25.01.1996

SLP - Kent style

I AM a socialist who has been politically active in Kent for the last five years - most of this time as a member of the Socialist Workers Party. However, I was expelled from this so-called democratic party last year for wanting a debate on the party line, ‘Vote Labour without illusions’ - somewhat outdated, I felt, in the light of Blair’s ‘new’ Labour lurch to the right.

Due to these experiences I was looking for a party that was democratic and believed in socialism from below through struggle and not through parliament. I found neither at a recruiting meeting of the SLP in Kent last week.

It is not democratic - the constitution has already been agreed at closed meetings in London. As an active socialist I felt I should have been consulted and a debate allowed to take place locally.

Comrades from other parties and other traditions have no place in the SLP unless they can give up membership of their own respective organisations. The constitution will not allow affiliation by other groups. This meant that most of the 50 in attendance at this meeting could not join even if they wanted to. Yet they were all good, experienced leftwing activists. Between us we had a huge network of contacts. So basically established socialists that could have been invaluable in launching the SLP are to be excluded.              

Electioneering - already this party seems to have full illusions in parliament as a route to socialism. Whereas I see elections as a useful method of propagating socialist ideas and politics, the SLP seems solely interested in gaining parliamentary power.

A resolution from this Kent-wide meeting denouncing the policy of not allowing affiliated membership was unanimously carried. However it seems that no democratic structure exists in the SLP for this dissent to be heard and acted upon. So this resolution has nowhere to go. However, more positive is that the comrades in attendance will be meeting regularly for organising and debate.

I welcome that disaffected socialists in the Labour Party have a new home to go to instead of the wilderness - but is it not like the old home? It could and should have been so much better. Both the SWP and the SLP have the word ‘socialist’ in their titles. Yet both parties, it seems, do not allow democracy within their structures - so how do they think they can achieve a democratic socialist society for the rest of us?

Chris Weller,
Ashford Unison