The discussion at the Socialist cism was needlessly fraught. Conference was presented with two motions - one relatively short one from the outgoing Executive and one rather longer one from Islington SA member, Dave Landau. The first motion concen.... Stephen Church racism. majority of conference understood. ... ..
RENDIM trated exclusively on supporting the AntiNazi League (ANL), while the second argued that, in order to undercut support for the British National Party (BNP) and other fascist groups, it was necessary for socialists to take up the battle against state
There was no way the two motions could be seen as counterposed, as the ure to make a real breakthrough was a
NCRM.
Sadly some members of the SWP were not well prepared for the conference.
So despite the fact that Dave Landau's motion appeared on the SA website several months in advance of the conference, they only read it on the day - and then decided to take objection to 3 paragraphs of it.
The SWP then tried to persuade Landau to withdraw the offending words - but failed to give any coherent explanation as to
• • TEKERS NCADC. why they wanted this
Later on, they argued to conference that the motion should be taken in parts - and spoke against these particular paragraphs. Their objection seemed to be that the motion was incorrect in arguing that the BNP were no longer targeting a petit-bourgeois base. Great stress was laid on what happened in Broxbourne (actually an unusual constituency for the BP to target in terms of its recent trajectory)
This argument is not a million miles away from a left "essentialism" which suggests that the working class is inherently good i.e. in this case not racist and that all we have to do is peel away the thin layer of false con sciousness. This approach could be dangerous in developing an effective strateg) against fascism.
At the same time, it was reasonable to argue that conference should decide on this question by taking the motion in parts. But Steve Godward in the chair, decided that this wasn't on - if people wanted to move amendments they had had ample time to do