SPART PROPOSAL

The following letter, dated 1 September, to the CPGB is a response to Mike Macnair’s letter “Spart leopard”, which appeared in Weekly Worker issue 1550, 28 August.

Dear comrades,

I appreciated the exchanges I had with comrades of the CPGB at the Communist University, in particular the openness of your organisation to engage in frank political debate. However, when it comes to the pages of Weekly Worker, we feel you engage our organisation in an unserious manner. A few weeks ago, you falsely claimed we supported the Iranian regime. Last week we had comrade Macnair’s letter entitled “Spart leopard” whose purpose seems to be to cast a shadow over us. In it he implies we still hold the aim of effectuating “short-term raiding” operations on other organisations. Again, it seems no attempt was made to look at our actual position which is clearly laid out in the current issue of Spartacist:

We have no problem exchanging vigorous polemics, but for the exercise to be productive it needs to hold some relation to what we write and do. We do not ask that you forget our past, which we certainly do not, but we do ask that your critique of our politics be based on more than impressions from decades ago and lurid tales about our late comrade Jim Robertson.

If I raise these points, it is not to whine, but to propose that our respective organisations engage each other in a more serious and sustained manner. Let’s get real and deal with the politics at hand. The founding of a new left party in Britain offers a chance to change the overall direction of British politics. We believe it is also an important opportunity for the splintered communist forces to clarify their differences and work together. However, in both cases there is a big difference between latent potential and real potential.

There can be no doubt that left to their own devices the leaders of “Your Party” will repeat the disaster of Corbyn 1.0. In the same way there is no reason to doubt that most communist organisations will act in their usual self-interested sectarian ways. Thus, if we want the outcome to be different, we must act to make it so.

To this end we think it makes sense for our two organisations to seriously engage with each other and look for ways to work together. First because we seem to align on certain important principles regarding the new left party: opposition to a coalition with the Greens, to Zionism and to support for Ukraine. Second because we both share the aim of political clarification and regroupment within the communist left. If you are interested in our proposal, we think an obvious first step would be to exchange views on our perspectives towards Your Party (we will be publishing a substantial article in the coming days [see front page]).

Of course we are two very small organisations, but we think that fruitful exchanges could exercise broader influence on the far left. It certainly could raise the level of political debate among communists and put pressure on other groups to work together in building a left pole in the new party.

Comradely,
Gabriel Perrault
For the Spartacist League