On an organisational level the advice of Spartacist is ludicrous. Having expelled anyone and everyone who has had the slightest disagreement with him Scargill, who appears to have caught 'god disease' some time ago, has managed to reduce the party to a numerical shadow of its former self. Only because of outside monies is it able to run a selection of candidates.

However, the Spartacist advice could perhaps be justified if the SLP's political line was in any way revolutionary or even progressive. This is not the case, much of the SLP's political line is downright reactionary. It is not ElectionFraud20001 who are saying this but rather the Spartacists themselves!!

After mentioning that the SLP has a few 'supportable demands'; (what left group hasn't!) they launch into a major attack on the SLP's nostalgia, protectionist poison, nationalism and parliamentary cretinism. Much of this attack one can only agree with. But remember: we have to vote for the SLP anyway! No - it does not make sense, it defies all logic and we can only surmise that the Left have got to find someone to vote for.

The Spartacist statement is reproduced below - read it for yourself.

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In the general election the Spartacist League says no vote to Labour, which promises only to carry out more of the same racist, anti-working-class policies they have dished out over the past four years, and we say no vote to the Socialist Alliance whose campaign is subordinate to getting Labour re-elected. We urge a vote for the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) which is running an independent working-class campaign that draws a class line, however crudely, against the Labour Party. Unlike the misnamed Socialist Alliance the SLP refuses to call for a vote to Labour and is willing to stand against so-called Labour "lefts" such as Jeremy Corbyn. Labour has whipped up a racist frenzy which is inciting deadly attacks on the minority population. Blair’s brutal crackdown on the fuel protesters was a measure of his commitment to enforcing capitalist austerity. From the war on Serbia to the British Army siege of Catholic areas in Northern Ireland to the ongoing bombing of Iraq, the Labour government are imperialist butchers.

We refused to call for a vote to Ken Livingstone—a zealous supporter of the bombing of Serbia—when he ran for mayor of London; needless to say the Socialist Alliance backed him. This month Livingstone and Blair unleashed thousands of cops on May Day protesters in London, The Spartacist League says: Defend the May Day protesters! Drop all the charges!

In contrast to the Socialist Alliance, the SLP forthrightly calls for British troops out of Northern Ireland. The SLP calls for a united Ireland. We oppose the forcible reunification of Ireland which would mean reversing the existing terms of oppression. The only just solution is one in which the rule of capital is overthrown on both sides of the Irish border and both sides of the Irish sea. We fight for an end to the oppression of the Catholic minority in the North and oppose the imperialist-brokered "peace" fraud which is necessarily at the expense of the oppressed Catholic minority and won’t do any good for working-class Protestants either. We say: Troops out now! For a workers republic in Ireland as part of a voluntary federation of workers republics in the British Isles!

The SLP raises some demands which we fully support, not least the call for the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords and the right of self-determination for Scotland and Wales. They also call for free abortion on demand and for rebuilding health and public services, including re-nationalisation of rail and public utilities such as gas, water and electricity. These demands speak to the felt anger of working people against the crimes of the capitalist system.

The key question is what kind of party and programme does the working class need to represent its interests and those of all the oppressed—minorities, women, gays and youth—in the struggle against capitalism. We seek to build a party which is proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist, modelled on the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky which led the great October Revolution of 1917.

The SLP, which raises many supportable demands, at bottom is nothing but a party of nostalgia: "Clause IV socialists" looking to a Labourite past, not a socialist future. "Clause IV", which promised "common ownership", was written into Labour’s constitution at a time when workers were electrified by the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution. The myths about "common ownership" were concocted deliberately to dupe workers into believing that "socialism" could be achieved without a workers revolution, and through parliament. The SLP harks back to the supposed "good old days" of Clement Attlee’s post-World War II Labour government which nationalised huge swathes of British industry in what amounted to an enormous capitalist bail-out of failing enterprises. These companies were then subsidised by working people through high taxes and low wages while the former owners were given exorbitant rates of compensation. Attlee’s Labour government were imperialist butchers who presided over the bloody partition of India and crushed the Communists in the Greek Civil War.

The Blair government’s mania for privatisation exceeds even that of Thatcher—the air traffic control system and the London Tube are on the list. We oppose privatisations, which always mean attacks on unions, jobs and working conditions, throwing safety to the wind. But for revolutionaries, the answer is not a return to the bad old days of British Rail ~ la the SLP, or Ken Livingstone’s bonds-plus-public ownership scheme, which again subordinates the operation of public transport to the overall dictates of the capitalist system. Livingstone has hired Bob Kiley, a notorious union-buster and former CIA operative to run the city transport system. Workers are currently engaged in one-day strikes over safety. Bob Crow, the chief rail union bureaucrat who was long a prominent SLP stalwart, has done his utmost to channel workers’ anger into support for Livingstone/Kiley. Tube workers were infuriated when Crow called off a recent strike.

Our programme is for expropriation of transport without compensation to the capitalist bosses as part of the sruggle for a workers government and the establishment of a planned economy. Expropriate private rail and bus—no compensation! Urban transportation ought to be free—rip out the ticket barriers! Such a programme is incompatible with the perspective of Scargill’s SLP. We fight for a powerful industrial union embracing rail, Underground and bus workers. Workers must rely on their own strength and must be mobilised independent of the capitalists and their state. The unions need a class-struggle leadership, not sell-outs like Bob Crow. The only way to get a safe, reliable transport system that also meets the needs of the workers in the industry is by the overthrow of capitalism through the seizure of power by the proletariat.

The SLP ‘s opposition to imports of coal and oil is protectionist poison which fuels national chauvinism and racism; it dovetails with calls to protect British industry at the expense of its rivals by nationalising British coal and manufacturing industry. Rivalry between imperialist powers has intensified in the wake of counterrevolution which destroyed the former Soviet Union; this rivalry leads to trade wars which lead to shooting wars. The logic of this kind of corrosive nationalism in the workers movement was shown at the April 2000 Rover demonstration organised by union bureaucrats in the car industry which was an outpouring of nationalist flag-waving. We fight for: Full citizenship rights for all inunigrants! Trade-union/minority mobilisations to crush the fascists! What’s needed is a fight across national borders for jobs for all, as part of the struggle to sweep away capitalist rule.

The SLP manifesto refers to the miners strike of 1984-85, which was led by Scargill and was one of the greatest class battles Britain has ever seen. We Trotskyists draw the lessons from it for the British proletariat. On the eve of the strike, Gerry Healy’s Workers Revolutionary Party set up Scargill for a witch hunt over his correct statement that Polish Solidarnosc was anti-socialist. And it is notable that Healy’s favourite Labour politician was…Ken Livingstone. The miners strike took militant trade-union struggle as far as possible; it was sabotaged by the Labour Party and TUC tops. But Scargill remained tied to the Labour Party and the miners union fought alone. We sought to extend the strike to other unions, calling for miners, railworkers and dockers to shut down the country.

Capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European deformed workers states was a catastrophe for working people there and internationally. US and British imperialism are preparing the ground for war against the People’s Republic of China. The SLP manifesto "condemns the use of economic and political blockades or sanctions which are used by international capitalism against countries—such as Cuba—that challenge the very basis of capitalism". We call for the unconditional military defence of Cuba, as well as the Chinese, Vietnamese and North Korean deformed workers states against imperialist attack and capitalist restoration. We Trotskyists fight for proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucracies. The overthrow of capitalism in the imperialist heartlands is the best way to defend the existing workers states and to go forward to a world socialist society. For a federation of workers republics in the British Isles! For a Socialist United States of Europe!