30.05.2001

Towards an SA party

Peter Grant, a member of the CPGB, is the Socialist Alliance candidate for Salford. John Pearson spoke to him

What is your record in the working class movement?

I have been active in the trade union movement for 25 years, mostly on the railways in London and Manchester, in the train drivers? union, Aslef. I?ve been involved in various trades councils and the Labour Party.

When and why did you join the CPGB?

I came across the CPGB towards the end of the miners? strike, at a conference in Sheffield, where I was a delegate from Manchester trades council. I found the CPGB to be refreshingly different compared to other left organisations, mainly in their willingness to discuss questions of politics and theory in a very open way. It was also refreshing to discover that it wasn?t the Stalinist outfit that the CPGB of old had been. As I?d always considered myself a communist, it seemed the appropriate organisation for me to join.

What is your view of the Socialist Alliance project?

I?m optimistic about the Socialist Alliance and I consider it to be very important. It is the first time in my political experience that the organisations to the left of the Labour Party have got together and cooperated in a major project such as a general election. I think this bodes well for the future and I am hopeful that it will develop into a far more solid structure than it is at the moment.

Do you think the SA has the potential to develop into a party?

All the indicators are that people are beginning to realise that this is the way forward. It has been interesting to see the changes in attitude on the ground within all of the participating left organisations. They have found that they can work together and they can argue and discuss quite complicated and often heartfelt political positions and once a decision has been taken they will carry it out.

So I can see in this not only the spirit of a party, but the seeds of a democratic centralist party. At the end of the day, this is what we need - a working class party capable of challenging Labour for the loyalty of the class as a whole. Without such a party we are pissing in the wind - we are not going anywhere. I see it as absolutely essential that we do develop in that way after the general election.

You are, of course, a member of the Greater Manchester Socialist Alliance. The Weekly Worker has carried many extremely critical analyses of GMSA?s development, calling it for instance, before the Socialist Workers Party?s entry, a ?proprietorial sect? and, afterwards, an ?SWP fief?. What is your view of the problems there have been and of the prospects for resolving them?

Well, I think the GMSA has had its ups and its downs. The big change that has taken place has been the entry of the SWP into it, which certainly shook up the original clique that was running it. People in the GMSA have realised that they do have to work together, but that this does not mean that you don?t discuss differences. The bureaucratic manoeuvres, the shenanigans we have seen in the past ought to have no place, although they do seem still to rear their ugly heads sometimes.

Most recently, there has been controversy over the GMSA committee?s refusal to endorse an SA candidacy in Oldham. What is your view on this question?

Clearly Oldham is the national focus for the race question in this general election, but the SA is not a serious player there. The SA has abrogated its responsibility to the working class by abstaining from the Oldham contest.

The problem has been conservatism on the GMSA committee. Some of its members have a very negative attitude towards standing in elections - putting up hurdles that people have to get over: for instance, the insistence that 30-plus people must be present at candidate selection meetings. I think their attitudes towards Oldham have been quite disgraceful. People in Oldham wanted to stand a candidate, wanted GMSA support for that and were denied it purely because they didn?t meet those criteria.

Comrades in Bolton, by contrast, had already announced a candidacy without going to the GMSA committee. But the fact that they later turned up and put pressure on the committee meant that their action was approved. This has left the GMSA committee very exposed as far as Oldham is concerned, especially in view of this weekend?s events, when the Asian youth have fought back in a big way against the racist attacks that have taken place and the infiltration into Oldham by the National Front and British National Party.

Not having a candidate there has left the field open to the argument that you have to vote Labour in order to stop the racists, but this is a false argument because, of course, Labour is as racist as the rest.

Which of the SA?s forces are involved in the election campaign in Salford?

The main force in Salford is the Socialist Workers Party and the people that they influence. There are also a number of ex-Labour Party people who have been very enthusiastic in trying to build a Socialist Alliance.

What has been your experience of working with the SWP?

It?s been very positive. I?ve found that the SWP members in Salford are less influenced by the control-freakery of their national officials and are able to engage in joint work and discussion in a most refreshing way. Although we?ve had some problems, I was heartened that leading SWP members in Salford were actually backing the Oldham comrades in trying to get their candidacy forward, against the official SWP line. They should be congratulated.

I understand that the SWP leadership wanted you to remove the word ?communism? from your candidate?s election address. Is this correct?

