Socialist Challenge 3 July l approach to the sniping references our tank ana musi tions and unofficial strikes.. maintainea since in socialist wilanenge vour organisation were serious about the terms their own resolution, they would have to break with believe that we are centrists and men aboarusor unry win only chose who do not believe that we are centrists. Otherwise they are asking us to accept precisely the kind of unity they itself.
But that is perhaps not the most important point.
nothing analysis of your conference or of Socialist Challeng ¡ends us to sunoose toar vou cave salted vour bosi tions fundamentally on the way you judge our basic class struggle. Your conference's tional strike committee grudging admission that we are a revolutionary' and not a 'centrist' organisation was accompanied by by speakers for all tendencies to tion against the Tories.
Even the resolution on unity insisted that our tradicted some *rank and file approach starts from a false choice. ference of the SWP we base ourselves on the activity of the rank and fil rank and file teachers group fetishes school based ac The tone has been Take for instance the article by Valerie Coultas on
and who have begun to seriously appreciate what we ge trying to build. Indeed on the basis of discussion ira manvadals, some or us oegan to teel in the run ip to your conference that a reorientation on your art might open prospects for organic unity.
a cone l cue contribanons al your conterence nd in your paper since have dashed any such hopes. It is clear that those elements who are genuinely movng towards our positions only got a ponference by compromising with those whose positions remain in essentials what they always were.
At the same time the essential political differences twe our organisallous nave u anytig grown since your conference. This is shown not merely bs snipes around our steel strike but also by the way in which you described 29)9i Or une most signinicant women's movement taking of The same starting point underlines our attitude to Afghanistan. over the steel strike. and over the abor. tion campaign. You denounce our approach on all issues 'rank and It is this which explains your repeated insistence against all the evidence that Iront because you cannot understand that for us the precondition for any united front activity, with MPs, union leaders, is our real ability to propagate notions of independent, revolutionary class action.
Nothing in your conference or your letter leads u: to believe that these differences since your last letter of two years ago. This is unforwork round the us to be able to unify with others forces around a developments in the common appreciation of our tasks would make the direct action job of revolutionaries a little easier.
filism' inescapably we oppose the united of our history comparison with have diminished Socialist Party, we are sa mies volt sze tol centralism in conditions of bourgeois democracy.
Many on the left will see all this as confirming their view that revolutionary Marxist organisations given to splittism.
Much of the history of our movement may seem t No serious observer could claim that the present differences between the IMG and the SWP bear any the differences between the British une socianst Labour rary. the Independent Labour Party Left and the revolutionary syndicalist shop stewards who came together to form And whatever the accusations we might have thrown at each other in the past, they pale into inSocialist GAY PRIDE MARCI Socialist Challenge on the