LSA: Socialist Party still in tangle
AFTER MONTHS OF VACILLATION, the Socialist Party (SP) has finally called for a vote for all London Socialist Alliance (LSA) candidates – the additional member list as well as the constituencies.
Previously they had supported the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation for the list, and the LSA in the constituencies. This was an untenable position, since it meant their own member who is an LSA candidate in Lewisham could not support the LSA’s additional member list.
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The change is a positive step forward, but the Socialist Party’s commitment remains partial and grudging. The SP still plays no significant role in LSA activities at the London level and its activity in the constituencies depends on the attitude of its local members. In fact they remain deeply divided on the LSA, and have now launched a series of sectarian attacks on the SWP, and by implication on the LSA itself.
The April edition of their magazine Socialism Today, far from welcoming the SWP’s turn towards collaboration with other sections of the left, launches a huge attack on the role of the SWP in the LSA.
They denounce the SWP’s turn to electoral interventions as an ‘unprincipled political somersault’. They claim that the LSA has been taken over by the SWP and its democratic structures obliterated, and warn that it could become an obstacle to the construction of an alternative to Blairism. "The SWP", it says, is "incapable of genuine collaboration with other forces", and sees the LSA as a predatory party building exercise.
Yet at the highly successful LSA rally on April 13, Tommy Sheridan of the SSP (and, like the SP, a member of the Committee for a Workers International) gave enthusiastic support to the LSA – as did Dave Nellist, a leading member of the SP. The SP itself did not mobilise for the rally and prioritised selling a new pamphlet attacking the SWP outside.
There are bound to be problems in the LSA, given the relative size of the SWP and the danger of parallel structures. But the remarkable thing is the degree of genuine unity that has been achieved.
And yes, the attitude of the SWP in London is not generally replicated. There are trade unions where the SWP have determinedly maintained their divisions with the rest of the left. But none of this invalidates what has happened in London: rather it means that it needs to be built on.
To understand the problems of the SP, which is in quite a serious crisis, it is necessary to look at how it got to where it is today. Four years ago the SP’s predecessor Militant Labour was in the vanguard of developments of the reorganisation of the left.
At the end of the 1980s the Militant Tendency was the biggest of the far-left organisations, and had played a major role in the leadership of the campaign against the poll tax. It recruited heavily out of this and drew the conclusion that it was time to leave the Labour Party and became an open organisation.
In the course of this turn it suffered a damaging split and its membership collapsed from something like 8,000 to more like 2,000. Most left organisations declined or stagnated during the 1990s, but the Militant Tendency’s demise was the most dramatic, almost catastrophic in its scale.
The SWP did not decline in the same way. It maintained a membership of around 3-4,000 during that period, and now found itself the biggest organisation of the far-left.
It had benefited from its insular character (which tended to protect it from outside events), a strong and dynamic central cadre, and the way it (incredibly) capitalised on the fall of the Berlin Wall as a ‘vindication’ of its theory of state capitalism.
Although its theoretical basis was completely wrong, the conclusions it drew over the fall of the wall gave it a confidence which other sections of the left did not have – particularly those with illusions in Stalinism.
The CPGB broke up and went into sharp decline.
Militant Labour focused on the need to construct a political alternative to Blairism after the abolition of Clause 4 in October 95 and stabilised around this turn. The first initiative, however, came from Scargill. He resigned from the Labour Party soon after the abolition and proposed the formation of the SLP which was launched on May Day 1996.
Scargill decreed that there would be "no federalism". Anyone who was in an existing left organisation would have to leave it first if they were to join the SLP. Those approved by Scargill, however, were allowed in regardless, particularly Stalinist fragments.
Militant Labour, in particular, fought hard to join, but it was rejected by Scargill, who would not compromise on the exclusive character of the SLP.
Militant Labour’s response to this rebuff was to seek to change itself into a broader party – to try to be what the SLP refused to be. This was an important and welcome initiative.
