16.11.1995

Who’s coming to the party?

THE WORD that Arthur Scargill is to act as a catalyst in forming a new party of the left is causing consternation and excited speculation.

Blair can be dismissive and even pretend to take pleasure in such an eventuality. But having sold his grandmother to be elected, he is unlikely to relish the prospect of a viable left alternative in mainstream Labour election territory.

It is just possible that the spin doctors might conclude that an emergent Socialist Labour Party - whatever that might mean - could pose just enough of a threat to wreck the election bandwagon and give English working class voters the kind of alternative that Scottish and Welsh workers found in the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru.

Would they offer a deal rather than risk a damaging break? Rather like poker, it depends on what hand the other player is holding, and that is far from clear.

It is absolutely certain that Arthur could centre around him some very dynamic activists from the trade union and labour movement, who are now totally pissed off with Blair, but hitherto see no viable alternative.

Whole branches of traditionally blue-collar Labour could come over. Particularly in the ex-mining communities of the Midlands, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire and the north. Mass public rallies in big northern cities would be likely to pull in members by the hundreds and perhaps thousands.

There would be a real knock on, especially if the new party intended to challenge new Labour at council and parliamentary level: an alternative to the tired, washed out men of the municipal party machine and the faceless wonders imposed on unwilling constituencies by Blair.

Ordinary workers in the north at least might well rally to a wind of simultaneous change and tradition, a powerful mix when many have felt despair at lost values and political impotence.

Think of the impact on Leeds North East constituency and their deselected MP. And where would Militant Labour stand? The word is that they are preparing the ground for affiliation on the right terms.

The legions of small entryist Trotskyist worms would be almost duty bound to change apples and thousands of ex-party members from the Labour and British Road CP have already begun to feel a flood of blood in veins long considered to be clogged. So could it grow?

Almost certainly. Mind, that is not to say that Arthur and an SLP would have it all their own way. Benn is genuinely a nice bloke, but it is a sad fact that Blair could shit on him every morning (as he frequently does) and he would still stay in the Labour Party.

Indeed it is such craven misplaced loyalty among the old Labour left which gives Blair his arrogance to proceed safely in the knowledge that whatever he did they would still back him. He has counted on this being so among traditional working class areas too. But he may find that if the SLP takes the stage the position may change radically.

Skinner, long time miners’ advocate and Arthur’s friend, may jump to the new organisation, although his notoriety and front seat in the stalls at Westminster may prove just too type-casting to abandon.

The main question of course is what sort of party will it be. The original Socialist Labour Party was Marxist, Deleonist and then Bolshevik. Arthur’s party is likely to be classically left social democratic, certainly reformist, though it may have infusions of revolutionary ideology shot through it. It will without difficulty stand well to the left of Blair on everything.

It will certainly throw down the challenge to organisations like the Socialist Workers Party, and perhaps even the Communist Party of Great Britain, depending on who is allowed to affiliate and with what constitutional rights. It will shift the debate and perhaps the climate back to a left agenda.

Saturday night around the pubs of Doncaster the discussion among young and old, quite ordinary non-politicos was all about Arthur’s initiative. In this sense it must be welcomed, although I shall not be coming to this or any other party, even if they invite me.

Dave Douglass