CAPTURE" OF NALSO ENDS IN FIASCO
By Brian Gormley
London The seventeenth annual conference of the National Association of Labour Student Organizations [NALSO], which opened April 3, lived up to expectations and proved to be the liveliest in its history. A sharp political struggle occurred among several tendencies over what attitude NALSO should take toward the offensive launched against it by the right wing of the British Labour party and how it should gauge the recent signs of a new radicalism among British university students as typified by such an organization as the Radical Student Alliance.
A broadly based socialist student organization embracing some 6,000 members, the great bulk of them belonging to the Labour party, NALSO is a loose federation of over ninety socialist societies and Labour clubs on most of the major univer-. sities and colleges. Since its inception it has been under the leadership of the Labour left; and since Labour's election victory, it has been in a state of decline.
Readers of the London Newsletter, the official weekly of the Socialist Labour League, may have guessed in recent months that the SLL leadership had developed a more than casual interest in the affairs of NALSO. Besides the amount of space devoted to this organization, NALSO loomed more and more prominently in various SLL activities and campaigns, the relationship being not unlike that of the SLL to the Lambeth Trades Council. (The SLL used the Lambeth Trades Council as virtually a front, until it became such an empty shell that today demonstrations come and go and it is no longer heard from. )
At a poorly publicized, specially convened interim conference last January, where representation from the clubs was at its lowest and where credentials of some of the delegates were questionable, members of the SLL made a concerted effort to "take it through the experience" of their particular brand of sectarian politics and grabbed a majority of positions on the National Executive.
Interestingly enough, they were assisted in this by the votes of the right-wing Social Democrats, a minority at the conference, whose only motive was to see the organization disaffiliated and proscribed by the Labour party so that it could be reorganized under their control.
In the past, NALSO has been an enbarrassment to Transport House. It was not uncommon for NALSO to nominate Ho Chi Minh as honorary vice-president. Transport House this time retaliated quickly by cutting off its annual subsidy, thus taking the first step in ridding itself of its troublesome student body.
This clearly fitted in with the plans of the SLL leaders. While they do not agree with Transport House on most things, they seem to share with the Labour party brass the view that it is better to have militants outside the party looking in rather than inside conducting an effective struggle where it counts most, in the constituency clubs.
As one delegate put it, the question at issue was whether or not NALSO would be participating in this coming Labour party conference trying to rally support from the floor, or whether it would be standing outside alone waving a placard.
As was clearly revealed in the NALSO conference discussions, the SLL leaders think it is a waste of time for young socialists to be concerned about the Labour party and its internal evolution and the growth of the left wing, instead preferring to be outside the organizations of the working class lecturing the left from the pulpit of sectarian ultraleftism, posing themselves as "the revolutionary alternative."
But the SLL leaders misjudged the situation in NALSO. While students may be critical of the right wing of the Labour party, they are as yet opposed to being absorbed into the SLL.
Under the initiative of the Cambridge and Oxford affiliates, a "Save NALSO" caucus was formed to protect the organization from the ultralefts and to maintain its ties to the Labour party.
This became the central question for the conference. The SLL approach was at first cautious. They submitted minimum policy resolutions. The main task for the moment was merely to burn all bridges to the Labour party.
But under pressure from the "Save NALSO" caucus, they were forced to argue their full position of making NALSO "the alternative revolutionary leadership" in opposition to the Labour party.
The conference, by a hefty majority, rejected a statement by the SLL majority of the NALSO Executive on the reasons for the break with the Labour party, referring it back to the incoming Executive. Over the opposition of the SLL, the conference by a substantial majority also passed the Can-
bridge position which was outlined in the following resolution:
"This conference deplores the hasty action of the NED of the Labour Party in repudiating its bi-lateral agreement with NALSO but also believes that the student socialist movement must retain links in some form with the Labour Party at a national level. It therefore instructs the EC to seek immediately affiliation or some form of association with the Labour Party, preferably one which will give NALSO speaking and voting rights at the Labour Party Conference."
