07.04.2004

British socialism at crossroads

Why does the left in England lag behind, compared to the achievements of the Scottish Socialist Party? SSP member Nick Rogers examines the reasons and discusses the prospects for Respect

In the months preceding the January 25 convention that founded Respect, a series of rallies declared that “British politics” was “at the crossroads”. It was proclaimed that the anti-war movement and the English left should seize the opportunity presented by the elections of June 10 2004 to directly challenge New Labour. Respect is the political instrument designed to enable the electorate to deliver a damning verdict on its rulers and launch a movement that turns British politics upside-down.

Unfortunately, with every month that passes it becomes clearer that Respect is in many ways a step back from what was achieved by the left in England with the Socialist Alliance. As a consequence, over the next few months socialists in England are faced with some stark choices. Two conferences over the last few weeks have helped clarify the options - for the left in England finds itself approaching its very own crossroads.

SA conference

At the Socialist Alliance conference held in London on March 13 the Socialist Workers Party and its allies voted to put the alliance into cold storage. Not only is the SA to pass the baton of a left alternative at the European and GLA elections to Respect, but the conference decreed that no alliance candidates are to fight any local elections. Socialist Alliance branches that wish to stand candidates for their local authority must obtain the permission of the local Respect organisation and the Respect executive committee and stand under the Respect banner. However, the winning resolution anticipates that such a procedure will be a rare occurrence and that most campaigning effort will be thrown into Respect’s European “referendum” on the Blair government.

The conference, which deliberated for little more than four hours, saw a walkout by up to a third of delegates - angered by the unconstitutional overturning of the rights of SA branches.

SSP conference

The Scottish Socialist Party conference held in Edinburgh two weeks later, over the weekend of March 27-28, offered an illustration of the differing states of health of the Scottish and English left.

The SSP conference agreed a comprehensive manifesto for the European election. Debates covered a wide range of social and economic issues, international questions, the SSP’s role at the heart of the anti-war campaign in Scotland, and its campaigns in workplaces and working class communities. Two key debates tackled faith schools (a vitally important issue in the Scottish context) and prostitution toleration zones.

In one of the most significant developments in the SSP’s five-year history, the 2004 conference was attended by an official delegation from the RMT railworkers’ union. Fifty constitutional amendments - many updating party procedures to take account of trade union affiliation - demonstrated the seriousness with which the SSP takes its internal democracy. Elections were held for the party’s list for the European elections, SSP spokespersons and officers, and the executive committee.

This was the first conference since the Scottish parliamentary elections of May 2003 returned a contingent of six MSPs for the SSP, four of whom were women. The SSP’s parliamentarians have distinguished themselves by taking combative positions on behalf of the working class, most recently in the all-out strike by nursery workers demanding an increase on the pitiful £13,000 that even the most experienced currently earn.

The SSP has also sought to use the machinery of the Scottish parliament to take up issues of direct concern to working class communities. In Scotland it is the SSP that leads the campaign against the council tax - not the Liberal Democrats or UK Independence Party. Tommy Sheridan is reintroducing the bill for a Scottish Service Tax, a steeply progressive local income tax. Other SSP MSPs are introducing bills for free school meals, the abolition of prescription charges and the nationalisation of the pharmaceutical industry, a railway nationalisation bill in collaboration with the RMT, and a bill to provide a decent drug rehabilitation programme (in line with the SSP’s high-profile policy to decriminalise cannabis). The SSP will organise campaigns involving street stalls, public meetings and demonstrations in support of all these initiatives.

Such campaigns have an impact in large measure because the SSP is able to mobilise a growing membership of 3,000, equating to a party of 30,000 members in the context of England’s larger population - a membership, moreover, that is organised in scores of branches across Scotland.

Of course, the SSP still has much ground to travel before it can lay claim to being a mass socialist party, although the contours of such a party are beginning to emerge. The party has even further to travel before it is able make a decisive challenge to the rule of capital. Its leadership is aware of many of the tasks that lie ahead.

