Labour's privatisation offensive, on the tube, in the NHS and a new round of sales of council housing, all demand a united response from the left against as Nick Long claims. It was only after a nasty sectarian attack on the SWP by Mike Davis of the LLA and based, then a successful appeal for the vote to be retaken, that it narrowly changed its mind.
This, however, is not the real debate. The real objecTOT the LLA executive majority had with the SWP T was not organisational or constitutional but directly Dolitical.
in the statement sent out with -the ballot paper for the postal vote their main objec•tion to the SWP was that the SWP are an organ- party. ised party with an elected leadership, and - worse than that - it has a revolutionary perspective rather reformist one. This was absolutely explicit. structing The same point comes through in Nick Long's let- cially. ter, although not clearly. He refers the "ultra left" and "those who are seeking to build a centralised and directed political organisation which can become a larger united revolutionary Leninist party".
He counterposes these to comrades (such as him- cussion. self who want to build "a broad federal structure"
But what about the SP? Doesn't he realise that the SP Britain today - Tony Blair and the Labour government. cate one.
Without broad nationally co-ordinated Socialist Alliance we don't believe a socialist voice will be heard in this general election - or an alternative to change. Blairism built.
This would be a defeat for the working class in however, Britain and therefore for us as revolutionary socialists.
It is for this reason that we revolutionary party. advocate building today the broadest possible, inclusive the basis alliance - not a revolutionary together This is not a unani- existing mous view in the SA, but we and others (including the SWP) are opposed to imposing a revolutionary programme on the SA, or con- different issue.
new "united revolutionary party" artifiWe do not know in advance the how the SA will develop in the future, but we do not believe that any decisions about its future should be made until it has drawn to it and a much wider range of inde- paigners. pendent forces. Nor should any decisions be made without a full and democratic disIn our view there is no parliamentary road to socialism, Stalingrad O'Neill DONT Knaw? VOTÉ NO