Many of the students would have agreed with the SLL when they argued that a revolutionary party must be built. But they would add that the variant by which this will happen is through a struggle inside the existing organized political expressions of the working class, especially the Labour party, a possibility which NALSO should not turn its back upon.
The incentive to struggle against the position of the SLL was touched off by the SLL itself. It was immediately posed that all who did not agree with the SLL would have no place in NALSO. It would cease to be a broadly based student socialist youth organization, representative of several tendencies on the left.
The SLL moved in hard in a determined bid to consolidate its hold, running a full slate for all positions. This was in contrast to the "Save NALSO" caucus which left several positions open.
The conference ran over four days. In that time the arguments developed fast and furious as the factions struggled for the majority.
At every session, Ernest Tate, an active supporter in Britain of the Fourth International, was denounced by members of the SLL for “organizing against the
A high point came when an SLL spy, who had been sent into the "Save NALSO" caucus, got up to "confess" and "tell all." Aside from the effrontery of the SLL using this well-worn Stalinist and right-wing Social Democratic device, the delegates were outraged when he got his facts wrong.
Tate took the floor at the invitation of the delegates. (The SLL have made him such a demon that even their own menbers wanted to hear him speak!) Tate answered the spy's charges, explaining to the delegates what the "Save NALSO" caucus was, and how he had helped it, as was his duty as a socialist.
He accused the SLL of acting like the right wing in giving every appearance of being opposed in principle to opposition caucuses. Didn't the SLL have its own caucus? he asked. He sat down to loud applause.
The SLL caucus members were forced to argue out their positions on many questions in which they showed serious lack of preparation.
When they charged that the "Save NALSO" caucus was an "unprincipled combination" against them because some held to the view that the Soviet Union was "state capitalist" while others. held it to be a workers state, they were informed that everyone knew the program of the caucus, and anyway the question of state capitalism could not be a principle for the SLL as they had adopted a similar position in relation to Cuba.
They were faced with the same difficulty when it was revealed that two young members of the Communist party were on the slate, both of whom came to the” conference in opposition to King Street {headquarters of the British CP]. The SLL denounced them as "Stalinists"!
The "Save NALSO" caucus was based on the Cambridge resolution and was open to all who supported that position. In addition, it sought to develop a student program and to orientate NALSO to the student protest movement. It was a minimum position. And it was this program that stuck in the craw of the SLL strategists.
In the elections for the new National Executive, the SLL contingent was reduced to a small minority, losing most of their previous positions.
The line finally adopted by the conference was by no means clear; it was even contradictory. Its position on student radicalism is ambiguous.
Many resolutions were passed by unanimous votes. In the debate on the constitution, the delegates defeated a move by the SLL to delete all references to the Labour party; but failed to prevent the "eligibility clause" from being deleted. This would have insisted that Executive positions could be filled only by people eligible for Labour party membership. In the past this clause has been ignored by NALSO but was in effect a statement of its main orientation.
The SLL argued that this was "a principle" and meant “acceptance of bans and proscriptions"; whereas it had been argued, especially by the Sussex delegation, that it was necessary to accept such devices if one were to be in an effective position to fight against then.
It was pointed out by one of the Oxford delegates that in the past the SLL
has accepted such clauses in the Young Socialists before they split from the Labour party.
Supporters of the Fourth International were in the forefront of the camnpaign to protect NALSO from the sectarians. The Fourth Internationalists had helped to organize several caucuses to plan strategy in the weeks previous to the conference.
They led in the political debates and succeeded in drawing out the SLL. The debates centered around such questions as "“entryism," the united-front tactic and how revolutionary socialists defend the
Vietnamese revolution.
Even though they were small in nun-
ber in contrast to the SLL's thirty-odd
votes, in the confrontation before stu-
dents interested in learning the truth the
Fourth Internationalists showed that the
SLL's ultraleft positions were a liability
rather than an asset.
After such ballyhoo about NALSO in
the SLL press, the defeat poses serious
questions for SLL members. It is to be
hoped that in looking for answers they
will closely reexamine the program and
tactics of the SLL.