12.04.2000

Fight for what we need

'LSA holds out prospect of all-Britain unity' The CPGB's Anne Murphy is a candidate on the London Socialist Alliance's GLA slate. She spoke to Peter Manson

What is your view of the LSA development?

The London Socialist Alliance means two things: firstly, it is posing the need for a united working class alternative to Blairism. And secondly, connected to that, it provides us with the opportunity to fight for the Party idea and the Party programme in a way that hasn't been possible for a number of years. An opportunity to work with our main rivals - the Socialist Workers Party in particular - to convince them of the necessity for genuine democratic centralist organisation.

The SWP is the most important left organisation numerically, and the fact that it is committed to the LSA is very positive. But we must go far beyond an electoral alliance towards a new organisation of the left in Britain. If the SWP had remained outside, we would have been greatly handicapped, but now its involvement has advanced matters in a significant way.

There are a number of spoiler lists standing - the Socialist Labour Party, the Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain and the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation - who will probably detract from our vote. But, unlike the LSA, they are not serious, neither electorally nor as sites for establishing a revolutionary workers' party. They are either single-issue campaigns or sects blindly promoting nothing but their own narrow interests. Our ongoing unity shows that we are collectively starting to move beyond the sterility of the sects.

Obviously the fact the Scargillites, Pat Sikorski's CATP, Tatchell and the 'offical communists' are standing too will create some difficulty - they could well take just enough votes to cost us a seat. But we are not just an alliance for the elections. Implicit within our unity is the answer for the workers' movement. The spoilers may be hampering it, but we will have a viable project after May 4.

What has been your experience of working with the SWP?

It's been variable. Initially there was a lot of distrust of ourselves and others. The fact that their membership had been sealed off from the rest of the left for so long and the fact that the leadership had convinced them that everything else was irrelevant was a factor in making cooperation difficult to begin with. But the barriers are dissolving and many SWP members are now willing to speak with us, to start to engage with us. Though I have to confess that the political level of the average SWPer is woefully low.

SWP comrades are starting to take the Weekly Worker, something that up to now has been rare. They have learnt a degree of respect for our organisation and our commitment to the LSA - they understand that we are serious politicians.

Of course in the recent period we've been highly critical of the Socialist Party, because of their sectarian refusal to cooperate with the LSA. This has been very useful for the SWP leadership, I think. During the build-up to last year's EU elections our fire was directed more at the SWP and its indecision over whether or not to participate. At that time they were as a result antagonistic towards us, even backing a move to have us expelled from the alliance because of our polemics. Today it's rather different.

What of the SP itself?

Apart from in Lewisham and Greenwich, where they have Ian Page as a councillor and an LSA constituency candidate, they've officially disappeared. Apart from the rebels elsewhere they're uninvolved. At first they turned up in their ones and twos to LSA meetings across London, but now, from what I've seen, hardly at all. Where the LSA has been raised in union branches, SP loyalists have actually been arguing against backing us.

In this month's Socialism Today Peter Taaffe continues his sectarian carping and sniping. Originally they used CATP as an excuse, saying it represented the beginnings of a mass break from Labour by the trade unions that should be enthusiastically supported. But rather than doing the principled thing and admitting he was wrong, Taaffe does not even mention CATP in Socialism Today. The SP is reduced to a face-saving rearguard action.

That's why it's so important that not only Tommy Sheridan, but Dave Nellist have accepted invitations to address the April 13 LSA rally. They are giving a lead despite Taaffe on this issue. Obviously a CWI spit is in the process of happening. Let us hope that the left opposition, people like Harry Paterson, get their act together and put their mark on events.

How have you found working with the other groups?

Again barriers are being broken down. For example, at last weekend's activist conference comrades from the CPGB, Alliance for Workers' Liberty, Workers Power, and the International Socialist Group were all buying each other's papers.

Whereas we in the CPGB treat the SWP as comrades who are open to change, there is a tendency on the part of some comrades in the AWL and WP to assume that the SWP cannot be changed. This leads them to be not a little cynical. I saw one WP comrade hectoring SWP members, accusing them of taking a reformist approach. He held up the LSA platform and said they should stick to that - ironic, given that our manifesto is hardly a revolutionary document. There is another irony. WP is not dissimilar to the SWP - they are both based on a mono-idea.

Nevertheless they are taking the LSA seriously to one degree or another. I'm not sure if WP and the AWL quite know what they're doing - after all neither of them have really theorised their break from automatically voting Labour. Either way, both want the LSA to continue after the May 4 elections.

You mentioned the platform. What are your criticisms?

