Day meeting on building a mass communist party Saturday 8 February
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Then and now trade unions *do* engage in campaigns to change the law, get certain MPs elected etc. Saying we can support trade unions because they operate only in the ‘economic’ sphere, and not the ‘political’ just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t seem like the right way of putting it.
Yes, that’s true what you say. But we are talking about what should be the attitude of the SPGB towards trade unions. Obviously, we support the principle of militant trade union struggle in the economic field even if, as a political party, we don’t get directly involved (it’s for individual members to get involved). Trade unions do get involved in reform campaigns and there is not a lot that we can do about that, obviously.
However, support for the principle of trade unionism on our part does not have to extend to supporting trade union involvement in reformist activity – only militant activity in the economic field and along sound democratic lines. Which reminds me – is there still a political levy in the UK whereby a part of your membership dues goes to fund the Anti-Labour Party? I don’t know what the situation is now (having left the UK 20 years ago) but I sincerely hope this practice has been discontinued. I remember vaguely there was an opt-out arrangement forced on the unions by the Tory government at the time but maybe things have moved on since then…
For the record, Robin has a short letter in this week’s Weekly Worker correcting someone who had written that we thought trade union activity was reformist. Scroll down to the end.
Most of the other letters are about the “mass communist party” idea.
There’s another good letter from Robin in this week’s Weekly Worker:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1528/letters/
The immediately preceding letter from Moshé Machover makes a couple of valid points on a different issue.
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