British Trotskyist conference :
Socialist League plans for 1983
The last year in Britain has been marked by a number of im- published in Intercontinental Press and International Viewdevelopments.
anti-missiles movement
A census of the organisation showed that 31.6% of members significant strides forward. Workers continued to be prepared were in industrial or manual jobs, and that 26.3% were memdisastrous policies of the Thatcher government to defend their jobs and living standards, like the healthbers of the youth organisation in solidarity with the Fourth workers who fought a bitter nine-month dispute over
This showed
The labour movement leadership ran true to form in refusing conference and recorded the progress made in two projects reaffirmed there - to build Revolution Youth and to implant to give a resolute lead to these struggles, thus leading to a the organisation more firmly in decisive sectors of the working series of defeats in the struggle against the Tories.
turned on the left in the Labour Party and launched a witch
The Central Committee elected to lead the organisation in hunt against the Militant tendency.
carrying out the tasks adopted also reflected the changing was the political context in which the British section of the Fourth International held its conference last December, composition of the organisation
The proportion of women members rose to while the important role of comrades from the youth olutionary Marxists to the Labour Party.
organisation in the work of the section was recognised in the
The conference also turned its attention to discussing the world political situation, giving special attention to the develdecision to allocate two places for comrades directly elected organisation in addition to the 10% youth opment of the revolutionary process in Central Amerie and the Caribbean, and the situation in Poland one year after marmembers elected at conference.
These debates marked the start of preparation for the
The report of the conference we publish here is taken from next World Congress of the Fourth International.
Socialist Challenge January 7, 1983.
ence adopted positions similar to those of the International
Executive Committee in 1981 and 1982 which have been
Steve ROBERTS
The conference of the British section of the Fourth International took place on
December 18-20, in London. Delegates decided to put all their efforts into backing mass action against unemployment and for unilateral disarmament as the best way of securing a Labour victory and kicking out the Thatcher government. Conference also decided to change the name of the organisation from the
International Marxist Group to the Socialist League.
Present at the conference were over
400 delegates and guests from the British and international labour movement.
18 made point. International. industrial jobs. from the youth Delegates heard greetings from Irish, Swedish, American, Mexican, and Hong Kong supporters of the Fourth International as well as the leadership of the International United Secretariat.
Five months of discussion had preceded the conference. The organisation is proud of its reputation for democratic internal functioning and sees the formation of tendencies organised around different points of view in this period as a natural and healthy
Fourth Internationalists contrast this method of functioning with that of the bureaucratised communist and social democratic parties who refuse to allow the right of tendency. Instead these parties conduct expulsions or witchan increase from the previous with 37.5% of members in hunts such as that being carried out supporters newspaper in the British Labour Party.
principle of democratic centralism therefore entails complete freedom of discussion; however it also demands that once decisions have been taken by majority vote that they are carried out by all members.
Hence for the British section of the Fourth International its national conference is sovereign, subject only to decisions taken by the world congress of the Fourth International.
By a small overall majority the conference adopted the following major points of policy;
TOGETHER CAMPAIGN fore the unity of the world revolution in the struggle against the capitalist class and of its allies - particularly the bureaucrats of Moscow and Peking
'In Britain the period since the elec. tion of Thatcher has been one of partial
WE CAN DISARMAR
STOP 5 32 defeats and political set-backs for the working class, but with the basic organisations of the working class remaining intact and being capable of launching tremendous battles, like the healthworkers strike, against the capitalist of-
THE
SCAB fensive.
•Within the labour movement the development of the Bennite current and the political offensive of the right-wing of the labour bureaucracy against it represents the deepest political polarisation of the British labour movement for fifty
CUT Demonstration against nuclear missiles in Britain (DR) * to campaign against the war-drive of Reagan and Thatcher; in particular through building the present movement for unilateral disarmament and supportthose fighting against imperialist the Caribbean. * to campaign for the release of all the heroic Polish fighters imprisoned by the * to build mass action around the slogan "jobs not bombs' as the best way to kick out the Tories and gain a Labour victory. * to work in the labour movement to oppose witch-hunts and defend the progressive policies of the TUC, Labour Parcongresses being junked by the right wing * to support the fight of women in the labour movement for an effective say at all levels of the labour movement and for policies like affirmative action for jobs and a woman's right to choose. * to help build Revolution Youth, the youth organisation in solidarity with the Fourth International in Britain. * to be in favour of unity with other far left organisations in Britain which have broadly the same approach as our own, such the Workers Socialist League. * to strengthen our links with the Fourth International and particularly with its Irish section, Peoples Democ-
The reporter speaking for the majority of the outgoing Central Committee summed up the political situation faced by the organisation in the following way:
"The world today is dominated by the rise of world revolution and the workers struggles on the one side and the unleashing of a brutal imperialist counter-offensive against that struggle on the other. The economic crisis of capitalism is ascatastrophic proportions combines with the advance of world revolution since 1968 to fuel a deep-going crisis of bourgeois rule and Stalinism.
advanced points of this sharpening class stuggle have been the revolutionary struggles in Central America and Poland. These combine with the rise of the mass anti-nuclear weapons movements in the imperialist heartlands and the struggle for class independence in the semi-colonial countries to bring to the years. We are at the beginning of a historical crisis of British labourism.
"The decisive task of revolutionary Marxists is to shake off all sectarian prejudices and participate in the coming political battles that will shape the future of the British working class movement.
*For this new methods of work are ne-
Workers and youth today increasingly look to the Labour Party and its left wing for political solutions to the crisis of British society. For this reason a revolutionary socialist newspaper is needed within the Labour Party to give a voice and political direction to their struggles.'
The attitude of the Socialist League towards the Labour Party is that it would like to be able to affiliate to it in the same way as the Cooperative Party and Fabian Society can. But it believes that in the current climate of the witchhunt against socialists that this would be rejected by the Labour Party.
The Socialist League therefore organises separately from the Labour Party; membership is open to all who accept the objectives and organisational principles of the Socialist League and who are prepared to actively realise them.
While the Labour Party today dominates all questions of working class pol-
British health workers took industrial action for nine months over wages (DR)
RKERS
TION
NUIGIS
TOK itics the conference recognised that the decisive political issues in the party would be resolved in the trade unions through
The trade unions remain working class despite the toll wrought
The conference was therefore happy to record a rise in the proportion its membership in such decisive unions as transport, rail, engineering, electrical and of its members are in the industrial unions, five per cent in manual unions such as NUPE and COHSE and 15 per cent are looking for industrial jobs.
Within the unions the Socialist League works to support the day-to-day fights against the employers and the Tories while at the same time building reform currents within the unions to introduce the type of principles of workers democracy espoused by the militants of Solidarnosc in the building of their mass trade union.
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