The proscription of SALEP by the majority on the Labour Party NEC, it is unfortunately but clearly the case, is motivated by a hysterical bureaucratic vendetta against Marxist ideas in the South African workers\u2019 movement being orchestrated by the leadership clique of the Communist Party. It is being carried out by those who, wittingly or unwittingly, are prepared to act as a mouthpiece for the CP\u2019s policies and interests in the British labour movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unable to halt the increasing turn towards the ideas and methods of Marxism among the organised workers and youth inside South Africa, they have instead entered an \u2018unholy alliance\u2019 with the right-wing of the British labour movement in a futile attempt to witchhunt criticism of South African capitalism and Western imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The British Labour Party NEC listens to the voices of the SACP leaders in exile and their supporters as \u201cspokesmen\u201d of the South African movement at the cost of tragically failing in its internationalist responsibilities of maximum solidarity with the struggle in South Africa for democracy and socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is absolutely correct for the British Labour Party to support the African National Congress \u2013 as well as the democratic trade unions \u2013 as the instruments which the oppressed need to build as the mass movement under the leadership of the organised working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it would be wholly incorrect \u2013 and would play into the hands of the Stalinist minority who seek to bureaucratically control the South African liberation struggle \u2013 for this support to be uncritical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the British Labour Party is to \u201cjointly determine the details of policy\u201d with an ANC and Sactu leadership in exile dominated by the policies of the South African Communist Party \u2013 is it thereby to applaud blindly every action taken in the name of the SACP\u2019s strategy of guerrillaism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Support for bombings?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Is the British Labour Party thereby committed to endorsing the Pretoria car bomb explosion, which killed 18 people and injured 217, many of them black workers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would it thereby become committed to endorsing a method of struggle in South Africa which it whole-heartedly condemns when used in Ireland and Britain by the IRA?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us make no mistake about this: there is no parallel between guerrilla methods in South Africa and peasant-based wars of colonial liberation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only is guerrillaism, in the industrialised conditions of South Africa, with the power of the SA military machine, a totally unviable strategy for power. Not only do military actions conducted by small groups isolated from the mass movement serve to distract the oppressed in struggle from a consciousness of their own power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, the methods of guerrillaism will inevitably evoke not simply continuing escalated counter-revolutionary repression by the state, but the reactionary terrorism of groups of armed whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A spiral of white terror, and black guerrilla response, would eventually put the slaughter which has taken place in Northern Ireland over the last decade in the shade \u2013 and in the end would lead to a horrific racial civil war from which neither black nor white could emerge as winners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Civil war, as we have explained, cannot be avoided in South Africa \u2013 but it will achieve democracy and socialism only if fought on class lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In reality, it is only if the movement of the black masses advances a non-racial programme for workers\u2019 democracy and socialism \u2013 for the destruction of white privilege along with all class privilege, and for the sharing out of a wealth massively increased by the expansion of production in a planned economy \u2013 that in time the whites can be won over from reaction, and the social support of the regime and the ruling class undermined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The British Labour Party, and all socialists and internationalists, have the responsibility of arguing this case within the South African movement, and of supporting those who are putting forward this position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Support for Stalinism?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the Labour Party is to \u201cjointly determine the details of policy\u201d with the SACP-dominated exiled leadership of the ANC and Sactu \u2013 is it thereby committed to the full support they have given to the methods of Stalinist totalitarian regimes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The leadership of the ANC-in-exile, scandalously, under SACP influence, was the first body to send a telegram of support to the Russian bureaucracy when it invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush a movement of the workers seeking an end to bureaucracy, and genuine workers\u2019 democracy and socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The leadership of the ANC in exile, scandalously, under SACP influence, has echoed the Polish bureaucracy\u2019s slanders against Solidarity \u2013 that this movement of millions of workers also struggling for workers\u2019 democracy and socialism was an instrument of the US Central Intelligence Agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The revolutions in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, in China, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Mozambique, in Angola have represented in their time historic advances \u2013 because they overthrew capitalism. But, whether from the start, or through bureaucratic counter-revolution, their nationalised and planned