New period; new Labour, and our response Perspectives fom confesence - Davies {This document have been extensively redrafted, and not just completed, and should be reread with that in mind) Introduction We are in a new political period in Britain. This is created by the continuing success of the Blair project (from the defeat of clause 4 to the massive changes Blair has been able to make to the politics and democracy of the Labour Party since), the social policies it is pursuing, and the possibilities which are opening up outside and to the left of Labour in the process. There is now a layer of the vanguard, and of the wider working class, who are hostile to new Labour and what it is doing, anda section of them are, to one degree or another, open to the creation of an alternative. As a result, for the first time since the second world war, the political conditions are developing for the emergence of a new party to the left of Labour. How this layer responds and develops, and whether a section of it can be won to such an alternative, is an important factor in the development of the vanguard, and of the left, in the medium to longer term. It is a highly political issue and something in which far-left organisations with clear politics (even the smaller ones) can play an important, even decisive, role.
This document agues that we must take all aspects of this new period fully into account if we are to build the organisation and get our interventions right.
This document also argues that the perspectives we adopt must be based on a rigorous analysis of what Blairism is and where it is going; if we get that wrong we get everything wrong. Concretely it argues that we should seek to strengthen and develop our intervention into the unions and maintain a fraction in the MO, but that the day-to-day centre of gravity of the organisation should be in the campaigns, social movements, and around struggles which take place We should take these campaigns and struggles into the unions and the MO wherever possible, link them to the battle against Blairism and Social Partnership, and build the maximum unity around them. At the same time the political project of the organisation (although not necessarily taking that much resources) should be towards the recomposition of the left and preparatory work for a new party of the working class to the left of Labour in the medium term, We also have to address the separate, but related, issue of the recomposition of the far-left itself, since it is potentially a major player in whether such a party emerges and the political shape it takes. * In veasing to be entrvist and moving to fraction work, however, we are not ceasing an orientation to the MO but moving to a different type of orientation to it. But we do have to be precise in the way we define and explain our orientation. In particular we have to say exactly what we think it is, At the last conference we decided not to say whether it was entrvism or fraction work but to set out what we should do in practice and allow comrades to draw their own conclusions. Whilst this may have been the right thing for that particular conference it was not a good experience. In practice comrades drew radically different conclusions as to what we were doing. Some thought we remained fully entryist, others that we were doing fraction work. The result was conflict when it came to the allocation of resources. This time, with the political situation far more advanced than at the last | conference (ie the Blair project has deepened, the response to it weakened, and conditions are further away from those of full entryism) it is even more important to clarify our line and say exactly what it is we are doing and how we characterise it. 1) International developments and Blair's relationship to them Last years crisis of the South East Asian economies beginning with stock market collapses and huge devaluations remains unresolved despite the continuing strength of the US economy which is currently facilitating a degree of bounce-back in some East Asian economies. The Two largest economies in the region, Indonesia and Japan have seen only a slight improvement in their situation, And the reason for the modest improvement in the Asia Pacific region, the US economy, rests of a grossly over-inflated stock exchange but the bubble could burst and plunge the region back where it was a year ago. Fora time, between September and December last year, most major commentators accept, a slide into a full
global recession was a real possibility. The financial crisis began to be stabilised (on a shaky and temporary basis) at the beginning of the year, but the debt crisis for the poorest countries is getting worse, and this is combined with an underlying and growing crisis of overproduction in key sectors of the global economy. Japan has managed to ward off stump through gigantic injections of government cash into the banking system, construction and industry, At the same time the neo-liberal offensive (led by the World Bank and the IMF) continues unabated despite forecasts of its demise. The NATO victory in the Balkans has strengthened this drive by strengthening the military and political capacity capacity of the US to provide the best conditions for it.
The EU of Maastricht remains the vehicte for the introduction of the neoliberal offensive and freemarket economics into Europe. Despite [3 of the [5 EU countries now having Social Democratic governments this has not changed. They are all running tight fiscal policies, introducing radical marketisation and sweeping privatisation, in many cases more effectively than their right wing predecessors. After less than two years in office the Jospin government (on the face of it leading the most left of theses governments) has sold off more nationalised property than all his right-wing predecessors together managed in the previous 13 years and has matched Margaret Thatcher's record on it. Not that Jospin is at the top of the current league of privatisers. That goes to Italy and its various governments (including the current one) where has topped £56 bn since 1993. Much of the pressure for this comes from this comes from the EU through the convergence criteria and the Stability Pact and the deregulation carried through in order to back it up. For example the recent liberalisation of the electricity market will lead to most of the remaining state-owned electricity companies being sold off.
