LSA Conference marks major step forward
The London Socialist Alliance conference on June 11 marked a positive move forwards in the development of the Alliance.
In the week before, seemed as if it would be a bear garden where all the negative traits of the far-left would re-emerge. But in a generally good-humoured debate clear decisions have been made that will enable the LSA to consolidate its position as the focus for left organisation in London.
That development was highlighted in Tottenham, with the LSA saving its deposit and coming a clear fourth in its first by-election.
It appears that the Socialist Workers Party have accepted that the LSA is not merely an electoral convenience to be opened and shut, as with previous SWP "front" organisations, whenever convenient to them.
And despite their public pronouncements, the Socialist Party have privately recognised that the LSA cannot be ignored or its effectiveness undermined and that, therefore, they have to relate seriously towards it as a factor in future planning of election work.
The rest of the organised left feels that this is an organisation where their role will be recognised and they can play a real part. To this end the number of groups affiliating has expanded, and organisations that were hostile during the election campaign are now trying to build bridges back to the LSA. And independent individuals are being attracted.
The conference agreed a series of concrete resolutions mapping out campaigning priorities for the LSA and a structure to deliver on them. The LSA is committed to work around defence of asylum seekers, against the privatisation of London Underground, and joining with anti-capitalists mobilising against the WTO summit in Prague in September.
In each case this is tied to a series of practical activities. At the same time the LSA will be taking forward the campaigns it successfully built during the GLA elections, on such issues as the sell off of council housing.
Political funds
In a further development the LSA agreed to deepen its trade union activity, particularly in aiming to break the bureaucratic monopoly on the use of political funds. In each area of work, despite the problems that still exist, this has opened up a new dialogue between existing left groups and currents, which has the potential for making changes far beyond London.
The conference in deciding a new structure pointed a positive way forward to consolidating the LSA's growth. Whilst retaining a "party to party" consensus system at the top, it also brought a number of independent activists into its steering committee.
Despite initial reluctance from the SWP, it has been possible to win a commitment to building strong local borough Socialist Alliances. The conference has also rejected the approach that sees the Alliance as just an electoral bloc, with areas of London to be divided up into fiefdoms of this or that organisation.
The LSA is now beginning to have a life independent of its constituent parts.
The key to the future is now to get two issues right. On the one hand it is necessary to decide on a medium term electoral strategy. Whilst clearly wanting to stand in appropriate by-elections, whether council or parliamentary, the whole issue of the general election has to be discussed and planned for properly.
Clearly the potential for an England wide campaign exists, but there are immense practical difficulties which need to be overcome, notwithstanding a general political debate about what sort of seats would be fought, and what attitude towards Labour the Alliance should take.
On the other hand the form that local LSA groups take must be sorted out in practice. You cannot have a purely electoral bloc that only appears at by-elections and general elections. Local alliances need to be involved in regular political campaigning.
They also need to offer a forum for political debate, not to thrash out who is right or wrong on some arcane point of political theory, but to involve its members in an organic development of our political programme.
Whilst some may believe that such a structure will cut across their own "party" work, this is the only guarantee that a healthy LSA can be built.
Potential
Overall, on both these tests, whilst not coming up with all the answers, the LSA conference did mark a step forward and pointed to the potential for a successful resolution of these debates.
This is why the Socialist Party's public view of the conference (The Socialist, 16 June) is unhelpful. Privately, leading members of the SP ask that the rest of the left not take these attacks too seriously.
It seems that they are mainly for the consumption of their own membership and contacts, to innoculate them before coming into contact with potentially contagious forces. But nevertheless the SP line is extremely negative.
They quite rightly point out the past problems caused by the SWP's "frontism". But they find it impossible to accept that the only way to operate in a new united formation is on an assumption of trust.
Of course, it is entirely possible that the SWP will revert to previous form. Their members have certainly made mistakes over the last few months. So safeguards are necessary. But a united front where you exclude everyone you don't agree with is hardly worthy of its name.
The SP argues that the structure of the LSA allows no rights for local borough alliances, and that they will have no possibility to influence the direction of the LSA.
In fact, the structure developed - a combination of representatives of political groups and a significant number of independent activists - is designed as an interim measure to best allow the development of the LSA at this stage.
It is clear that outside one or two areas, to put borough representatives onto the central steering committee will just mean to increase the number of SWP members on the committee. Far from broadening the democracy it would merely increase the impact of the SWP. They quite rightly rejected that approach.
Only over time, with the development of the borough groups, will it be possible for them to break free of the local hegemony of one or another organisation. Only then would a full borough based structure become possible.
Scargill
The SP argue that the conference is trying to stifle political expression, potentially suffering "the same fate as Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party", because the SWP voted to ban parties from selling their papers while canvassing. This is compared to proscriptions inside the Labour Party.
They miss the point. If the LSA is to develop, it has to be seen as more important than any of its constituent parts. Maybe the stick was bent too far, but independents, not the SWP, wanted to ensure that in going out to campaign for the LSA they weren't just building support for one or other organisation in the alliance.
Weyman Bennett in Tottenham was the LSA candidate, not the SWP's. As a candidate he must be accountable to the LSA, not the SWP. Anything else will hamper our growth.
Common project
It should not be a matter of hiding one's politics but of building a common project.
All this makes the SP's position on the long-term creation of a new mass party of the working class seem hollow at times. They rightly attack the SWP for failing to develop a strategy that goes beyond seeing themselves as the "party".
But at every practical step they balk at any move that does not allow them to concentrate on building themselves as their first objective.
If the Socialist Alliance is to develop, if we are to move forward our objective of a new mass party, an objective which the ISG shares with the SP, then we have to allow the organic development of the LSA to continue.
In that way the stance of the SWP, for all its faults, for all its lack of a strategic overview, was more positively in the direction of the new mass party than the paper positions taken by the SP.