22.07.1999

Alliance or party?

Dave Spencer continues the debate on divisions that arose over the West Midlands European elections, and discusses the future of the Socialist Alliance

My last article was intended as a contribution to a political discussion on the future of the left in the aftermath of the Euro elections (‘A nod and a wink’ Weekly Worker June 17). The reply from the West Midlands Socialist Alliance (WMSA) avoids any political analysis of the results and seems intent only on self-justification and blaming Christine Oddy for their lost deposit (Weekly Worker July 8).

The impetus for me writing the article was the particular experience in Coventry where the local alliance, the Coventry and Warwickshire Socialist Alliance (CAWSA), was divided into two rival campaigns - one for the WMSA slate; the other for Christine Oddy MEP, standing as independent Labour. Furthermore the supporters of Christine Oddy were prevented by WMSA supporters from even mentioning their existence in three sentences in the CAWSA’s monthly bulletin. Thus the bulletin went out in the name of six committee members, calling for a vote for the WMSA slate, when three of those committee members were supporting Christine Oddy.

This experience raises the question of whether the Socialist Alliance is indeed an alliance of various strands and tendencies - or a political party with a hierarchical structure of national, regional and local bodies with democratic decisions on strategy and tactics and some binding discipline. Personally I would be in favour of the latter option, as in the ‘Scottish turn’, as I understand it, whereby the Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA) transformed itself into the Scottish Socialist Party, with Scottish Militant Labour withdrawing the boundaries of their organisation in order to fuse with smaller groups and independent socialists. However, the three Coventry comrades who signed the July 8 WMSA response have always favoured the former option with a liaison and networking role for the Socialist Alliance.

It is ironic therefore that the WMSA statement reads as though the SA is a political party, when clearly it is not and these comrades do not want it to be. For example, what is the West Midlands Socialist Alliance? In the WMSA statement you would be forgiven for thinking that WMSA was a regional organisation of a party, intermediate between local and national bodies. Thus we have the WMSA officers “unanimously endorsing the CAWSA sub-committee decision to post their June newsletter without any reference to Christine Oddy’s campaign”.

Leaving aside the “facts” that the sub-committee was split three against three and that the Coventry censors were also WMSA officers, what right do WMSA officers have to endorse anything to do with the CAWSA or even pay the postage of their bulletin? In a political party - certainly; but in an alliance? The political reality and context behind the WMSA ‘fact sheet’ was an electoral pact between various left groups, some of whom - notably the Socialist Workers Party - do not otherwise participate in the SA project.

The name ‘Socialist Alliance’ was accidental: it could have been ‘Socialist Unity’, ‘Socialist Alternative’, or whatever the groups decided. Therefore the decision as to whether a WMSA slate would stand in the Euro elections was not made democratically in the SA at national, regional or local level, but was made in the national committees of the left groups involved in the pact. If the SWP or Socialist Party had decided to pull out in the West Midlands, as they did in London and the North West, there would have been no WMSA slate and no WMSA.

We can only speculate as to why the SWP supported the Socialist Labour Party in London, but stood candidates in a slate against the SLP in the West Midlands, and why the SP thought it worthwhile to have a go in the West Midlands, but not elsewhere. I say we can only speculate because we do not know the bases of their decisions: they were made in secret, but we still had to stand around waiting for them. This is what I meant in my article by the lateness of the WMSA declaration.

One explanation for the mess which was the Socialist Alliance efforts in the Euro elections is what Allan Green of the former SSA called the hybrid nature of the SA. It is composed, on the one hand, of national left groups with their own agendas and democratic centralist methods of organisation and, on the other hand, of local groups, composed of independent socialists and campaigning groups. The only way to overcome the distrust and misunderstandings is for the left groups to democratise their own proceedings and then to unite under one organisation.

My view, and that of other independent socialists, was: ‘The left groups will make the decision on whether to stand or not. They must know what they are doing. They will take into account the money involved. They will each produce their own separate leaflets and propaganda, and their members will be out recruiting to their own organisations. Let them get on with it.’ It is unfortunate, but I cannot see any other realistic way of looking at the situation while we have a hybrid organisation.

Another example from the WMSA statement which reinforces my argument is the start of the second paragraph, which reads: “The Socialist Alliance agreed to start considering standing Euro election candidates at a national conference in March 1998.” What they do not say is that at that very same conference Spencer Fitzgibbon of the Green Party made an impassioned plea for the alliance to support the Greens in the 1999 Euro election. He reported that the Greens already had their slates of candidates elected and were well on the way to raising by campaigns and collections the £20,000 needed in each region for deposits and leaflets.

Notice the difference in approach. One year before the election the Greens are well organised while the SA nationally “agreed to start considering standing”. Later the WMSA statement tells us that three days before nominations closed, and one month before the actual election, £9,000 had been committed to the printers for leaflets and £5,000 was needed for the deposit, but that money had not yet been collected. This is not a serious way of running an election campaign.

As I stated in my article, on the day in May 1997 when New Labour was elected we all knew that proportional representation would be used in some elections and would give the left an opening. We also knew that the Euro elections would come at Blair’s mid-term. Arthur Scargill started the SLP on this basis in spring 1996. The SSA made their transformation into the SSP so that they could campaign with credibility in the assembly and Euro elections.

And what about the SA? They “agreed to start considering standing” one year into Blair’s government and one year before the actual election. This can only be a lack of strategy or a wrong strategy, stemming from the left groups and from the SA Liaison Committee - in particular from the Socialist Party in England and Wales.

The WMSA statement fails to mention political strategy and tactics at all, or any lessons learnt from the election experience. Furthermore they fail to address what went wrong with their predictions. In the SA national bulletin Pete McLaren predicted that WMSA would not lose their deposit, that Dave Nellist would be an MEP and that Christine Oddy would take just a few votes.

Incidentally it is fairly obvious from these predictions what the WMSA attitude to Christine Oddy was, whatever they say in their statement. They would not have wanted her at number one on the slate. Certainly the left groups, the SP and the SWP, wanted Dave Nellist as number one. That is why they agreed the slate in the West Midlands and pulled out in London and the North West. But what happened to the predictions which were clearly wrong? The WMSA statement does not even begin to give any answers.

In this context the last sentence is pathetic: “We hope we can all move forward together in building the Socialist Alliance project now the elections are over.” The point is that the elections have raised the question, ‘What exactly is the Socialist Alliance project?’ Is it censoring comrades you do not agree with and then getting others to endorse censorship when they have no right to? Is it waiting around while self-important, undemocratic left groups make up their mind what is in their short-term interest?

The WMSA five think they can beat people over the head, put them in their place and then shout, ‘business as usual’. It is just not good enough. We need to know what they mean by “the Socialist Alliance project”, what their strategy is and how they intend to change their behaviour.