But it is not just Brussels which exerts the pressure, it is also the crisis of, and politica! evolution of, Social Democracy itself - at the European level. This is rooted in the lack of reforms available and the overall success of the neoliberal offensive. [tis carried out in different ways. Jospin has overturned the actual policies of the Mitterrand era, which carried out extensive nationalisations, but maintained much of the ideology of it, although he has now begun to change the culture of the French Socialist Party along the lines that Blair has changed Labour in Britain. In Europe, however, this has been undertaken in a much more pragmatic and contradictory way. Despite these different approaches, however, these developments have enabled Social Democracy to assume the leadership of the central project of the European bourgeoisie - European integration under the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties and the development towards a European super-state to compete with North America and the Pacific Rim along the same lines in an intensified way.
The response of the working class across Europe to austerity in preparation for EMU was massive.
Mobilisations in France at the end of 1995 were bigger than in 1968. and there were general strikes or mass actions in most countries of the EU: in particular France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Belgium and Germany. The actions did not stop EMU but they did modify what governments were able to do in some countries involved.
In Britain, however, it was totally different. The defeats of the 1980s - made possible by new realism and the betrayal of the miners - ensured that the Tories, under Major, and then new Labour under Blair, were able to impose their plans without significant opposition. Unfortunately this has not changed. Behind the success of Blairism, the weakening of the left, and the new political period in Britain, lies the continuing low level of trade union struggle. And this is unremitting, apart from some important examples of stubborn resistance. This situation is not due only to the anti-union laws although they remain a major threat once a fight-back starts. [t is due to a huge shift in the balance of power at the level of the work place (brought about most importantly by a transformation in conditions of employment though new management techniques fixed term contracts and so on) and the allembracing reactionary ideology of social partnership which permeates the unions, The problem ts reflected graphically in the difficulty of workers taking even short periods of strike action without getting sacked for it. Once you are sacked the ideology of social partnership ensures that you stay sacked. The TGWU is paralysed at Heathrow with 30.000 members on the site. And, of course, it is this massive change of in the balance of power between the employers and the unions, starting with the defeat of the miners in the mid- 1980s, which has produced Blairism at the political level and allowed the whole political spectrum in Britain to swing massively to the right. Today the unions, with a few exceptions, refuse to mobilise on even the most basic issues leaving the streets to reactionary mobilisations like the Countryside Alliance and the Road Haulage Association or very important and inspiring, but ultra-left, actions like the Carnival Against Capitalism - although other action such as those against GM crops, organised in some cases by the same people, have not been ultra-left in 2
anything like the same way. 2) Blairism; just a right-wing form of Labourism or a new kind of political leadership? [n two short years Blair has proved that he is a major and conscious political force at both the world and European level. He has placed himself at the leading edge of the neoliberal offensive, world-wide and in Europe, pushing forward the example of what has been achieved in Britain. He has fully embraced (and extended) the pioneering efforts of Thatcher and Clinton which are increasingly the social policies of the American right. He has successfully remolded them, combined them with radical structural reforms of the antiquated British capitalist state, and pushed them forward in the most skilful and conscious way, drawing in the workers organisation to accept the ‘inevitable’, He sees his role as pushing forward the doubters and the foot draggers in Europe particularly over deregulation and flexibility. He recently lectured the leaders of the European Social Democratic Parties along these lines (and apparently got a cool response). He is slavish to US global policy and dedicated to its introduction into Europe in all its aspects. He quickly emerged as a key driving force in NATO’s war in the Balkans. He did not just back Clinton but urged him along saying that Britain would send ground troops if the US was prepared to do so. In Europe he was the foremost of the warmongers strongly opposing any wavering by any of the NATO members countries and pressing them to maximise military action. He has a strategic view of the role of US imperialism (and British imperialism within it) including its role in Europe and its use of the NATO alliance to extend its influence in Europe. His successful promotion of George Robertson as secretary general of NATO has given Blair a major new lever in this regard.
