APEX rick: Bourgools leaders dishoreed on whutnerto back van the like may he able to play a useful role in pushing this process along a bit.
The transicion from this overall anslysis to explanations of the present sicuation bes in detining what has been the most essential element in the defeats of the last period. Acoording to the Eurocommunists and centrists what has occurred Trotskyists" suppose, some sort of "betrayal" by the labour buremucracy. On the contrary it is an affirmation of the tremendous power of ruling class institurions The working class was unable to go forward, and suffered defeats, because of this bourgeois power — although whether the allegedly decisive role was played by democracy, culture, or general idcology differs from version to version The answer in the present situation is to prepare the way for bigger successes in future. But it wouldn't even remotely over bourgeois democracy, let alone raise tbe que insurrection. To attempt analyse that the present situation is in any directly determined by the alleged utis dominetion of bourgeois democratic ins theories of low the bourgeoisie can d revolutionary upbeavals hased worl councils is noasense. It is iterely a dive whose aim is to draw attention away fron CALM TOTTEN SHORTIOn If we ture from the general theory to the of the present situation we see that even a r sophisticated version of the Eurocommu centrist argument is equally incapable of g an analysis of the pass period. This argu
Peter Hain speaks af Labour Party conference Tribune meeting maintains that the ability of the institutions of the bourgeoisie to begemonise "day to day life"
ben the real dominant cement in this period, even though they do not operate in a direct" Fashion.
But the exact opposite is nearer the truth. Far from an almighty display of ideological and repressive power of the ruling class, even struggle initially involving a small group of workers, such as Grunwicks, produced significant problems within the bourgeoisie. Far from a powerful response, bourgeois leaders started openly disagreeing over whether or not to back Ward the row over the Scarman report revealed this most clearly.
Furthermore, as with the Pentonville Five and the NIRC fine on the AUE, it wasn't institutions such as the bourgeois courts which were determining the situation, but on the contrary, the judiciary carefully followed every twist of the struggle before determining its olicy. Indood what the Scarman report and bourgeats policy in the summer confirmed was that following the mais demonstration of 11 July, Ward and his supporters could have been defented by further workers' mobiusations, Whar allowed the defeats of the late summer of Grunwicks wasn't the huge power of ruling ciass dustirations but the fact that Grancham ond Jackson stepped in smartly to put an end both to the mass pickets and post-office blacking which were winning the struggle.
has existed in other Important struggles of the last period. Despite the press and bourgeois campaign of burning children to corne', rarely has any strike in recent years enjoyed such overwhelming mass support at its inception as the FBU strike. Even the 1972 miners" strike had much less sympachs at its commencement. I won mass suppor, later only hocause of the resolute and determined execution of the dispute.
The First impact of the FBU strike look sections of the bourgooisic by surprise. There were various proposals for capitulation from the bourgeois press and Tory Party, Ir wasn't any tremendoss power or action of institutions of the ruling class, "bur Collaghan stepping in to say 'not an inch* when elements of the bourgeoisie itself wavered. It was Parryandthe FBUleadership spinning out their endless negotiations with the empiovers rather than mobilising passive sympathy into active support, and the TUC stepping in to isolate the FBU that broke up the initial impact of the strike and ensured that a struggle with a chance of victory instead plunged hat within the National Union of Mineworker is hardly even necessary to detail. The most elementary facts show up the bankruptcy of centrist 'explanations". Not even the ruling class just defeat the niners. Indeed every single capitalist policy since 1974 has NUM cannot be defeated in strugsle wing opponents. communists and centrists: the role of the labour burcaucracy.
These are not "academic questions. Any analysis which explains that the crucial factor in recent defeats was the 'strength of bourgeois institutions" and not the central role played by the TUC and Labour Party leaders, leads inexorably not to looking for ways to attack and weaken the position of the leadership but to moves to the right and giving up any activity frightening to the "left allies" within the bureau cracy. For the reformists the enemy which has to be encountered and defeated within the working class is not the Labour bureaucracy, but rather the so-called ultra-left"
There is a certain logic in this position becalise the central leaders of the bureaucracy in recent years have been Scanlon, Jones and Daly, old friends of reformism and centrism, and traditional defenders of left social-democratic perspectives. A break with them is clearly too frightening a perspective.
Thus the claim that the central facror was the "strength of bourgeois institutions' provided the rationale for the complete abscoe of any activity in the present period from the CP-controlled SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 12 January 1978 page 9 Unions (LCDTU), the virtual disappearance for a prolonged period of the Institute for Workers Control conference, and the abandonment of the call for a campaigning NUS by the CP. The different practical policies advocated by centrists and reformists on the one hand, and by revolutionaries on the other, are thus closely interconnected with how both sides explain the present situation.
But the obvious flaws in lne retormist argument shoald not lead to complacency on the part of the revolutionary left. For mercly exposing incorrect arguments is not sufficient. The fact is that the revolationary left, too, confronts a crisis, which only those who live in the fantasy world of soctarianism can ignore. For unless the revolutionary left can provide answers to the present situation and evolve a strategy capable of linking it to the masses, its own crisis will continue apace.
Next week Socialist Challenge will be pristing the second part of this article which takes up the crisis facing the revolutiomary left and the tasks posed for revolutionaries today.
the civil rights movement of 1968. and the writer suggests that it would be better to return to a single issue campaign around repression.
While the civil rights demands were a threat to the power of Stormont, in no conceivable way were they a conscious attempt to build a socialist movement or even lay the basis of one fle. A HANDS OFF HANDS OFF NE