02.07.1998

Inclusive democracy is key

London Socialist Alliance

London Socialist Alliance stands at a crossroads. Members and affiliates attending the July 5 general meeting have before them two roads. The ‘amalgamated’ motion points to sectarian exclusion, faddism, and localist fragmentation. The motion presented by the CPGB (see back page) points to the continuation of inclusive democracy and strength through principle. Obviously which road is taken will have profound implications for the whole project, not only in London but throughout the whole country.

Elements in the Socialist Party, Socialist Outlook and the Socialist Democracy Group have congealed into what can only be called a rotten ‘amalgamated’ bloc. The twofold effect of their motion would be to wind down the LSA and ingratiate the greens. According to news leaked by Nick Long (Lewisham SA), the ‘amalgamated’ bloc have also got together with people from the Green Socialist Network (a wing of the Democratic Left), the Independent Labour Network (around MEPs Hugh Kerr and Ken Coates), and the Movement for Socialism (the rump of the Workers Revolutionary Party). This weird amalgam exists to present a slate of candidates for an LSA committee, seemingly with the sole purpose of excluding those associated with the CPGB ... “first they came for the communists”.

A number of different and often contradictory motives are in operation. It is not that the CPGB has proved a hindrance or is unwilling to take on the burden of work. Since initiating the LSA our comrades have played an active and constructive role on the ad-hoc committee. There has been no domination. Nor attempt at domination.

However, certain forces fear and loathe the CPGB simply because we engage, as a matter of principle, in open polemic ... and not only in the Weekly Worker. The SP rep on the ad-hoc committee vehemently objected to the circulation of an article of mine in the regular mailing - thankfully after a sharp exchange censorship was rejected. Now along with their allies in Socialist Outlook and SDG they presumably think debate can be avoided by exclusion.

There is also the fact that we and other comrades seek to build the LSA through elections - the biggest slate of SA candidates for the May 7 local elections in London was fielded by the CPGB. Perhaps the SP does not want another left force standing candidates, especially one that finds interpretation in the sectarian mind as a ‘diversion’ from the task of building the “small mass party”. Certainly, having just lost his largest region, comrade Peter Taaffe dreads another Scotland. Does this explain why SP is determined to stop the monthly LSA meetings and wants to disorganise our activists into “existing campaigns” and localism? Surely a grossly irresponsible proposal in the long run-up to the London Assembly, mayoral and European elections. We should be concentrating, centralising and upping the tempo of our small forces, not scattering them. Whatever the SP’s exact reason, it receives opportunist support from Socialist Outlook - still organically tied to Tony Blair and auto-Labourism.

Finally there is the green question. The greens are a petty bourgeois movement happily containing within themselves a wide spectrum, ranging from the critical-utopian to the overtly fascist. Its best thinkers have written savage indictments of capitalism which supply wonderful ammunition for the class struggle. Despite that most green ideas are confused, naive and at the end of the day reactionary. There is an underlying neo-Malthusian assumption which sees human beings as the fundamental problem. A general prejudice also exists against economic growth and technological progress. The world’s ecological problems are to be solved through an impossible return to nature - itself, of course, a social construct.

Needless to say the CPGB is not opposed to the affiliation of green organisations and individuals who declare themselves socialists. Indeed such affiliations are to be positively welcomed. But it does not follow that the CPGB is committed to a red-green alliance. We envisage a united front of socialists. Not, it should be stressed, on some lowest-common-denominator basis. Nor in order to end polemical exchanges. The CPGB fights for the highest organisational and political unity. That necessarily requires constant political debate, criticism and self-criticism.

Our conditional attitude towards greens has its malevolent antipode. Socialist Outlook and in particular David Lyons of the SDG are intent not only on orientating towards the greens, but making the SAs acceptable to them by purging the extreme left: ie, the CPGB. Comrade Lyons, it should be pointed out, is not only a member of SDG, but the Green Socialist Network (ironically he walked out of the SP last year in the most capricious manner, waving the flag of revolutionary Marxism).

Both Socialist Outlook and comrade Lyons, are via separate factional channels, joined to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (which has well known sympathisers in Arthur Scargill’s SLP in the shape of the Fisc witch hunters). This school of thought is notoriously eclectic and tailist. Socialism is viewed not as the self-liberation of the working class. Initially at least, the socialist transformation begins as the result of forces from on high.

In the 1950s the unconscious vehicle for a mechanically inevitable socialism was the Red Army, Broz Tito and Nye Bevan; in the 1960s Maoism, Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro; in the 1970s student foci and third world guerrillas; in the 1980s Tony Benn, municipal social democracy and Solidarnosc. Now, in the 1990s, with capitalist triumphalism and the collapse of ‘official communism’ and Labourism as any sort of alternative social vision, it would appear that the banner of human liberation has passed to other hands. This time it is the neo-social democratic parties of ‘recomposition’ and the greens. Put another way, the ideologically weak search for something that appears materially powerful. Having been identified, no matter how undemocratic and morally barren, it is to be venerated, excused and emulated. The result is a travesty of Marxism and, as in the case of the LSA, a distinct rightist, bureaucratic, not to say liquidationist, trajectory.

The LSA is at a very early and therefore vulnerable stage of development. No one is, or should be, content with existing affiliations, individual membership or level of support and activity. We have a long way to go. That said, it would be wrong to underestimate or dismiss, let alone jeopardise, what has been done thus far. Indeed there is every reason to build on our real strengths, which at present derive from three mutually reinforcing pillars.