The most significant changes Blair has made, however, are not in these foreign policy areas. The British LP has a long record of supporting imperialist wars whether British or American. Blair has been better at it and more determined in the short time he has been in office (and he wants to rebuild Britain's world imperialist role), but it is not such a radical departure. His radical departures are at the level of social and economic policy: Privatisation, welfare, health, education, crime and the exclusion of the dispossessed. We can add to this Labour’s transformed relationship with the unions and the employers and the changes within the LP itself - aimed at suppressing opposition, transforming it into the principle party of the British bourgeoisie. But ultimately it is Blair's total acceptance of todays globalised market and the neoliberal agenda of the American bourgeoisie, which most mark out the political changes he has imposed on the LP. And this puts him firmly in the leadership of the the breakup of the post war settlement on welfare. The joint declaration he signed recently with Schroeder setting out his fraudulent “third way” and advocating it as a model to Social Democratic parties across Europe concentrated heavily on deregulation and flexibility. 3) Where does this leave us?
Blair may not yet have changed the class nature of the LP but he has profoundly changed the political character of the it: its policies and programme and its internal democracy as well as its relationship with the unions and the employers. These changes are hugely significant in themselves. Any idea that our tactical approach to the LP can avoid change with such developments is fanciful. Any idea that LP work can be as central to the building of of revolutionary organisation in Britain today as it was a few years ago, is a refusal to take these changes into account. It is not enough to refer to the still surviving class character of the party. That is important when it comes to our general approach to the LP and whether we vote for it or not but it does not tell us whether we should use the special tacticitata particular time or how central such work should be for us at the present time. There remains a political fight to be had within the LP, but that is a different matter to seeing it as the centre of our party — building tactic. We have to move from an organisation which was originally primarily based inside the MO intervening outwards to one which is primarily based outside intervening into it. That is what we should define the move from eniryism to fraction work. The debates of the 1970s and 1980s about the need to turn to MO work through entryism were based on the opportunities it presented at that time. It was possible to conduct a serious fight against the Labour leadership from inside, fight for the democracy of the party, generate support for struggles outside, and fight for revolutionary ideas. The "open valve" relationship with the unions allowed the battles within the unions to cross over into the LP. All this has now been dramatically weakened and to add to it the dramatically lower levels of class struggle and the dominance of the Social Partnership idea at the top of the unions makes it more 3
difficult now anyway. ‘y We simply cannot have the flexibility to do what is necessary today if the organisations and its publications are shaped to the needs of full entry. And it not just ourselves who are faced with this problem, From a position where the bulk of the left (excluding the SWP) were inside the MO the vast bulk are outside of it, Even those most committed to entry work are having serious second thoughts.
Briefing for example apparently almost voted to leave the MO and reputedly none of the Briefing Editorial board voted Labour in the European elections, They want to vote for a left alternative whilst calling on others to vote for new Labour when a left alternative exists. Mike Marqusee, of all people, announced at the SWP/NLR conference on the war in the Baikans (when the debate evolved into a debate on the future of the left) called for the formation of a new party to the left of Labour and said that if it was credible he would join it. Such an intervention by him would have been inconceivable only a short time ago. Other key figures of the Labour left have said similar things. It is a sign of the times. The key debates today are not how to mobilise the rank-and-file of the LP against its leadership, but how to rebuild the unions organise broad campaigns on the streets that flow out of the government attacks, and how to construct an independent political alternative to the left of Labour. All this has come about not least because the rank-and-file of the LP has changed as well. However we precisely quantify it the Blair levy is huge (even if it is uneven across the party), and the left has become marginal - though as a result of a range of factors not just the Blair levy. This is the reality which most of our comrades meet in the constituencies. The opportunities to do useful things, from promoting struggles and campaigns within the party to fighting politically within it have been severely reduced.
None of this is an argument for leaving the MO. But it is an argument for redefining how we work in it and how we allocate our resources. It means we have to change from entry to fraction work.
Maintaining the old party building line would not allow us to get the right balance and relationship between our MO intervention, our trade union work, our general campaigning work in the social. movements and our work around the recomposition of the movement and the building of a new party to the left of labour. We should maintain our united front orientation to the LP, but we should not subordinate our activity, including our united front activity to what is possible within the MO or sections of its left wing. We need tactical flexibility to those in the broader workers movement and the social movements who want to fight back, but at the same time maintain the ability to reprioritise LP work if changed political condition demanded it. .
