The International Socialist Group is submitting the following resolution to the Socialist Alliance conference on December 1.
"a) The Socialist Alliance should produce a regular, well produced external publication in the form of a bulletin/magazine. This should be a vehicle for promoting the politics of the Alliance at a local and national level – it should be something that is saleable on stalls, at demonstrations etc. It should also aim to be a resource for members and local groups of the Alliance by carrying reports of Alliance activity, current and proposed.
"Such a publication should be produced and edited by an Editorial Board elected by the National Executive, which would reflect the political diversity of the Alliance and may involve people who are not members of the Executive. The Executive together with the Editorial Board should also discuss how to create an effective financial system and distribution network to make this project viable as soon as possible.
"b) The bulletin should be developed as the political expression of the Socialist Alliance and should be seen as a step towards developing a newspaper for the Alliance at a future date."
The Socialist Alliance has taken important steps forward over the last year, particularly through the high profile and successful general election campaign. However since that time, there has been a difficulty about maintaining a strong enough central dynamic to the project.
In a situation where new political developments occur, such as the racist backlash over the summer or the war now, the Alliance has not always responded quickly enough – even though many of its members are central to developing initiatives around these campaigns both locally and nationally.
That the Alliance has the potential to recruit and grow seriously in these times is shown by the fact that since the war started more than 200 new members have joined the Alliance.
This has happened mainly through the distribution of the Socialist Alliance leaflet against the war at both national and local events. The Alliance bulletin, All Red and Green has not appeared for some time and anyway has outgrown its usefulness.
If we had a regular publication, we could do so much better. It would provide all members of the Socialist Alliance with information about initiatives and arguments to support our ideas.
It would enable us to recruit more people to the Socialist Alliance both locally and nationally.
There is no doubt that committing ourselves to producing such a publication would stretch the Alliance.
We would be forced to elaborate positions and ideas about questions that we have not previously addressed. But we were able to develop and agree the Manifesto for the General election with a degree of consensus that surprised us all.
This can only serve to develop the Socialist Alliance as a more coherent force, and one which is therefore more attractive both to its existing membership but even more importantly to potential recruits.
We also would be forced to develop our organisational mechanisms to make sure we could adequately distribute a publication, sell it and get the money back in. However, this would be of benefit in strengthening local groups, ensured that all supporters were regularly involved and heightened our profile at local and national events.
All this requires a leap for the Socialist Alliance. However, it is not as big a leap as was the decision to stand in so many seats in this year’s General Election. Making that leap produced the biggest impact the Socialist Alliance has so far made in its development, the greatest increase in membership and in profile.
As the ISG says in its resolution, we think that a decision to produce a regular magazine should be a first step to producing a newspaper. However we don’t think that the Socialist Alliance is yet ready to take that step.
From December 1, we need to make sure the Socialist Alliance is continuing to go forward to become in reality a serious political alternative to Blairism. In our view committing ourselves to a serious well-produced publication is a crucial next step on this road.