At this stage, an RSSF Conference should provide an arena, first for the politicisation of experience, in which comrades can draw political lessons from their activities and learn of specific solutions to particular problems; second, for the development of theory, through analysis of the present situation; and third, for the extension of perspective, by listening to comrades engaged in struggles elsewhere.
Conference in Manchester, March 22-23, successfully provided only the last - by the comrade from Ulster, who was given a standing ovation at the end of his speech, and by four Ford workers, from both Halewood and Dagenham. The Ford sesion, however, was marred by a measure of idolisation; there was a sharp contrast between the way some students referred to 'the workers", and the perspective as seen by Fords.
The longest session of the Conference, on Red Bases, abstractly discussed the correct perspective to take on the student struggle in general. Far from developing theory it became clear that basic Marxist concepts such as 'relative autonomy" and 'structure/superstructure' were completely misunderstood and that many comrades hadn't started to realize that they even needed to understand them. The retoric rarely rose to the level of an exchange concerned, the base reports were arid empirical confessions rather than political contributions and when a new idea showed its head it was immediately drowned in a mass of boring detail. The only positive thing to come out of the debate on Red Bases was the motion on Ireland which was proposed as a development of 'the red base strategy' and demanded that RSSF members intensively educate themselves on the class struggle in Ireland and in particular on the reactionary role of the English ruling class; that they take the issues, especially the civil rights issue, to the mass of students (Demanding money for PD etc) and use their base in the university to go out and build up support among the Irish working class in this country • Any in Ulster, the Conference agreed, must meet with massive and intensive opposition in the rest of the British Isles.
Many speakers referred to the RSSF as a united front, and tried to reduce it to the co-existence of the distinct political lines which take part. And the political groups, far from uniting to encourage revolutionary politics in the student sector, fought for control. In fact, the most encouraging aspect of the conference was that it showed a distinct RSSF tendency, with some individuals attached to different The 7th National Conference of the Institute of | the abolition of stewards contro CAlcarIV clearly dispersed into the sectarian groupings Leicester, York, Cambridge, Warwick showed that there may be differences between the groups and within them but that they were not struggling political organisation, using it rather to develop their own struggle. This new development of RSSF base groups is in sharp contrast to the affiliations of socialist societies or clubs, which can never produce a viable group. The structure of the debates, however, with its formal motions, lists of speakers, and so on, reduced discussion to the tactics of a debate, tendencies fought to gain a majority. The base groups were largely silenced thereby.
The conference established RSSF as a real organisation, but did little to develop the student struggle at the bases, in the schools, polys, techs, and universities. The next such conference must discuss all the questions which were not debated in March exams, occupations, emancipation, unions, minorities, ideological criticism, and techs, newspapers and magazines and must allow time for work groups to function.
If they prepare themselves, the base groups RSSF conferences from being sectarian spectacles and can transform them into an organic part of the development of the
GUN RUNNING TO BLACKMAILING BRITISH WORKERS COLLUDING WITH CALLAGHAN, NIXON.
HEIGHT: NONE. STEAD man
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GROUPS AND SECTS