Introduction on perspectives
Talks2010sAlan Thornett introducing the perspectives document at Socialist Resistance's national conference of April 2013, on its first day. The conference took place in the week of Margaret Thatcher's funeral (17 April), a week after the first meeting of the International Socialist Network, and as Left Unity was taking off after Ken Loach's appeal. He sets out five priorities: ecosocialism, fighting the cuts, feminism, a broad party of the left, and revolutionary unity. Recording on the SocResVideo YouTube channel; transcript corrected from the automatic captions, 10 Oct 2026. Square brackets mark words supplied or not clearly heard; figures are as he gave them.
A corrected transcript of the recording. The recording is the authority.
00:00 Alan Thornett: OK, so I'm presenting the revised perspectives text, which is in Bulletin number four. It was revised by the last meeting of the NC, mainly to take into account the new developments around the possibilities for far-left unity, basically. And I'm also introducing
00:30 the resolution from the EC in Bulletin six, which again addresses the issue of revolutionary unity, taking an [updated] character. It was only adopted last week, taking into account the very up-to-date position following the meeting that we were invited to of the IS Network last Saturday.
01:00 There will be an amendment proposed to this, [inaudible]'s amendment on Europe; [inaudible] isn't here, but I believe that Fred [inaudible] from London is going to introduce that. So obviously I don't agree with that amendment, because I agree with the document we've got in front of us. OK. So the perspectives text is
01:30 a very comprehensive text, as comrades will know, and it's not possible for me here, in 25 minutes, to refer to everything that's in it, particularly given recent developments in terms of the possibilities of a broad party and the possibilities of far-left unity. What I'm going to do in this presentation is to refer to what I think are
02:00 really the main things facing us over the next six months, or the next year. So I'm going to make some points about the following. Briefly on the global crisis; rather more on the crisis of the EU and the fightback across Europe, which is something that [Josep Maria] from the Bureau will be saying more about when he makes his introduction after lunch;
02:30 the struggle in Greece and the rise of Syriza; and the political situation in Britain, the struggle against austerity, and developments on the left in recent months. And I'm going to present what I think are the five main tasks that are in front of us over the coming year. The first is developing and deepening our
03:00 ecosocialist conceptions. The second is fighting the cuts. The third is developing our feminist ideas and feminist conceptions. The fourth is the possibility of building a broad party, and the fifth is the possibilities of revolutionary unity. I think those are the things which we're facing over the coming months.
03:30 Globally, we're now more than five years into the deepest recession since the 1930s, which remains completely unresolved, and which is in fact now the longest-lasting such crisis in modern history. There appears to be agreement on the left these days on the character of the crisis at the economic level:
04:00 that it's a systemic crisis, a crisis of the capitalist system itself, and not some kind of cyclical development or business cycle. There's far less agreement, however, on the aspect of the crisis that we stress, which is the dual, or multiple, nature of the crisis: in other words, the crisis not only at the economic level but at
04:30 the level of the ecology of the planet. This is a conception which is either rejected or neglected by many sections of the left, and it's something that we need to continue to fight for. The evidence of it is overwhelming. Global warming is accelerating; the Arctic sea ice is retreating much
05:00 faster than previously thought; climate chaos and extreme weather events hit food production around the world: floods, heatwaves, droughts, fires and so on. We're approaching tipping points that can make the whole thing irreversible, and we have to continue to argue very strongly for this kind of understanding of the crisis. At the level of the EU,
05:30 the crisis was initially the product of the world crisis, but it's now the epicentre of it. And the depth of the crisis is reflected in the inability of the European elites to have any effect on its progress. In fact, endless EU summits have resolved absolutely nothing. The EU is now wracked by internal divisions: firstly between the countries of the eurozone and the rest, and
06:00 secondly between the countries of the centre and the so-called periphery. The eurozone stands on the brink of further contagion, as illustrated by the remarkable crisis in Cyprus in recent weeks, where the raiding of private bank accounts to pay off the debt will no doubt put bank runs firmly on the agenda when other crises occur.