For this we need to maintain and develop the paper, We can draw a very positive balance sheet of the paper since the last conference with generally increasing sales and increasing interest in it. In moving to fraction work we do not need to make big changes with the paper. We already regularly openly advocate the FI and we called for a vote for some candidates to the left of Jabour in the last general election. We do need to say clearly what we are doing outside the MO as well as in it and this should not be a problem. Comrades working in the Party may need to modify the way they sell it in some cases, and we should keep the situation under review, but we should not, initially anyway, have a separate publication for our work in the MO.
The important thing is that we put more resources in the paper, as a major asset, not just in technical terms but in human resources as well. 4) The situation in the unions and the development of Social partnership What permeates the leadership of the trade unions today is the ideas of social partnership. Not all unions are the same. Some unions like the NUM and the NUJ resist it. Leaderships like the RMT are more ready to challenge the employers than others like the TGWU or the AEEU, but they are in the general framework of the Social Partnership although in the case of the RMT some of its actions challenge it. And the TUC, under John Monks, is the pinnacle of it, providing the ideological underpinning as well as the practical drive for it. The the TUC recently held a conference on social partnership with Blair himself as the main speaker. He lectured them on the “problem” of annual wage reviews, which he said were divisive and contrary to the spirit of social partnership.
Politically Social Partnership, like Blairism itself, it is the consequences of the defeats inflicted on the unions in the 80s and the resulting downturn in the level of strike struggles in the 90s. It is now a dangerous and pervasive ideology, which will not be easy to reverse. It is the glue which binds the 4
trade unions leaders to the Blair project. True there are other factors involved, like not wanting to rock the Blairite boat, but in the end it is the Social Partnership which determines the union’s attitude in the workplace, and this is the most important factor. It means that the union leaders essentially agree with Blair about the need to keep the level of struggle at its current all-time low. Taik of opposition to the anti-union laws is hot air since such opposition is incompatible with Social Partnership. Opposition to redundancies, restructuring, or whatever new management technique you like to mention is also hot air. since it is incompatible with Social Partnership. > But is any of this new, it could be asked? We had Mondism before the war, the Joint Consultative Committees coming out of the war, the Social Contract under Labour in the 70s — along with Worker Participation schemes and worker directors. All these were designed to subordinate the interests of the workers (and the unions) to that of the employers. In the 1980s we had New Realism,.which was based on the idea that the strike struggles of the 70s had put the Tories in and that the lid had to be kept on if Labour was to get back. New realism presided over the defeat of the miners, the introduction of the anti-union laws, and the resulting demolition of trade union strength. Then during the 1990s we have had team leaders and other ‘participatory’ aspects of new management techniques, leading on to the Social Partnership. All of these phenomenon can be described as the form that class collaboration takes as a particular time. There is a difference, however. Most of the previous schemes have been compromises. The social contract was a compromise in that it gave the union leaders a role in government. New realism broke with that but was based on stopping strikes in order to get Labour back in office. The social partnership idea is an extension of new realism but is based directly on the relationship between the workers and the employers. Under it the idea of joint interest has been replaced by the idea of backing the single interests of the employers. No element of compromise, just complete capitulation. The interests of the work force are not even a balancing factor. The White Paper, Fairness at Work, institutionalises the ‘obligation’ of the unions and the work force to cooperate with the employers.
