New anarchist organisation, The Anarchist Communist Group

 Our hostility clause certainly does appear unique and it has always been subject to regular debate within the Party. It can justifiably be put down to the 19th-century social democrat roots of our Party since it stems from the early members experience of the SDF and the Socialist League. William Morris together with Aveling, Eleanor Marx, Belfort Bax and other members of the SDF, resigned and issued a statement giving their reasons, for  "a body independent of the Social Democratic Federation".  Yet they added: "We have therefore set on foot an independent organisation, the Socialist League, with no intention of acting in hostility to the Social Democratic Federation”. The main weakness, as some saw it, of the Socialist League, was that it "had no intention of acting in hostility" to the SDF. When the Socialist Party was formed, its members made sure our Declaration of Principles would include a hostility clause against all other parties (such as the SDF) who advocated palliatives, not socialism.When it was drawn up, the early members envisaged the party developing rapidly into a mass party, and not remaining the small educational group that we have been up to the present. And in that context is our party is not going to do any election or parliamentary deals with any other political party, either to get elected or to obtain reforms. Basically, the hostility clause applies to political parties, organisations aiming at winning control of political power. In the eyes of those who drew it up, it was about the attitude that a mass socialist party should take towards other political parties.The hostility clause doesn't mean that we are hostile to everything. There are a whole range of non-socialist organisations out there, ranging from trade unions to community action groups which we are not opposed. Nor does the Clause 7 read"If you are not in the SPGB, you are automatically anti-socialist." There are, and always have been, socialists outside the party in the sense of people who want to see established, like us, a class-free, state-free, wage and money-free society based on common ownership and democratic control with production solely for use not profit. We should recognise this. Okay, we consider that they hold a mistaken view of how to get there but clearly they are not in the same category as openly pro-capitalist groups. So what about the anarchists? We are not opposed to them because they represent some section of the capitalist class. We are opposed to them because we disagree with their proposed method of getting rid of capitalism rather and that opposition doesn't need to go as far as “hostility”.A better attitude to them is to engage them in comradely debate to try to convince them that the tactics they favour to achieve socialism are mistaken and they should join us. Of course, we think that the tactics anarchists espouse such as insurrection (no longer popular among the anarchist these days) or a general strike (which still retain much of its appeal) is dangerous to the working-class interest and we openly we say so, opposing them. We disagree with the way they are proposing to or fellow-workers as a means to establish socialism — and, of course, they are against what we suggest. The SPGB and the anarchists agree to disagree. Comradely disagreements. We aren't challenging one other's socialist credentials. And our opposing respective views are put forward to our fellow-workers and in the end, it will be they who will decide what to do. The socialist movement must be a working-class movement. It must depend upon the working class initiative and intelligence. Until the requisite knowledge is equal to the task there can be no emancipatory liberation for the workers. We do not seek to substitute the party for the class or see the party as a vanguard leading the masses to the Promised Land.In 1904 we raised the banner for such a single, mass socialist party and proclaimed the party as the basis or embryo of such a party (Clause . Not only did the working class in general, or in any great numbers, not "muster under its banner"  but neither did all socialists. So we were left as a small propagandist group and continue to be. And that is what we must address.  That's my view, anyway, heretical or not.