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Title: Stitched up
Author: Anarchist Federation of Scotland
Date: May 12, 2013
Language: en
Topics: taxes, Scotland, Trotskyism, austerity, community organizing
Source: Retrieved on 21st June 2022 from https://scotlandaf.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/stitched-up-the-scottish-anti-bedroom-tax-federation/

Anarchist Federation of Scotland

Stitched up

The first Scottish Anti-Bedroom Tax conference took place on 27^(th)

April in Glasgow, its aim to unite local groups across the country into

one campaign with greater strength and resources. I’m surprised it

hasn’t received more coverage and criticism. I suspect that’s because

people are holding their tongues and focusing on organising locally and

in other campaigns. However, I would argue that we need to discuss

what’s happening nationally so that we can be more effective in

challenging the Bedroom Tax, and any government cuts, but also to ensure

that a campaign like this is controlled by working class people

themselves.

Here’s what I’ve written previously:

The old authoritarian Left, after having lost much of its credibility,

recognises the importance of the anti-Bedroom Tax campaign and has been

trying as usual to put itself in a position of leadership in order to

control it and regain political influence and power. Tommy Sheridan, out

of prison for perjury, is back in the media spotlight as the face of the

anti-Bedroom Tax campaign and, after everything he’s done, still manages

to muster enthusiastic support from his fan club. He briefly got himself

elected secretary of the interim committee of the West of Scotland

Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation, before being forced to resign because of

his divisive role. But don’t count him out just yet.

Well, that was a bit of an understatement. What in fact happened at the

Glasgow conference was that the West of Scotland federation effectively

became a national federation. Tommy Sheridan was elected the chairperson

and, coincidentally, members of the Socialist Party Scotland (CWI) and

SWP gained positions as secretary and deputy chairperson respectively.

These, just to remind you, were the same parties that backed each other

up previously in manipulating things in the West of Scotland federation

and in putting forward Dave Sherry, one of those high-ranking SWP

members who covered up a rape in the party, as speaker on the last march

against the Bedroom Tax in Glasgow, 30^(th) March. Sherry gave another

speech at the conference. There were over 200 people there on the day,

although it’s unclear how many of those were voting delegates. In any

case, out of all those present only one person actually voted against

the officers during the election or seemed to have an alternative

proposal. Furthermore, amendments to the pre-written founding statement

were not allowed. And to cap it all, speeches were given arguing for the

necessity of a workers’ party and that we should look, funnily enough,

to the example of the Militant tendency’s influence in Liverpool council

in the 1980s as to how local government should be run.[1]

This is all bad news. It is incredibly cynical to use a grassroots

campaign meeting, presumably meant to attract people from different

groups or none, as an opportunity for your own party political

broadcast. That Sheridan has taken such a central position within this

new organisation shows, as though any more proof were needed, the extent

to which he’s willing to go to trample over any independent attempts at

organising and promote himself. As a politician, he is so toxic and

divisive that his latest ego trip is his way of saying a big fuck you to

the rest of the Left, and leads him to actively compete with any other

organisation he can’t control. As for the structure of the federation,

the steering committee is meant to consist of 60 elected members from

across Scotland. That’s sounds democratic, right? The problem is that

the national federation’s officer positions appear to be permanent

rather than rotated, there is no mention of recallability for the

members from local groups, and it seems likely that the parties will

between them be able to engineer things in enough local groups to

marginalise any differences in the steering committee – after all, this

is what’s happened so far. And, just to be clear, a real federation

doesn’t ‘steer’ things from the centre but co-ordinates what groups have

already decided and told their spokespersons. It all starts to look like

a small group of party activists deciding things among themselves and

then passing on these instructions to the ‘foot soldiers’ – without whom

there wouldn’t be a “federation” in the first place. That’s not a

federal structure, it’s a party structure.

But this is an important point. It’s not just party hacks who were at

this conference or who will be involved in the “federation”. Most of the

people will be those who are genuinely concerned by the Bedroom Tax or

are directly affected themselves. And I am certainly not criticising

them. The number of people attending the first conference was certainly

impressive.

