18.04.1996

From alliance to Party

In Glasgow this Saturday the Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA) holds its founding conference. The impetus for the SSA came from the rejection by the Scottish delegation of Arthur Scargill’s proposed bureaucratic monstrosity of a constitution for the Socialist Labour Party. Following report back meetings with activists in Scotland, the delegation felt it could no longer participate in the meetings. The outcome was the setting up of the SSA.

In hindsight this withdrawal was a mistake. Instead of accepting this ‘constitution’ as a fait accompli we should have seen it for what it is - a contribution to the debate, (as Scargill himself described it). This position holds until the SLP membership as a whole has taken a decision at its founding conference.

The SSA is an important step forward in bringing activists and left organisations together into an alliance on a united platform, with open discussion and debate, but it is still only an alliance. The SLP has the potential to be far more than this. It can be the mass, independent party that the working class in Britain needs. A party with a revolutionary programme and a democratic, not bureaucratic, constitution that can organise and mobilise workers on a political basis, across sectional divides. Only this organisation can disarm the bureaucratic trade union leaders that are prostrating themselves before Blair’s capitalist Labour Party.

To build this party and prevent any ‘constitution’ being imposed on the SLP from on high, it is crucial that as many militants, revolutionaries and activists join the SLP and get their views heard at the May 4 conference in London.

Although its development is uneven, the SLP is recruiting significant layers of activists, particularly in England. It is important to recognise that to have any chance of socialism in Britain we need to have a Britain-wide party organised in Scotland, Wales and England. This has to be done without denying the Scottish people the right to self-determination. A federal republic of Scotland, Wales and England would embody that right, enabling voluntary union or voluntary separation.

While urging all members of the SSA to join the SLP, the SLP and its members must get involved in the alliance. There must be no room for sectarianism, if there is a mass movement of the class developing then it is the duty of all partisans of our class to debate and argue for the correct political line but also to get stuck into the activity.

Andy McLean