However, the party’s position on the national question and particularly the proposal for an independence convention that will bring the SSP together with the Greens and the SNP in joint campaigning work poses many dangers. But it has to be said with respect to this issue that the failures of the left in England hardly strengthen the hand of those in SSP seeking to promote a different vision.

Respect

In England Respect is a markedly different organisation from the Scottish Socialist Party. In place of a manifesto, Respect is fighting the European, GLA and any local elections it contests on the basis of its founding declaration, a statement a few hundred words long. The ‘S’ in Respect stands for ‘socialism’, but more in the sense of recognising that socialists are members rather than describing the nature of the coalition. Hence several speakers at the January 25 convention, while urging a limited programme, insisted that Respect was not explicitly socialist.

The organisational structures of Respect are rudimentary, to say the least. The convention saw votes on the declaration and the election by slate of an executive committee. Subsequent meetings have seen candidates selected for European and GLA slates and the GLA first-past-the-post seats. Yet how any elected representatives are to be held accountable to the members of Respect will not be resolved this side of the elections. The SSP’s constitution sets out clearly how candidates are to be selected and how elected representatives are to relate to the various structures of the SSP.

When it comes to the political make-up of Respect, the contrast is equally striking. A long list of socialist political parties and an even longer list of independent political activists have held back from participating in Respect. The CPGB has joined, but at a succession of meetings has been excluded not only from the Respect’s executive committee, but also from local steering committees that will organise election campaigns. In Scotland the SSP organises the vast majority of socialists who are not in the Labour Party. Single transferable vote elections ensure that political minorities can gain representation on committees and delegations.

Given this background, the case for withholding support from Respect can appear persuasive. The final straw for many was the behaviour of the SWP majority at the Respect convention. There we were treated to one SWP speaker after another urging us to think of our potential supporters outside the hall. This to justify voting against policies that in any other forum would surely be supported by the vast majority of those present: against immigration controls, for republicanism and for elected representatives on a worker’s wage.

More than one speaker at a Respect rally has promised a new politics of honesty and integrity in which “we say what we mean and mean what we say”. Yet what do we say about immigration controls - an issue sure to play a major role in June’s election - if asked about them on the stump? Oppose them without reservation, as the best Respect candidates are doing? Or prevaricate, as the convention majority sought to do?

For those of us with experience of the rightward drift of the Labour Party the day was reminiscent of nothing so much, say, as Neil Kinnock imploring Labour Party conference in 1988 to abandon support for unilateral nuclear disarmament - not because the policy was wrong, but because it made Labour unelectable.

Come to think of it, where does Respect - an anti-war coalition - stand on Britain’s nuclear weapons? One assumes none of Respect’s candidates support them and will be happy to say so on the stump. After all, George Galloway has been arrested while protesting outside Faslane. But such a glaring oversight in the founding statement of Respect demonstrates the pitfalls of going into an electoral campaign without a comprehensive policy manifesto.

The declaration speaks eloquently of the crisis of democracy and representation. Yet it offers no solution other than electing Respect candidates. Nothing to say on the lack of democracy at the heart of the British state: a hereditary monarch holding executive powers to declare war, to sign treaties, to dismiss the government of the day. Powers that in practice devolve to a premier who has the freedom to take an extraordinary range of decisions without recourse even to the elected House of Commons, let alone the millions who may march on the streets in protest.

Two decades ago Tony Benn made the issue of democracy - and the bypassing of the elected chamber by a premier exercising the powers of an unelected monarch - central to his challenge to the British establishment. In June Respect’s solution to the democratic deficit it identifies in British politics is simply to ask the electorate to vote for its candidates. Not one of the bullet points addresses the way the British state is run or what Respect’s candidates, if elected, would do about creating a genuine democracy.

Respect is not even in a position to respond - as does the SSP, for example - that its candidates can be distinguished from the normal run of career politicians by their pledge to live on the average wage of those they seek to represent.