06:30 The most crisis-ridden economies of the EU are being strangled by austerity programmes taken straight from the shock-doctrine tactics of Milton Friedman himself. Social democracy has been completely complicit with this, and has been unflinching in its support for austerity. In fact there's not a single country in Europe where social democracy has broken with the neoliberal agenda, and
07:00 this includes France, with the Hollande government, and so on. The fightback across Europe, and [Josep Maria] will say more about this as well, has been huge, but it's been uneven. The European day of action on November 14th saw millions take action in 24 countries across the EU. There were general strikes in Spain and Portugal. In Italy
07:30 there were demonstrations in 100 cities and four hours of strike action. In France there were 130 strikes and protests in 100 cities. In Belgium all transport services were brought to a halt. The centre of the resistance, of course, has been in Spain, Portugal and Greece. In Spain we've seen the emergence of the indignados, general strikes, and the struggle of the miners in defence of their jobs. In Portugal there have been general
08:00 strikes and mass demonstrations, two of them involving 10 per cent of the population. Greece, of course, was and is in the front line, both of the scale of attack and of the resistance which has been mounted by the working class. Greek society has been smashed up; the state has practically collapsed;
08:30 public services are being wiped out; its economy has been shrinking by seven per cent a year; there is 25 per cent unemployment, and 50 per cent amongst youth. Its debt is now 170 per cent of its GDP. And Greek society has been deeply polarised, of course, by the emergence of the fascist Golden Dawn. But I think we should say about Greece that actually
09:00 the level of struggle mounted in Greece is really the biggest level of struggle since the Portuguese revolution of 1974. There have been over 20 general strikes, there have been hundreds of demonstrations and mobilisations. But in the end it couldn't be won just at the industrial level. What was posed was a political development, in terms of a workers' government of the anti-austerity parties.
09:30 It was this which led to the rise of Syriza, a radical left party which came close to winning power last June. Syriza is the most significant development on the European left for many years. It was only stopped from forming a government by the sectarianism of other sections of the left. It went from 4 to 27 [per cent] in the course of the crisis. It could easily win as and when fresh elections are called,
10:00 and it could form an anti-austerity government. We have to stress the incredible importance of this. We have in Europe a radical left party which is likely to be elected into government, with a huge confrontation with the bourgeoisie, not just in Greece but the European elites and the bourgeoisie across Europe. This is a major challenge to the European left:
10:30 not just a challenge to replicate what has happened in Greece, in terms of the rise of Syriza, but a challenge in terms of the defence of Syriza, should Syriza come to office and be subject to a massive attack from the Greek and European bourgeoisie, which is what would happen in that case. And it's this really which makes Greek solidarity, the whole issue of
11:00 Greek solidarity, incredibly important, and it's important that we're involved in that. Then we come to Britain. The level of struggle in Britain is much lower than in most European countries, certainly the ones we've been talking about, since we've yet to overcome the defeats of the 1980s. It has, however, been
11:30 an interesting week, over the last week, and in some ways quite remarkable. We've had the ruling class celebrating the life of a Tory leader who smashed the unions in the 1980s. Not that it went entirely to plan. Their view of it was: Churchill had a state funeral because he won the war; Thatcher could have a state funeral because she smashed the unions. But what actually happened
12:00 is that it raised the whole issue of Thatcherism in a way that it's not been raised for a long time. So we have George Osborne saying we're all Thatcherites now, and we have polls showing 60 per cent of people rejecting Thatcherism, and we had a series of demonstrations and protests. And what it has done, in my view, is actually pinned Thatcherism firmly onto the coalition,
12:30 branded them with Thatcherism, which I think is not something which is going to help them as they move towards a new election. They will in any case be vulnerable, and I think this makes them more vulnerable. They're facing a triple dip; the debt is going up, not down; they've lost their AAA credit rating; and the Tories have a huge challenge to their right
13:00 electorally, by UKIP. Their response to the challenge from UKIP has been to shift further to the right, and to go on to the xenophobic and racist, anti-immigrant agenda, which we've seen in recent weeks, which has now reached grotesque proportions. Nevertheless, they've been ramming through their cuts, mainly because they haven't yet met
13:30 serious opposition to reverse that. They're getting away with their cuts, in my view, because of four principal factors. They won the argument early on that there was no alternative to the cuts. They've had massive support from the media. Labour has been compromised right from the outset by its own cuts agenda, and also by its inability even to argue its own case. And the TUC and the major unions have
14:00 been a disaster, since a demonstration every 18 months and an occasional strike action was never going to reverse the cuts. That's not to say, however, that it's easy to develop mass strike action after so many years in the doldrums. But the point is, it is entirely possible, but it's only possible if they put forward some determined leadership and stick to it, and develop
14:30 consciousness in the course of struggle. Labour, of course, has followed the Tories to the right. Every time they've lurched to the right, Labour has followed; every time they've raised the issue of race, Labour has followed. Nevertheless, it's probably the case that at this stage the most likely outcome of the next election is a Labour government, despite their policies and despite
15:00 their performance. Because there is a rising level of resistance against the cuts. The teaching unions and the civil service unions are getting together and planning strike action. Action at all levels against the cuts is hotting up, particularly around the NHS. There have been serious mass mobilisations in several parts of London, Lewisham for example, and in Birmingham and Newcastle and
15:30 other parts of the country. No doubt John will inform us in the course of the weekend exactly where this has happened and what needs to be done. Disabled people have been mobilising against the cuts, and so on. There's a problem, however, which is the unity, or the disunity, of the anti-cuts movement. Instead of having one anti-cuts movement, unfortunately we have three anti-cuts movements, and this is a big problem.
