Scottish socialists gear up to contest every seat
Terry Conway and Gordon Morgan
The second conference of the Scottish Socialist Party took place in Glasgow on February 10-11 attended by around 250 people. Its main focus was to launch the party’s ambitious General Election plans.
Yet again the conference demonstrated that the SSP is a serious force in Scottish Parliament, with the 27% score in the Irvine by-election ringing in participant’s ears.
As the Executive motion pointed out, the average score for the SSP since the Scottish Parliament elections is just under 7%, they have beaten the Liberal Democrats every time, and can now realistically claim to be the fourth political party in Scotland.
The Party’s National Council way back last August had agreed that the target should be to stand in each of Scotland’s 72 seats – as has been stated many times since to give every Scottish voter the opportunity to vote socialist.
The only constraint on such a project, they said, should be if it seemed that the required finances could not be raised.
Socialist Outlook supporters were not convinced this was the right approach at this stage of the party’s development. In some areas of the country, especially in some large rural constituencies where the SSP has no effective branch, this will lead to a token campaign.
Others at the conference felt that if the organisation were over-stretched in the battle over the Westminster elections and ended up with major debts this would cut across mounting an effective challenge in the elections for the Scottish Parliament due in 2003.
Supporters of the Scottish Republican Socialist Move-ment who argued this position, also claimed that "actual membership of the Westminster Parliament would be inimical to the aims" of the SSP.
In this debate for the first time I as a visitor from England got a real sense of the breadth of positions within the party on the Scottish national question.
These range from the supporters of this position who locate themselves strongly in the tradition of John Maclean, to the federalists of the Campaign for a Federal Republic, of which supporters of the CPGB seem to form a sizeable proportion.
The leadership and most members of the party have positions somewhere bet-ween these two.
It was also healthy to see that in practice the existence of organised platforms within the party allow it to attract broader forces and to conduct serious political debates without this at all cutting across its effective operation on the ground either in campaigns or elections.
In effect the debate on how many seats should be contested in the General Election was pre-empted for most members.
The target had been publicly announced – including that very morning in radio interviews with MSP Tommy Sheridan – and therefore a large majority felt it would be a defeat to back off at this stage.
Even at the conference itself this debate followed the opening of the conference by Sheridan in a speech in which he motivated the leadership’s position, calling for 100,000 votes for socialism.
Conference went on to debate the programme on which the party will stand – which will be delivered to every voter in the country in the form of an 4 page newspaper.
The programme was in general non-contentious – it is a serious document, which is very well thought through and extremely accessible. The Socialist Alliance in England would certainly benefit from studying not only some of the discrete proposals in this document but its language.
Some additions were agreed. The platform accepted that the SSP should welcome the Socialist Alliance challenge in England and Wales, and that the manifesto should include a section on Ireland dealing with the way the Good Friday agreement has entrenched sectarianism. There were some drafting changes to other sections.
The conference took place in the context of two major developments on the far left in Scotland.
The majority of the leadership of the SSP were formerly members of the same international organisation as the Socialist Party in England and Wales, the Committee for a Workers International (CWI).
There had been long standing disagreements between most of the Scottish people and the Taaffe leadership in London which had finally culminated in a break by the Scottish majority.
These disagreements go back at least as far as the formation of the SSP itself – which the Socialist Party leadership opposed.
They had become increasingly bitter as the overwhelming majority of CWI supporters, organised as the International Socialist Movement (ISM) refused to accept the line peddled by London – in the Socialist Alliances as well as the SSP – that building the broader political formation was counterposed to building their own party.
It was clearly no accident that the decision to finalise this split took place in advance of the SSP conference – leaving the ISM free to produce the first issue of its rather impressive magazine Frontline and hold its own fringe meeting..
The resulting tension was evident during the conference, particularly in the session which discussed the question of tendency rights within the SSP.
On other questions the debate seemed far less polarised – partly because of skilful handling by the ISM.
So for example when the CWI comrades put a series of essentially nit-picking amen-dments to the programme, the response was to accept most of them.
The other main context for the conference was the discussions which have been taking place between the SSP and the SWP.
The SWP had increasingly recognised that there was little political logic in it remaining outside the SSP once it was increasingly committed to playing a pivotal role in the Socialist Alliance in England and Wales.
However, entering a party is a more complicated issue than just being a current within an alliance.
The fact that this has been difficult for the SWP to fully convince their membership in Scotland may be indicated by the fact that the negotiations have been conducted by Julie Waterson and Chris Bambery – who while they are Scottish have both lived in England for many years.
At the conference itself it was clear that there was some suspicion from the base of the SSP as to the extent to which the SWP has broken from its sectarian past.
As far as I could tell the leadership does not really share this concern – accepting the point that the experience in England has been overwhelmingly positive: but that it will be a process in Scotland that both "sides" need to go through.
However they have driven a hard and unfortunate bargain on the question of paper sales, in which they have essentially played on this suspicion to ensure that Socialist Worker, along with the rest of the left press, cannot be sold publicly but only within SSP events.
This debate was definitely the low point of the conference, in which the Executive’s position was carried despite opposition from all the minority currents.
The top table tried to insist that their opponents were over-reacting: no one would be disciplined for going against the resolution – it was just a question of setting out what was expected of people.
They were assisted by ridiculous speeches in opposition from Socialist Party loyalists who made comparisons between the SSP leadership and the witch hunters of the Labour Party.
Of course the leadership is right about one thing: there are real difficulties. It would not be acceptable for sales of Socialist Worker to continue in their present way because they would completely dominate the SSP’s own paper, Scottish Socialist Voice.
The conference heard anyway that a distribution deal had been done for Scottish Socialist Voice which would enable the paper to go weekly (though probably the SWP’s participation is actually equally important in making this a reality.) but this in itself would not solve the problem.
The experience of the Socialist Alliance in England and Wales demonstrates that the SWP are becoming more prepared to put the need to build common projects above their own narrower interests.
However the fact that the SWP’s entry was a done deal became clear from discussions in the corridors – with it becoming clear that one of the SWP’s full-timers was coming on staff immediately to work on Scottish Socialist Voice.
The leadership must find ways to become more inclusive in practice – it cannot be healthy that the overwhelming majority of officers are supporters of the International Socialist Movement.
Conference took a lengthy discussion on constitutional changes that would deal with this question. No immediate measures were agreed a commission was established to look at best practice across Europe and bring back proposals to next year’s conference
It certainly seemed that the leadership were genuine in their wish to change the current situation. Only time will tell how far the break from the stranglehold of the Socialist Party dogmatism will take the ISM current.
The challenge facing them and all socialists in Scotland is to build of a dynamic, broad, truly democratic party to the left of Labour which Scotland so desperately needs.
The Scottish Socialist Party faces many challenges in the months and years ahead. There can be little doubt that the party will continue to grow and strengthen through its activities in defence of working people’s rights and through its election campaign.
It is on the right track, and all socialists should support its endeavours to deepen its impact.