24.02.2000

North West

Drawing in other forces

The North West Socialist Alliance met in Manchester on February 15, ostensibly to discuss our plans for the forthcoming council elections. Attentive readers will remember that this ad-hoc formation grew out of the negotiations around a joint slate for the European elections. Although the project collapsed when the Socialist Workers Party decided to back the Socialist Labour Party, the NWSA continued to function as a tentative alliance.

This was for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Merseyside Socialists (comrades who recently split from Socialist Party in England and Wales) seem disinclined to build an alliance on their own patch, preferring to work under the NWSA umbrella. Secondly, the predominantly Manchester-based organisations in the NWSA (CPGB, Alliance for Workers' Liberty and the International Socialist League) have all been excluded from the steering committee of Greater Manchester Socialist Alliance after its AGM in September 1999. Essentially the NWSA has partly filled the democratic deficit left open by the shabby GMSA clique of John Nicholson, Chris Jones, Margaret Manning et al.

However, one should not be left with the false impression that NWSA does not have its faults. Indeed, one would have to admit they were somewhat glaring. In its worst moments the NWSA has threatened to become something of a talking shop, buttressed by a distinctly cautious internal culture. Our recent meeting was an excellent case in point.

John Pearson opened proceedings with this motion from Manchester CPGB: "The North West Socialist Alliance recognises the importance of electoral interventions as an aspect of our work in solidifying the Socialist Alliance and promoting independent working class politics.

"It applauds the united socialist challenge being mounted in the Greater London Assembly elections by the London Socialist Alliance and it notes the involvement in that campaign of socialist organisations which are not currently participating in the NWSA - ie, the Socialist Workers Party, Workers Power and the International Socialist Group.

"The NWSA agrees that a co-ordinated challenge in the forthcoming council elections, under the Socialist Alliance banner, would be an appropriate means to attempt to extend to our own region the cooperation achieved in London.

"Such a campaign would be timely too, in view of the grossly undemocratic reform agendas being pursued by many councils in the region, at the behest of the Blair government, and in view of the intensifying attacks on the services provided by the councils and on the pay and conditions of local government workers.

"The NWSA resolves in principle to stand candidates in Manchester, Liverpool and Tameside and to select seats where council leaders or other councillors prominent in leading the anti-working class attacks are standing for re-election.

"It further resolves to urge the SWP, Workers Power and the ISG to join the election campaign in the North West."

In the context of the recent advances made by the London SA this may seem rather uncontroversial, but then this is the North West and not London, which unfortunately means that any such motion exposes near universal timidity and fudging.

First out of the traps was Martin Ralph of the ISL who then proceeded to lumber around the track with all the poise and dynamism of a rheumatic greyhound. Comrade Ralph began by stating there should be no vote on London events. CPGB comrades were not surprised at this early application of pressure on the brakes. Comrade Ralph is a firm supporter of the single-issue CATP slate in London - an organised slate of the political left is far too 'advanced' for London workers. Now I think even comrade Ralph would admit (in his darker moments) that these arguments have received something of a leathering from AWL and CPGB members inside NWSA.

Indeed, at a previous meeting of the NWSA when the relative merits of the London slates were debated, comrade Ralph was seen to be veering between emotional outpourings and gibbering incoherence. Therefore our learned comrade was quite right to be a little anxious. Comrade Ralph then moved on to state that we should aim in 'principle' to stand (a phrase that Martin had previously taught us to be very cynical about) before launching into his usual waffle about standing where we have a 'local base'.

The ISL creeped out of the WRP's implosion in the mid-1980s. Its current Trotskyite practice consists of strike-chasing and searching out spontaneous movements of the class that it can opportunistically adapt itself to. The ISL then is vehemently anti-Party in the sense that it refuses to challenge the working class in its current spontaneous habitat - hence the tedious diatribe about 'local issues'. This methodology was amply illustrated when comrade Ralph tackled the issue of the Tameside careworkers, making the bizarre comment that he 'was not sure' who had a Socialist Alliance base in Tameside.

CPGB comrades pointed out that this was all rather disingenuous, coming as it did from a man who is actually the chair of the strikers' support group! It was surely comrade Ralph who exercised some authority with the careworkers who had in fact shown themselves quite willing to challenge sitting Labour councillors in last year's council elections. One can only surmise that comrade Ralph is unhappy about approaching the Tamesiders under the aegis of the Socialist Alliance, ideas of showing a lead and winning the working class to a broader political project being alien to the ISL. No doubt comrade Ralph could square all this with some vacuous notion of Trotskyite 'orthodoxy', but in the context of a fledgling NWSA such tired arguments merely become excuses.

This apparently 'common-sense' idea of standing only where we have a local base (echoed by the AWL and Merseyside Socialists) really does need dispelling. Of course, it would be excellent if the NWSA was firmly rooted in the council wards of Merseyside and Greater Manchester. But on the other hand we should not fear having to 'parachute' people in. Arguments that 'local people' (whoever they might be) do not like this would leave us practically disarmed were we attempting to tackle the xenophobia and racism that still poisons some sections of the working class. Indeed if taken to its logical end, such reasoning actually strengthens xenophobia.

Similarly we must be brutally frank and state that you could probably count on two hands all the housing estates in Britain were the left has any kind of base. Therefore if comrades want to start picking and choosing were they feel 'safe' enough to stand we might as well all bugger off and retire into private life. Sooner or later someone, at some time, is going to have to show a lead in beginning the work of re-implanting working class ideas in local politics - why not NWSA in 2000? In any case, as the Merseyside comrades honestly pointed out, their local record has been no guarantor of electoral success. Recent events in LSA have also illuminated the flaws in this 'local politics first' argument, when 'top-down' organisational unity has been the facilitator for vibrant local groups.

Other doubts were raised by Kathy Wilson of the Merseyside Socialists: in particular the thorny question of relations between NWSA and the Greater Manchester SA. The comrade seemed very concerned about 'stepping on people's toes' if the NWSA resolved to stand in Manchester itself.

It has be said that comrade Wilson's concerns received fairly short shrift from the meeting. CPGB comrades argued that if this was a case of giving Nicholson's personal clique a veto on electoral activity in Manchester, the probable outcome would be no electoral candidates. GMSA is a talking shop, pure and simple. ISL comrades brought up a recent GMSA 'forum' on the World Trade Organisation which soon degenerated into a set of boring, technical workshops with any concrete proposals from the small audience being frowned upon. In a similar vein both CPGB and AWL comrades remarked that GMSA has no democratic means by which to engage the likes of the SWP and others in electoral campaigns, being run by 'officers' and not the organisations who actually fund its 'activity'. NWSA is surely the best vehicle to draw in other forces: any individual or organisation wishing to get involved can turn up and have their voices heard and votes counted immediately.

The result of this meeting was that the CPGB motion was left on the table. Although our partners in the NWSA seem distinctly reticent about committing themselves to the principle of standing in the May council elections we can at least take heart in the decision of the NWSA to approach interested parties (SWP, SPEW, Workers Power, the ISG and GMSA) about the possibility of a joint challenge to New Labour in Manchester, with a meeting proposed for February 29.

One can only hope that the potential of this wider involvement will energise certain elements and dispel some of the pessimism that currently troubles the NWSA.