Renewing the left: the prospects after the London elections
The election of Ken Livingstone as mayor of London is a huge political blow to new Labour. Blair has lost control of his capital city and a potentially powerful alternative power base has been established but there are few signs that Livingstone intends to capitalise on the situation.
Once it became clear that he could win the election with or without the Labour nomination, Livingstone had a unique opportunity to build an alternative to Blairism. Tens of thousands would have followed him if he had taken that path.
A new party may have been premature, but he could have organised his support as a broad alliance. Instead he called on his supporters to stay inside the Labour Party and appealed for readmission himself - something that is only likely to be achieved by avoiding confrontation with new Labour for an extended period .
The May local elections were a disaster for new Labour. Labour voters stayed away in droves or voted for left alternatives. Left candidates therefore scored impressive results in a number of places - particularly where a track record had been established.
This confirms, once again, that the time has come to stand left candidates against Labour in order to offer an alternative to those socialists who are defecting from it.
New Labour is not just another swing of the social democratic pendulum to the right. Blair's aim is to transform the LP into the principle party of the British bourgeoisie. He is at the leading edge of the neoliberal offensive, embracing the pioneering efforts of Thatcher and Clinton. He was a key driving force in NATO's war in the Balkans, not just backing Clinton but urging him along saying that Britain would send ground troops if the US was prepared to do so.
The Socialist Party is wrong, however, to argue that Labour is already a straight capitalist party. Blair's project is a long way down the road but not there yet. We should vote Labour where there is no credible left alternative and intervene inside the Labour Party where this can be effective and help to maintain a left opposition.
But the time has come to start building a credible left alternative, not only through electoral interventions, not even mainly through them, but with electoral interventions as an important adjunct to other forms of struggle.
The LSA and its future
In London the LSA's results were excellent, with an average of 3.1% in the constituencies and around 50,000 people voting for it overall. But its real significance is to be found in the way it has reinvigorated the left in London and opened up new possibilities for left unity and future campaigning. It has enthused those already active, reactivated many others, and brought new forces forward.
A remarkable level of unity was achieved amongst the far-left organisations involved (the principal exception was the Socialist Party, which equivocated throughout). This unity became an attractive force in itself, starting to break down the sectarianism of the far-left and create a new dynamic.
Crucial to this was the turn of the SWP which had previously stood outside of the developments in Scotland and was only marginally involved in Socialist Alliances in England and Wales. The SWP's decision to make a full commitment to the LSA opened up completely new possibilities.
Every organisation and prominent individual involved drew positive conclusions from the campaign and the results. The LSA, therefore, will not only continue but should be able maintain the momentum it has achieved. The June 11 conference needs to create a new structure at the all-London level, lay the basis for a membership structure and for local LSA groups. It needs to establish some clear campaigning priorities as well as preparing for other electoral interventions and for the General Election next year.
But these developments need to go beyond London. The Network of Socialist Alliances (the England and Wales co-ordinating body) needs to be strengthened and alliances built where they do not yet exist.
Then there is the wider issue of left unity. Already there are signs in some unions of the SWP abandoning its previous isolationism. Again this reflects the current opportunities and problems faced by the left and the growing realisation that these cannot be addressed while maintaining past divisions.
There is a wide range of views within the LSA as to how it should develop in the medium term.
Workers Power argue that it should become a revolutionary party more or less immediately. The CPGB has a variant of that position, that the LSA should adopt its full programme.
The AWL call for a new Labour Representation Committee, which seems to be a call for the recreation of old Labour. The Socialist Party call for a new broad party to the left of Labour, although in a rather propagandist way. The SWP appear not to have developed a collective view yet.
We would all like a new revolutionary party to emerge out of the current diverse forces of the LSA, but the political conditions do not exist for that. What exists - for the first time since the second world war - is the possibility of building something like the Scottish Socialist Party (a small-mass left centrist party) in England, and possibly Wales.
To insist that it must be immediately a revolutionary party (as Workers Power do) would be to reduce it back to its Marxist component.
