THERE CAN be no doubt that many socialists have left the Labour Party in disgust at Kinnock's policies - probably the vast majority of the 25% of party members who have left in recent years.
But is the appeal for an inde' Europe: 1year £18 - Six months £10 O Rest of the World: 1 year 222 O Six months £12 J I include a donation of £.
I'd like to know more about Socialist Outlook O 1 Name ... I Address pendent socialist alternative', recently launched by the Socialist Workers party(SWP), the 'only viable one' as they claim?
The disgust that the SWP expresses at Kinnock's slavish support for the Gulf war, and the implementation of the Poll Tax by Labour councils, is undoubtedly shared by the left in the Labour Party.
The left is at a low ebb - a fact recently confirmed by the 2-1 defeat of call for repeal of all anti-union laws at the TUC. Many socialists have grown tired of seeing defeat, time and again. But does this I mean that now is the ¡ time to join with the , SWP - and some others, no doubt - to try and outflank ' Labour from the left? The idea of the I SWP appealing to I socialists to leave the I Labour Party is not a I new one-indeed, it is 1 what they have been ¡ doing for many years. Their claim that Labour is a party that 'bases itself on elecPrinted by Tridant Press, Edenbridge, Kent. Published by Idolrare Ltd, 377 City Road, London ECIV Manion toral alliances and respectability, not on the power of its main supporters - working class people' is nothing new.
But the question that the SWP do not adequately answer is 'Is this the way - and the right time - to launch such a party?' The fact is that it is not just the left, but the labour movement as a whole, that is at a low ebb.
Strikes are at their lowest level for more than 30 years. And despite the shift to the right in the Labour party, it retains its organic links to the mass organisations of the workers - the trade unions.
The only way that a serious alternative to Labour can be built is through the mass struggles of the workers themselves. Surely a period of defeats of mass struggles such as we have seen in the miners strike, Wapping, the dockers' struggle is precisely the worst time to launch such a split.
In such a period, the left needs an alliance that can bring together socialists inside and outside the Labour Party - which can respond to struggles such as the anti-Poll Tax movement, and organise in the Labour Party and the unions.
Such an alliance exists - admittedly on a small scale - in the Socialist Movement, launched by Tony Benn MP at Chesterfield in1987. With its different wings organising among women, socialist greens, trade unionists, and among Labour Party members, it can bring together the left in a way that no SWP open letter can.
Unfortunately, it takes more than an open letter or a by election campaign to replace Labour with a fighting, socialist alternative. Unless they represent real, mass workers' struggles they will be doomed to remain a tiny minority, as with Lesley Mahmood's Liverpool campaign.
The madness offine