WRP in new Bosnia fiasco
Socialist Outlook1990sScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
THE GROTESQUE opportunism of the Workers Revolutionary Party's 'Workers Aid for Bosnia' campaign has emerged again following their recent convoy to Tuzla.
Starting with silly claims that they would mobilise 1,000 lorries, later reduced to 200, they eventually took 33 lorries to Tuzla last month -on the face of it a very creditable achievement.
When they arrived in Tuzla, however, 28 out of the 33 lorries refused to take their aid to the miners union - or any other union or destination decided by the organisers. Instead they took their aid to their own destinations - including the private market!
Most of the lorries had attached themselves to the convoy simply as a means of getting through, and wanted nothing to with a working class or trade union based initiative at all. This has caused considerable confusion amongst those in Tuzla who have been waiting for an aid convoy to the unions.
This gross opportunism has been endemic with the WRP campaign from the outset, when they included people who had not just a different political agenda but were hostile to the politics of the campaign. In some cases people from the convoy denounced the politics of the campaign at public meetings.
This lateşt development, however, is far worse. The WRP are campaigning in the trade unions in Britain on a the fraudulent basis that the convoy is a labour movement based initiative, when in reality the bulk of its 'support is nothing of the sort.
This is not surprising, however, given the way the WRP has operated in the campaign from the outset.
They split the unified Bosnia campaign in October by refusing to allow it to have a democratic structure and by hijacking it for their own impossible campaign to open the northern route to Tuzla'. This is the Breko pass, the main route into Serbia from western Bosnia and the most sensitive bit of territory under Serb occupation.
The idea that the route could be opened up by an aid convoy was at best cranky, at worst a call for UN intervention. It is now likely to be the next military flash point in Bosnia as the Serbs move to make it wider.
Having denounced IWA for using (and getting through) on the southern route, the WRP themselves then used it to get their own convoy through.
Amazingly, however, they continue to campaign to open the northern route. Even the article in Workers Press which reported that the bulk of their convoy had failed to reach the unions was headed Open The Northern Route'.
The labour movement should have nothing to do with this fraudulent campaign.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.62, May 14 1994, Page 7