Re: Academical Marxism ???

[wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Paul Cockshott)]

No han it was not a joke, it reflects
my personal experience over the last
10 years. Over that period, instead of
being involved in the futile no hope
campaigns of the middle class left I
have been involved in struggles run
by overwhelmingly poor working class
people - first in the Workers Party
of Scotland, and then in Red Action.

Although we started out less than a
dozen of us, the WPS took the initiative
in starting up the campaign against
the Poll Tax in Scotland. At the begining
the mass of the Left were not even
interested. But we campaigned continually
on the streets in the poorest areas.
Matt Lygate and I literally walked the
lenght of Scotland on foot going through
villages and towns talking to working class
people about the tax. This investigation
convinced us that the masses were
ready to fight on the issue.

So, following the line of from the people
to the people we formed branches of the
Anti Poll tax union. When it was started
I was the only member in Edinburgh, six
months later there were active branches
all over the city.

At this point the middle class left said
that it should be fought through the unions
and the labour movement. We opposed this
line from the start and said that the
campaign should be community based.
We took the line that the tax should
not be paid, that people should not
register, and that if necessary force
should be used to drive out those
attempting to register people or
collect the tax. The middle class left
opposed this on the spurious grounds
that the civil servants compiling the
register were union members?

The lines were put to the test of practice
and ours won out. Imitation is the best
form of flattery, and our slogans and
forms of organisation were then adopted
by the much larger Scottish Militant -
a trotskyist/social democratic party -
except that they excluded all republican
propaganda from the campaign.

By relying on the working class masses
the campaign was a great success. The
anti-poll-tax unions made the tax uncollectable
in Scotland, and showed that the law
could be defied with impunity. We
got 40 to 50% non-payment here in Glasgow.
This encouraged the masses in England,
so that when the tax was introduced there
a year later, there were massive riots
by the poorest sections of the proletariat,
culminating in the resignation of Thatcher
and the withdrawal of the tax.

By following the principles that I outlined,
the campaign led to the most significant
working-class victory since the miners
strikes of the early 1970's which overthrew
the Heath government.


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