25.04.2001
Australian SA and CWI
Down under déjà vu
Peter Taaffe's sectarianism towards socialist alliances is not confined to the shores of Britain. As this covering note makes clear the Taaffeites are also fighting a desperate rearguard action in Australia
Your paper might be interested in this piece of scuttlebutt: the text of a leaflet handed out by Australia's Socialist Party (Committee for a Workers' International) at the Melbourne launch of our Socialist Alliance.
The meeting was very successful - over 250 people and standing room only. The SP intervention certainly looked like the sectarian stunt it was, their leader Steve Jolly rhetorically slinging mud with the question, "And where does all the money go to?"
If you care to pick through it, their leaflet is an amazing piece of self-contradicting excuses for why they, basically, only want to build the CWI, not anything else. For example, they claim the structure places barriers to others getting involved. If we adopted their proposal (which seems to amount to each party running its own campaign in a different seat), where would the (many) non-party socialists fit in? Would they have to join the SP (god help them) or whoever was running in their seat?
And of course, they claim for themselves the seat which in the state elections got 6,000 socialist votes - for them and a Democratic Socialist Party candidate, as the federal electorate comprises two state electorates.
A lot of their claims seem false or silly. The SA programme "makes no reference to the working class" - but what are all its demands about? The SA national committee has an inbuilt International Socialist Organisation/DSP majority - well, that's the first I heard about the ISO and DSP constituting a homogeneous bloc! The plan (as far as I know) is to hold an SA membership-based conference later this year to set up a more lasting structure.
As to paper sales restrictions, I haven't heard anything about it.
Finally, they try to present us with a fait accompli - that they have already begun their campaign.
Ironically, the SA would probably have been quite happy for an SP member to stand for the SA in the seat of Melbourne. The SA regulations provide for affiliated groups to produce their own statements. But the SP really don't like working with or even near the rest of the left. I think they are (rightly) worried that their newer membership layers might see the falsity of their claims to be 'the only Marxists'. I don't yet know if the SA will bow to their standover tactics. I personally favour it emotionally (we'll have to assess the political ramifications though). The SA should have electoral registration - with our name on the ballot - something the SP is highly unlikely to get. The Greens have also made noises about a green-socialist alliance with all the left, not just the SP.
Ben Courtice
Melbourne
Socialist Party open letter on the Socialist Alliance
The Socialist Party (formerly Militant), a party that received the highest votes for socialists in the last Western Australia and Victorian state elections, has decided to take observer status only within the Socialist Alliance. This leaflet explains why.
Vacuum exists for the left
The WA and Queensland state elections showed the search for an alternative by an increasingly angry working class and rural poor. Up to 30% of people voted for minor parties or independents.
The electoral successes of the Greens, especially amongst young voters, gave socialists a taste of what is possible. On the other hand the recovery of One Nation is a warning that if we don't fill the electoral vacuum, the far right will.
The Socialist Party (SP) calls for the creation of a new mass workers' party in Australia to break the electoral hold of the ALP on the working class. The Australian Labor Party no longer represents the interests of the working class. It is disgraceful that trade unions continue to donate resources to this party.
The coming together of left trade unions, community groups, direct action activists, anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist youth, and the existing leftwing groups into a new party would be a real breakthrough for the working class. The SP would join such a party and build it, while at the same time fighting for it to take on socialist policies and a campaigning stance.
Election results product of campaigning work
The Socialist Party has the best election results of the socialist left in recent elections. In WA we received 1.24% in Maylands, the best result for the left. At the last Victorian state election, we received over 12% in the seat of Richmond (4,213 first preferences), the highest vote for a socialist since the 1950s. In suburbs such as Collingwood and Fitzroy the vote reached close to 17%. This is laying the basis for socialists to capture a seat for the first time in Australia for decades.
The reason for these good votes is years of campaigning work in the community; there are no short cuts. In Richmond most of our vote was due to our work on the heroin crisis, education cuts, industrial issues and more. A minority of voters also voted for clear socialist policies that linked the everyday problems facing the electorate to the need to change society.
We want to work together with the ISO and DSP on the electoral arena. We welcome the change in political direction from the ISO. In the past they criticised socialists standing in elections, now as part of an international change they are standing in elections.
We want to work with all left groups in elections and have done so in all the elections we have stood in. The question is how is it to be done. Our preference is for us to come together in a united front way: that is, a coalition of parties and individuals coming together around an agreed programme for the upcoming election.
We have made criticisms of the interim programme of the Socialist Alliance which amongst other things makes no reference to the working class.
Coalition, not domination
We don't believe the existing leftwing parties alone provide a sufficient basis for a new party. However, they definitely can work together in elections on a united front basis. In fact we want to expand election cooperation to the Greens, independent activists, trade unions, etc.
Unfortunately the current plan for the organisation of the Socialist Alliance is too centralised and therefore under the domination of the ISO and DSP.
We are not willing to hand over our election campaign to these parties, who are bigger in size but get less votes (in fact the ISO have never stood in elections in Australia). If other real forces were involved in the Socialist Alliance, such as community groups, trade unions, significant numbers of youth, etc, it would be a different matter. But at the moment the SA is dominated by two parties. The national committee has an ISO/DSP built-in majority, a product of a private meeting these two parties held prior to the first SA meeting in Sydney in February. The party has a centralised structure that guarantees power to the ISO and DSP.
The SA cites the London Socialist Alliance has been a guide for us in Australia. However, our experience in the Socialist Alliance in Britain makes us wary. There, the ISO has used its numbers to dominate the organisation despite the fact that in England and Wales and Ireland we are the only socialist party with elected representatives - six councillors (and an MP and three councillors in Ireland).
We believe the SA should be organised in the same coalition of forces framework that S11 was organised. A centralised approach at this early stage could put off fresh forces from working with us. An alliance organised as a federal coalition will find it easier to work with the Greens, trade unionists and others outside SA.
We believe a better way to work together is to copy the united front/coalition approach of S11. Such an alliance could still have a common name and an agreed minimum programme, but with each party and individual maintaining their right to put forward ideas.
The SA as it is currently constituted places important barriers to the SP and others getting involved. We have won a certain electoral base, especially in Melbourne. Under the call for 'left unity', we are being asked to hand over this to forces we do not have confidence in.
The "self-denying" restrictions on paper sales must be opposed. This is exactly the type of restrictions that the labour and union bureaucrats tried to implement in the past. We will not allow the numerically bigger, but electorally weaker ISO and DSP decide if we can stand in the elections or not.
Others involved in the SA have raised similar concerns to us.
We call on the SA to move from a centralised format to a united front, coalition format. We believe this SA structure will allow the widest possible involvement of those on the left and moving into the political arena. The move to centralise the SA is pre-emptive when it is still largely made up of currently existing left parties. A move to a centralised, democratic party would be a huge step forward if it had union, community group and mass working class support. At the moment such a move is wrong.
The Socialist Party - despite its concerns - has taken an observer status in the SA, and will ask for a non-aggression pact with it.
We will ask the SA to endorse our candidates. In Victoria we plan on standing Denise Dudley or Stephen Jolly in the federal seat of Melbourne. In the last state election over 6,000 people voted for socialist candidates in the two seats that together make up the federal seat of Melbourne. This is unequalled anywhere in Australia. We have already met with the Greens and are close to an agreement to swap preferences.
We are confident we can make good ground for the left in this seat and ask you to participate in the campaign. Already we have started letter-boxing the electorate.