Alliance debates the next steps
The national executive of the Socialist Alliance held an extremely positive meeting on June 16 to assess the election result and plan for the future.
From the extensive balance sheet discussion, there was overall agreement that the most important thing to come out of the campaign was the strengthening of the Alliance itself. In a situation where new Labour has no mandate to carry through its neo-liberal assault on public services, the Socialist Alliance is determined to play an important role in fighting back at local and national level.
The lead off from Dave Nellist, chair of the Socialist Alliance, was upbeat and was echoed in probably the majority of contributions.
There was some difference of emphasis about how to assess the vote the Socialist Alliance achieved – perhaps not surprising when it had been impossible to set any collective targets during the campaign, leading to some over-optimistic speculation.
Some comrades correctly pointed out that those who were disappointed were often revising upwards their predictions made at the beginning of the campaign.
Other comrades, who had opposed standing so many candidates at the outset, pointed out that it was the scope of the campaign itself which had allowed us to draw in so many people and so much material support.
Other discussions took place on how to better address those who could be won to vote Socialist Alliance in the long term, from the need to address those who see no difference between any of the parties, to those who decided to give Blair one last chance.
There was a feeling that perhaps we didn’t respond sharply enough, except through press releases which the media failed to carry, on the shift in the new Labour campaign in the 10 days before the poll to promote themselves as the party that promoted public services.
Many comrades had anecdotes of discussions on stalls, and polling stations with Labour voters who just didn’t believe us when we argued that New Labour was committed to privatisation.
But most ended these discussions by saying that these exchanges should be resumed when the record is clear – as Blair’s commitment to selling off our services becomes more and more apparent people will remember that is was the Socialist Alliance who campaigned against this.
The Socialist Alliance entered a new phase during the General Election campaign. Now what is necessary is to reshape the organisation so those who have been won to its banner in recent weeks feel that they can have a real input into its decisions.
Initially there seemed to be a difference between the Socialist Party and others about how soon a national conference should be organised. Both Dave Nellist and Clive Heemskirk from the Socialist Party emphasised the need to have a thorough debate on proposals for restructuring the organisation in advance of the conference and to reach as much consensus as possible, which they suggested should mean a late autumn date.
Nellist also explicitly supported the sort of proposals put forward by the SWP’s Lindsey German in Socialist Worker as the direction in which the Socialist Alliance needed to move.
This was a very significant development given the fact that the Socialist Party had previously been hostile to any moves to further centralise the Socialist Alliance as a national structure, rather emphasising its federal nature.
This approach was combined with its determination to stand its own candidates in seats which the Alliance had consciously decided not to contest, and very much to control the Socialist Alliance campaigns in many of the areas where it had comrades standing.
All of this, together with the non-attendance of Socialist Party representatives, other than Dave Nellist at national meetings of the Alliance, had led to speculation that the organisation might pull out completely.
Perhaps the response to the Socialist Alliance campaign has made clear that the only result of them doing so would be to plunge their organisation into a crisis which it would find it hard to recover from.
At the executive itself, it was clear that there was a commitment from all involved to put in the resources necessary to ensure that the national conference was organised in such a way as to allow maximum discussion both in advance and on the day.
In this context, there was agreement to propose the November 3 date to the Liaison committee and to set up a planning committee to develop detailed proposals for the national conference in advance of that meeting..
The meeting also recognised that the executive, which actually has no constitutional status now the election is behind us, has played a very positive role.
It is recommending to the liaison committee on July 14, which will bring together supporters from all local Alliances, that the Executive continues to function on a monthly basis through to the national conference proposed for November 3.
That this recommendation went forward without dissent is a mark of how far things have progressed since last year’s conference in Coventry where proposals to create this sort of structure were acrimoniously defeated.
The meeting decided to keep the Socialist Alliance national office open until at least the November conference and set up a fund raising committee to look at the question of financing.
The meeting also agreed a whole series of other proposals ranging from support for a statement opposing police violence in Gothenburg and support for action against Bush’s visit to Chequers next month. Work is also being done to publish a number of pamphlets – one on privatisation and local government and one on the consequences of European integration.
Time prevented other discussions developing as much as they were needed on other important issues such as our profile in the trade unions.
There seems to be a general consensus that a conference of supporters in the unions needs to be organised, but so far no flesh has yet been put on these bones. This will be a topic to which future meetings will need urgently to return.
There were only two dissonant interventions in the meeting. The CPGB made a rather muted contribution arguing that the campaign had not sufficiently emphasised "high politics" – by which they presumably meant issues such as abolition of the monarchy!
The Alliance for Workers Liberty unfortunately seemed to want to use the occasion to polemicise about the apparent "low class content" of the campaign.
They produced a lengthy assessment of the results and prospects for the Socialist Alliance which, while making some correct points was negative in its overall tone.
They argued for example that the average vote of the Alliance at 1.69% across England and Wales was no higher than the average left vote for many years. They then go on to claim that "it is wrong to take too much comfort from the idea that we were bound to do badly ‘first time out’".
Not only is this an incorrect assessment of the vote, but one distortion is then used to justify another. No one in the Socialist Alliance thinks that all we have to do is to stand a second time, without learning any lessons from this first campaign and that things will automatically get better.
Many comrades correctly pointed out that votes lag behind support, but at the same time were keen to debate how to improve things for the future. But the real problem with the AWL’s approach is demonstrated by what comes later in their article, a bludgeoning attack on the SWP over the question of canvassing as well as sniping points about work in the trade unions.
The problem here is not in raising a debate about how the campaign should be conducted, but in apparently being more interested in attacking other organisations than having a real exchange of ideas and experiences.
While the AWL are quick to talk about the sectarianism of others the reality is that part of the prerequisite for having the broad democratic debates we need in the Socialist Alliance and more broadly is to create a culture in which debate is about listening not point scoring.
Despite these problems there can be no doubt that the Socialist Alliance is at an exciting stage of its development and there is a determination from its leadership to use this strength to raise both the battle for socialist ideas and the biggest possible opposition to New Labour’s Tory policies.