Engaging with Respect

Nevertheless, socialists often need to make fairly hard-nosed decisions. Respect does represent many of the forces that led the biggest anti-war movement in British history. For all its manifold shortcomings, the Respect declaration does oppose the war and occupation of Iraq, along with all imperialist wars. It does oppose all privatisation and calls for all public services to be brought into public ownership. It does demand a raft of improvements to public services. It does explicitly defend the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers and oppose the EU’s ‘fortress Europe’ policies. It does call for a world based on need, not profit. Some significant candidates have been selected. The candidate lists reflect a gender and ethnic balance that successfully represents a cross-section of British working class society. In June’s European election no other political force that even alludes to socialism will be making a significant intervention.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s fairly obsessive position on George Galloway strikes entirely the wrong note. George Galloway is no worse than many Labour MPs socialists work with - and better than many. George Galloway’s vision for Respect and its development into a political party appears to be a lot more ambitious than that of the SWP. There is clearly much potential for future conflict.

The CPGB and others are justified in joining Respect and engaging with those groups and individuals who participate in it. Furthermore, a successful electoral outcome for Respect will be good for the whole left. It will demonstrate that the political space to build an alternative to New Labour exists. And it will raise a multitude of questions about the direction in which Respect should develop. Not least, the accountability of any elected representatives and the policies they should pursue. In this event, Respect will be a key arena for intervention by socialists in the months after the June elections.

Prospects for Respect

However, such an outcome is far from guaranteed. Again, a comparison with the history of the SSP is instructive. The Scottish Socialist Party was launched in September 1998. In February 1999 it held a national conference that agreed a manifesto and a constitution. By May 1999 a branch structure was in place to fight the first Scottish parliamentary elections. In Glasgow the SSP achieved some 7% of the list vote and Tommy Sheridan was elected as an MSP. But across Scotland the SSP received little more than 2% of the vote and was outpolled by Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party. However, the impact of Tommy’s election was immense. A month later in the European parliamentary elections of five years ago, the SSP’s support across Scotland doubled to over 4% and the SLP was completely eclipsed.

In the years that followed the SSP’s profile in working class struggles soared. The electoral consequences were reflected in the 7.7% the SSP achieved across Scotland (and over 15% in Glasgow) in last year’s Scottish parliamentary elections.

At the SWP’s Marxism 2003 in July last year, an intervention in the June 2004 elections was clearly being mooted. Yet it has taken until the last few months for any kind of local structures to be put in place. And with just two months until the elections, what grassroots campaigning has been undertaken? Where are the Respect interventions in trade union and community struggles? Which local Respect organisations have sought to inspire their activists with discussions of important political issues? What prospect is there that Respect will develop a vibrant and independent political life and culture?

In the Brent East by-election the anti-New Labour vote went to the Liberal Democrats. In the last European and GLA elections the Greens secured a large chunk of the anti-establishment vote and had MEPs and members of the GLA elected. Today how many people are even aware of the existence of Respect? How likely is it that the situation can be turned around in the next eight or nine weeks?

To pose these questions is to provide a fairly accurate assessment of Respect’s prospects. At the Socialist Alliance conference, Chris Bambery - perhaps with a presentiment of Respect’s likely performance on June 10 - told those who expressed doubts that Respect was the best way forward for socialists that they would be responsible if Respect failed.

Chris Bambery is wrong. The tragedy of the last few years is that the Socialist Alliance had the potential to provide a real alternative. In some areas it achieved decent electoral results. It established a profile in some trade unions and in some working class communities. But if the Respect convention witnessed the SWP indulging in crass and inept electoral opportunism, the SWP’s behaviour as the hegemonic force in the SA exemplified the SWP’s commitment to building its own organisation at the expense of the interests of the whole working class movement. In other words, to sectarianism.

In one arena after another the SWP has failed the test of providing real leadership to the working class. At every demonstration, at every workplace picket, at every conference, virtually the entire focus of the SWP has been on recruiting to its own fold. Even at the Socialist Alliance’s own trade union conference on the political fund in March 2002, it was easier to buy Socialist Worker or join the SWP than obtain information about the Socialist Alliance. And of course there is Chris Bambery’s infamous email before the anti-war demonstration of February 15 last year instructing SWP activists to recruit to the SWP, not the SA. Needless to say, no official alliance representative spoke from the platform of one of the most significant political events in decades.

