different direction to the nationalist camp.
Further evidence that the SLP is marching towards the nationalist camp came with the by-election results. The to the Labour Government the terms of their support. This they did. But not falling living on ine curs, not on standards, not on unemployment SMITTEE but... on devolution!
Thus the SLP MPs chose to reject a parliamentary campaign to make the Labour lefts fight in alliance with SLP MPs were in a position to dictate them, and instead took one more step towards becoming the left voice of an SN/SLP bloc.
The expelled left wing of the party which met in Stirling last weekend is in an infinitely healthier condition. Although they represent a politically mixed grouping, brought together in defence of democracy against the leadership's witch-hunt, the move to the left has been rapid.
Public Through holding public and putting the responsibility for the split on the old leadership, the left wing have won recruits from outside the SLP who were previously distrustful of Sillars and Co. Their stated policy is for the reunification of the SLP with full guarantees of internal democracy.
would inevitably publication of the result of the elections for the SLP NOC held at the Stirling conference but declared void after the expulsions.
reason to believe that the left will find that they won a majority, and that this was the factor which triggered the purge.
The likelihood of such a reunification, however, has been made difficult by statements from Atex Neil that 'we have got rid of a cancer which could have killed the party'.
question revolves around a simple question: on whose terms will reunification take place? All the left appear to agree that such a project will depend '76 The split in the Scottish Labour Party engineered by Jim Sillars and the meetings grouping around him leadership has raised a whole number important among these is democracy in the workers movement. Accordingly arbitrary who are the real defenders of democmean racy.
Let us start with Journal Question. produced weekly whose contributors include well-known SLP There is every such as Tom Nairn. Question was in an unquestioning mood. It congratulated the SLP for getting rid of the far entane went or to write paid to the British Labour Party... It must, like the SLP, set its house in order. Its National Executive Committee is manifestly failing to do this in the matter of the appointment of a But really the Trotskyite as National Youth Organi[this] indicates the ser..
Party's failure to maintain its commitment to democratic laedis on Ascherson questions. Central question Ascherson and his bureaucratic and expulsions have shown us nationalist is a wellpathetic. supporters *The same compliment cannot be Labour What are we to make of this curious way of showing a love for democracy? The only conclusion we can draw from Question is that democracy is only for capitalism.
Another supporter of the SLP, Stewart MacLachlan, writing in the Daily Record on the eve of the conference, urged the party to expel the lunatic left'. I am sure Mr MacLachlan is also a firm believer in democracy, but, like Turnont!
Question, only for those who agree Neil Ascherson is a more intelligent expulsions than either Question or MacLachlan, but he tion of monolithism Writing recThe Scotsman in an article he first that the IMG controlled a whole layer of militants in the SLP and prevent them from moving leftwards at a rapid rate. The IMG supposedly 'entirely lost control of the forces which they were encourJOHN ROBERTSON - the SLP MP, long time ally of the right wing in the AUEW, addresses the Stirling conference came from the Cumbernauld branch where there is no IMG supporter las acknowledges himself], Party. how a handful of IMG supporters can be held responsible escapes us.
In reality the real question, as friends realise perfectly well, is one of democracy. He asks: 'How far can a party tolerate organised dissenting groups...? and replies: "No real answer exists. But then he attempts an answer which would be amusing were it not so The SLP contests elections.
IMG aoes. not. So the IMG can afford the luxury of inner-party democracy, but the SLP must bow to 'the pressure for conformity' to retain its credibility with its voters. So Ascherson's long record of reporting on Eastern Europe for The Observer has finally boiled future.
From the Glasgow Herald down to this neo-Stalinist justificaIt should be said that Benn, Foot, Heffer and co. showed themselves to be far more courageous and far more correct when they opposed the plann ed witch-hunt against Militant and other currents in the British Labour Party. The old Labour Party left has many weaknesses [and chauvinism is one of them], but on the question of finhting witch.huntsthey have and the erstwhile socialists of the former Scottish Workers Republican In reality Neil Ascherson and his radical nationalist friends are extremely short-sighted. By acquiescing expulsion of regardless arguments they utilise to do so, they are opening the road to more expulsions. They them. selves will receive the same treatment if they clash with the Sillars gang at a future stage.
Sillars has made it clear that he will not tolerate any serious dissent. All criticism must be within the framework of what he stands for. Ascherson and co. will have to behave them selves or else their blood, too, will soil the bureaucrats guillotine.
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