[Militant 704, 15th June 1984, p. 12]
By Lynn Walsh
Militant, A new book by Michael Crick of Channel 4 News, will be eagerly seized by Labour’s enemies as ammunition for stepping-up the witch-hunt against the Marxists in the labour movement.
Even prior to publication next Monday, excerpts have appeared in the Guardian and The Times. Crick claims this is the first serious attempt to „tell the story of Militant.“ In reality it is a rehash, on a bigger scale, of a story that has been churned out by Fleet Street time and time again.
Confronted with Militant’s success, and unable to grasp that it is based on growing support among youth and workers for Marxist ideas, journalistic hacks repeatedly attempt to explain it away by imagined plots and secret conspiracies.
Like the Observer’s Nora Beloff back in 1975, like Tom Forrester in New Society, and like numerous other political demonologists, Crick has conjured up a long organisational pedigree for Militant and laboriously fabricated an elaborate organisational structure which he claims runs Militant.
We have answered all this before. Militant is a newspaper, it is not run by a „Revolutionary Socialist League“ or any other secret organisation. His allegations about central committees and other structures are all untrue. Far from working by stealth, Militant boldly proclaims its ideas and policies, which have wide support in the Labour party, in trade unions, and among young people.
In fact, throughout his book Crick cannot help expressing grudging recognition of Militant’s success. We have long enjoyed overwhelming support in the Young Socialists, have a significant base in the Constituency Labour Parties, and have rapidly growing support in the trade unions. Our support is better organised than other groups, our supporters more dedicated. In fund-raising from workers we are in a „different league“ from other groups.
Two supporters were elected as MPs last June, and Terry Fields, Crick acknowledges, chalked up a „remarkable“ 4.8% swing to Labour in Liverpool Broadgreen.
Crick even blandly admits that the argument that Militant is „a ‚party within a party‘, with a separate organisation and policies… is a weak one. There are dozens of groups within the Labour Party that have the characteristics of political parties – Labour Solidarity and the Labour Co-ordinating Committee, for instance“.
There are groups with constituency organisations, some are financed from abroad. The constitution, he says, has always been taken „with a pinch of salt“. But Militant is different because it has breached the constitution „so effectively“. In other words, in his book too Militant’s crime is that we have been too successful in winning support for our ideas!
Crick is incapable of understanding the economic and social basis of Marxism’s success. In passing he refers to disillusionment with past Labour governments. In relation to Liverpool, he accepts that the party’s support drastically declined under the stewardship of Labour’s old right wing leaders. He acknowledges that mass unemployment is radicalising youth.
But these fundamental factors are largely off camera. He is not concerned with the crisis in capitalism. Crick’s focus is firmly on the conspiratorial methods which, according to him, Militant uses to win support.
Of course, it would be very difficult to win support with the political approach Crick attributes to us. In a single chapter, Crick attempts to summarise Militant’s „policies and programme“.
He lists many of our policies, it is true, but presents a crude caricature of our programme and perspectives. At best his „analysis“ reveals profound ignorance and a very superficial political understanding. But not content with distorting what we say, Crick alleges that „little of Militant‚s revolutionary plan is stated explicitly by the tendency, even in its internal documents“. Is Crick claiming that Militant is the first revolutionary conspiracy in history to communicate its aims by telepathy?
Again, Crick’s political attack is a revival of the old red-baiting calumny that Marxists advocate a totalitarian society. The underlying idea is that anyone who stands for the abolition of capitalism must support totalitarian dictatorship. This is the primitive, pro-capitalist ideological basis of the „conspiratorial view of history“.
Militant is „wholly alien“ to the Labour Party, according to Crick, so why does Militant enjoy growing support? We suggest that instead of interviewing our enemies and alleged „defectors“ Crick spends some time discussing with miners, young workers, women and blacks who are involved in the day- to-day struggle against the bosses and the Tories. From their own experience of the crisis and the bankruptcy of Labour’s right wing reformist leaders, more and more are drawing the conclusion that there are no solutions within the rotten framework of capitalism – and that the Marxist policies advocated by Militant offer the only way forward.
We may be sure that Labour’s enemies will use the book to step up the drive to witch-hunt Labour’s left wing and purge radical conference policies.
A revival of the witch-hunt on a big scale could wreck the Labour Party – Crick notes that the witch-hunt against Militant was stepped up when the last general election was in the offing – with disastrous results for Labour.
Even now the strategists of capital are weighing up the prospects for the next general election. Despite Thatcher’s landslide victory last year, they are well aware that growing class battles could drastically undermine support for the Tories – and open the door to a Labour government which would come under tremendous working class pressure to implement socialist policies.
What better tactic then, than to provoke a renewal of the witch-hunt? How convenient to have a new book from a Channel 4 journalist, particularly as Crick heightens the alarm by stressing Militant’s strength and the fact that the Labour Party is „ill equipped“ to get rid of the Marxists. However, we would warn both our opponents inside the Labour Party and our enemies outside: Crick’s last sentence is about the only correct statement in the whole book: „Militant is here to stay“.
Crick’s dubious sources
„This book is not meant to be a hatchet job on Militant,“ claims Crick in his Preface. The media man is evidently anxious to establish his credentials as a serious, impartial journalist. Whatever his intention, however, the book’s smooth political distortions, the elaborately „documented“ misinformation, and the uninformed gossip will provide welcome ammunition for the capitalist press and their shadows within the Labour leadership.
