Machinations

There is a very strange article on the AWL website by Martin Thomas - 1976 Walsall by-Electin. In terms of the arguments that are put forward in the original WA article from 1976, I agree with most of it.

That argument is that Marxists should not counterpose electoral support for Left candidates standing on non-revolutionary programmes to support for the mass workers party. It covers many of the ideas I have outlined here in the past. but, what is odd is that this article appears now a couple of weeks before the election, an election in which the AWL is standing its own candidate in Peckham on a centrist programme against Labour!!!! Worse, as set out in previous blogs the AWL has set up a Socialist Campaign To Stop The Tories and Fascists, which calls for support for "socialist" candidates where they are standing against Labour.

But the term "socialist" does not at all mean "revolutionary", and we can only assume that the AWL does not beleive these candidates to be standing on a revolutionary programme, or else it would have no reason to maintain a separate organisation from them, just as in the original WA article, Trotsky made that argument against the ILP. To be honest the AWL have zigged and zagged in its positions so wildly in recent years that it is difficult to understand the significance of this article. For example, as stated a couple of blogs ago, a couple of years ago, the AWL, out of the blue, announced, in what appeared to be partly a unity offensive aimed at SWP members, and in part a childish desire to support any candidate on any grounds that could be thought up, against their old enemy Ken Livingstone that they would be supporting Lyndsey German and the SWP's Left List in London. Yet, that support certainly could not meet the criteria set out in the 1976 article.

Reading between the lines of the canvassing reports given on the website from Peckham, I get the impression that the AWL have decided they made a big mistake in standing a candidate. The SCSTF seems to me a last-minute, cobbled together response to square the circle of having made that decision, and the need to do what they know should have been the correct strategy of developing an SCLV. The extent of union involvement in Labour's campaign, particularly through UNITE, also undermines much of what the AWL has argued about Labour being dead over the last few years, and they are probably belatedly trying to position themselves, and more importntly prepare their young, inexperiened cadre for yet another zig, or will it be a zag, towards renewed activity in the LP.