The future of the Socialist Alliance
The development of the SA has been a remarkable success since the Greater London Assembly elections and then the intervention into the general election. This has been confirmation in practice that an opportunity exists, in the present period, to rebuild and reshape the left in Britain into a more effective force which can confront the challenge of Blairism and the continued drift of the labour movement to the right.
The process of globalisation, and the neo-liberal offensive, led by US imperialism and aided by the collapse of Stalinism, pushed politics, internationally, to the right and the working class onto the defensive.
This began to change with the rise of class struggle in Europe in the mid-90’s and the rise of the anti-globalisation movement.
The latter part of the 20th century saw the break up of the post-war consensus and an end to a long period of reform, which had been the political basis of Labourism.
Blairism and its march to the right is an adjustment to this new reality and has fully backed the neo-liberal offensive. This shift has important consequences in that it has opened up a political space, for the first time since the war, to the left of Labour, which makes the building a real socialist alternative possible.
This situation been re-emphasised with the current war drive and its consequences in Britain which have been that Blair has been able to push his second term plans ahead without a shot being fired at either the TUC or LP conference.
The need for a long-term development of the left out of the SA could hardly be stronger particularly given the decline of the CP and the Labour left. It is imperative, in the period ahead, that we do not squander the huge opportunity provided by the Socialist Alliance for reorganising and strengthening the left in a qualitative way.
The December 1 SA conference is set to adopt a new constitution for the Socialist Alliance which will be the framework for the next stage of its development. This is a crucial step towards the consolidation of the SA into an adequate vehicle for building a broad-based alternative to new Labour.
Important as it is, however, the future of the Alliance cannot be shaped by its Constitution alone. The constitution we are seeking to adopt will provide a democratic structure for the election of leadership, the participation of the membership, and the functioning of the Alliance.
The issue of the political role the Alliance should play, particularly between elections, however, is not yet adequately resolved – and there is little opportunity at this (unfortunately one-day) conference for an adequate discussion on it.
The purpose of this text therefore is to raise the issue of what the role of the SA should be in the next stage of its development: i.e. after the December conference and what this implies for its development longer term. During elections the role of the SA is clear: it runs its election campaign. It is between election campaigns that its role remains ambiguous.
A recent example of this problem was the way the SA was initially sidelined in the reaction to the war drive after the attack on the WTC, where the initiative came form the SWP and not the Socialist Alliance.
None of the organisations involved in the SA or the independents took the initiative in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the WTC to call for an emergency meeting of the SA EC to discuss both the events and the SA’s response to them. It was a problem of the political perception of the role of the SA.
However, the SWP took advantage of this situation to push itself forward as the primary sponsor of the coalition, while by-passing the Socialist Alliance and the other left forces of within it.
This did not stop the Anti-War Coalition getting off the ground successfully, albeit with flaws. In the immediacy of the situation that was the most important thing. It did make the process more fractious and raises the issue of the role of the SA and of democracy within the united front.
The SA is the organisation which unites the bulk of the far left including the SWP in alliance with independent socialists, and it should have been central to launching any united front.
True, the SA would need to be more politically geared up and organised than it is to play an initiating role in this way, with its leadership functioning on a day-to-day basis. But it will need to be more geared up anyway if we are to build it as an alternative to Blairism!
If the SA is not able to take such initiatives then its role between elections is one simply of supporting and mobilising the campaigns which exist around the various issues – like Globalise Resistance and the ANL.
There is a danger that the SA is seen as one of several united fronts, initiated by the SWP, each dealing with aspects of political work – in this case electoral interventions.
But the SA is not a united front in the way the ANL and the GR seek to be. It is a political organisation with an extensive programme and with a leadership elected on a political basis seeking to establish itself as a serious political alternative.
Obviously it should support important initiatives like the ANL and GR, but it is not the same as them. If it is to develop it has a wider role to play. It has a global political view of the world and that means that there will be times when it takes initiatives, which are not elections, in its own right. It should seek, even between elections, to set the political agenda on the left.
It therefore needs to develop its own political culture, tradition and experience. It needs at every level to promote a political dialogue both in the form of practical politics and education in order to facilitate its development as a political organisation.
Different attitudes on this, at least partly, reflect different views on the longer term development and role of the SA – in particular whether it should remain an alliance or whether it should become a new party of the left.
Broadly speaking those who want to see the SA becoming a new party of the left want to promote its political development at this stage as an all-round political organisation (although the Socialist Party appear to be an anomaly in this), whilst those who don’t want to see it as an alliance with a more limited brief.
Turning the SA into a party, however, is not so much about the name. The political character of an organisation is not defined simply by its name. The issue is whether it functions as a party, plays the role of a party, and is structured as a party.
In fact it is hard to see a long term future for the SA unless it establishes itself as a political force between elections as well as during them – and that means intervening and taking initiatives in its own right when it is appropriate to do so: in other words being a party. By responding to political events the way a party would respond to them rather than an alliance which responds to the initiatives of political parties.
It is also the most effective way for the left to organise. Establishing the SA as a party would not only make it more effective in elections, but would strengthen the SA itself against its constituent parts and provide a more democratic situation for individual activists within it.
If the SA does not develop in this way it could squander its unique potential to occupy the space to the left of Labour; local alliances could find it more difficult to establish themselves in local politics; its role will remain ambiguous; and its longer term existence put in jeopardy.
Effectively there are two possibilities for the further of the SA: that it continues to play the role of a mainly (in effect) electoral framework within the current configuration of the left – with an ambiguity remaining as it its wider role; or it can play the role of reshaping the left in Britain into a more effective force.
This means developing it into a party broadly on the lines of the Scottish Socialist Party, which would contain the bulk of the far left organisations as well as large numbers of individual activists and groupings which do not share the revolutionary traditions but share the aspiration of building a broad based alternative to Blairism.
As far as practical steps are concerned, it is also difficult to see how this can be achieved without the Alliance having a well resourced publication of its own.
This would not only give the SA a clear public presence and a means of organising the activities of the Alliance, but it would ensure that the leadership of the Alliance functioned in a political way. It is important that this process of developing the press of the SA is initiated on December 1st.