29.05.1997

Socialist Party’s open letter

Party notes

The post-election analysis of the Socialist Party underlines the extent to which this important organisation on the left has been politically disorientated over the past period.

The May 23 issue of its paper The Socialist reprints extracts from a semi-open letter to the Socialist Labour Party’s leadership, calling for “the reopening of discussions between our parties about the possibility of creating a broad federal socialist party”. The letter correctly notes that the situation in the general election, where candidates from the SP and the SLP actually stood against each other, “should not be repeated. It was of no benefit to either party or to the working class as a whole.”

Given the relative performances of the two parties on May 1, the SP will be lucky to even get a reply to this letter. The fact that SLP candidates edged out SPers in every head-to-head contest and the party did marginally better nationally will reinforce the sectarianism of the leadership of Scargill’s organisation. Arthur has made it abundantly clear that he does not intend to have left groupings in his party. After beating the SP electorally, why should he even think about “reopening discussions” with it?

The open letter is also an expression of the lack of clarity that haunts SP perspectives in general. Formally it remains committed to the establishment of a ‘mass workers’ party’ - its own version of the ‘party of recomposition’ thesis. But its exclusion from the SLP prompted the SP leadership to retreat into a self-deluding ghetto. While it therefore still calls for a new party, it postures that “we have a responsibility to intervene now to win the best workers to socialist and Marxist ideas” (The Socialist February 7); that it is on the verge of entering “a new period of advance for the forces of Marxism under our fresh Socialist Party banner” (Socialism Today February 1997).

Presumably the election results have provided some food for thought in the SP. But the approach to the SLP is made from a considerably weaker position now. The leadership of the organisation must bear the responsibility for inept tactics, for not pursuing a unity offensive with single-minded vigour from the first stirrings of the SLP. Plaintive musings along the lines of “a joint [election] campaign would improve the standing of all candidates beyond mere arithmetic” (Socialism Today May 1997) will cut no mustard with the sectarian leadership of the SLP, a body that has made it explicit that it proposes a bureaucratic war of extinction to the SP and much of the rest of the left.

Meanwhile, the SP appears to vacillate between a formal commitment to working class political unity and a narrow ‘ourselves alone’ orientation. In Scotland for example, we can a see a definite cooling of Scottish Militant Labour’s attitude towards the Scottish Socialist Alliance. In a snapshot article in this month’s Socialism Today on ‘What Labour’s Scottish victory means’, leading SMLer Alan McCombes barely mentions the SSA, apart from a lame observation at the end that “the 8,000 votes for the new SSA in Glasgow represents a small but significant schism in Labour’s working class support” (my emphasis - MF). The SSA stood elsewhere of course, and did at least as well as the bulk of the candidates in Glasgow, most of whom were SMLers. However, the emphasis on this city may represent a certain freezing out of other political forces in the Alliance, the Communist Party included.

Inside the SSA, SML have found the process of building political unity uncomfortable, given the Communist Party’s propensity to openly challenge its opportunist manoeuvring, particularly around Blair’s sop referendum. Certainly debate and political clarification is viewed at best as disruptive, at worst as sectarian.

The coming period could be a make-or-break one for the SP. It could turn its back on the project of unity and fight to build its own organisation exclusively. Given the centrifugal pressures generated by its opportunist programme, this could see its spectacular demise. If the principle of unity is taken seriously, it must seek to politically engage all forces on the left committed to building a mass revolutionary party of the Class, not just another more or less successful sect.

Mark Fischer
national organiser