25.01.1996

Genuine socialist alternative

Lee-Anne Bates spoke to John Nicholson, ex-deputy leader of Manchester City Council, who set up the campaign to defend clause four with Arthur Scargill

You are setting up a Socialist Alliance in the north west, but are you involved in the SLP meetings?

No, I haven’t been invited to those. I am hopeful that the process of both building the Socialist Alliance and Arthur Scargill’s SLP proposals will lead to a party that presents a socialist labour alternative. I think that process will take a lot longer than has currently been allowed for. But the momentum has been created both inside and outside the Labour Party. I don’t want a socialist alternative just to be a pressure group on Labour, but the debate is pulling to the left now.

I have been very impressed with Militant Labour comrades who have almost been saying, ‘Look: if there has been any sectarianism in the past, let’s put those days behind us’.

What encouraged you to set up an SA in the north west?

The actual name comes from comrades in Scotland. They have worked across left groups and people not involved in any organisation to forge an alliance. This way of working has had a resonance for comrades in the north west, which I do not think is an accident.

There is struggle at the moment around the dockers in this area and a history of militancy industrially and politically. There are comrades here in constituency Labour Parties that have effectively been closed down for over a decade - ordinary Labour Party members who have not been able to vote for their candidates in selections.

We do not wish to exclude anybody. We want to work with all the different trends and currents who want a socialist alternative, including people already involved in the SLP of course.

I welcome the strong presence of Militant Labour because they are organised, know how to run elections and do the work. There are others from other groups and tendencies, people not involved in any group and people involved in single issue campaigns who see the need to link up.

Are you in any organisation yourself?

I think I am still technically in the Labour Party. I was in Labour for 20 years and used to be deputy leader of Manchester City Council from 1984-87. We were elected on a platform of fighting Tory cuts, but over a period of time the people elected started to drop that platform. I would like to see the majority of people on the Labour left move to a genuine socialist alternative.

The incident with Harriet Harman tells a story in itself. A lot of PLP members are very annoyed, but everyone accepts the line that Blair knows how to win an election. So why should Harman resign? She is in line with the Labour/Tory policy. She is not a class traitor: she is of their class, doing what their class believes.

Ordinary Labour parents who have fought like I have to keep their school under local authority control, even when it is rotten local authorities like Manchester, are not very pleased. So there is a lot of potential opposition there.

You were involved in the meetings with Scargill initially. What has been the problem with those meetings for you?

Arthur and I launched the Defend Clause Four, Defend Socialism campaign at Labour Party conference in October 1994. I believe that Arthur’s analysis of what has happened to Labour is absolutely correct, but to get the organisation we actually need will take a lot of discussion. Arthur has done a lot to raise the profile of that discussion and I think he is absolutely right to be fighting Hemsworth. But you can’t conjure a political party out of nowhere. To create a political party with a firm foundation you need everyone involved in discussions and work together.

So was the crunch for you the dropping of clause four?

Essentially, if you take out any vestiges of socialism in Labour the only thing that arguably remains is the link with the trade unions. But the trade unions now have to make up their minds if this is a party that can represent organised labour.

Do you think Labour could ever have delivered socialism, with or without clause four?

I always saw it as working in bourgeois institutions at the same time as building a party. The council was a platform for me, but as to turning that platform into delivering socialism in what are bourgeois representative institutions, there is a long way to go. I’ve been involved in a reformist party for a long time on the basis of pushing it to the left, but I don’t see that as a possibility any longer. The trouble is people use the Labour Party as a tactic, but get stuck there.

We’ve been fully involved in debates in socialist forums, particularly with ML around what sort of party we need. We would argue it needs to be a revolutionary party: a communist party.

I am almost a professional holder-together and have been trying to hold the Labour left together for a number of years, so I want the discussions to be broad, even if personally I might favour the type of party you are talking about.

From our point of view the constitution of the SLP as it exists was a social democratic one. Would you personally be arguing for a revolutionary programme?

I am arguing on two levels. For the sake of the process I want to subordinate some of my own personal views. At a personal level I want to argue for something that does tackle the nature of capitalism as it now affects us, that looks at this in a world context, not an English one, that makes links with socialists across Europe and the world and recognises that for the long-term future of our planet there has got to be a major distribution of wealth and power. That requires much more serious addressing than what you called a social democratic constitution can do.