It was at this point that Militant Labour changed its name to the Socialist Party, although the rationale for this was hard to fathom, particularly since the existing name was well known.
But some of the politics behind it were certainly flawed. The SP developed the view that Blair had achieved his goal and the Labour Party was now a straight bourgeois party.
This wrong analysis made the call for a broader party leftist in character, and limited what it could achieve, particularly amongst those breaking from new Labour. In any event, the political conditions for the construction of a new party to the left of Labour were still underdeveloped.
The reaction of the SP to this failure was to retrench and wait for a new and more fruitful period. This began to open up divisions in the SP which remain unresolved today and as a result the retrenchment was only partially carried through.
During its turn outwards the SP had played a key role in establishing Socialist Alliances in various parts of England, Scotland and Wales. The retrenchment created a contradiction in the attitude of the SP to the alliances, and some deprioritisation, but they remained the main force involved.
The most important alliance was the Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA). This had developed a real strength and with Scottish Militant Labour (SML) at its core. SML never accepted the retrenchment.
The introduction of devolution and the partial introduction of PR became a factor as well, since it would transform the electoral prospects for small parties. Most of the far-left, including the SWP, had not stood in elections for decades, but now – as a result of both this and the consolidation of Blairism – the line began to change in favour of electoral interventions. This in itself has had an impact on the way the left campaigns and organises.
When the London Socialist Alliance was launched for the European elections last year, the SWP became involved. Their commitment seemed only partial, and the SP took the leading role, but it was a significant development. But the LSA withdrew from the contest after the decision of the SLP to stand a rival slate headed by Scargill, so the possibilities remained untested.
The Scottish Socialist Party was launched in the run-up to the elections for the new Scottish Parliament, and after a wide consultation on the Scottish left. It comprised the Scottish Socialist Movement, the Scottish Communist Party, and SML – which dissolved its apparatus into it. This was highly controversial with the SP leadership in London.
The SSP achieved a major breakthrough when Tommy Sheridan was elected to the Scottish Parliament. It has grown rapidly to a membership of 2,000 in 53 branches throughout Scotland – a significant left force in a population of just 5 million. It gets a high media profile in Scotland and is currently registering 6% in the opinion polls, which would give three SMPs if there was an election now.
When the London Socialist Alliance was relaunched last August to contest the elections for the Greater London Assembly, it was under radically different political conditions to those which existed first time round. Labour had suffered disastrous results in the Euro elections, the local elections, and in the elections for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
The message was absolutely clear. As new Labour moved further to the right, millions of traditional Labour voters were deserting it. Some were voting for the nationalist parties (in Scotland and Wales), or the greens and even the Liberal Democrats: others were not voting at all.
The role of the SWP was also different. After a few months they transformed their level of commitment and began to mobilise their organisation behind the LSA. This created a new situation.
SWP shift
For years the SWP’s hallmark has been to take up political campaigns either in its own name or through organisations it controlled. Now it has begun to co-operate and collaborate with the rest of the left. This shift was reflected not only through the LSA but in other campaigns such as that against the WTO and in opposition to Russia’s war in Chechnya – although in a more partial way.
But as the SWP increased its commitment, this exacerbated the contradictions in the Socialist Paty’s position, and it took a more of a back seat.
This remains a problem for the LSA and for the development of an alternative to Blairism. The more the SP distances itself from the LSA, the more it compounds the problem of the relative weight of the SWP within it.
No one can guarantee that the SWP will not simply pull out at a future date and denounce those it has been working with – in the way the SP is doing at the moment.
But that is not a rational reading of the current situation. The signs are of a growing commitment of the SWP to the LSA, including a post election conference to discuss the way forward. And there seem to be differing views in the SWP on the issue of a new party to the left of Labour.
In any case the political imperative behind the LSA is not the good will of its component parts but the objective need for an alternative to new Labour, something which cannot be achieved if the left carries on in the old way. And one thing we can be sure of is that if we don’t test out the possibilities of unity in this situation