04.04.1996

South London Labour councillors defect to SLP

In brief

Almost 30 members attended a successful South London SLP branch meeting last week. Its most important function was to elect temporary officers to take the branch through to its official May Day launch.

The branch also heard report-backs from a number of comrades who had attended the March 2 national members’ conference.

The party membership is still on a leftward trajectory, and that was reflected in those reports, where individual comrades clearly approved of the consensus arrived at by the conference workshops, particularly on Ireland and international issues.

However, reporting on the ‘constitution’ workshop, branch chair Terry Dunne mentioned one particular ‘problem’: the fact that the CPGB has openly called for all partisans of the class to join the SLP, and its own members are entering the new organisation without leaving the Communist Party.

This is required by the SLP’s provisional constitution, but it was obvious from the South London meeting that many members were sympathisers of other left groups. This is not only unavoidable, but actually desirable if a genuinely revolutionary party is to be forged.

Various comrades gave reports on other campaigns and disputes, including the Liverpool docks, Brent Unison and the Newbury protest.

Members also drew the meeting’s attention to interesting developments in two South London boroughs. In Lewi sham, three councillors defecting from Labour (either tc Militant Labour or the SLP) could form a bloc as the official opposition. Terry Dunn agreed to discuss the question with Lewisham comrades in the local Socialist Alliance.

In Southwark, Labour councillor Ian Driver has now joined the SLP. He told the meeting that he intended to remain on the council, but was keen to secure the SLP nomination to contest Harriet Haran’s parliamentary seat - although members immediately made it clear that no such immediate decision could be entertained.

In the meantime the Southwark Socialist Alliance has already nominated a member of Militant Labour, Joan Francis, to fight the seat. Terry Dunne informed the meeting that he had attempted to meet her, as previously agreed.

However, at the last moment she had switched the proposed discussions to her own home and he drew the line (apparently on principle) at meeting her on non-neutral territory.

One comrade, a former member of the ‘official’ CPGB, expressed reservations about the electoral tactic, believing that demoralising defeats had in themselves caused the demise of the organisation. This was challenged by another self-proclaimed communist, who saw elections as the way to put the SLP on the map- a way of stating the revolutionary alternative to Labour.

Alan Fox