16:00 It's a problem, however, that actually starts with the disunity of the far left, and reflects itself in the anti-cuts movement. This is why I think, when we look at possibilities of developing left unity, that I'm going to go on to talk about shortly, this is not something which is just for the far left, or just for the left. What is involved is the unity of the whole
16:30 movement, and the possibility of developing unity for the whole movement. So, as I said, I want to present five points of policy which I think should be our priorities over the coming year or so. The first is strengthening our ecosocialist conceptions.
17:00 This is actually the political core of our politics. Our ecosocialist orientation is now central to our identity, and a key factor in building the organisation and shaping our work. Ecosocialism is a declaration that the designation "socialist" is no longer adequate; that the ecological issues cannot for us be an add-on, but are central to everything we do, a fundamental component of our programmatic identity. It is a signal that we reject the
17:30 capitalist logic of insatiable growth, which is built into the nature of the system. It means striving for a society based on ecological rationality, democratic control, social equality, and the predominance of use values over exchange values. The primary aim of an ecosocialist government should be growth in the quality of life rather than the quantity of output; an abundance of free time rather than an abundance of unnecessary
18:00 commodities. This development of our ecosocialist ideas has led us in recent years to a close relationship with the comrades of Green Left. We've been working with them both at a practical and a political level. We've been working with them in the ecology campaigns, the Campaign against Climate Change, the
18:30 Campaign against Climate Change trade union committee, and increasingly also in [the Coalition of Resistance], but now increasingly around the anti-fracking campaigns, which are becoming increasingly central to the whole struggle to defend the environment. We've met them very recently. They've begun to produce a broad paper called The Ecosocialist,
19:00 which they're producing a second edition of for the People's Assembly event in June, and we're working with them on that, jointly producing a paper with them. And they share our alternative to the crisis, and that is that it's not only a matter of rejecting austerity, but it's a matter of
19:30 advocating massive programmes of investment based on green energy, to create a different form of society, away from fossil fuels, and in particular a campaign for the million climate jobs, which the Campaign against Climate Change and its trade union committee campaign around, and which we've been strongly in support of. So that's the first one, ecosocialism.
20:00 The second is feminism. When we planned this conference agenda back in November and December of last year, we put feminism on the agenda for two principal reasons. One, because of the onslaught that women are facing in terms of the cuts, and to
20:30 advance that whole discussion. But secondly, because we have an unacceptable gender balance in the organisation, which has to be seriously tackled. This gender balance goes back into periods when the organisation, or its predecessors, have gone through very difficult times. And then when better times and new opportunities come, it doesn't
21:00 automatically redress itself; it has to be fought for in order to redress it. But then, no sooner had we started the pre-conference discussion than we had the huge developments inside the Socialist Workers Party: the party going into steep decline around key issues of the defence of women in the organisation,
21:30 and attacks by the leadership on feminism, raising the whole issue of feminism in the workers' movement and the left in a way which it hasn't been raised for a long time. And so this brought a whole new importance to this item on the agenda. Had we not had it on the agenda, no doubt we would have had second thoughts and changed the agenda.
22:00 But we have, and tomorrow we have a full discussion on feminism, and how to respond to all this, and how to bring women into the organisation, and all that. But it links into this whole issue of democracy on the left, which has been raised by the comrades of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative. Because you can have constitutional positions in your constitution which
22:30 appear to be there just for the principle, over the years, but suddenly something happens and they become absolutely crucial. [inaudible] We now face [the question of whether] it is even feminised enough. The whole situation can change very rapidly on these things.
23:00 So this is an extremely important discussion that we're having tomorrow. Then there's the issue of fighting the cuts. In terms of activity, of course, fighting the cuts is our overarching priority. [The Coalition of Resistance] is by far the most open and credible of the campaigns, and the one which most expresses the unity of the movement. The People's Assembly
23:30 in June could hardly have come at a better time, though it wasn't particularly planned this way, because it comes with rising resistance against the cuts, and it has the ability to draw all these threads together and to create something new going forward after the People's Assembly. It's already, or it is heading to
24:00 being, oversubscribed. It's in Central Hall Westminster, which holds 2,200. There are already 1,500 registrations, two months in advance, and going up rapidly, and they're booking overflow venues and a marquee in the front and things like this. There is going to be a very, very big response to it, and we need to back it to the full, mobilise every possible person we can along to it, and everybody should be signing up to it.