Nor is there any kind of movement against the Social partnership, there is not even a great deal of awareness of it, and what it represents, even amongst the vanguard. In contrast there was a mass movement against the Social Contract, which was eventually defeated by rank and file action. New Realism was targeted by the left in a much clearer way. This means that combating Social Partnership, and increasing awareness of it, has to be central to our trade union work. We have to fight to rebuild the unions and promote a fight back, unite and organise the left within the individual unions, across the unions, but we have to do this in the context of a fight against the social partnership at every level. 5) The results of the May elections Although elections are only a partial reflection of the political situation, the European elections in May, along with the local elections in England and the elections for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, gave us some important indicators of the current state of the class struggle in Britain. An important feature of the elections was the introduction of forms of proportional representation in the European elections and in Scotland and Wales. But there was a common denominator in the results irrespective of the method used. That was massive abstentions in Labour's core areas. These were reflected in Labour’s loss of Sheffield in the local elections and the routing of Labour by Plaid Cymru in the Rhondda. In fact there were two factors involved. The first was protest abstentions and the other was the inclination of a smaller layer to look for a left alternative. This layer was reflected best in the brilliant success of the SSP in Scotland. Labour was losing its traditional vote. It failed to wina majority in either Scotland or Wales. There is a big difference between a abstention and a deflection, of course, and some abstainers will return to Labour at the next general election. But it is an important and real phenomenon and one which has been examined widely in the media and within the LP. It was a European phenomenon for Social Democracy as well, though particularly marked in Britain. But the left in Britain still suffered from its disunity. In England most of the protest vote went to the greens, who had a left platform and opposed the war in the Balkans. In Wales it went spectacularly to Plaid Cymru, who consciously presented themselves as a left social democratic party. In Scotland where the left was more united it did better. Tommy Sheridan polled 11% in Glasgow and 4% in Scotland as a whole. This was helped by a more radical political situation in Scotland, but it is not qualitatively different to England and Wales. In fact Parties to the left of Social democracy did well right across Europe for the same reasons. The most important of these was the LO/LCR slate in France with 5.2% and 5 MEPs. In Holland the former Maoist Socialist Party won an MEP. In Sweden the Left Party 5
polled 16% its highest ever result. In Germany the PDS polled a remarkable 6%, In Italy Refondazioni polled 4% and Cossuta 2%. There were others who did not do so well, of course. The United Left in Spain suffered for its long running crisis and fell back to 6%. But the lesson was clear enough. Where an alternative could be established to Social Democracy, with some credibility and some degree of unity, it could attract support. This is a very important conclusion as far as left in Britain is concerned because this, apart from Scotland, is precisely what was absent here. Even in England, however, where overall the Socialist Alliance candidates did not do very well there were examples where credible alternatives to Labour got good votes. In Thameside 14,000 voted for the striking care workers. In Kidderminster those fighting hospital closures won seven seats. In the West Midlands those voting for Christine Oddy, the Socialist Alliance and the SLP add up to 7%. In Lewisham Ian Page won a council seat with a vote of 40%. Of course it has to be qualified by the low poll, but it is hard to say that it is not a significant vote and that this does no indicate an emerging constituency to the left of Labour. The problem is to find the right formula to tap into it. It certainly shows that if the SLP had been built in a healthy and inclusive way it could now be a ina position of getting some credible results which would have helped it to build further as well as play a positive role in the wider struggles. 6) A new party to the left of Labour - how will it emerge and develop?
We have argued that the creation of a new left party must be discussed widely on the left in advance and not decided and pronounced by a secret group of chosen people, as was the case with the SLP.
Such a new party is not on the cards in the short term, of course. we are in a (never-the-less very important) preparatory stage. Nor are we are talking of a new mass party . That development may well need higher levels of class struggle than exists at the present time and bigger ruptures. We are talking of a relatively small but significant new development (of maybe ten or twenty thousand) more like the SLP in Scotland, which can begin to regroup the left lay the basis for (hopefully) bigger developments at a later stage. It is a necessary political preparation since there are no circumstances in which a new mass party will spring up fully formed. We have argued such a party that it must not only be a democratic party but it must have a federal structure and be pluralistic. In other words it must be inclusive of those sections of the left who want to be a part of it - with the full right of descent and publication. The political basis for such a party would obviously depend on its political character. If it was a left reformist party it should be based on a class struggle action plan with elements of our programme in it if we can achieve that. As the mess created by the SLP makes clear, this is far from a widely held view. With the SLP the die was cast when Scargill excluded the Militant and all other organised groupings (except those he approved of and turned a blind eye to) and set his face against any kind of federal structure.
Predictions of how this process will develop beyond its present stage of Socialist Alliances, the ILN, and other like-minded initiatives, are probably unwise. But, as we have argued elsewhere, it is likely to come from the results of a fragmentation and attrition of the left out of the LP - joining up with those already outside the LP, and with militants from the unions, rather than in a major single split. And such a development will not be in the short term unless there are major developments. The important thing, however, is that we are a part of the process from the outset so that we can influence what its character and structure should be when the opportunity arises. Of course a higher level of class struggle would aid the process but it is not dependent on it. The most important factor in the formation of a new party, however, is the existence of a constituency of people prepared to join it, and the haemorrhaging of the left from Labour and the disaffection of its traditional electoral base provides this. This is what makes the need for a new party an objective political process in its own right with its own dynamics in the current situation and it has to be tackled in the current situation if the opportunity is not to be lost.
