29.03.2000

English Socialist Alliance conference

Nellist backs LSA list

Both the Socialist Workers Party and the London Socialist Alliance have now affiliated to the Socialist Alliance in England. This is a welcome move. The SA, formerly the Network of Socialist Alliances, is a grouping that began with some promise, but fell under the lethargic bureaucratic sway of the pink-green John Nicholson, Pete McLaren, Dave Church and Declan O'Neill, with Dave Nellist of the Socialist Party in England and Wales fronting its affairs.

While the Nicholson-Nellist SA has been stalled for almost a year, a real movement has developed in London around the forthcoming Greater London Assembly elections. Unfortunately, however, the London Socialist Alliance with its hundreds of active supporters must rely on comrade Nellist, the registered 'leader' of the Socialist Alliance 'party', to sanction the use of the name under the terms of the Registration of Political Parties Act. Comrade Nellist's Coventry and Warwickshire Socialist Alliance put forward a motion to the SA's second annual conference, held in Leicester on March 25, stating that only affiliated organisations could use the name. Lacking authority, comrade Nellist turns to the power of resolutions.

At the conference Greg Tucker of the International Socialist Group, the LSA's secretary, asked what had happened to his recent affiliation application. Comrade Nellist replied that he was not sure whether the structure was intended to permit the affiliation of regional, as opposed to local, socialist alliances: "We haven't in the past had a regional alliance affiliated," he declared. This prompted comrade Toby Abse of the Independent Labour Network and LSA to query whether Nicholson's Greater Manchester SA - which is affiliated - was not in fact a region.

Dave Church of the Walsall Democratic Labour Party - whether by accident or design - rescued the seemingly perplexed Nellist with the statement that, "At the moment affiliation is open to both regional and local alliances". Perhaps this particular double-act was for the benefit of SPEW's leadership. Dave Nellist can portray himself as being swept along, reluctantly welcoming aboard the LSA. The SPEW leadership's differences with the LSA majority over standing a slate in the proportional representation section of the assembly elections on May 4, rather than supporting the single-issue Campaign Against Tube Privatisation, have been well documented in the Weekly Worker. "You're not getting your money back then, Greg," Nellist smiled as he called next business.

Interestingly, while comrade Nellist began his remarks with a mealy-mouthed support for the SP's official line of facing both ways, he ended up calling on all comrades to support the LSA - even to the point of urging them to go to London to help with the campaign. Pointedly, he said those interested should contact Greg Tucker, not his own SP comrades, if they wanted to get involved.

The Coventry and Warwickshire motion was the only one on the agenda. It read: "The Socialist Alliance is, at this stage of its development, more of a network of left/green groups than a party, and affiliation will be encouraged on that basis. The title 'Socialist Alliance' will remain our electoral name, to be used as such only where local/regional alliances are affiliated nationally and, if necessary, approved for that purpose by the officers/liaison meeting." An amendment from GMSA proposed deletion of all after "electoral name" in the second sentence and its substitution by "and a special conference will be held in early autumn on how to work for maximum unity across all socialists in elections".

With neither the time nor the desire for a debate in this 'consensus'-driven organisation (the meeting was scheduled to take one hour only, and the now infamous one-minute time limit on speeches was wielded once again), a strange haggling process took place, whereby Nicholson for GMSA agreed that the amendment would become an addition to the Coventry control mechanisms. But, with the LSA's affiliation now confirmed, there was no longer any reason for concern over the motion. For this reason the two senior SWPers present, Pat Stack and Rob Hoveman, declined to intervene, sitting silently at the back of the hall.

Also tight-lipped at this stage was SPEW's national organiser, Hannah Sell. However, at the activists' meeting which had preceded the AGM comrade Sell had been put firmly in her place. Drawing a heckle from comrade Hoveman, she said that the problem with the LSA was the role of the "undemocratic" SWP. Certainly internal democracy is not exactly the SWP's strong point, but by and large its work in the LSA has been open and inclusive. SPEW's carping complaints have come as a result of losing the vote (for example in Lewisham and Greenwich over the majority's insistence that the local alliance should support the LSA, not the CATP).

Greg Tucker criticised SPEW for causing confusion and disunity in London, saying he was "sick" of it. Unlike the SWP, comrade Tucker is not considered to have any sectarian axe to grind and so his intervention carried much weight. Slapped down in this way, the SPEW comrades said nothing more on the matter.

Comrade Stack was drawn out in the closing minutes of the AGM. Dave Nellist read out two statements, asking for endorsement. The first, calling for support for the Rover workers' demonstration in Birmingham on April 1, and for Rover to be taken into public ownership, was nodded through without comment.

In the second, Nellist was looking for a three-part declaration. Firstly, a call for support for Ken Livingstone's candidacy for mayor of London. Secondly, a call for votes for "Socialist Alliance candidates in the assembly seats across London", together with an appeal to Livingstone to discuss with "the LSA and other socialist and community lists, with a view to achieving a single socialist list in the proportional representation section of the GLA elections". Thirdly, a declaration of intent to continue campaigning after May 4, "with the objective of forging a new mass workers' party to challenge New Labour between elections as well as at them".

Comrade Stack protested at a "strategic resolution being introduced in the last five minutes of the conference". Whilst his point was valid, comrade Stack's intervention was no doubt also motivated by the fact that the SWP views itself as the growing mass party of the working class. Of course, as an interjection from Cathy Wilson, of the ex-SPEW Merseyside Socialists made clear, the party project is alien to the thinking of many others assembled in the hall at Leicester - she cited green and direct action activists in this respect.

Comrade Nellist had to bow. First he answered in the affirmative your reporter's question as to whether the call for votes for Socialist Alliance GLA candidates included those standing on the PR all-London list. Secondly he seized upon an anonymous shouted suggestion that the phrase "new mass workers' party" be substituted by "socialist alternative to New Labour".

Earlier the report from the membership secretary, comrade Dave Church, confirmed the Socialist Alliance's failure to garner any real forces. Just seven alliances - Birmingham, Coventry and Warwickshire, Greater Manchester, Hackney, Leicester, Lewisham and Greenwich, and Preston - and five political organisations - SPEW, Socialist Perspectives, the ISG, Leeds Left Alliance (an Independent Labour Network associate) and Walsall Democratic Labour Party - had affiliated at the time of writing the report. Individual membership had opened on January 1 2000 and stood at 94. All affiliated organisations are required under the rules to "ensure" that their comrades become individual Socialist Alliance members.

The five officers - comrades Nellist, McLaren, Church, Nicholson and O'Neill - were all declared re-elected unopposed. John Rothery (Walsall DLP) was also re-elected for another year as the registered election agent. Demonstrating that the English SA beast has some consciousness of its own nature, re-elected chair Dave Nellist actually apologised to the passive audience for the patent "mate-ism" of the election process. Referring to the regional imbalance in the officers' group (all are from either the west Midlands or Greater Manchester), the comrade suggested that two new vice-chair positions should be created. In this way none of the mates would need to be displaced in order to bring in representatives from other regions. All knew that it was London he had in mind. Nominations will close at the end of May for these new positions.

Life itself has exposed the hopelessness of the Nicholson project. Downplaying the importance of the existing left and looking instead to environmentalists and "direct actionists", groups with no connection to the organised working class, the SA has been ignored by both. By contrast London has shown the way.