Exclusions: no way to build socialist unity against New Labour!
Socialist Outlook2000sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Nick Long's letter (left) raises a number of issues which are central to the current debate around the building of the Socialist Alliances.
In particular it focuses attention on their political character, and the need for people from diverse parts of the left to work together within them if they are to be developed into an effective socialist alternative to Blairism.
It is unfortunate, however, that Nick Long has decided to defend the disgraceful witch hunt against the SWP in Leeds. The Leeds Left Alliance (LLA) has denied members of the SWP the right to be full members of the LLA and have debarred them from standing for office within the Alliance (SO39).
Nick Long euphemistically describes this anti-democratic outrage as "defining the political boundaries" of the LLA. Blair and Mandelson want to "define the political boundaries" of the LP by drumming out the left. Such an action by Milbank would rightly be condemned by the whole of left.
Democracy is not an optional extra for the Socialist Alliances, to be discarded when there are a few scores to settle or a few revolutionary socialists to be nobbled. It is an integral part of the Alliances or they are nothing.
You can't fight the right-wing with the bureaucratic methods of the right-wing. An SLP mark II would go nowhere.
Nick Long invokes his experiences in the Lewisham Socialist Alliance to justify his defence of the indefensible in Leeds.
Yes, the Lewisham Alliance is a divided Alliance, and this has led to divided campaigns. But his description of the roots of those divisions are to say the least highly controversial with all the political organisations involved other than the Socialist Party (SP).
Nor is it true to say that all the independents in the Lewisham alliance share his view. The picture he paints of the SP and the independents working in harmony whilst the rest simply doing their own thing is a rather grotesque caricature from all accounts.
As welcome as the recent victory of Sam Dias in the Pepys by-election is, and it is very welcome indeed, the fact is that the Socialist Party imposed her as a candidate on the Lewisham Socialist Alliance.
At the meeting to adopt a candidate she flatly refused, as a member of the SP, to stand as anything other than as a candidate of the SP – i.e. under the SP's election rubric of Socialist Alternative/Ian Page team.
How does that promote harmony? What happened to local democracy? Or any kind of democracy?
Unfortunately it reflects a long and dishonourable tradition on the far-left in Britain – that democracy is a very good thing as long as it does not interfere with 'our patch'. For socialists there is a higher principle than simply being in the best position to get votes in a local election.
And this is not the only place where the SP have imposed a candidate – or presented an ultimatum as to who it would be, which amounts to the same thing.
At a recent Socialist Alliance public meeting in Walthamstow the SP speaker Simon Donovan announced from the platform that he would be standing in Leyton whatever anyone else said, and the Socialist Alliance would simply have to decide whether to support him or not.
It is not surprising that there are divisions in the Lewisham Alliance under these conditions. It was a credit to the others in the Alliance, organisations and individuals, that they decided to support the SP candidacy, even though they had been given no say in deciding the candidate.
This all flows from the unilateral declaration of the SP (in The Socialist) that they would stand eighteen of their own candidates in predetermined constituencies. This is irrespective of the views of any local SA group in those areas, either now or in the future if one is launched.
This is not the way to build any kind of alliance – even a federal one. It is another practice borrowed from Blairism. Nick Long does not refer to these impositions or give his view on them.
Nor does Nick Long make the case for his assertion that the SWP was attempting to take over the Leeds Left Alliance.
This is because no such case exists. But in any case, if a judgement is to be made about the conduct of the SWP in the Alliances, it needs to be made on the basis of their general practice.
In our experience they have not attempted to take over alliances, even in places where they have the numbers to do so.
On the contrary in most places (though not all) they have been careful to involve independents and other organisations, and have sought to be in a minority, often a small minority.
They know that a successful SA intervention will build their organisation, of course, because of the resources, both human and material, that they will bring to it on the ground. But there is nothing wrong with that.
The whole left will grow if we are successful in building the alliances to their potential in the present period. Nick Long should realise that without organisations like the SWP involved (and the SP as well) there will be no credible general electoral intervention, certainly not one which could meet current requirements. The rest of the left, those organised and those independent, are not strong enough to do it.
Like the SP and the LLA, Nick Long talks about "the moves towards centralisation" arising out of the Coventry conference at the end of September which adopted a protocol for the general election campaign. As the ISG has argued previously (SO38), this is a gross misrepresentation of what took place at Coventry, and it is being systematically promoted by the SP.
In fact Coventry produced an extremely federal election protocol, which put no restrictions on local alliances.
They are free to stand under a different name to the Socialist Alliances whilst being a part of the Socialist Alliances if they want to. They can have their own local profile and local demands and the candidates can make clear their political affiliations.
This has been made clear to the LLA repeatedly by the officers of the Socialist Alliance nationally, in case there is any problem of interpretation.
In fact the Coventry protocol creates a far less centralised structure than the Leeds Left Alliance has itself, if the way its executive was able to act against the SWP was an indication of its powers.
And, by the way, the Green Socialist Network AGM actually voted for affiliation to the Socialist Alliances, not against as Nick Long claims. It was only after a nasty sectarian attack on the SWP by Mike Davis of the LLA and then a successful appeal for the vote to be retaken, that it narrowly changed its mind.
