23.11.2000

Simon Harvey of the SLP

Scargill damns Socialist Alliance

Arthur Scargill has admitted to being "sick and tired" of being asked to join forces with the rest of the left as part of the Socialist Alliance.

Speaking to the Socialist Labour Party's September 2-3 weekend school, organised by national executive member Harpal Brar and attended largely by comrade Brar's ultra-Stalinite followers, the SLP general secretary declared that the Socialist Alliance was a "nonsense", and that Socialist Labour would itself "be contesting a minimum of 100 seats" in the general election.

Most of Scargill's speech in Southall has now been published, courtesy of the November-December edition of Lalkar - nominally the bimonthly journal of the Indian Workers Association, but in reality the exclusive property of Brar's faction (the connection with the IWA is no longer mentioned in its pages). For some time Scargill has been handing over the notes of his speeches to Brar for publication.

However, as I reported last week (Weekly Worker November 16), the SLP's official paper, Socialist News, which also covered the school, did not mention the figure of 100 candidates (October-November). It was sprung on the September NEC by Scargill and reported in September's internal Information Bulletin. But since then this figure has disappeared from sight: it has not been published anywhere, not even on the party website.

Perhaps this means Scargill has, since his speech at the school, begun to engage in a little realism. After all, in 1997, riding on a wave of enthusiasm for his new party, he also set 100 as the target. We managed 64 candidates. Today our membership stands at less than 20% of its size at that time.

This, according to Lalkar, is what he had to say in Southall: "I am sick and tired of listening to people ask me whether it wouldn't be better if we joined a socialist alliance and got together as one organisation. Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem for those who advocate this is that is exactly what we have done."

What? The SLP has joined the Socialist Alliance? Unfortunately that is not quite what Scargill means. He goes on: "When that defining moment [Labour's abandonment of clause four in 1995] came about, many people, including myself, were able to argue the case for another party. We convened a series of meetings, inviting people from all over the left political spectrum. The constitution of the Socialist Labour Party was the result of six months' intensive discussion, involving all these parties who now want an alliance - the SWP, the Socialist Party, etc. It also included members of the Communist Party of Britain and a number of people from the Labour Party, and other left organisations.

"We sought to create an inclusive party that would embrace everybody on the left who was, firstly, committed to overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with a socialist system of society and, secondly, prepared to undertake to leave their political baggage at the door and stop this nonsense of being in two camps at once.

"The reason that it never came to full fruition is that none of them were prepared to give up their own political party. They only ever wanted an alliance. Alliances look good on paper, but are in reality an unmitigated disaster."

For the first time then, Scargill is admitting that his project "never came to full fruition". Gone is the absurd bragging fantasy about the SLP being Britain's "fourth largest party". But he piles all the blame for this failure on those who rejected his anti-democratic, authoritarian constitution, with its bans and proscriptions inherited from the Labour Party. Under his version of "one organisation" all the left groups would be obliged to shut up shop and close down their publications - Socialist Worker, The Socialist and the Weekly Worker would all have to go, leaving only the Scargillite Socialist News and Stalinite Lalkar.

And, for good measure, he accuses the SWP, SP, etc of sabotage: "Many of our opponents on the 'left' who do not believe in elections have recently begun to do so, but for the sole purpose of destroying the SLP. Ours is the only party that has the possibility of building a force in Britain for changing the system under which we live."

So, while the Socialist Alliance is taking huge strides along the path towards the united left organisation that Scargill claims to aspire to, he pretends that none of this is happening: the SA and Scottish Socialist Party are contesting elections purely to wreck his 'unity' project. The SA and SSP combined have thousands of active supporters. The SLP is down to around 300 inactive members.

Scargill concludes: "I tell you, we can win people for socialism - not for the nonsense and short-termism of socialist alliances which are going nowhere, and are already attacking each other." This smacks to me of the last desperate attempts to hold together the remnants of the SLP in the face of the SA's success.

Of course it is absolutely true that an alliance in and of itself is not the answer. We need a single working class party. And, for all those "committed to overthrowing capitalism", it can only be a Communist Party, based on democratic centralism, where minorities have the right to publicly state their differences, maintain and form factions, and publish their own journals. An ever closer unity - where differences become ones of nuance, and factions fade from the scene - can only be achieved voluntarily, not by bureaucratic diktat of one faction, let alone a failed labour dictator.

The SA does indeed contain comrades who have this vision. There are many who see the alliance as a concrete step towards a party. In fact all the principal components are formally committed to a single workers' party of some kind. Scargill may be "sick and tired" of it, but SLP comrades like myself will continue to advocate real unity, and class-conscious workers will continue to wonder why he is holding back from the SA. Scargill has now admitted the failure of his "inclusive party" project. The SLP should recognise that failure through its actions, drop all talk of contesting the general election alone and join the SA as a full and equal participant.

By the time most readers pick up this copy of the Weekly Worker, the results of the parliamentary by-elections in Preston, Glasgow Anniesland and West Bromwich will be known. Comrades will be able to judge for themselves whether the SA is "going nowhere" from its result in Preston. And they will be able to decide whether the SLP is "the only party that has the possibility of building a force" to challenge capitalism by comparing its result in Glasgow to that of the SSP.