Crick’s acknowledgments read like a directory of Militant‚s right-wing opponents. Some need no introduction: He thanks Alistair Graham, chief apostle of the right’s „new realism“; and Ken Cure, chairman of Labour’s Star Chamber, the National Executive’s mis-named „Appeals and Mediation Committee“ which organises the witch-hunting. Russell Tuck and Frank Field MP also get a mention .
Thanks too go to Eddie Roderick, one of the six renegades who voted against the Labour group’s stand on Liverpool council.
Some of the others listed are now more obscure figures but were probably even more assiduous in providing Crick with political muck. He thanks Reg Underhill, known as Lord Mole-hunter, who worked for years as a Labour Party official to get the witch-hunt going. Another is Barrie Clarke, former LP Youth Officer, who now admits that his role was „disorganising“ the Young Socialists, confessing that the he worked ‚totally in league‘ with the Clause 4 organisation.“
Past luminaries of Clause 4 active in NOLS (the Labour student organisation) feature prominently as informants, notwithstanding Crick’s admission later that this organisation, “though professing to be left-wing, in reality … was no more than an alliance of people who detested Militant.”
With helpers like these, is it surprising that Crick’s account seriously distorts Militant‚s position, seeks to explain every success by plots and conspiracies, and is embroidered throughout with fairy tales?
Some of the stories are malicious lies, some are plain ridiculous. At one NOLS Conference, for instance , „somebody“ (who?) „even tried to electrocute Barrie Clarke. The wires to the LP duplicator were deliberately wired up incorrectly“!
However, Crick implies his book is superior to the average hatchet job because it is based partly on interviews with „fifteen Militant defectors, former members of the tendency who have been prepared to talk about the organisation and their life in it.“
it is such „inside“ sources presumably, which allow Crick to come out with amazing details. For instance, reading his book Militant‚s Editor discovered he had a brother or sister he had not previously known about! Untrue Insight-type details do not authenticate untrue stories.
Most of Crick’s informants repudiated Marxism long ago. Some (like Frank Ward) have become cynical right-wing hacks. Others have ended up in the „League of Abandoned Hopes“, full-time pessimists on the fringes of the movement.
Either way, their memories are notoriously selective, their recollections distorted by political malice. They are particularly strong on personal gossip directed against comrades who have worked unwaveringly for Marxist ideas.
Detailing such distasteful trivia in itself undermines Crick’s credibility as a serious journalist.
What sort of witnesses are Crick’s „defectors“? Crick travelled to Blackburn, for instance, to see Michael Gregory, whose „first-hand evidence“ has been used to expel six Militant supporters from Blackburn Labour Party. But Gregory never supported Militant, he is a political provocateur. As Jack Straw’s former secretary has recently revealed (Militant, May 25 … ), the MP corrected glaring errors and added „missing“ names to the sworn, but nevertheless false, affidavit of this ignorant „insider“. Having supplied dirty ammunition against Militant, just prior to the local elections this stooge stabbed the Party in the back by voting to defeat the Labour group on Blackburn council.
Another of Crick’s informants is Dave Mason. No Militant supporter would have anything to do with this character, who has excelled even other Clause 4 leaders in underhand manoeuvring.
At the 1983 NOLS Conference Mason was exposed for substituting two forged, defective membership cards for two genuine ones in order to get two opponents from his Club ruled out as delegates .
Even Clause 4 delegates were obliged to support the overwhelming vote of censure on Mason. He is not so much a defector as a political defective. Yet Crick extensively quotes this „typical case“ about the „unending tedium“ of „The Militant Life“, which disrupted poor Mason’s “social circle“.
Reliance on people like this for his „facts“ does not deter Crick from regurgitating outright lies about Militant supporters „fiddling NOLS credentials“, etc. it is indicative of Crick’s mentality that he relates the infantile and sick – „Operation lcepick“ story about Clause 4’s consciously neo-Stalinist manoeuvres against Militant with a puerile glee worthy only of Private Eye.
Hostile tales are only to be expected from opponents who are incapable of formulating arguments, although Crick can hardly expect to be taken seriously when he himself admits that they are „no doubt embellished somewhat by the passage of time.“
More serious, however, is evidence that Crick has completely twisted the comments of some alleged informants. For example, Crick quotes derogatory comments from Sam Bornstein. These are attributed in his source notes to an uncheckable „unpublished interview with Tom Forrester“.
For a start, this shows Crick is re-hashing stuff concocted by Forrester, a councillor in Brighton who published a scurrilous attack on us in New Society – shortly before deserting Labour for the SDP.
However, when he saw Crick ’s book, Sam Bornstein wrote to Militant saying that although he spoke to Forrester on the phone, he had refused to meet him:
„Crick rang me some months ago and told me he was writing a book for Fabers. I refused to discuss with him. I have always been willing to help serious researchers who are genuinely interested in the history of the movement, but it has never been my habit to denigrate people with whom I have disagreed politically within the movement. At no time have I granted a formal interview to Forrester or Crick and any remarks I am stated as making have been taken out of context and not been verified by me.“
In the light of this, how can we accept Crick’s plea in his Preface that this is „a fair account“? He must be joking!
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