This, however, is not the real debate. The real objection the LLA executive majority had with the SWP was not organisational or constitutional but directly political.
In the statement sent out with the ballot paper for the postal vote their main objection to the SWP was that the SWP are an organised party with an elected leadership, and – worse than that – it has a revolutionary perspective rather than a reformist one. This was absolutely explicit.
The same point comes through in Nick Long's letter, although not so clearly. He refers to the "ultra revolutionary left" and "those who are seeking to build a centralised and directed political organisation which can become a larger united revolutionary Leninist party".
He counterposes these to comrades (such as himself) who want to build "a broad federal structure"
But what about the SP? Doesn't he realise that the SP is itself a centralised and directed political organisation?
The ISG, he writes, "appears to be clearly drawn to playing a minor role in a united revolutionary party, rather than a leading role in a broad socialist party which can be at the centre of left politics".
The ISG has published its views on this a number of times (e.g. SO34). Yes, since we are a revolutionary organisation, we do want to build a new united revolutionary party. However, there is more to it than that.
In the present situation the existing divisions on the left are not only damaging to the cause of socialism, but to the pressing need to organise a fight-back against the capitalist offensive and its main political representatives in Britain today – Tony Blair and the Labour government.
Without a broad based, nationally co-ordinated Socialist Alliance we don't believe a socialist voice will be heard in this general election - or an alternative to Blairism built.
This would be a defeat for the working class in Britain – and therefore for us as revolutionary socialists.
It is for this reason that we advocate building today the broadest possible, inclusive alliance – not a revolutionary party. This is not a unanimous view in the SA, but we and others (including the SWP) are opposed to imposing a revolutionary programme on the SA, or constructing a new "united revolutionary party" artificially.
We do not know in advance how the SA will develop in the future, but we do not believe that any decisions about its future should be made until it has drawn to it a much wider range of independent forces. Nor should any decisions be made without a full and democratic discussion.
In our view there is no parliamentary road to socialism, so therefore we do not advocate one.
And we believe that this implies a particular type of party – one that is organised along Leninist lines to carry throughrevolutionary change. Consequently we are not for a recreated "old Labour".
The political conditions do not exist in Britain today, however, in which the diverse left which is breaking from Blairism can be drawn together into a new revolutionary party. There may, in the medium term, be the basis for bringing together some of the existing revolutionary organisations into a bigger and more effective organisation, still working within a broad alliance, but that is a different issue.
We therefore seek to build a broad and inclusive alternative to Blairism, which can contain the revolutionary organisations along with sections of the ex-Labour left, the trade union left along with environmental activists and anti-capitalist campaigners.
The best format for this at the present time is undoubtedly the Socialist Alliances. Beyond that we think there is the possibility of creating, in England, a new broad party of the left on the lines of the SSP in Scotland, as the next stage of development.
We have argued on numerous occasions that such a new workers' party must, as a first principle, be federal, inclusive and democratic. The SLP was politically dead from the time that Scargill rejected federalism, refused membership to the SP and others, and said that individuals could only join the SLP if they resigned from any other organisation they might be a member of first.
Nick Long seems to think that the SSP is more federal than the Socialist Alliances. This is not true. The Socialist Alliances are a loose network of groups seeking to develop an organising structure to facilitate common action and common campaigning based on an agreed platform.
The SSP is a political party with an extensive programme and a democratic inclusive structure, and of necessity much more centralised than the Socialist Alliances. It started as the Scottish Socialist Alliance and developed into the SSP by tightening up its structures and extending its programme and policies.
Neither the SAs or the SSP are revolutionary organisations, of course – nor should they be. They are coalitions between revolutionaries and those who do not regard themselves as revolutionaries, at least at the present time.
They are united front frameworks in which a broad spectrum of the left can build the best possible political alternative to Blairism in today's conditions.
New Labour is busily ramming though its attacks, including:
● the privatisation of Air Traffic Control against the wishes of the bulk of the population,
● the privatisation of the London Underground against the vast majority of Londoners,
● refusing even to contemplate the re-nationalisation of the railways, despite a big majority of people supporting (even demanding) it.
More and more people are looking for an alternative.
This was clearly reflected in the results of the recent round of by-election results.
We have, today, a unique opportunity to build such an alternative against Blairism with signs that the bulk of the far-left organisations are prepared to abandon past histories of sectarian practice in favour of building the Socialist Alliances.
We must not allow a knee jerk reaction to the SWP to get in the way of this. Most people who have been active on the left for some time will have had bad experiences with the SWP (and with the SP/Militant as well by the way). And bad experiences are still happening in some areas of work.
But it is easy to sit back and say "don't trust the SWP". This can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. The significance of the SWP is not so much how much they haven't changed but how much they have. The level of collaboration which is now taking place between the bulk of the far left within the alliances is unique and the SWP are a central part of it.
Nick Long should appreciate that the best way to combat the inherent sectarianism of the SWP, indeed the whole of the British left, is to build the Socialist Alliances in the most inclusive democratic and effective way possible.