economies are ruled by monstrous totalitarian bureaucracies, repugnant to workers in the advanced capitalist countries struggling for democracy and socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The oppressed masses in South Africa, who have suffered under a horrible racial dictatorship throughout this century and earlier, aspire to genuine workers\u2019 democracy and socialism \u2013 and despise the privilege and elitism of bureaucrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Labour Party has a duty to support them in this struggle, and to criticise all those who stand in its way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the question of direct links, the Labour Party showed that it was possible to have differences with the policies of the ANC leadership while still committing itself to support for the ANC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Labour Party can take the same position with regard to the methods of guerrillaism, to the question of Stalinism, or, for that matter, on the question of SALEP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The struggle of the oppressed black South African masses against the most formidable regime in the capitalist world, will go down in history as one of the most magnificent international achievements of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the last twelve years, spearheaded by black workers and youth, that struggle has scaled ever-newer heights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The upsurge in 1984-85 \u2013 in small towns as well as the major cities \u2013 has marked a new watershed in that struggle, and signals with absolute clarity that South Africa has entered an epoch of revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Workers everywhere around the world can gain strength and encouragement from the courage and determination shown daily by black workers, youth, and women in struggle in South Africa \u2013 not bowed but only further angered by the massacres, torture and violence which is the only response the South African ruling class can offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The struggles that still lie ahead in South Africa, before apartheid and capitalism are finally ended, will be bitter and, unfortunately, bloody ones \u2013 but ones in which the black South African masses, because they have everything to gain and nothing to lose, will FIGHT AND FIGHT AND FIGHT AGAIN, will ORGANISE, ORGANISE AND ORGANISE AGAIN, until every chain which binds them is finally smashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unafraid, they will take on, challenge, and defeat, not only the Chamber of Mines, but the multi-national monopolies of Britain, the United States, West Germany, etc. within SA \u2013 and they will bring them under their own democratic control and management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time they will take on, challenge, and defeat the monstrously repressive apartheid regime \u2013 and replace it with the democratic rule of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because it will provide the only answers, they will turn in their thousands and then their millions to the ideas, the perspectives, the programme and the methods of Marxism which are the historic legacy of the working class in every country, as a guide in the struggle for democracy and socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The workers\u2019 movement in South Africa \u2013 and the fighting movement of all the oppressed \u2013 stretches-out the hand of brotherhood and sisterhood to the labour movement around the world in the common struggle to bring to an end all oppression and exploitation everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every British Labour Party member committed to socialism, every British labour movement activist, every worker in struggle around the world, will share in those aspirations and want to make them part of his or her daily practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SALEP members and supporters, within the limits of our resources, are proud to be participants in this struggle, and are committed to continuing our work of socialist education and building direct links until the struggle is concluded in victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are encouraged by the fact that, since the formation of SALEP in 1980, the demands for our work within the Southern African labour movement, and the support for our work in the labour movement internationally, have increased tremendously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No arbitrary banning by the Labour Party NEC \u2013 no attacks from the South African Communist Party and its supporters \u2013 will hamper or deter us from this work. Nor will it diminish, but only increase, the support for our work within the labour movement internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The NEC\u2019s report, and its decision to attempt to proscribe SALEP, are a disgrace which will do the reputation of the Labour Party immense harm \u2013 not because this decision is an attack on SALEP, but because it is a mindless attack on all the finest aspirations of the movement of the oppressed in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are confident that the ranks of the British Labour Party and British labour movement, with whom we struggle shoulder-to-shoulder, will ensure the rapid reversal of this unwarranted witchhunt against SALEP, and provide increased support for SALEP\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, we believe, they will draw from what has happened vital lessons as to how to go about giving the most effective support to the movement of the oppressed in South Africa \u2013 which seeks to build the democratic trade unions and the African National Congress as the means to organise for workers\u2019 democracy and socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May 1985<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a9\u00a0Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2020).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nContinue to Appendix<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"