WeeklyWorker

04.07.2001

Merseyside SWP steamrolls in

Merseyside Socialist Alliance chair Chris Jones, a member of the Revolutionary Democratic Group, reports on events in Liverpool

Anyone who wondered what agenda the Socialist Workers Party had for the future of the Socialist Alliance on Merseyside had the issue clarified on July 3.

The occasion was the second meeting at which the SWP prioritised organisation above politics and was determined to press through its own set of organisational changes. The key feature of these changes is that they do not recognise the nature of Merseyside SA as an alliance and envisage a simple membership structure. The MSA has had one other members' meeting and one open meeting to discuss the way ahead since the election.

Merseyside Socialist Alliance has an existing organisational framework that worked well throughout the election, and was flexible enough to allow St Helens to develop a vigorous local branch during the campaign - the MSA has certainly not been a failure organisationally. This contrasts with the centralised arrangements in Manchester that were implicated in the decision not to stand a general election candidate in Oldham. This point was not lost on MSA members, who noted that the SWP proposals would lumber Merseyside with a Manchester-type system, as they allowed for an elected leadership that could easily bypass members' meetings. Members will only meet regularly under this new system in local area alliances.

In a clumsy and at times near farcical show of strength SWP members forced the vote on organisational changes in a way that split the alliance between SWP members and the rest. The SWP had proposed four organisational points, introduced by a short preamble. The resolution called for:

The same meeting was scheduled to discuss the position paper by Chris Jones of the RDG, which was circulated locally and has been published in the Weekly Worker (June 28). This document contained a set of organisational proposals that covered the same ground as the SWP resolution, but with significant differences. For example, it proposed regular monthly MSA-wide meetings in addition to local area meetings and allowed affiliated organisations to be represented on the MSA committee.

The meeting was chaired by an SWP member, Mark O'Brien. It was run in a stilted and formal manner, the style of which Mark indicated had been derived from a copy of Mr Chairman, an old CPGB guide placed in view on the top table. Speakers were given three-minute time slots and the debate ran together the resolution proposed by the SWP, the discussion of the position paper from Chris Jones and two amending comments.

Each person who had put a written proposal to the meeting was given chance to speak in turn and then speakers were taken in a general discussion of the merits of the different positions. The meeting had before it, in addition to the SWP resolution and the position paper of Chris Jones, comments by Martin Ralph of the International Socialist League and Lesley Mahmood of the Merseyside Socialists.

The debate, given its wide remit, had a general political tone. Chris Jones argued for a political approach to building a party. He argued that this was only the beginning of a debate that would run at least until the conference called for November. Organisational questions should flow from a debate about the political direction the alliance was going to take and not be rushed through. Martin Ralph generally agreed with the position outlined by Chris Jones and Lesley Mahmood argued in favour of adjustments to the existing MSA structures rather than the changes proposed by either the SWP or Chris Jones in his paper. Lesley, Martin and Chris all agreed that any kind of party structure, like that proposed by the SWP, required a degree of political agreement and that had yet to be built.

The SWP did not discuss the need for a party and portrayed their proposals as common sense and simply organisational matters. There was no time in this general debate to discuss the particulars of the SWP resolution or any alternatives to it. SWP speaker after SWP speaker spoke as if the MSA was currently paralysed and in crisis. The solution, they suggested, was only to be found in the options proposed by the SWP, stating that the alliance would be built through activity.

Non-SWP speakers noted that in the past year the alliance had decided on an electoral platform, intervened in many dispute and campaigns and stood candidates in the general election. All this had been achieved using existing structures and operating by consensus. No one opposing the SWP resolution was complacent or argued against change; the argument was about which changes were appropriate and when and how they should take place. The SWP wanted a quick vote and an end to discussion. The non-SWP MSA members all argued that the question was one of politics and priorities, not simply one of "action".

Some of the sharpest exchanges were about how the MSA could attract and relate to new working class members and supporters. John Whearty, speaking for the SWP resolution, argued that workers would be put off by political debates. He illustrated this by reference to the position paper, which he noted was six pages long. He argued workers did not want political debate and long meetings in which politics were discussed. This was repeated by many SWP speakers and led to Celia Ralph, an ISL member, accusing the SWP of being condescending to workers. She and other non-SWP members argued that workers needed political debate, that the debate was already in the workplace and that the MSA had to relate to it.

