SL/WSL talks Is there a basis for unity?

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CLASS FIGHTER Get 10p per copy plus postage from 13 Buxton Rd, N19. regularly used to witch-hunt socialists, and which is being used now to proscribe Militant; and (d) it enshrines the right of groups and/or individual Party members to appeal to Party Conference against the NEC.

The • Greenwich amendment has a real weakness - lack of a 'status quo' clause after NEC disciplinary action and before the subsequent Party Conference. But Greenwich can be strengthened - after it has been carried.

Instead of concentrating on criticising the Greenwich amendment and boosting their discredited and rejected alternative, Victor Schonfield and the other CLPD officers should be using their experience and resources in campaigning to get Greenwich carried at this year's Party Conterence.

Fraternally, JOHN BLOXAM I HAVE no wish to preempt the discussions - which are still at a rudimentary planning stage between the Socialist League and the Workers Socialist League. But it is important to raise a couple of points from David Biggs' letter in Writeback last week.

Biggs - National Secretary of the St - telis readers that his organisation (formerly the IMG) has "long" been of the view that "the differences between ourselves and the WSL are not sufficlent to justity the existence of separate organisations."

The statement is doubly evasive. It does not tell us for how long this view has been held - in other words it gives us no chance to assess the scope of the differences on political and programmatic questions at national and international level the SL regard as containable within a single organisation. Are there in fact any disagreements on anything which the SL might argue justify the existence of separate organisations?

Secondly, the statement - in common with Biggs' whole letter, fails to mention any of the present differences which in the SL's view mark them out from the WSL:

This coyness is particularly unhelpful when his letter is supposedly in answer to an interview with myself in which I set out as clearly and objectively as possible the issues which the WSL believes must be addressed if discussions are to be seriously pursued.

Of course we agree that organisations should reject the quest for monolithism, and facilitate lively internal debates' on various questions.

But revolutionary Marxist organisations are not debating societies: they exist to fulfil a function of political leadership in the class struggle. To do that job a certain degree of common political ground, agreement programme and on method of work in relation to the mass labour movement is a vital starting point.

The problem is that despite comrade Biggs' talk* of "our common tactical line" and the SL's "respect" for the work of the WSL, practical experience for many years and including the period since the SL's fusion proposal has brought the WSL and SL into repeated conflicts which in a single organisation could paralyse or disrupt vital work in the class struggle.

Unless these problems are acknowiedged and contronted, talk of the grand possibilities of a joint organisation is simply a deception.

It would certainly be "criminally irresponsible" to pass up a real chance of principled unity: but the possibility of such a fusion has not yet been politically demonstrated. It will not drop from the skies: only a serious debate around programme, policy, perspective and orientation can create it.

We have publicly welcomed the chance of such a discussion, and spelled out what we want to talk about.

Now is the time to test the sincerity of the unity proposal: will the SL take up a real debate or -as so many times before - pull back from an exchange?

Yours fraternally, "JOHN LISTER #T1 Just out from Pluto Press: an analysis of capitalism in crisis from regular Socialist Organiser contributor Bob Sutcliffe. £2.50 from bookshops, or (with 50p post and packing) from Pluto, The Works, 105a Torriano Avenue, London NW5.

wate .'..... sx. 4

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no.127 April Page

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