Marxists and the British

Labour Party

Two Trends: The Political Roots Of The Breakaway

Majority Document

Short war

Because of the approach of the British paper, we did not pay such a heavy price. In Spain, where the ranks were fed on a different diet, this was not the case. The speedy ending of the war produced disappointment and consternation in the ranks of the Spanish tendency. We have the testimony of two young British comrades who were living in Seville for an extended period and who participated in the big anti-war movements. They witnessed the reaction of the rank and file to the ending of the Gulf War. When these comrades related to one Spanish full-timer that the British leadership had expected a short war, his reaction was: "Well, 1 wish they had told us."

The war's duration - totally unexpected to them - undoubtedly had certain repercussions within the Spanish organisation's ranks which are felt to this very day. The Spanish comrades made a tremendous intervention in organising the big anti-war demonstrations. However, the tendency did not intervene in a clear, distinct, Marxist fashion, as we have sought to do in Britain on the poll tax, in Liverpool, etc. Prominence has been given to the school students' union, but the profile of the tendency and its journal was very low. There were very few sales of the tendency's journal and no attempt on the part of the leaders of the school students' union to connect the anti-war struggles with that of the Spanish tendency as a whole.

Moreover, the leadership of the Spanish tendency completely underestimated the level of consciousness and receptivity to our ideas of the hundreds of thousands of youth who were drawn into the anti-war struggle. The general secretary of the Spanish organisation, speaking at the British conference in October, 1991, declared: "From our own experience of leading millions of youth and workers, we can say now the consciousness of these workers is not superior to the consciousness of the average reformist leader." He subsequently amended this to: "Their consciousness was no higher than the reformist organisations." The revised version is no better than the original. To put the hundreds of thousands of youth, mobilised on the streets against an imperialist war, on the same level as the pro-imperialist Labour leaders is not just wrong, it is shameful.

Spanish youth

The false approach of the Spanish comrades was underlined in the recent polemic over the mass organisations at the International meeting in November, 1991.

A Spanish EB member, Pul, declared: "In Barcelona alone, there were three demonstrations of more than 100,000 each in two weeks. So evidently there was a tremendous will to struggle and the healthy and honest attitude of the youth in comparison with the attitude of the reformist leaders, well, that was there too.

But what about the political consciousness? Due to their lack of political experience, their low level of consciousness, they didn't support the ideas of the people who led the struggle - which is us. To be more concrete, the great majority of the youth there supported the idea of the standing army - that is to say, of changing the present army to a professional army, going from a conscript to a professional army.

The majority of them defended this reactionary idea which was also defended by the leaders of the United Left. This would be a big step back for the Spanish working class. But the youth accepted this idea simply because they did not want to do military service."

It is quite natural that the youth would not want to be conscripted into an army to do the dirty work of imperialism. In general, Marxists prefer a conscript army to a professional army. This is because it allows each generation of workers to familiarise themselves with military training, etc. However, if a mass movement develops in opposition to conscription, depending upon the concrete historical circumstances, it would be absolutely false for Marxists to counter-pose themselves to this movement.

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