Although we do not consider the development of such a new party to be possible in the short term we cannot rule out a more rapid development either, depending, maybe (amongst other things) on what Blair decides to do with the Labour left MPs in advance of the next election. In any case we have to be able to give a perspective to those who have already left the LP or have decisively rejected Blairism.
The significance of the Socialist Alliances in this process is located more in what they represent as a phenomenon, in the current political situation, than what they have on the ground at the present time or even their precise orientation. In any case they are very diverse bodies varying from region to region. They represent a material part of the process of recomposition and they have begun to provide forums in which the left (and within that the far-left) can both conduct joint work and develop 6
discussion. With or without any significant regroupment of the revolutionary forces, the development of common work amongst the left can lay the ground work for a positive recomposition as other forces breaking with social democracy. Not that the current left working together represents the recomposition we wish to see, but in that the development of common campaigns by the left opens the possibility of drawing larger forces around it as struggles break out and political developments take place.
The launching the Scottish Socialist Party came out of the Socialist Alliances and is an important development in Scottish politics. It took advantage of a more radical political situation in Scotland compared to either England or Wales (though not qualitatively so), the creation of the Scottish } Parliament and to the introduction of a PR system (the additional member system) for the Scottish Parliament. Their success in the elections (Scottish Parliament and Euro) has created the possibility of further developing the SSP into a significant force in Scottish politics. The initiative to form the SSP came from both the Scottish Socialist Alliance and Scottish Militant Labour within it. It triggered a major debate (and crisis) within the SP. Since its launch the SSP has regrouped forces beyond the SSA and SML. It now appears to have six or seven hundred members with a target of a thousand. It has established a number of branches ({ don’t have a figure) but it includes 5 in Glasgow. In many ways the SSP is a model, though not a precise one, of what we should be aiming for in England and Wales.
In England and Wales, however, the Socialist Alliances still exist primarily as an opportunity for the left to develop common campaigns, and dialogue, which can begin to have an impact. Unlike some involved (CPGB, sometimes the SP, and some independents) we cannot see them at the present time as an embryo party, whatever they develop into in the future. For the time being and for the foreseeable future they are a useful forum for both common practical activity and discussion of the issues surrounding the question of a new party. Whilst there is necessarily electoral dimension to this joint work we have rightly opposed the wild electoral interventions of in particular the CPGB (with their call for 100 candidates in the London May elections), mainly in Londdn. We have argued that the alliances should be based on practical campaigning around issues in the labour movement and the electoral interventions should be undertaken where there is some base in the area and a credible candidate or candidates. We should be clear, however, that standing in elections by revolutionary organisations (or left alliances) is a normal and useful tactic and should not be confused with electoralism. Electorialism is the Parliamentary road practised on the left by parties such as the Greens or even the SLP which structured to stand in elections, When revolutionary organisation stand in elections they are not being electoralist. They may stand at the wrong time or in the wrong way (even a mad way in the case of the CPGB) that is political misjudgment and bad politics not electoralism. To be electoralist the Alliances would have to have a perspective of achieving their aims through Parliament, and there is no evidence of that.
Within the debate we have also addressed the issue of how revolutionaries should be organised within such a party. We have argued that it is a matter of principle that revolutionaries remain fully organised inside such a party. How revolutionaries organise can be flexible. That revolutionaries organise is essential. We have published this debate as a part of the general discussion. 8) Far-left unity and the possibility of regroupment | It is probably true that the political conditions have not existed in the post-war period for the building of a mass revolutionary party in Britain, even in the 1970s. But it is certainly is the case that the conditions have existed for building a substantial Trotskyist party of tens of thousands which could have had far more substantial base in the working class than the sum total the fragmented movement has been able to achieve.
The biggest single factor which has frustrated such a development has been the fragmentation of the movement. A political alternative to Stalinism was established but its public face was a dozen or more competing organisations. This has been the biggest single turn-off for those who began to look for an alternative to Labourism or Stalinism in times of upturns in class struggle. Even when the Trotskyist movement in its fragmented form got the issues right, which it repeatedly did, most people potentially attracted to it found the divisions incomprehensible and chose not to get involved. It has been a huge problem. 7
The left has declined drastically over the last 10 years with both the labour and trade union left affected as argued above. The far-left has also shrunk and we have shrunk with it. The most dramatic example of decline has been the Militant which collapsed from 8,000 to a thousand or so. The least effected has been the SWP, which has been most insulated from objective reality, although they appear to have stagnated recently. Although the far-left has stood the test better than the left in general it has also lost much of its social weight . And this is not just in its trade union role (where it often spearheaded strikes and direct action) but in local government (where it is totally gone) and the LP. Liverpool and the GLC, for example, were significant factors in national politics not so long ago.
