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Title: Guilty by Association Author: Anarchist Communist Federation Date: 1996 Language: en Topics: United Kingdom, the left, the Labour Party, Organise! Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130513162536/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue42/left_turmoil_iwca.html Notes: Published in Organise! Issue 42 — Spring 1996.
The ACF has always argued that the Labour Party is little more than an
expression of the interests of a faction of the ruling class. With the
launching of New Labour this is now more evident than ever. Various
sections of the Left are now re-aligning in attempts to fill the
political void — i.e. to claim to speak for the working class and to win
our votes. Last Organise! featured analysis of Arthur Scargill’s new
baby, the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), which is still rooted in the old
fashioned belief that socialist trade unionism, with the appropriate
political support, can turn things around for the working class. In
response, new initiatives by Militant, Workers Revolutionary Party
Workers Press and others concentrate on political manoeuvring to win
over the class.
However, one of the new groupings is of special interest to anarchist
communists, because its political orientation and structure appears to
reflect many of our own priorities. The Independent Working Class
Association (IWCA) is an alliance of individual activists and sponsor
groups (mainly political organisations). It says that it is for working
class self-activity, that it will expose redundant Labourism and
workplace based politics, and that it is in favour of a ‘bottom up’
structure in which all its members can participate equally. Is this an
organisation which we should be joining? After all, one of the
organisations which founded it, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), has already
shown itself willing and able to defeat the racist class enemy on the
streets — surely an indication that the IWCA is not all mouth and
bureaucracy like most of the Left. The other main founder of the IWCA is
Red Action (RA). They split from the party hacks in the Socialist
Workers Party in order to pursue pro-working class politics. Unlike most
of the Left they also recognise that the potential power base of the
class no longer lies solely in the workplace but, arguably,
predominantly in the community.
But there are real problems with the IWCA. The most obvious of these is
its lack of a political programme. It sees this as a positive virtue in
that it will prevent it being dominated politically by any one group.
But what good is a political organisation without a basic programme or a
set of aims and principles? Without these, it is merely a protest group.
In reality, the lack of political discussion conceals the fact that the
unholy alliance of groups which comprise the IWCA will be incapable of
working together on any long term basis. Genuine working class activists
who are opposed to party politics, capitalism and the state will surely
grow disillusioned with putting time and energy into working with most
of them. Most of the sponsors are Leninist opportunists who will use the
IWCA as a recruiting ground. For example, the Communist Party of Great
Britain (CPGB), are orthodox Leninists who will not tolerate anything
which conflicts with their own party organisation, and will join any
faction under the sun if it means they can recruit. Open Polemic an
internal faction of the CPGB, and Partisan are also ex-Communist Party
Leninists. The Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), will no doubt be
arguing that the IWCA support the Cuban ‘social revolution’!
AFA’s declared reason for its involvement is in order to be able to
offer a practical alternative to many working class people who may vote
for the fascist British National Party (BNP) because they feel betrayed
by Labour (rather than because they are inherently racist). In the past
AFA, in order to preserve unity and effectiveness, was a single issue
anti-fascist organisation, but its paper Fighting Talk is now stating
its need for a politically Leftist agenda, which it hopes the IWCA will
provide. But to tell working class people that voting for some minority
Left candidate in opposition to Labour and the BNP will improve the shit
in which they live, is only to play the state’s game. AFA aren’t doing
this for the cynical reasons for which politicians and the rest of the
Left do it, to build their party’s power base, they are doing it to stop
fascist candidates getting in at election time. But it is a diversion
from where many in AFA know the real fight lies.
Whatever the working class credentials of Red Action, they represent a
vanguardist tendency which is common to most Left groupings. Whereas
Anarchist Communists emphasise the need for working class
‘self-organisation’, RA emphasise the need for ‘an organisation’ to
represent the working class. They are unconditionally pro-Republican on
the Irish question, a position anarchists do not consider either
anti-capitalist or pro-working class. Yet, in their aims and principles
they extol the virtues of working class self activity. This phrase also
features heavily in IWCA literature, but so does the rather dubious
assertion that working class militants, on joining, would form the
bridgehead between the IWCA as a political opposition within the Left
and the working class proper. RA and the IWCA, it would seem, view ‘the
organisation’ as something outside the working class. So is the class to
be active on its own behalf? Or is it to be represented by militants
acting within already established political boundaries?