Firstly unity. The LSA is a rudimentary united front. The appointment of Anne Murphy as coordinator and Ian Driver as chair took place in that spirit - the former from the CPGB, the latter from the SDG. The recent SWP break from auto-Labourism and the crisis of the Labour left create excellent conditions for broadening and deepening. Blair’s stubborn maintenance of anti-trade union laws also means trade union affiliations are quite possible in the short to medium term.

Secondly politics. In the midst of Blair’s de-Labourisation of his party the SAs can provide an alternative for masses of traditional Labour voters. That has nothing to do with re-inventing Labourism. It is an opportunity to renew genuine socialism, both in terms of theory and as a class movement - social democracy and all variants of national or bureaucratic socialism are bankrupt and anti-working class. Our willingness to challenge Labour in the ballot box with a revolutionary manifesto is therefore correct.

Thirdly democracy. The LSA is an inclusive project. Unlike Scargill’s SLP there has been no exclusion and witch hunting. Our ad-hoc committee has been open to all groups and individual members. Sectarianism has been combated on the field of practice, not by voting through a resolution allowing for the barring of minority opinions. Everything has been conducted in a spirit of principled unity and democratic tolerance.

It is not only the ‘amalgamated’ bloc which seems intent on pulling away these pillars. The LSA is a vital part of an all-Britain network. Developments in the LSA take place in this wider context, and the fact is that there exists at the top an unspoken agenda to close the Socialist Alliances as a militant and inclusive united front ... at present this takes the form of bureaucratic manoeuvre against the CPGB.

Dave Nellist suggested at the Coventry conference of the SAs that we in London send a representative to the Liaison Group of the Network of Socialist Alliances - itself a very ad-hoc body. Our coordinator, Anne Murphy, was elected unopposed in March. A decision not to the liking of a certain John Nicholson - coordinator of Manchester SA and the network. On the phone he darkly suggested to comrade Murphy that her election was invalid. Unnamed persons in London had raised unnamed objections. To clear up the matter beyond a shadow of doubt the question of the London rep was again put on the agenda in April. Again unopposed, comrade Murphy was confirmed. Again Nicholson objected. This time however, instead of inventing some excuse he resorted to a stonewalling silence ... and intrigue.

None of comrade Murphy’s numerous telephone massages, e-mails or letters have been deigned with a reply. London - which is absolutely essential for the whole Socialist Alliance project - can elect anyone it wishes ... as long as it is not comrade Murphy. So much for uniting on the 80% where we are supposed to agree while tolerating those who have disagreements.

Unfortunately comrade Nicholson has come to personify the worst in intolerance and Labourite-type plotting. With the help of an unholy coalition of Socialist Outlook, the SP and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, he staged-managed a democratic coup against democracy in Greater Manchester SA. Its May 16 annual conference threw out the principle of inclusion - along with representatives and supporters of the CPGB.

Comrade Nicholson ran the meeting in a fashion that would have made even Scargill blush with shame. Originally billed as an all-day event, it was arbitrarily cut in half. Naturally the time he allowed himself was not reduced. Nor was that of the ‘guest speaker’ - Spencer Fitzgibbon of the Green Party. But, no doubt as intended, it did spell disaster for ‘debates’ on motions and amendments. They were limited to one minute per comrade. The clock was also used to prevent those standing for committee elections from addressing the meeting.

The Manchester events show the ‘amalgamated bloc’ and comrade Nicholson’s outrageous treatment of comrade Murphy in their true light. This trend within the SAs is against any revolutionary challenge to Labourism in elections, eschews frank and open debate and wants to reinvent Labourism by way of a transfusion of green politics. Instinctively it recognises the CPGB as its most intransigent and dangerous enemy.

The CPGB is determined to defend and advance democracy. We say London should be able to elect whatever rep it so chooses. We also stand by inclusion. That is why there is no CPGB-sponsored slate of candidates which will result in any defeated minority being excluded. Our motion aims to formalise the structures of the LSA in the manner of the flexible, combative and inclusive democracy practised by the soviets - or workers’ councils - during the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Every affiliated organisation should have the right to send one instantly recallable delegate - that would include borough alliances, political organisations, trade unions and progressive campaigns (we are open to suggestions on a tiered system which accounts for big differences in numbers or political weight). Crucially our proposal allows for the speedy and full reflection of growth, success and change. A new affiliate will not have to wait a year before finding whether or not this or that majority will permit it to take a seat on our committee. Nor will it have to rely on cooption - which is prone to terrible abuse by a determined clique (a majority of one can be turned into something totally unassailable by cooption). It would moreover be organisations, not individuals which count. So if a comrade is assigned to another task by their union committee, they can be replaced without fuss or bother by that organisation at a moment’s notice. There would be no need for an annual general meeting and the generosity of the majority.

We apply the same flexible practice to officers. Treasurers, editors, chairs, coordinators, trade union organisers, etc should be elected when and where needed, not according to some snapshot popularity poll by an atomised membership. They should be elected by and accountable to their peers. We need hard grafters, not finicky stars. The mayoral or presidential system has no place in our tradition. Officers should be elected and replaceable by those whom they work alongside. If a comrade has to drop out of activity because of illness or family pressures, another can easily be substituted. By the same measure those who fail to carry out agreed tasks can be replaced without the need for cumbersome general meetings - mainly they ought to be called for the purposes of broad discussions and decisions, not details of day-to-day organisation.

Our proposals also allow political alterations at the base of the organisation to be immediately reflected. If below there is a shift to the right, that will see a shift to the right above. The same applies if there is a shift to the left. So the CPGB is for the right of the minority to become a majority and the right of the majority to take the leading positions ... but not through exclusion.

John Bridge

CPGB representative on London SA ad-hoc committee