Well, it's not the sort of document I would have written myself, which isn't surprising, seeing as we were not involved in drawing it up. There is a noticeable absence of high political - that is, constitutional - demands. The emphasis is overwhelmingly on economic reforms. It is of course correct to put forward economic reforms, but what decides the matter is the way you frame them. In fact the platform doesn't contain much that common or garden Labour lefts wouldn't agree with. We don't even imply that workers must fight for what is necessary, or that workers' own self-activity is the key - that is, fighting for reforms in a revolutionary way.

If, instead of fighting for what we need, your approach is one of putting forward 'realistic' demands, this can lead to caving in before populism and toning down. One example of this is over the demand in our platform for the abolition of all immigration controls. This is particularly relevant at the moment, given the wave of anti-immigrant hysteria, with the Tories going on the offensive and Labour wanting to be seen as tough on asylum-seekers.

It's very important for us to take a principled position - and the platform is principled on this issue. But this is not being pursued by the majority of SWP candidates. They prefer facts and figures. They show that more people leave Britain than enter. The comrades also trot out figures about how spending on asylum-seekers is not so much, compared to military spending. This leads you away from the politics of principle towards cost-accounting.

Whenever I speak on this question from LSA platforms, I say no to all immigration controls. If capital is free to cross borders, then workers must be free to do the same. It seems that a plastic bucket made in China has more rights than a human being. People on the ground are open to what we have to say on this issue and we can persuade them that we are right. It's no use winning votes if we do so on the basis of liberal arguments.

Besides the overall reformist approach, which effectively leaves workers as a slave class, political questions - those that deal with how we are ruled - are completely absent. Take the national question in Britain - it is totally missing from the LSA platform. With the exception of ourselves it's treated as a non-issue, not a crucial class question. This reflects a mixture of economism and parochialism.

The national question is important not only in Wales and Scotland, but in England too. Unless English workers take up the national rights of the Scots, Welsh - and the Irish - we are never going to defeat nationalism. In fact English nationalism could well appear as a reactionary force that revives Hague's Tory party.

The idea of breaking up the British working class, including its trade unions, must be fought tooth and nail. That's another reason why having Tommy Sheridan at our rally on April 13 is so significant. It holds out the prospect of all-Britain unity: the LSA can play a pivotal role here.

We pose the federal republic as a central question. That means fighting to overturn the UK constitutional monarchy system. Unfortunately much of the left sees such questions as being somehow the preserve of bourgeois politics. For them the class questions are only those concerning privatisation, the NHS, schools, the workplace. Racism and sexism are the exceptions that prove the rule.

This lack of interest in how we are ruled means that the left is not thinking about how the working class unites itself by becoming hegemonic. It has no answers in response to Blair's constitutional revolution. The monarchy, national self-determination, annual parliaments, the House of Lords - questions of democracy - of course these are working class issues. But the traditional left's attitude is either tailist or indifference: critically follow Blair of simply ignore democratic demands under capitalism in the name of a hopelessly abstract socialism.

What sort of reaction has the LSA been getting, and how well do you think we will do on May 4?

I was on the LSA battle bus driving through north London last weekend and the reaction was tremendous. People are wanting an alternative, but at the moment the working class is very passive. This is indicated by the type of backing Ken Livingstone has been getting. There have been expressions of support, but no outbursts of action or anger, no militant demonstrations. Similarly people are signing up for the LSA, but they are not yet activated - we still depend on our own core forces. It's this passivity we need to change.

As for May 4, we could do very well, but it's difficult to say. The LSA is new and a lot of people haven't heard of it yet. We are mounting an energetic, bold, and inspiring campaign. Not only will we be distributing one and a half million leaflets, but we have already forced our way onto TV, the radio, and the national and London regional press. I'm not talking about preparing for a workers' government of course. Nevertheless, with Livingstone turning accepted political notions upside down there is every possibility of getting GLA members elected.

Despite my disagreements with the platform, it is one that is centred on the working class. Our LSA candidates are not only more committed, more serious, than those put up by Labour: they are for the working class. A space has opened up around Livingstone - we are doing our best to fill it from the left in order to galvanise discontent.

How do you see the LSA developing after the election?

It must continue. There must be a serious conference to decide the way forward. Those elected will definitely be accountable. The SWP has committed itself to this. So have I and all the other LSA candidates.

The unity of the left is excellent, but not just as an end in itself. We need a democratic centralist Communist Party, and the LSA could be an important step in that direction. So we should not aim simply for a united front, but for a party capable of organising the majority of workers around a revolutionary programme. For that we need an open and inclusive approach.

This question of the left's culture is something we have been challenging: differences are not something to be feared, but should be freely expressed in front of the working class. We are fighting very hard for such a culture. Workers need to know about those disagreements that divide us - after all the working class is a class that has to liberate itself. For that we need the truth.

One thing that ought to have been learnt from the last century is surely the necessity of democracy. For us it's not an add-on extra, but the very oxygen of our movement.