A STEP forward for left co-operation was marked by the meeting of English Socialist Alliances in Coventry on March 21. 60 people representing 30 national and local organisations discussed the current political situation and proposals for creating a united left. Several organisations were represented for the first time. This included the Socialist Perspectives group, who have recently left the SLP, and the Green Party. Will Reece, secretary of the Trades Union Left Alliance (TULA), gave an opening address which highWould political funds be better spent campaigning rather than backing Labour? lighted the difficulties and benefits of drawing diverse groups together. TULA's experience offers a successful model from which the Alliances have much to learn.
Spencer Fitzgibbon of the Green Party argued that the Green Party was essentially left wing, that its starting point was social justice plus ecological sustainability, but some of its members hadn't realised this yet. He has fought hard to draw the Green Party towards the Alliances with some success.
From the point of view of those within the Alliances most interested in (in some cases obsessed with) standing in elections he provided the biggest upset of the meeting. He announced that the Green Party would be standing in all seats in the Euro elections in 1999 and asked that the Alliances confined themselves to pushing Green candidates to have clearly socialist platforms. While the electoralist wing of the Alliances remain strong there was a stronger mood at this meeting to make campaigning activity the key to the Alliances future. Work over the Summer on Trades union rights was agreed to, preferably in conjunction with the Reclaim our Rights initiative. The meeting also unanimously endorsed demonstration in Cardiff at the time of the next Euro summit.
The mad decision of some comrades inyolved in London Alliances to try to stand a hundred candidates in local elections this May will hopefully lead to a more sensi-ble appreciation of the role of electoral campaigns in the future.
This stance does highlight the Alliances' failure to.come to grips with the fact that thousands of socialists and trades union militants with whom we wish to work do not see electoral campaigns 'against Labour' as the right thing to be doing at this time.
The meeting resolved to move towards being an organisation with a structure based on our common political aims (while encouraging debate on areas of disagreement). A further meeting in September will discuss how this should be done.
The meeting was a step forward for the cause of left unity. Comrades are behaving in a non sectarian manner and looking for opportunities for co-operation. At some stage, however, the thorny questions of working with activists in the wider Labour and Trades Union movement will have to be addressed. pened. In our resignation letter of 4 March 1998 to Arthur Scargill we said:
you and other members of the SLP leadership have systematically set out to destroy the potential which the ... SLP represented. You have imposed your own programme on the party. You have set up a maze of petty, contradictory and impractical organisational obstacles to a dynamic internal life.....
"At the party congress last December this process came to a head. The congress... was overwhelmed by an .. undemocratic bloc vote which rendered the ... views of every constituency activist in the party virtually meaningless. We were expected to endorse the constitution and the leadership's arbitrary rulings without discussion. It was a tragic moment for the working class when the majority of delegates.... did exactly that....
Many past and present members of the SLP will play an important part in the future of the British workers' movement. But the SLP is no longer the arena in which they can do so.... Those committed to a socialist future must look elsewhere...
"The need for a working-class alternative to Blair's Labour Party is stronger than ever. The need for a party with a Marxist programme that can lead the working class to victory is an absolute necessity. The Socialist Labour Party is neither.
"Despite its faults, the SLP has shown ... that advanced sections of the working class are ready and willing to break from and Labourism. Under the Blair government these numbers can only increase.
"The failure of the SLP is a setback, but a temporary one.
"A serious layer of activists have learnt from this experience, and seek to build a new, genuine party of the working class in Britain. This can only be achieved through honest debate on the programme necessary for and through testing in action the various programmes on offer from different elements of the workers' movement. "We are committed to that process " • Marxist Bulletin is available from: BCM Box 4771, London WCIN 3XX £3 for 4 issues.