amendments to programme for unity OUR PROGRAMME Is not directed to reforming the state or putting forward what a socialist goverment might do empowering workers to take schieve their demands. It is with this in mind that we are putting forward the following amendmenes to the redrafted programme, which is an acvance on the first draft circulated before our last meeting. Social Partnership On the section on Social Partnership we should be precise and make the following call:
*The Socialist Allance calls on Programme for Prosperity and Fairness and all such Partnership Corruption The demand for the state to jall undoubtedly be argued requires Taso sale Por s nor any sense an anti-capicalist emand but simply a demand for the stace to crean up ics act should be:
"Open the books of all companies and Agencies implicated in corrupcion. For a workers': expose all the llars and crooks. or nationalisation under workers contrer of all boales Touna to haye defrauded the irish peo Privatisation In the section under privacisa. sacion under workers control, imple nationalisation b not sointed out, the army, police and jodges would be bastions of socialism. The North The section on the north still does not say whether we are for: or against the Good Friday Agreemenc. Are we in oppostrto i, or simply its left wing?
An still do noci demand the disbanding of the RUC - which pues us to the right of the Bricish and working class unity, but utterly bes that will gramme says we are opposed to ectarian structures but does not if the Socialist Alliance wants to represent a new beginning it must relect the left's history of betrayal on the nacional question The Socias Allance should state as a minimum: • Oppo sition to the sectarian.
• Oppose the new Stormont.
band the RUC • Self-determination for the Irish people.
• For an all-Ireland Constituent Assembly, Overall Objective The Socialist Alliance should state what its objective is. beyond that of a fairer share of that: The Socialist Aliance fights for a 32 county Socialist Ireland. Nearly 70 people attended a debate organised by Workers Action (Red Rose Islington April 22) to discuss "what role for the Socialist Alliance". ALAN THORNETT was there.
D espite the title, the debate was more about whether the Alliance has any useful role to play at all rather than the particular role it might play in building a fight back against Blairism The meeting was more or less evenly divided between advocates of the Alliance and those from fragments of the left which still insist that working inside the Labour Party remains the key tactic of the day. The average age of the (almost entirely male) ably high. There were four platform speakers; two against the Firmin from Workers Action and Bob Pit the editor of What Next, and two in favour - myself and Rosie Wood from the AWL. Pete Firmin's was the opening speaker, offering not so much a rejection of the Alliance as a series of complaints about it. It had failed to do this, that, and the other that it should to have done. People in it, he said, did not speak with one voice, and there were competing ideas as to its next stage of development. missed the main political He did strongly make one political point, however That was that the politics of New Labour are little different from the politics of previous Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s. This is a standard argumentemong those insisting that work in the L.P has to remain the principal tactic. After all, if the Debate AND factor in a fight-back. If the Alliance can organleft in England and move towards a new party on the lines of the SSP in scouana. & nis is tac regal response to the rise of type of Labour Icadership ditional social democracy.
The strength of this approach is shown by the spectacular rise of the Alliance to a position where it has selected nearly IW candidates, nas nad rwo major conferences, has adopted an extensive clection manifesto, and has new people coming on all the time was unterly negative and contemptuous of the far-left as well. He refused to see any useful form of life outside of "the labour movement". He said that instead of standing "nohope candidates" in the clection the most positive thing the Alliance could do would be to shut up shop and go away. Rosie Woods responded to this by pointed out that those arguing for the importance of work in the Labour Party had nothing it other than be in it. There was no strategic framework suggested for such an intervention.
The pointed out S that if the Alliance did not exist, the left would have no profile in the election at all. The days when il was possibic to nave chings like a Socialist Campaign for Labour Victory were over.
The only practical thing that Bob Pit proposed was to go to Meriden and camShawcroft, as if that represented a perspective for the left in the election. between my contribution and Rosie Woods sermed to be on the future of the While I stressed the need for a new party of the left, she talked abour the need to resolve the crisis of representation of the working class. This is an abstract truism - which sill becas a pracacal soldtion in the form of a party. floor was polarised a bit by cither for" or "against the Socialist Alliance - so that he could balance the ing was more complicated.
One issue quickly raised from the floor was how to vote consulacue where there is no Allance candidate. A number of speakers - Mosne Machover and Anne Grey in particuar no vote for New Labour Machover argued that bourgeois party and could Rosie Woods replied, should call for a vote for candidate. Although it is the aim of the Blairites to turn the I.P into a straight capitalist party, they were not there yet, and we should still vote Labour where there is not a socialist alternative.
The meeting demonstrated that Workers Action has hardened its position against the opposed to the Alliance standing against 1 abour in the election, rather than paigning organisation. Bob Pit, on the other hand, insisted that the Alliance could play no useful role, even as a campaigning Some Workers' Action speakers criticised the Alliance for being too harsh in its criticism of New Labour, arguing that living standards had actually improved since 1997, and this should be recogOther speakers pointed fact that the rich were getpoorer - which is the real of new Labour. Richard Price (from WA) even criticised the Alliance for representing a rather old agegroup - which seemed odd at a meeting which was on average 10 or 15 years older that the average Alliance meeting.
It was an interesting disbeing offered as an alternaAlliances was hang on in Inc Le •.. ana дорс tal something turns up.