24:30 It has the support of virtually all of the trade unions, which is very important. There is a danger that comes with that, that you can have too many general secretaries and so on, and we should argue not to have too many general secretaries, and we should argue for the centrality of the campaigns on the ground in the conference. And the comrades that are closely involved in that could say what kind of headway is being made in that regard, but that should be entirely possible. Also, what
25:00 comes out of it in terms of proposals, national demonstrations, moves towards unity: all these things are extremely important in terms of fighting the cuts. So this is a major priority. Building a broad party: the gap to the left of Labour remains huge. The crisis of working-class representation remains unresolved.
25:30 We've had bad experiences in the past, in which the whole thing has foundered in Britain. But as SR we've continued to be absolutely committed to the necessity for a broad party. The far left, the Marxists, can't just do it on their own. We need a broader expression in order to have the weight which is necessary to influence events.
26:00 We've been through the Socialist Alliance and we've been through Respect. We've held seminars, we've written books, we've had meetings, all to keep to the forefront as much as we possibly can the issue of building a broad party of the left. Going back two months, it looked an incredibly uphill struggle. We campaigned on it, we argued for it,
26:30 we theorised around it, but we didn't know where it was going to come from. That was the reality of it a very short time ago. And then we had Left Unity, which was set up by Kate Hudson and Andrew Burgin and others. We went to the first meeting, and they said at the first meeting: this is a long shot; we think there might be, I don't know what it was, one in a hundred, or two
27:00 in a hundred, chances of this being successful, but we think we have to try. By the third meeting Ken Loach had emerged with his new film, The Spirit of '45, and had put forward an appeal for people to sign up for a new party of the left, and within two weeks 8,000 people had signed up. It was a completely unpredictable situation. And it's real.
27:30 Not all the 8,000, of course, but nevertheless there are now 90 proto-groups, many of them meeting with new people at them, good attendances, a good gender balance actually, I've heard, in a lot of these meetings. And this has opened up a completely new situation in terms of the possibility of a broad party in England, or England and Wales: a completely new opportunity. And there's already a remarkable degree
28:00 of agreement amongst those most involved on what shape such a party should be. First of all, that it should be a party; second, that it should be a membership-based party, and not some kind of federal arrangement. And because of the strength of the response it's going forward very fast. I understand that the meetings in the
28:30 last few days have set up a timetable: a national meeting of the groups, which is happening shortly, and another national meeting of the groups in September, which will be charged with setting out the timetable for a founding conference of a new party in something like February. It's also proposing setting up a series of policy forums, maybe it was a different name, policy groups, to
29:00 develop policy for a new party. This is serious. This is seriously going to happen, and we need to be absolutely 100 per cent behind it. And finally there is the issue of revolutionary unity, which has been brought up first of all, as I've said, by the comrades of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative,
29:30 who I see are here with us, who not only broke with their tradition on the [idea that] we need a more transparent and democratic way of doing far-left politics, but wrote a book about it, articles about it. We've done joint meetings with them about it, and they opened up an incredibly important discussion on the far left about an alternative way of
30:00 organising the far left. Now, we may have different views on the demise, or what could well be the demise, of the Socialist Workers Party. It's a contradictory situation. It's never in the left's interest when a major organisation declines in that way. [The] fact is, it's happening, and there's another side to it, and that is that we've had the emergence of
30:30 the IS Network, which has now taken up this same theme that the comrades of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative have taken up: how should we do far-left politics, and how can we do a different far-left politics? And you will have seen the report that [Adam], myself and [Rafi] went to their first meeting last weekend, having come out of the SWP. And it was really quite remarkable,
31:00 because here were comrades looking outwards, not inwards, and saying yes, we're going to build a network, we have to consolidate ourselves and build a network, but for the purpose of looking towards revolutionary regroupment with others. It's incredibly important. And actually the two others that were mentioned in their resolution were us, Socialist Resistance, and the Anti-Capitalist [Initiative]. And we're all also working inside Left Unity.
31:30 They fully support Left Unity; we support Left Unity; and the Anti-Capitalist [Initiative] supports Left Unity. Now, if you take this forward a stage further, and I'm a little bit reluctant to talk about how far forward you go in these things, because there are lots of things that can happen, and the ability of the far left in Britain to mess things up is legion; nevertheless, if you look at what could be shaping up here, and we have to talk about it, because there's a
32:00 real possibility, and that is: you could have, by early next year, a new broad party launched, which is open, inclusive and democratic, with the possibility of existing within it a Marxist current, or platform, or whatever, involving the different currents that I've been talking about. This at least is now a real possibility that can be talked about, and
32:30 this is incredibly important. So I think that it's these things which mark out what we've got to do next year. And I think that from our point of view we've got to make sure that we make our contribution to this, and that if it doesn't happen, we will have done every possible thing we could have done to make it happen. Thank you very much.