To go beyond this towards something approaching a new mass party, even a left reformist one, would require substantial splits from the LP and its reflection in the trade unions. And given Ken Livingstone's position this is not happening today.
A left centrist party on the scale of the SSP, however, would be a valuable gain at the present time providing it contained within it the bulk of the existing far-left. There is no way under today's conditions that the far-left can be by-passed. The LSA could be a stepping stone to the development of such a party - but the time-scale and conditions for that are complicated.
The diversity of the left forces which have come around the LSA, and the legacy of sectarian rivalry (plus the negative experience of the launch of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party), suggest a protracted period of political development, preparation and confidence building before such a party could be formed on a stable basis. We are in a preparatory stages. Such a party cannot be created by ultimatum as Scragill tried to do with the SLP.
A new party must be democratic, federal and pluralistic with the full right of dissent and separate publications; since for us it is a matter of principle that the revolutionaries can remain organised. This could be contentious. With the SLP the dye was cast when Scargill excluded Militant and other organised groupings and set his face against any kind of federal structure.
The way that revolutionary organisations work within such an organisation is important. Having the objective of changing it into a revolutionary party when the conditions for that emerged is a different thing to constantly demanding that it become a revolutionary party irrespective of objective conditions.
Renewing the left across Europe
These developments in Britain are part of a Europe-wide phenomenon in which the left has been reshaping and rebuilding itself. The process started after the fall of the Berlin wall, and the break-up of the communist parties. It was given new momentum with the election of Social Democratic governments across the EU during the nineties, eventually embracing 13 of the 15 EU countries.
These governments are committed to the neo-Liberal project of radical deregulation. Their programme of privatisation has, in most cases, far exceeded their right-wing predecessors. On a social level too, these parties have implemented right-wing policies including discriminating against refugees and asylum seekers under Fortress Europe and creating the conditions for the re-emergence of the far right.
These has opened up space to the left of Social Democracy in most EU countries - albeit in many diverse ways. Where mass Communist Parties existed and broke up, the fragments have often became a major factor in new developments. In Britain the small CP broke up and has become marginalised and irrelevant to the process.
Diverse formations have emerged such as Rifondazione in Italy, the United Left in Spain, the PDS in Germany, the Left Block in Portugal, the LCR/LO electoral slate in France, the Red/Green Alliance in Denmark, the Anti-capitalist Left in Greece, the Red Electoral Block in Norway and the Scottish Socialist Party. Some are new parties and others are loose electoral alliances and they have varying degrees of success. Clearly the LCR/LO achievement in establishing a group of Trotskyist MEPs in the European parliament is a major break through.
The Fourth International sees this process of recomposition as a crucial political development for the future of the left. Our sections are active in all the formations that exist and our comrades hold a number of important positions within them.
Fourth International comrades have been elected as MPs for the Red/Green Alliance in Denmark and the Left Block in Portugal. The LCR has two MEPs, Alain Krivine and Rosaline Vachetta, from the LCR/LO slate.
Building such alliances and new parties on a stable and long term basis, however, is politically complex. Our ability to develop the project of Socialist Alliances in England and Wales can only be strengthened by learning lessons from other parts of Europe.
If the far-left in Britain is to be a part of the building of a serious new party to the left of Labour, it has to look at its own fragmentation seriously. A political alternative to Stalinism was established in Britain but its public face was a dozen or more competing organisations.
This has been a turn-off for those who have looked for an alternative to Labourism or Stalinism. Even when the Trotskyist movement in its fragmented form got the issues right, which it repeatedly did, people found the divisions incomprehensible and chose not to get involved.
Fortunately there are signs of change. The far left are talking to each other and there is a growing confidence. But the issue of far-left unity is a very different, even if closely related, matter to the creation of a broad party to the left of Labour.
It is a much longer process and the political basis for it is more rigorous. The level of convergence which has been achieved in the current situation falls far short of that. Working together to build a democratic, pluralistic alternative to New Labour may well provide opportunities for deeper developments.
In any event, this task of building a political alternative to Blair's betrayals offers the best opportunity to shift the balance of forces in our favour that the left has had for a long time - if we pass it by it will not come again for a long time.