Again, in Scotland a different trajectory can be identified. Scottish Militant Labour (now the International Socialist Movement after its split with the Committee for a Workers’ International) handed over its newspaper, its organisers and the bulk of the organisational apparatus to the newly formed Scottish Socialist Party. Over the years in every important struggle it has been the SSP that intervenes, SSP speakers who address rallies, SSP stalls that take the party’s message to local communities, and the SSP weekly newspaper, Scottish Socialist Voice, that is sold on the streets, at picket lines and in meeting rooms.

After the intense excitement of February 15 the SWP was convinced that it had the political skill to translate the opposition to the Iraq war and the anger against the Blair government into electoral gold dust. It would be of enormous benefit for all socialists if the SWP were proved correct on June 10. But what the SWP does not understand is that most political breakthroughs are based on the painstaking and consistent organisational and political work of years, not months or weeks. The mistakes the SWP made with the Socialist Alliance it continues to make with Respect. At the March 20 anti-war demonstration in London most SWP activists were selling Socialist Worker and recruiting to the SWP. And two months away from a supposedly breakthrough election the SWP continues to organise street stalls that offer no Respect literature.

If the SWP itself were anything like the political vehicle socialists require in order to transform society, perhaps the SWP’s strategy could more easily be excused. But a socialist party capable of winning the mass support of the working class must allow internal dissent and encourage open debate. How else can correct decisions be reached over tactics and strategy and errors corrected? How else can prospective members be reassured that their contribution to the party will be valued? How else can sharp changes of direction be explained to the working class?

That is why a broad socialist party that allows political differences to be expressed through genuine debate (and, if necessary, organised tendencies) and that unites as many groups and individuals committed to socialist transformation as possible is the most pressing objective of today.

Democracy Platform

On April 3 a few dozen socialist activists met in Birmingham to discuss how local Socialist Alliance groups should respond to the dictate of the SA conference of three weeks earlier. The meeting heard from alliance activists organising in Merseyside, Manchester and Walsall and preparing to stand candidates in the local elections, and of initiatives by the Socialist Party and the Liverpool dockers. The meeting resolved that the Democracy Platform of the Socialist Alliance would support “branches and individuals who wish to continue activity under the banner of the SA and specifically to stand candidates in the June local elections. The DP will therefore support and help coordinate SA branches that are prepared to undertake this independent activity.”

The meeting will probably merit hardly a mention in most of the socialist press. Yet the very fact that individuals from a range of disparate political backgrounds, several of whom have played prominent roles in the Socialist Alliance, think it worthwhile to meet together and start to talk about the way forward for socialists is significant. In the long term, possibly more significant than anything Respect will achieve.

It would be a dereliction of duty to abandon the roots in working class communities that the most active Socialist Alliance branches have carefully nurtured over years of local campaigning.

The CPGB made a serious miscalculation in walking out of the meeting of February 21 on the grounds that they lost the vote allowing individuals who were not members of the Socialist Alliance to join the DPSA. For a key task of the latter part of this year will be precisely to bring back into socialist political activity the many individuals who have been repelled by the antics of the SWP. Creating artificial boundaries on the basis of current political memberships is not the way to meet the challenge.

The CPGB, after all, would like to reach out to socialists within the Labour Party. A worthwhile objective. But engaging with the Labour Party socialists will require campaign work and joint meetings that cut across exactly the political party boundaries that the CPGB turned into something of a shibboleth on February 21.

The ranks of disaffected socialists are likely to grow, as those joining Respect realise that they do not always share the same objectives as the SWP. All socialists committed to creating a genuinely pluralist socialist movement - whether the DPSA, the Socialist Unity Network, the CPGB or currently inactive individuals - should seek to come together to construct an alternative pole of attraction to that of the SWP.

Both Respect and the Socialist Alliance are scheduled to hold conferences in the autumn that will determine the future geography of the left in Britain. Given the likely outcome of this year’s electoral challenge, we can look forward to a welter of recriminations at both. What will emerge at the year’s end is far from clear. A flexible, multi-pronged strategy will be the best way to seize those opportunities that do arise and begin again the project of building a mass socialist party.