It is argued by some that anarchists only denounce things and retreat

into ‘pure’, small-scale initiatives with little influence or give up

entirely. I would dispute this, but were it ever to be true it would be

a mistake. We need to be where people are. What we share even with the

parties mentioned above is the aim to defeat the Bedroom Tax: to

pressure local authorities, housing associations and government, and to

physically prevent evictions if necessary. In campaigns like this it

would naive to think that we can avoid working with other political

groups we often disagree with.

However, It would equally naive to suggest that divisions aren’t ever

meaningful and can simply disappear. There is a line. Pro-feminism isn’t

an add-on or a separate issue, it has to be advocated by us in

everything we do. We need to oppose sexism wherever we encounter it or

we are hypocrites. And we should always argue for directly democratic

structures. This isn’t some sort of luxury; it increases the

participation and popular base of organisations, making them stronger

and more radical, and ensures that a struggle like this has a positive

long-term effect on class solidarity and empowerment.

This all leads to the question: can and should anarchists and anyone

with a commitment to genuine grassroots organising be involved in the

Scottish Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation?

My mind isn’t made up on this, but I think there are a few options:

If it becomes clear that this federation is a lost cause, and just

another in a long-line of front groups then we could ignore it and

concentrate on making the local community groups we’re already involved

in as successful, as influential and participative as possible. At the

same time we should continue to be actively a part of regional

federations like that of Edinburgh & Lothians, which has taken a much

more positive direction since it’s much more diverse, hasn’t yet been

captured by party socialists, and recognises the need for directly

democratic decision-making. We shouldn’t take that for granted, but make

sure that we build on this beginning.

Let’s get one thing straight: anarchists love federations (the clue’s

in our name). We want to federate everything, and build a collective

power from below, rather than have weaker isolated groups. So, we

definitely support the idea of an actual national federation. Despite

all its problems, if this federation is the only cross-Scotland

organisation in town and continues to attract local groups and working

class people (which is what it was designed to do) then perhaps we need

to be involved. But that would require us actively arguing for important

changes in the structure, processes and current officers. Sheridan needs

to be ousted, and Sherry refused a platform altogether. That all sounds

like an uphill struggle. On the other hand, Trotskyists and their ilk

will always try to dictate and manipulate. They’re the ones who call the

A to B marches on Saturdays, who set up the ‘national federations’ and

open ‘coalitions’, choose the speakers and speak to the media. We can

either complain about this or challenge it with a co-ordinated response.

However, it may be that we can be involved in national organising and

avoid much of the authoritarian Left. The No2BedroomTax campaign seems

to have originally been part of the West of Scotland federation but is

now independent of it. It seeks to support and link anti-Bedroom Tax

groups throughout Scotland, and also seems to have a commitment to

grassroots democracy and skepticism of politicians very unlike the

Scottish Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation. I’m sure they’re not interested in

sectarian battles between left groups, but want to extend the campaign

and have an impact. So, as far as I can see, this is a much more

positive initiative. They’ve called a Day of Protest against the tax for

the 18^(th) May in Glasgow.

I’m much more inclined towards a mix of options 1 and 3. But I know from

my own experience that the Scottish Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation is

trying to involve groups from across the country in their own

organisation, and that many don’t see or aren’t aware of it being

dominated by the Sheridan crowd. At the moment, that’s really

unfortunate. The key points are to fight the tax without sacrificing or

undermining other fundamental principles, not to surrender control of

the campaign to the authoritarians, to be where working class people

are, and to take our arguments to them.

[1] Funnily enough, because both the CWI and Solidarity come out of the

earlier Militant tendency. The Liverpool example is a bit hilarious,

really. Militant managed to dominate the Labour council through

undemocratic machinations in the labour movement and their very own

Sheridan figure, Dereck Hatton (who’s now a millionaire property

developer). When they got into power the Labour council did indeed build

houses, parks and sport centres. It ended up fighting teachers’ unions,

the Black and Ethnic Minority community, making deals with the

Conservatives so that Liverpool council didn’t support the miners,

spreading mass disillusionment among council workers, especially after

having to ‘pretend’ to deliver thousands of redundancy notices, and

seriously undermining self-organisation and radicalism among the

Liverpool working class for succeeding generations. Another hierarchical

leadership cult, whose vague Leftism was constrained by becoming the

business managers of a council, and who were eventually chucked out of

the very party they were meant to take over to achieve socialism.