23.11.2000

SA roundup

East London Global vision

On November 14, a public meeting organised by the Socialist Workers Party took place to campaign for a 'yes' vote for industrial action at Ford Dagenham car plant. Sections of the plant have been threatened by closure, with work being transferred to Ford's Cologne plant in order to "boost efficiency" for the company.

The outcome of the vote will not be known until the first week of December, but the atmosphere at the meeting was positive despite the fact that out of around 200 people in attendance only a small number were from the plant itself. East London Socialist Alliance (Elsa) comrades at the meeting pledged their support to Ford workers, with activists emphasising the importance of winning the 'yes' vote in order to protect not only jobs at Ford Dagenham, but also in the area generally.

Comrade Munyaradzi Gwisai, a member of the SWP's sister organisation in Zimbabwe and an MP in the Harare parliament, spoke from the platform. He pointed out that the fight for workers' rights begins in the here and now and a victory at a local level should be seen as a victory at a national and international level too. He made the correct and important point that the political system responsible for cuts and job losses was organised on an international scale. We should therefore set our sights and perspectives globally.

This was in contrast to the contribution of Labour Party NEC member Christine Shawcroft. Although she was undoubtedly sincere in her support for workers at the plant, her call to "make the Labour government support the fight for jobs and community services" was an utterly forlorn and hopeless perspective. You might as well demand that capitalists like Ford 'fight for socialism'.

At the end of the meeting, only a limited number of individuals from the floor were able to speak due to time constraints. These included militants from the car plant who correctly emphasised the importance of the need for workers themselves to fight back. However, of the other comrades selected from the floor, nobody challenged comrade Shawcroft's politics. So an opportunity was wasted to make a clear distinction between the bankruptcy of Labourism and the need to build an alternative working class political organisation.

Elsa was due to select our general election candidate to fight the Dagenham parliamentary seat at a meeting on November 23. We are also committed to fighting Poplar and Canning Town, in which constituency we are at present involved in a council by-election. Maureen Stevenson, a militant trade unionist at Newham general hospital, has been selected to fight the Custom House and Silvertown ward in Newham on December 7.

Much emphasis will, correctly, be placed upon the defence of public services and against the scapegoating of asylum-seekers. However, hopefully the SA will move beyond localist calls for "clean streets" and address the big political issues. As comrade Gwisai says, we are campaigning locally, but our political vision needs to be a global one .

Bob Paul

To get involved in Elsa's local election campaign please contact Maggie on 020 7474 1794

Cambridge
'Loony left'

Cambridge Socialist Alliance was launched on Monday November 20. While the attendance of around 30 was pleasing, remarkably there was not a single comrade present from the Socialist Party.

This followed on from the SP stance at the Eastern Region Socialist Alliance conference and its continued hostility towards the SA project exhibited at a national level. The Socialist Party seems determined to continue on a road of sectarian indifference, while the rest of left tackles the task of building the Socialist Alliance in preparation for the coming general election.

In the SP's absence, the numerical dominance of the Socialist Workers Party comrades was overwhelming - it was the SWP that built for the event. Two CPGB comrades and a couple of non-aligned individuals were also in attendance.

Comrade Theresa Bennett, a candidate for the London Socialist Alliance in the Greater London Assembly elections, led off, emphasising the importance of the Alliance in the face of Labour's "anti-working class project". There was a mood of "anger", according to comrade Bennett.

The debate was then opened up to the floor, with the nature of our electoral intervention being raised. One comrade stressed the need for this to be "professional", pointing to a danger of the SA being branded "loony lefts", with the press picking up on the involvement of "groups like the CPGB".

In contrast to those comrades who think it best to hide their politics and the organisation that they belong to, Darrell Goodliffe stressed the need for honesty about our affiliations and about what the Socialist Alliance is - this is the only way to win the trust of the working class. It will be considerably easier for a hostile press to misrepresent the SAs if comrades are not upfront about these issues.

Despite this there was a genuine enthusiasm for standing a candidate in Cambridge. When this was put to the vote, two thirds of the meeting voted in favour. The Cambridge opposition seemed to have been cowed after the SWP's conference, but it still snarls.

The second point of debate was the attitude that should be taken towards the Green Party. Several comrades wished to know its plans for the area, with the implication that there should be some form of cooperation. Though it was pointed out that the Green Party in no sense could be considered a workers' party, and some of their policies were anti-working class and reactionary, this remained an open question.

Another meeting was scheduled for a month's time to discuss plans for the general election in more detail .

Darrell Goodliffe

Notts
Debating SA future

Nottinghamshire Socialist Alliance's November 20 meeting was far from effective, to say the very least. The two dozen or so members met to discuss future plans after the public launch rally the previous week. Considering there were almost 60 people at the rally and in total 80 contacts of some kind, this was a disappointing turnout.

The Communist Party of Great Britain put forward a resolution proposing that a steering committee should be formed consisting of representatives from each participating organisation and individual socialists. With the exception of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, the other groups voted against this clause. Despite the fact that most NSA work is being done by a few volunteers, the majority of members decided that such a steering committee would 'bureaucratically control' the alliance. The clause was opposed most vigorously by the Socialist Workers Party, no doubt because it considered automatic representation 'unfair' to the large organisations, not least itself.

Jean Thorpe of the Socialist Party moved a successful amendment to the CPGB's motion on the procedure for nominating SA election candidates, which stated: "The NSA should remain a forum for negotiation in which open discussion should take place." A very healthy statement on its own, but considering it replaced, "SA members will democratically decide who will stand and where", Jean's amendment could easily be translated as, 'If the Socialist Party does not agree with the majority view, it is in our right to go ahead and do our own thing, possibly including standing a candidate in Nottingham North under the name of Socialist Alternative.'

Clause 5 of the CPGB's resolution proposed to the NSA that it support the aims and objectives of the Notts Marxist Forum (an open forum for both political and theoretical debate). This clause was defeated. It seems surprising that, although the groups involved admit there are differences and misunderstandings, they miss a good opportunity to engage in discussion with one another to argue these differences out.

An interesting SP amendment to the CPGB motion was to remove "... after the general election, the NSA should remain an alliance and seek sustained unity." This was to be replaced with "... after the general election, the NSA should remain an alliance and raise the need for a new workers' party in opposition to New Labour." The CPGB and some SP comrades suggested that both points should be accepted. However, the SWP voted for the original CPGB clause, ensuring the defeat of the amendment.

The reasoning for this was made clear after the meeting when Steve Glass, a Notts SWPer and former SP member, told me his organisation does not see the SA as the potential nucleus for a new workers' party, but rather the SWP itself is already the workers' party. An arrogant claim, explicitly disowned by SWP national secretary Chris Bambery at the CPGB's Communist University earlier this year. Comrade Bambery is right. The SWP is organised around one view. It is palpably not the advanced part of the working class.

There are obviously huge differences in opinion on what the NSA and the Socialist Alliance nationally actually represents. I hope comrades in the NSA will debate with the CPGB in December at our open meeting.

The next meeting of the NSA is planned for the first Monday in December.

Liam Hughes