In truth, the IWCA concept of self-activity is a far cry from the
anarchist communist one. Although the IWCA does not actually define the
sort of society it wishes to create, we can assume that RA will assert
their own view of a workers paradise which, they state, is democratic
authority, not the abolition of authority. And RA are also correct in
saying that this most perfect democracy would be regarded by anarchists
as authoritarian. In the absence of a political programme, the IWCA
cannot blame us for looking at the agendas of its component parts for an
idea of what kinds of politics it will eventually adopt, and it looks
like this will be a variety of militant, activist, born-again
(non-Trotskyist )Leninism.
The IWCA’s ‘bottom up’ structure is designed, whether cynically or
naively, so that once the organisation picks up more individual members
than political sponsors, policy will be determined by democratic
process. That is to say, whichever tendency, party or faction in the
IWCA can get most members to a meeting will get their way, whether or
not their ideas are best. This is what is wrong with democracy.
Organisations like the ACF have long ago recognised this, but the IWCA
states unashamedly that the groups and individuals who work hardest will
have the greatest influence. In the longer term then, when it does get
some political content, the IWCA will begin to adopt the same agenda as
the biggest group within it. In time honoured fashion, the other groups
will struggle for power and either the IWCA will split or smaller
factions and numerous disillusioned individuals will leave. It will then
be a political party. It is not at all certain the IWCA structure has
been adopted with party building in mind. Very possibly the founders
believe their claim that this structure...is not designed for the
sponsors, but to limit the influence of the sponsors. But in its vague
desire to create a new structure for working class political
organisation, and in pig-headedly ignoring anarchist critiques and
models for organisation, the IWCA structure is open to abuse by majority
views.
In the short term, before any group is able to dominate, political
debate is being ditched in favour of activism. The IWCA emphasises that
it will be an organisation of activists. But what will these activists
do? All the emphasis so far is on building the organisation. Internal
literature stresses the need to publicise the organisation at every
meeting no matter how vaguely relevant, in order to recruit and to raise
money, emphasising that membership is without precondition. Does this
mean that we can expect frantic interventions from the IWCA in campaigns
like the anti-Job Seekers Allowance, as this organisation without a
political programme of its own attempts to set our agenda (as its
literature says it aims to do)?
Then there is the issue of IWCA attempts to get the sponsorship of
Anarchist and Syndicalist organisations. Are the IWCA seriously
interested in attracting groups whom it knows will oppose their flawed
structure, their lack of a political direction and the ‘hidden’ politics
which will eventually emerge? Anarchists were invited to the initial
IWCA meeting and went along curious and open -minded. Seeing what sort
of political forces were involved and realising the lack of potential
for anything new or positive for revolutionaries, the ACF has since had
nothing to do with the project. The Solidarity Federation
(anarcho-syndicalists) appear to have distanced themselves, whilst the
Class War Federation appears divided, at least one local group
affiliating, with others taking a hostile stance. The whole episode
looks rather as though the IWCA was trying to appear non-sectarian, and
to label anarchists as sectarian. Bearing in mind the attacks on
anarchism which regularly appear in the pages of Red Action, being out
numbered by libertarian socialists in the IWCA was probably the last
thing they wanted, not least because the presence of anarchist
organisations would expose the lie that the IWCA is distinct from
anything that exists in Britain now or in the recent past — a working
class organisation not only independent, but hostile to Labour.
The political parties and organisations who comprise the majority of the
membership of the IWCA are too small themselves to have much influence
on the Left, and they hope to change this first by joining and then by
dominating a new organisation. In truth, they will probably either be
discredited or lose their momentum in the face of the other new and
revived groupings which are emerging. They are already completely
overshadowed by the SLP and by various initiatives of Militant in
England and Scotland (the Socialist Alliances) . The IWCA is presumably
planning to spring into public life around election time, when the
working class will thrill to the hilarious chaos which will ensue when
various Left groups groups try to work out their electoral strategy —
not least regarding what policy to adopt regarding each other’s
candidates in marginal seats! What a spectacle!
It remains to be seen whether the IWCA, if they last that long, will be
advocating the electoral system as a means to create a constituency
within the working class. For our part, we think that the future lies
not within the ballot box, which is always a diversion, but in the
potential for working class self-organisation in both workplace and
neighbourhood.