10.10.1996

Party perspectives

Party notes

The major item on the Party’s forthcoming aggregate in November is our perspectives and year plan for 1997. The debate around the formulation of these is always an important opportunity for our organisation as a whole not simply to look forward, but also to take stock of the past year of activity and political intervention.

Obviously, as comrades debate national perspectives, the Socialist Labour Party will be the key question. Our internal Perspective ’96 document anticipated the development of the SLP and set it in the context of the more general period of political fluidity and realignment. However, at the stage when P’96 was finalised, the full potential of this initiative was only starting to emerge. Here is what we were thinking about the question back in late October/early November of 1995:

“[The rightward drift of Labour] has prompted some to float the idea of a new ‘socialist party’. Of course, such a party would not be the product of a movement from the class - the struggles of the organised workers’ movement remain at an historically low ebb. If it emerged, such an organisation would be the offspring of the left, of a realignment in the ranks of left Labour and its revolutionary diaspora ... Our attitude to such a realignment should not be one of unremitting hostility or leftist abstentionism. On the contrary, we should respond with enthusiasm and actively seek to shape the new party. Nothing in politics is pre-ordained. We should fight for the new formation - whatever name it finally adopts - to be a communist party” (Perspectives ’96, p4).

At the time, some Party members accused us of getting far too excited over the prospect of a break to the left from Labour. Clearly, when these lines were written, we were actually underestimating the potential and importance of the process that was to give birth to the SLP. Even when the document was passed, there was a certain lag between the more cautious approach exemplified in these lines and the Party’s growing realisation that something very important was happening. Nevertheless, we correctly highlighted the fundamental duty of revolutionaries faced with such an important development: “It is ... imperative that communists struggle to shape the political contours of the new organisation from the beginning” (p5).

By the time I came to comment on the newly-passed Perspectives ’96 document in the Weekly Worker (December 21, 1995), the fact that this “could be an opportunity of historic proportions” had become clear. Thus:

“All of our activity in the coming period must be subordinated to this key question. It sets in context all of the details of our perspectives for 1996 and all our work.”

Looking back over the past year, comrades can now draw on the experience of precisely this type of political struggle. Perspectives ’97 must attempt to both summarise the lessons of our fight thus far and outline a broad approach for the coming 12 months.

The general election in 1997 will be an important test for all organisations on the British left - the SLP included - and, after the (almost inevitable) election of a Labour government, will change the political terrain that all of us work on. In Scotland, the challenge of our communist intervention through the Scottish Socialist Alliance must also be very carefully analysed by all parts of the organisation.

The debate around Perspectives ’97 offers the organisation as a whole the opportunity to assimilate as one body the important lessons of the last 12 months of political struggle. All Party cells, branches and other organisations must agenda this discussion as soon as possible.

Mark Fischer
national organiser