30.11.2000

SA Liaison Committee meets

No time to waste

After a Socialist Alliance-backed victory in Pepys ward, Lewisham, and excellent socialist votes in the Preston and Glasgow Anniesland by-elections, the Liaison Committee of the Socialist Alliance (England) meets on Saturday with what is a glowing backdrop of optimism.

We have much to do. We need to establish a national centre to coordinate our work. It is likely that the general election will be called for May, only five months away. Locally there are candidates to select, activists to mobilise. Nationally, we need to build our Socialist Alliance profile - in the media, in the unions, in every region and campaign.

To this end, the CPGB will be pushing for the most ambitious perspectives to come from the Liaison Committee meeting. We must establish an election subcommittee or political executive to coordinate our work centrally. Given that there are now up to 70 members of the Liaison Committee, the day-to-day running of the election campaign must be undertaken by a smaller but representative working body, wholly accountable to the Liaison Committee - London is the obvious base. The Liaison Committee must meet monthly from now until the election is called. The election subcommittees must meet at least weekly as the election draws near. It is vital that such a committee include all the principal organisations in the Alliance, perhaps along with the existing officers and any relevant non-aligned individuals.

To make our socialist campaign against the Blair government as united as possible, the CPGB is proposing that the Scottish Socialist Party and the Welsh Socialist Alliance each has a seat on our election committee. Further, we are proposing that the Socialist Alliance negotiates with the SSP and WSA to enter into an arrangement that allows us to make a joint party political broadcast on national TV and radio. The home office seems likely to set a threshold of 100 seats in order to qualify for such a broadcast. The SSP intends to stand in all 72 seats in Scotland, which means that, together, we will easily go beyond that figure. Latest reports indicate that there will be around 50 socialist candidates in England. United with Scotland and Wales, we can have a national broadcast, no doubt alongside the SSP's own broadcast in Scotland.

The CPGB is also putting forward a proposal to launch a daily Socialist Alliance newspaper for the last three weeks of the election campaign. The purpose of this is to raise the horizons of our local campaigns so that we join them into a truly national election fight. Such a common propagandist and organiser will provide a strong framework for higher and deeper unity after the general election - a stated aim of the Coventry protocols.

Our other tasks include organising the February conference for deciding our manifesto. To this end we should establish a drafting subcommittee to report to the February conference. All the principle organisations making up the Alliance need to have a place on the committee. If necessary, minority reports to conference must be facilitated. The London Socialist Alliance, it should be pointed out, has already passed a resolution calling for such a committee.

Saturday's meeting must also start organising finance, working out how to jump through the home office hoops, facilitate selection of candidates to reflect the political make-up of the SA and establish a website. The CPGB is presenting a design for comrades to look at. The structure of the site should give control of local campaign material to local campaigns, but should, crucially, centralise organisation of our press, rallies, manifesto and other logistical and political matters.

Given that we only have four hours on Saturday, and comrades will have travelled from all over England, hopefully sense will prevail: we should make use of every possible minute and get on with our business in a serious, professional and comradely manner.

All in all, a busy but rewarding time ahead. Recent results have shown that, united, the left is far stronger than the sum of its separate components. A successful general election campaign can be the next big step towards building a single democratic centralist party in Britain. Unity around the revolutionary majority that currently makes up the Socialist Alliances will ensure that our new party is not a left re-run of the Labour Party, but the main weapon in the hands of workers to constitute themselves a political class and conquer their own liberation.

Marcus Larsen
Chair, London Socialist Alliance

Motions proposed by the CPGB

Cooperation with the Scottish Socialist Party and Welsh Socialist Alliance

Given that:

1. The Coventry conference of the Socialist Alliance decided to "coordinate the widest possible number of socialist and other anti-cuts candidates to fight the Westminster general election, in seats in England ... in liaison with the Scottish Socialist Party, which will fight seats in Scotland, and with the Welsh Socialist Alliance, which will fight seats in Wales";

2. The home office is likely to set a threshold for national broadcast for the general election at 100 candidates across the United Kingdom;

3. The SSP has declared it will stand in all 72 Westminster seats in Scotland;

4. It is likely that the Socialist Alliance will stand in around 50 seats in England;

the Liaison Committee of the Socialist Alliance (England) will enter into negotiations with the SSP and the WSA to seek unity which enables us to qualify for a joint national election broadcast. The SSP and WSA are also invited to take a full and equal part in our elections committee to coordinate our campaign across Britain. Seats for delegates from the SSP and WSA must be made available and kept open.

Representative delegates from the Liaison Committee must be appointed to enter into negotiations with the SSP and WSA. In the spirit of openness, minutes of these meetings must be made available for publication.

Election newspaper

The Liaison Committee will propose the following motion to the February conference of the Socialist Alliances:

Given that the Coventry election protocols of the Socialist Alliance states. 'For this [our election campaign] to be a credible alternative for people, we have to have maximum unity. To mount the most effective challenge as the Socialist Alliance we believe that local Socialist Alliances should seek to build the broadest, most inclusive and united organisations possible. Local Socialist Alliances, together with the national network, should begin raising money and winning working class support in the unions, the local communities and from all progressive campaigns now with the aim of recruiting wider forces to the alliances in preparation for the election campaign'; this conference of the Socialist Alliance believes that uniting our local affiliates into a truly national campaign for socialism will be greatly aided by the publication of a daily paper for the final three weeks of the election campaign.

We cannot rely on the BBC, Sky, or the bosses' press. Our daily paper should act as our collective propagandist and organiser, responding to all the main issues of the general election campaign and carrying debate and discussion between our members and affiliates at every level. Conference instructs the Liaison Committee and its relevant sub-committees to prepare such a paper to assist in building maximum unity and impact. An editorial staff should be appointed by the Liaison Committee that is representative of the principal organisational and political strands in the Socialist Alliance.