03.02.2000

Why walk away?

Socialist Party dissident speaks out

The ongoing sectarian degeneration of our party continues - not only unchecked, but also, it seems, gathering momentum.

News that the Socialist Party has jeopardised its participation in, and support for, the London Socialist Alliance in favour of the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation has been greeted with disgust and anger by a small layer of cadre. Small, because the party's continuing fragmentation is rapidly shedding many of those who are not simply gullible and blindly loyal. Of course this latest contortion by an increasingly irrational leadership underlines, yet again, how marginalised and politically weak we have become.

So what on earth could possess our leadership to snub the LSA at this late stage in favour of the CATP? Is it possible that here at last is the "mass outburst of anger", the "crisis of expectations" that we have long predicted? Sadly the CATP is anything but that. Of course, it would be foolish to ignore that, on one level at least, this initiative does "represent the first tentative steps of a section of the trade union movement to stand against the Labour Party, albeit on the single issue of transport" (unsuccessful SP motion to the LSA, Weekly Worker January 20). But the weaknesses far outweigh the strengths. Leaving aside the question of the dubious factional leadership of Fisc (comrades Sikorski et al) within the CATP, those weaknesses are at least twofold.

Firstly, the single-issue nature of the campaign ensures that any success it may have will invariably be of the 'one hit wonder' variety. Secondly, the intransigent disdain displayed by the CATP towards the wider left places it firmly in the sectarian tradition it purports to despise in the rest of us. Just what our class needs.

So what of the SP? Publicly, our perspective is to work in socialist alliances as a step towards the creation of a new mass workers' party. (In the words of one wag, "The SP is desperately seeking a new reformist sun to orbit.") Apart from Dave Nellist and Coventry though, there is little or no evidence of concrete commitment to this. Behind closed doors, however, there lies what some comrades describe as an "undeclared agenda". That is, that we are (at least) the voice of such a formation. This is perfectly consistent with the grand illusions the party has been suffering under since the name change and subsequently the overt reformist rubbish peddled by The Socialist and Socialism Today. It is clear the leadership feel it possesses privileged knowledge and that everyone else can go hang! How else to explain the sectarianism that has characterised our involvement and now collapse regarding the LSA?

Some comrades believe the question of Labour is where have come unstuck. This is key to current decisions by the leadership and probably gets close to the mark. At some point - we do not say when, where and how - the Labour Party became a "totally bourgeois party". And only recently is deserving to be shunned by advanced workers. This 'qualitative change' was what alibied the turn to open work. A bit much to swallow for comrades who had been raised on our former, equally ridiculous, illusions in Labour as an expression of the trade union movement that had always had (at least according to our general secretary, Peter Taaffe) a significant and legitimate Marxist strand since its inception.

Labour now, we are told, is the party of pro-imperialism, a defender of capital and the enemy of the working class. For heaven's sake when has it ever been anything else? The task facing us all is to break Labour's stranglehold over our class and this, sadly, is where we have lost the plot.

On the one hand we supported Livingstone's right to seek Labour's nomination for London mayor, but - should he win that nomination - we cannot possibly support him because, presumably, he is a simply bourgeois politician representing a bourgeois party! It may seem awfully 'left' to some comrades but, to repeat a well-worn Trotskyist clich"š, leftism and opportunism are two sides of the same coin.

So, what of the poor unfortunates on the ground who have to follow the line? Well, although we will continue to play a role in the LSA, "given the decision to stand against the CATP list, the Socialist Party will not participate in the LSA slate" (SP statement to LSA, Weekly Worker January 20). I would not be councillor Ian Page for all the tea in China. The comrade is said to be "fuming" and "embarrassed" at this Taaffeite volte-face and, let's face it, who could blame him?

We can only speculate as to the amount of confusion and demoralisation this latest sectarian insanity will introduce into the dwindling ranks of our activists, but signs of discontent are popping up in the most unlikely of places. One long-term loyalist was heard to plaintively wail, "But where is the debate? When did we decide this? There hasn't even been an explanation in the Members Bulletin." Typically, the poor wretch was told that he clearly did not grasp the intricacies of democratic centralism. For the uniformed, this is how it works: leaders are elected by the membership at conference and remain accountable to it. Until the following conference the leaders do as they like. If you are unhappy with them, then of course you have every right to vote them out at conference.

Seriously though, the progress made by the LSA is excellent and, while no one would wish to cover up the important political differences that still divide us, it is surely one of the most significant left initiatives for some years. Certainly not a new "mass workers' party" by any stretch of the imagination, but quite possibly the first, faint signs of the kind of unity that could produce one. At the very least a real opportunity to engage with our class and to imbue it with revolutionary politics - a real chance to break the stranglehold of auto-Labourism.

Why then are we walking away? Answers on a postcard please.