No substance in complaints
Socialist Party makes its excuses … and leaves the Alliance
The political framework of the Socialist Party’s statement is their call for a new mass party of the working class. This is a dubious framework for a number of reasons
The use of the word ‘mass’ is crucial. Whilst the SP calls for a new mass party it is opposed to the formation of a new party of the left which is not, at this stage, a mass party; for example the Scottish Socialist Party or a party on same lines in England – even though it originally welcomed the formation of the Socialist Labour Party by Arthur Scargill in the mid 1990s.
The statement argues that since the Labour Party has been transformed by Blair into a straight bourgeois party, a new mass party (a reborn Labour Party), will emerge more or less spontaneously from future explosions of working class struggle. Meanwhile there is little the existing left can do to prepare for this or bring it about.
While the Socialist Party are wrong to say that Blair has completed the transformation of the Labour Party they are correct that a crucially important political space has opened up to the left of Labour: that is what the Socialist Alliance is all about.
Where they are wrong is in dismissing the need to prepare for such a situation. The idea that the working class will leap from a situation of no organised alternative to new Labour to a new mass party is fanciful in the extreme. The preparations made today in the form of a new organisation of the left may well be crucial to what becomes possible when upsurges of struggle take place and bigger developments become possible.
Future upsurges of struggle in Scotland, for example, would be more likely to draw socialist conclusions with the SSP in existence than without it.
Equally it would be wrong to assume that workers involved in struggle will automatically draw the conclusions that the answer is a new mass socialist party in the absence of an effective, united organisation of the left fighting alongside them.
The advantage of having already in place a broad and democratic socialist party which would not be a reformed Labour Party is obvious.
Today we have the opportunity, in England, to begin to build such an organisation with the development of the SA. The forces already exist for such a party in the form of the existing left organisations and the disaffection that is taking place, and has taken place, with New Labour.
The challenge for the far left today is to be able to respond to this. This means breaking from its sectarian past and building an organisation which can be a point of attraction not just for revolutionary socialists but for those who have not yet embraced revolutionary politics – people who are breaking from New Labour, as individuals or small groups.
It is this challenge which must shape the type of organisation we build today, and it is this challenge which the SP fails with the model of the Socialist Alliance it fought for at the SA conference. This was an alliance of the constituent organisations rather than alliance which emphasises the rights of individual members – making it the least effective way to fill the space to the left of new Labour.
The SP claims that they established Socialist Alliances in the mid-1990s on a federal basis; and then in the last two years the SWP came in, took it over, and centralised the organisation to an unacceptable degree. This is a version of history that is hard to recognise.
After Scargill had excluded the SP from the SLP, they did set up Socialist Alliances in areas like Coventry. But they did not consistently build Socialist Alliances in areas where they had forces: and even where they did organise, they did so in a way that treated the groups as their own front organisations.
Some local alliances came into being for separate reasons, such as the expulsion of the majority of the Labour Group in Walsall, who set up the Democratic Labour Party there – and affiliated to the Alliance.
At this point, the Socialist Alliance did not really exist as a national organisation with a consistent political or electoral practice.
Things began to change around the time of the European elections in 1999. An attempt was made to establish a London SA for those elections. It foundered when the SWP (who were only partly on board) withdrew when Scargill intervened. The following year, with the SWP fully on board, the LSA stood in the GLA elections.
>From then on, and through the general election campaign, the SA became a very different organisation. Local alliances came into being in virtually every area of England. The general election manifesto was by far the most extensive policy statement adopted by the Alliance, and by this stage the overwhelming majority of the far left were involved.
Therefore claims by the SP that the SWP stole its ball are not only crass and apolitical – they are also historically dubious.
Another central plank of the SP statement is the federalism versus centralisation debate – the idea that the SP originally built the SA on a federal basis, and the SWP have now changed it to a centralised structure. In this the meaning of the words change – with yesterday’s federalism becoming today centralisation.
For example when Scargill excluded the SP from the SLP, he did it on the basis that he would not countenance any federalism. By that he meant that he would not have any organised political formations inside the SLP. As he put it "if you want to join the SLP you have to leave any other party you are in first".
The SP were right to reject Scargill’s ultimatum, and demand to be allowed inside the SLP as an organisation and that the SLP should have a federal structure. What they rightly demanded then as federal structure is what they are rejecting today as ultra-centralisation.
In fact the new constitution of the SA is far more federal than any constitution the SLP is likely to have had with the SP in it – after all the SLP was a political party. Today the SP denounces the partial move towards a party structure – even though the political situation is much more advanced that it was then.
The new SA constitution is rightly a move in the direction of a party structure, but that does not mean it is not federal. Its policies are not politically binding on the constituent organisations, which are explicitly given the right of dissent and the right to distribute their own publications.
Membership of the SA for both local Alliances and individuals is on the basis of broad aims, not detailed programme. This is exactly the same as the outgoing constitution.
