Alan Thornett ('SP's pamphlet is just as bad as its statement' - SO 52) "assumes" that the Socialist Party's idea of a new party is "old Labour". I can only conclude that Alan had his own preconceptions of the SP's position, and then set out to prove them. For he doesn't include a single quote from this 24-page pamphlet (Resisting Capitalism - The Case for a New Workers' Party). He makes his own interpretations, which are not truthful. "The model for the SP's new mass party - expounded at great length in the pamphlet - is, predictably, the formation of the Labour Party, a hundred years ago" says Alan, and "The class content of this party is unknown, or at least unspecified". (There is a difference between "class content" and "characterisation". To be concrete: the old Labour Party was working class in content, but its leadership and policy was bourgeois in character.)
In fact the SP's pamphlet is quite specific in opposition to such a party: "Historically the Labour Party was a 'capitalist workers' party. The leaders at the top reflected the outlook and interests of OLD LABOUR AND the capitalist class." (p3 - with reference to the Appendix "How the