate in the Communist Party: we want to convince the many dedicated socialists and working class leaders in the Party to take up the fight for a revolutionary line against re formism and to take up a fight against bureaucratic crimes in the workers"
STALINIST METHODS Many thousands of workers and socialists in Britain today are watching the British Communist Party and wondering whether the Party has deci sively broken from Stalinist methods. These people have noted what the leadership has said about not trying to establish its monolithic monopoly of power if the Party gains the leadership of the working class. They have noted what the Party leadership has said abour allowing other political tendencies to operate, organise and function openly, and they welcome this recog sition of the right of tendency in the political атела But if the leadership 5 genuine on that then why does it not allow such rights of tendency to its own membership, as some Trotskyist groups like the IMG do? Can we really expect the CP leadership to operate in a principled way with people outside the Party on the issue of workers' democracy, ver simultancously bureaucratically dominate its own membership and deny it the indispensible right of tendency? Who can believe that? For our part we see it as part of our task to struggle for workers" democ racy throughout the labour movement. This for us is a hasic practical principle and it requires that we defend the rights of socialists whose ideas don't necessarily agree with at all. That is why we consider it a necessary service to CP merbers themselves to publish Charlie Doyle's plutform in Socialist Challenge. If it is read by many CP members then we will have helped to weaken the buresucratic restrictions of the CP rule book. And that is something worth fighting for, METOTAL OPPOSTON I Fourth concept of The British Road can besummed up as follows:
First Britain is neither immune from the laws of social revolation nor the possibilly of some unfonseen, unpredictable violent social upheart, although thes mas be hased on peculin Brish cir cumstancer and characteristies, Second The most dangerous and futile ching a resolutionary cor de is base political propramme on prog posticsdods of unknown future developments which is not only Foolish bot impossible We are revolutionaries, MarxistsLeoists, not tortunetellers. Third The British Road seitles for the pastest of all possible options. thereby disarming the warking class of is most important iden logical weapons. te substitutes the soclal democratie, revisionist eveJotonary part for the revolu -tionary path, ORALISTE The rules allow any individual n ber to put 800 words into Comr and 900 words into the Morning Individual branches can also pass Jutions for Congress or amendien "The British Road". And the Par having a public discussion in labour movement with other tre including the IMG and the speaking on it from the same plac as the Party leadership.
GOON SQUADS Is this not "very democratic' generous and very 'unstalinist? not a striking contrast to the bad "undemocraric" days when Trotsk used to be beaten up or worse by Stalinist goon squads? And wouldr Irfalls to understand toe c nature of the state in either ho geois or be socialist society confuses bourgeois democ and socialist democracy and f losee where one ends and the of begins Fifth AL negates the Commu pays vanguard role and merges it In some broad den raticalliance whose compustio not ver vible in the realitie British political life Sixth Imokesa mechanicalscpurs between the international sud national, and relies on a st quality to the reistionship of e forces on the world arena, h the docement a decidedly cha mistic character Seventh Because of this mechan sepacation, we surrender by fanit our main strength and
LENGE 9 June 1977 be 'unfair' to give Charlie Doyle 3,000 words when every other member, apart, of course, from the Executive Committee, gets only 800. And the IMG doesn't have a running debate week after week in public in its paper - in the past it has only allowed each rendency to say its piece once or twice in the pages of its paper. Though it gives every tendency equal spacel Nothing shows the contlict between the organic development of the differences in the Party and the bureaucratic character of the internal structures more clearly than the black farce over Charle Doyle's pamphlet. Foctions are banned, so secret factions are formed. The Frenchites are banned from organising support round the country, so they do it anyway in clandestinity. Opposition platforms are prohibited so Charlie Doyle produces a samizdar platform. At this point administrative measures are started against political dissidents inside the Party, What will we hear next? That the Frenchites are heing funded by hostile circles abroad, not a hundred versis from Moscow? Some individuals in the Party are already raising this sinister foreign bogey in private, off the record, remarks to Social Challenge. It's probably true. But so what? Is it not possible to prove to the entire membership of the CP in open debate the leadership's point of view. Can a fittle Moscow gold tip the balance? And anyway. not expose Moscow's general gangsterism openly to the membership? Is that possible for the CP leadership in 1977'