The new constitution specifically recognises the right of minorities to publicly promote views other than those of the SA if they feel they have to do so. This is clearer than in the old constitution. The only obligation is not to obstruct campaigns decided by the SA.
The relevant clauses are as follows. The first is exactly the same as the out-going constitution, whilst the second is an extension of it:
"B2: The SA is a broad, open, inclusive and flexible organisation, based on voluntary participation. The SA is politically pluralistic and encourages all individuals and perspectives to participate fully in our vision of a socialist society and our way of working as an Alliance. Members of other parties, organisations and groups who join the SA are expected to be able to keep their identity as members of these organisations whilst participating fully within the development of the Alliance.
"C18: Membership of the SA carries an obligation not to obstruct campaigns decided on by the Alliance. We recognise, however, the right of minorities publicly to promote their views. In the event that an organised minority intends to take any action conflicting with a majority decision nationally or locally, that minority should inform the SA at the relevant level of its intention to do so".
This is a federal structure within the normal usage of the term. The idea that ‘the right of minorities publicly to promote their views’ represents ‘draconian’ centralisation has more to do with the mythology spread by the SP than any objective assessment.
Any organisation needs criteria by which to accept or reject individual members or local groups. An individual who acts in an openly sexist, racist or reactionary way should be excluded.
If a local alliance rejects the broad aims of the Alliance, it does not have the right to remain affiliated. The political criteria for deciding these questions remain the same under the new constitution as under the old.
In fact now there is an added safeguard – not only the right to appeal to conference, but the creation of an independent appeals committee. But the Socialist Party statement refers to these powers as "excessive".
In general, the differences between the old constitution and the new are mostly in terms of the decision-making structure and the membership structure – to make it a more efficient and effective organisation.
The huge change in the character of the constitution and minority rights has not taken place, except in the Socialist Party’s imagination.
The Socialist Party justifies its walkout by claiming that the SWP ‘imposed this draconian constitution’ in order to dominate the Alliance. But what is the evidence for this supposed quest for domination?
Whilst there are infuriating examples of the abuse of local SAs by the SWP, which should and are being challenged, the issue is what is the overall practice of the SWP. There is no evidence that the SWP is setting out to dominate the Alliance – not least because if they tried to build the Socialist Alliance in that way, they would end up as the only ones in it.
The slate for the new Executive elected on December, which was proposed by the SWP and others, has only three SWP members on it – 15 per cent of the membership of the Executive. The Socialist Party predictably dismisses this as window dressing, but it is also a fact – it is what actually happened
The SP statement claims that the rejection by the conference of a proposal for a limitation of 40% of the EC to be members of a single constituent organisation as proof of the intention of the SWP to dominate the EC. I can’t say why the SWP voted against this, only why I did.
This was not just because I think that the political balance on the EC at a particular time should be a political decision rather than an arbitrary constitutional norm, but also because I think that 40% is far too high.
None of the organisations in the SA could contemplate taking such a proportion of the EC. Saying that 40% is the limit suggests that maybe 30% would be OK, whilst this would also be excessive. Moreover, once you get down to the kind of percentages it should be – 15 or 20% – it becomes too rigid and proscriptive to have a constitutional limit.
A direct charge made in the statement about the ISG is that we campaigned for the constitution we supported to be adopted unamended.
The SP seem to have missed the fact that we tabled three amendments, two of which went to conference and one of which – on the major issue of the need for a publication of the SA – was rejected. How that amounts to campaigning for the constitution unamended is hard to see.
I intervened into the conference to say that I thought the provision in the ISG/SWP proposed constitution was inadequate on the procedure for new affiliations.
I was loudly heckled by the SP who were shouting "too late now; you should have thought about that before’. But although the Socialist Party have made this a campaigning issue, the old constitution had no more to say on this than the new one.
With such attention to detail, it is no wonder the SP have resorted to a succession of sectarian insults rather measured argument.
There is a difficulty around this question in terms of possible legal problems, but the new Executive should look at this issue again as I urged them to do.
It is not even true, as the statement implies, that the SWP had a majority in the conference. They did not. They had to win other votes to get decisions through. In fact they lost the vote on the establishment of an appeals committee.
In the end it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the SP leadership wanted an exit strategy from the SA, and that they found one.
Their statement repeatedly claims an erosion of minority rights: but what minority rights does the SP want which are not in the constitution, other than the right to unilaterally determine who the candidate will be in their own chosen constituencies - which is what they did in the general election.
Fortunately that was one right that the vast majority in the SA were not prepared to concede.
It is also hard not to see behind the SP’s actions a reversion to the crudest sectarianism of the British left. This has led the SP to withdraw from the SA - the most significant development of the British left for decades - and to risk damaging that development and missing the opportunity to reshape the left and fill the space to the left of Labour which they point to.