But if the far-left is to be a part of the reforging of the workers movement and the building of a serious new party to the left of Labour, it has to look at its own fragmentation and divisions in a serious way.
And there are signs that this is beginning to happen. There is certainly a new mood of unity amongst the far-left and even the SWP are affected by it. They have been prepared to enter into electoral alliances with other organisations in a completely unprecedented way. Although they were politically dreadful during the war in the Balkans they were, in most cases more open in the way they organised.
We have also had the experiences of Amsterdam and Cardiff where we drew together coalitions which would have been impossible in the past - which included (in the case of Cardiff) the CPB which after the change of leadership is now far more open to working with the rest of the left. Of course all these developments are relative and limited and uneven and contradictory and fragile, but they do add up to something real and important and something on which we have to build.
The event we organised on November [4th gave us a useful opportunity to look at the issue of the fragmentation of Trotskyism in Britain from an historical perspective. It was hard to escape the conclusion that despite the immense political problems the early Trotskyists faced in the 1930s and 40s (the midnight of the century) and the huge contribution they made in establishing the Trotskyist movement in Britain - the organisational divisions of the movement at that time can not be defended.
The splits which took at that time were based on tactical issues or Worse and it helped to establish a tradition from which the movement still suffers. It is true that there are deeper problems, in particular the way the CP was formed in Britain from a number of sectarian groups without a mass base in the working class, but this problem has never been seriously tackled. But we are maintaining a serious attitude to these problems, Our recent very successful summer school in Bangor involved several other groups and was something of a model of how such discussions should take place, Today with the decline of the whole labour movement (the trade unions and everything to the left of Blair) and the problems and challenges faced by the left this fragmentation is more damaging than ever and new initiatives have to be taken to attempt to overcome it.
This is not to say that there are no conditions which justify the division of the movement, but we should insist that it is on the basis of strategy and programme and not tactical issues, Yet time and time again tactical issues have been the basis on which splits have taken place. Today under conditions where the far-left is unfreezing for the first time in decades and beginning to talk to each other full advantage has to be taken. Many of the changes taking place on the far-left take the form of organisational and/or political crisis. But these crises are a part of the pressures and the changes which are taking place and need to be seen as such. Lets look at what is taking place. 9) How can a fight-back start?
The central problem remains the low level of class struggle, and breaking out of this situation is a big problem. But it has to be a combination of strengthening trade union organisation at the workplace, strengthening the left in the unions, and developing a fight-back against social partnership at the ideological level. It also means linking this to the fight for alternative to Blairism at both the political and organisational level. Where and how a fight-back will emerge is not in our hands, but we must insist in linking these various aspects together as essential preparation.
The dearth of a fight-back within the unions, however, does not reflect the same in the campaigns and the social movements - which to varying degrees of course are linked to or been taken into the unions and the LP. Whilst the response to the Asylum and Immigration Act reflected the problems of challenging new labour - with the small demonstration and with not a single Campaign Group MP 8
voting against it - the impact of the Lawrence campaign has been huge. It has empowered and energised the black communities and has struck a blow against racism in Britain (with inevitable differing impacts on different sections of the population) and has forced new Labour into (at least some) action behind it, despite its direct contradiction to the Asylum arid Immigration Act which strengthen state racism. In a somewhat less dramatic way the environmental movements have shifted government policy of transport and put them under pressure on GM foods. Jubilee 2,000s huge protest last year has put them under at least some pressure over the third world debt. Something which is not invalidated by the weight of the churches in the campaign.
It is clear from this that whilst the fight-back is severely weakened by the paralysis in most of the trade union movement it has not prevented it. The initiative has been taken by the social movements and their impact has been significant. This is (obviously) not an argument for deprioritising the struggle in the unions - far from it. Or for not maintaining an intervention into the LP. But it is a pointer as to where the centre of gravity of our organisation should be at the present time. It is an argument which says this is (not specifically the campaigns mentioned above of course) where the best space exists for us to have an impact and to develop and recruit at the present time. Not that it is easy anywhere, but until new and healthy class struggle forces start coming back into the LP and the unions it is the best option opén to us.