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'QUESTION'
TOM NAIRN REPLIES Dear Editor.
I have seen your December January issue very late, but I hope not too late to reply to the question" posed to me in it by Neil Williamson.
There are a number of questions in lus letter, but they add up to an image of ex-Marxist Nairn turned lackey of the SNP, as proved by his scribbling in the notorious Question. I particularly appreciated the past tense in mentioning my work with New Left Review, and comrades Blackburn and Anderson, having just completed a month's work in association with them. Here I must refer Comrade Williamson to the forthcoming No. 101 of NR, and my book The Break-up of Britain (New Left Books, April).
Seriously though, two theoretical issues are at stake: the national question in Scotland, and the nature of the state. On the former, my view is that Lenin's approach is sounder than Luxemburg s or the Austro-marxists, althouch it does need amendation, and it seems to me to entail giving much more priority to the rational issue than Scottish Socialist nd the IMG) have yet steeled themselves do. This in turn implies alliance on that issuc with other political forces and : tendencies. As long as this struggle remains progressive there is nothing whatever disreputable in such alliance (or in writing for a paper like Q). It goes without saying that I do not agree with other views expressed in that newspaper.any more than Blackburn. Anderson or other comrades do when they contribute to notorious rags like the Guardian or New Statesman.
The second issue may be even more impottant. I have been accused of Imputing "Neanderthal views to some victims of the Stirling purge, and taking the constitutional problem seriously. Guilty on both counts, Your Honour, but unrepentant. Constitutional whether it is pronounced with in Enlish or a Morningside accent, means that the working class does not get a look in*, writes Alan Freeman in the same issue, He goes on to contrast all this "constitutional bickering' with the real answer: workers" control. This dichotomy is a false one. Constitutionalism is not a bourgeois delusion, and anyone who thinks it is should argue the case with to take only the blatant examples comrades in Yugoslavia or Crechoslovakm. Without a viable constitution and democracy in Scotland, there can be no real representation of the working class at all, and to claim that the form of the future Scottish state is none of our business is a Neanderthal stance.
It was kind of Williamson to say that I have sometimes played a constructive role in the past. But again, I must refuse the past tense. I was willing to Tight for democracy inside my own political party, the Scottish Labour Party, That is why I stayed in it after Stirling. He, and you, must know that this fight is not concluded, and that disagreement with some of the SIP left's views did not. and does not, mean condoning all that happened there or agreeing with the policies, outlook and methods of the present leadership Fraternally. TOM NAIRN
NEIL WELLIAMSON WRITES:
Tom Nair's lerter doesn't really deal with the issues at stake.
Firstly, on Question. Comrade Nain compares it to the Guardian or New Statesman; many of its editorials on purging the Labour Party of its left wing, or fighting international terrorism' are, in fact, much more reminiscent of the frenzied reaction of the Telegraph or Express Socialists, since Marx, have, howerer, frequently written for all sorts of bourgeois rags, so the precise character of the journal isn't really the point. For none of these journalists have ever envisaged Lord Beaverbrook or iris kind as forces and tendencies' in a common progressive struggle. as comrade Nain envisages the people around Q.
Tom Nair's projected alliance between socialists and our own literary national bourgeoisie is a profoundly mistaken one for these forces are the very least able (to use ins own words) to wage a progressive struggle on the national question. What is more, their impotence is a product of their constizutionalism' wich Tom Nairn so much admires: a constitutionalism which serves merely as a cover for their real class politics When Scorrish workers occupy factories against multinational plant closures, when they demand the STUC leads an orgamsed fight against spending cuts, or when they resist that labour movement representatives implement conference decisions on issues like derolution, then these same constitutionalise nationalists will be the first to scream for Westminster intervention This alliance of Nain's will prove to be an umbrella which can not survive its firsr shower of rain.
For this reason Comrade Nairn's polemic against Alan Freeman is misplaced. What Alan was correctly arguing was the ineffectiveness of reliance on parliamentary methods. This at least must be abundantly clear in the wake of the Westminster debacle over devolution. We aiso would refer to the failure of Dubceck (not to menrion Allende) int this respect:
Alan's entire article was an argument against the stupidity of thinking that the national question or democrarie rights are irrelevent to the working class. It is ironical that it is often the very parties most committed to constitutionalism like the Communist Party and the Sillars S/P that are the worst offenders in terms of their own internal democracy. And surely this is all the more reason not to put the slightest faith in the constinitionalism and reformism of our elected representatives to actually carry out the wishes of the Scottish people.
While we were delighred at comrade Nairn's reaffirmation of his willingness to fight for political democracy inside his own we remain puzzied at how this tallies with his vote for the expulsions ar Srirling.
Finally, it is because we think that Tom Nairn is a socialist and not a lackey of the SP* that we consider his failure adequately to answer our questions all the more important
PLYUSHCH OR FAGAN? Dear Comrades.
Having been present at the Leonid Piyushch public meeting in Glasgow University, Tread with interest the interview by Gus Fagan in Scottish Socialist No. 3. However, it seems to me that some of Plyushch's most interesting ideas have been carefully left out of the published interview, One statement in the introduction scoms highly inaccurate, namely that Plyushch is "Marxist by conviction". Durine the public meeting, he devoted some time to explaining his neo-Marxist views, and he also strongly hinted that Eenin might have
sown the seeds of Stalinism, which isn't mentioned in the Scottish Socialist interview.
Plyushch also took some time during the public meeting to explain his view that the USSR is state capitalist surely an important point, and one that could hardly have been avoided in the subsequent interview by Gus Fagan.
Was the point of the interview to present Plyushch's ideas or Fazan's?
Yours fraternally, DAVID BUCKNER