There was mutual incomprehension on this issue, as SWP members clearly conceived of politics in a different light to the rest of the meeting. There were further exchanges on this question following the meeting, when SWP members made it clear that politics for them did not involve debate about issues, strategy and tactics: it was simply a question of action. As if to emphasise this point, at the close of the meeting an 'activity sheet' was circulated, on which members were simply to sign their names against activities.

The debate was brought to a close with each initial speaker having a right to reply. This led to a degree of confusion, because at the point when the chair pressed for a vote there had been no discussion of the specifics of the resolution. The debate had been about whether the MSA should immediately adopt a new structure or set in train a debate about the politics and structure of the Socialist Alliance that would feed into the conference in November. The SWP clearly wanted organisational change immediately, whereas every speaker not aligned with the SWP expressed the view that this was only the beginning of a debate.

The chair then asked for a vote on whether the resolution should be put to the vote amidst objections from the floor against this way of proceeding. At least two speakers from the floor asked for clarification of the resolution that they claimed was unclear on several points. This was dismissed as time-wasting and the resolution was left unclarified. In a room containing 37 people, 17 voted in favour of taking a vote on the resolution.

When asked for votes against, the remainder of the meeting refused to vote. Despite having packed the meeting, the SWP had achieved the support of less than half of those present, with several SWP members abstaining. This outcome was clearly not expected. But instead of accepting that there was no majority the chair organised a second vote. This time the meeting split simply on party lines, with 24 SWP members and sympathisers dutifully voting for the resolution. It is an interesting question as to why in the original vote seven SWP comrades sat on their hands.

The MSA is now threatened with a division between the SWP and the rest (this does not take into account the Socialist Party, whose members, as usual, stayed away). This potential split is entirely the consequence of the SWP forcing a decision on organisational questions rather than patiently building support for changes in structure that had many points that were not controversial. The evidence for this was in the proposals in Chris Jones's position paper and the constructive amendments proposed by Martin Ralph and Lesley Mahmood.

The resolution that was passed remained unclear, no vote on the new committee was taken and no future meeting was scheduled to elect a committee or set up new area Socialist Alliances. The MSA has by this vote adopted a new structure and then not enacted it. This leaves the previous coordinating committee in place with the job of trying to make sense of it all.

The resolution covered many points that were also covered in Chris Jones' position paper and in the document circulated by Lesley Mahmood of the Merseyside Socialists, neither of which were put to a vote. Indeed throughout the meeting both proposers of these documents stressed that their position was one for discussion leading to decisions at a later date. It is no longer clear what status these documents or the proposals they contain have. Put simply, the SWP engineered a split on issues that were not necessarily contentious. The resolution is intended to enable the SWP to take organisational control of the MSA.

After the meeting in fractious exchanges SWP members were keen to reassure non-SWP MSA comrades that they would not routinely exercise their voting power. They did not seem to understand that they had just demonstrated exactly what their organisational control actually meant. The SWP has a responsibility as the largest organisation in the Socialist Alliance, but it did not try to convince or build a clear mandate from non-SWP MSA members: it simply outvoted them on the night. This puts non-SWP members in a quandary. Do they take these events as a declaration of civil war and prepare an opposition capable of organisationally standing up to the SWP or do they roll over and accept SWP control?

In Merseyside non-SWP members now have to organise an alliance within the alliance. If there is to be political debate and a consideration of how to build the alliance successfully rather than the mindless activism proposed by the SWP, other MSA members will have to stand together. The danger is that some will now walk away.

Several non-SWP members of the MSA are now questioning their future membership. It would be a tragedy if SWP manoeuvring repelled other sections. This has already been openly suggested by Cathy Wilson, the MSA candidate in Riverside and a national vice-chair, and Lesley Mahmood, who are both members of the Merseyside Socialists.

The task for the MSA minority is to avoid this tendency to split and to organise and generalise their struggle into a coherent political opposition to the SWP majority in Merseyside and nationally.