Familiar faces in a new setting

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THE GENERATION of the 1968 found a new staging post last weekend (January 23-24) at the 1,000strong founding conference of the 'Socialist Society' Many of the old familiar faces were there - Robin Blackburn and Meghnad Desai from the LSE of those long gone days, Pat Jordan and Tariq Ali from the Grosvenor Square marches against the Vietnam war, and many more people whose faces have gone past on so many demos, at so many such meetings. Yet there were new elements also, many for whom 'student power' and May 68 were distant history like Hitler or Alexander the Great.

Most conspicuous of all the new elements were the feminists. As at all such assemblies nowadays, they ZRAF affected the form of the conference and the structure of its discussions, though they remained strangely absent from the fibre of its politics.

There have been many other staging posts for this section of the enlightened middle class over the years. There were some who even recalled and went back to the 'Socialist Forum' movement of the late 1950s, after the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

High Priest There were more from the days of the short-lived Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation of the late 1960s and the various sub-groups of intellectual endeavour that have since mushroomed in the Conference of Socialist EconBy Gerry Byrne omists, Critique, History Workshop and so forth.

It has to be said that some of these efforts have been ineffectual, abortive, or an avoidance of real political activity.

However, a new seriousness has been forced on the participants in such enterprises by the massive attacks on the public sector -including the cuts in education, from which many of them earn their living.

There is also a genuine frustration that the madhouse logic of Joseph and Thatcher has achieved an intellectual respectability for theories which were thought to have become extinct as the dodo.

Also, there is a concern that the alternative to this might be the discredited policies of Wilson and Call"Asking for it"

THE DOCTRINE that women who are raped are 'asking for it' reached a new level of hideousness in an American court. A man who raped a five year old girl was given 90 days in prison with work-release privileges after the judge described the child as 'an unusually sexually promiscuous young lady'.

I say ....

HARD TIME: pity poor Dick Giordano, top executive with British Oxygen Company. He's coming in for a lot of stick from the mean-minded and spiteful sections of our society, simply for accepting a just reward for his efforts.

BOC's profits were up 50% last year, so quite rightly they thanked Giordano with a £200,000 a year pay rise. Which is only fair when you consider that if that amount was given to BOC's workers who actually produced that proft, they'd only go and squander it and give a bad example to all the other workers who are tied to four per cent. aghan, tied up with a red and blue bow of vacuous public relations and reentitled the SDP.

Perhaps the most notable new feature for those present was a recognition that there had been some significant developments around the Labour Party in recent years.

In case anybody might decide to take a serious attitude to the mass movement as a result, there were those to prevent them doing so. The Socialist Workers' Party intoned the phrase 'Leninist Party' as if it provided an answer to every political problem.

And Professor Miliband, the high priest of scepticism, said that even he had had his doubts last summer, but now the right wing were fighting back all of his old prejudices had been confirmed.

The issue of the Labour Party loomed large over the conference, but it was easily diffused by those who said that it was one issue among many.

Despite a friendly reception to a skilful speech by Tony Benn, in the end the conference decided, after its sharpest discussion, that the Society would not even consider the question of affiliation.

Avoidance What was behind this was: something more than a determination to be ineffectual. There was also an avoidance of the major political issues for the sake of 'unity'.

The Communist Party, whose members were prominent, particularly — it is interesting to note - in discussions about the Labour Party, are of course past masters at this.

There was even an argument in one of the discussion groups that the national struggle in Ireland did not concern socialists there!

In an interesting way the Communist Party and some others were able to capitalise on that same mood sweeping sections of the petty bourgeoisie, for polities with all the effort and difficult choices missed out, as is reflected in their own different way in the rise of the SDP.

Supporters of Socialist Organiser will naturally be appalled by all this. They will be repelled by the conscious avoidance of serious political questions and political activity.

They will find it especially necessary to condemn the prevalent opinion that there could be a socialist movement without the working class.

Democratic

For all that, there were still positive aspects of the venture.

Under the umbrella of the new society, a meeting of almost 200 people discussed with Ken Livingstone the theory and practice of a campaign against the London fare increases, and there was an excellent speech from GLC councillor Valerie Wise outlining future action on the matter.

It is a forum where it is possible to draw out the lessons of Poland for socialism in the same way that it was possible for Trotskyists to argue on the meaning of Hungary twenty-five years ago.

There is one other point that needs to be squarely faced by supporters of this paper. This is the fact that à number of significant and general political developments have affected the socialist movement in recent years in ways that have been separated from its practical activities.

New aims and attitudes derived from the women's movement, and from the realisation of the democratic character of socialism. have come through discuse ions of the sort that the Socialist Society seeks to initiate Ther are 5 in this new Su. alist Socies! can provide an adjun to serious politics - ‹boog) not the substitute sam would like. Therefore I can be given a reicase. however much re will see to qualify it.