Yes. I thought they were actually having a bit of a laugh at the time, but they did ask for it to be replaced by ?a better formulation?: eg, ?international socialism?. But I insisted it remained as it summed up better what I believe in.

You have emphasised, in the election address, that you support the SA manifesto demands for abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords and that it is your view that the people of England, Scotland and Wales should unite voluntarily in a federal republic. Why do you think such issues are so important to the working class struggle?

Because I believe there is no more important issue for the working class to address than the way in which we are ruled. That question comes before everything else. All the economic demands will flow from that. We need to understand the nature of the capitalist state in order to determine how to combat it. At the moment, the nationalist trend in Scotland and, in particular, the nationalistic orientation of the Scottish Socialist Party make it even more important that these issues are taken forward, because we need to have a positive resolution of the national question in Scotland. A negative outcome would be a disaster for the working class in Scotland, England and Wales.

A majority in the SA currently do not share such an emphasis. This is reflected in the ?priority pledges? which appear in every SA electoral publication. Issues such as fighting cuts and privatisation, housing, unemployment, discrimination, pensions, student finance are highlighted, but constitutional issues are omitted. What is your view of this approach?

Well, to be honest, I think it?s crass and I think any Marxist, or person calling themselves a Marxist worth their salt, knows in their heart of hearts that it?s crass. The reason for the emphasis they are putting on all these economic issues is that they are easier to argue compared to the big issues. There are also problems with some of the constituent organisations because they have not discussed the constitutional issues with their membership. Others have problems because of their theoretical outlook, which does not match up to the concrete situation which exists.

It?s a cop-out basically and it?s something that does need to be challenged, because, as I?ve said before, there is no more important issue than how we are ruled. I have consciously tried to take that issue forward, not only within the SA, but also within my trade union, where it is getting some resonance.

One of the priority pledges is ?Renationalise the railways?. As a railworker, how do you see this issue?

Obviously I support this demand, but, as I state in the election address, we need to go further. We must have nationalisation under the democratic control of railworkers and passengers.

I have spent 25 years working in the railway industry, most of that as a train driver, and I have never been so frightened of a major accident as I am now. The railways are literally just falling apart and a lot of this can be laid at the door of the Tories? privatisation. But the root cause of it has been years and years of under-investment by all governments and what I don?t want to see is a return to a British Rail mark II.

That is why we need a publicly owned and financed railway that is under the control of the passengers that use it and of the railworkers themselves. The treasury?s grip has to be removed. It is a disgrace that this country - that actually invented railways - is a laughing stock within Europe. I have talked to French and Belgian drivers who have come in through the Channel tunnel and have to then negotiate Railtrack?s decrepit infrastructure and they cannot believe how it has been allowed to get into this state.

Now we have the latest scandal. Railtrack is effectively bankrupt. Its stock market valuation has fallen to ?2.7 billion. Yet the Labour government are about to give it a further ?1.6 billion without any return, when they could have demanded half the company. At the same time, Railtrack have announced a substantial pay-out to shareholders.

Do you think the SA should set a target for votes achieved in this election?

Not particularly, because it can become a hostage to fortune. If you don?t meet the target, people can start sulking, become despondent, think it was a waste of time. We should assess how well we have done in terms of influence in the labour movement and the working class - that is the most important thing in this election campaign.

What should be the SA?s next steps after the election?

I think it?s important that the SA organises another members? conference after the election and decides to go down the road of closer and closer cooperation and, hopefully, of developing into a fully-fledged working class party - one that is democratic, centralised, open to divergent views, not afraid of airing those divergent views in public, and able to build itself as a real alternative to the Labour Party.

Labour Party supporters are themselves now saying that Labour has become the party of big business. Mickey Blackburn, the assistant general secretary of my union, for instance, said just this at a recent weekend school I attended. We need to get people to understand this and appreciate the need for a proper contender to be able to challenge Labour.

How do you think the SA can be most effective in work in the trade unions?

I think we need to set up SA groups within the trade unions. The left groups within the unions need to be brought together. This is hard, organisational work, but there is no escaping it, because there is presently no opposition to Labourism within the unions in any meaningful sense. It is in the unions that a challenge to Labourism can be most effective.

We have recently seen the Fire Brigades Union decide to refuse to pay the Labour Party subs it owes, effectively disaffiliating itself, and freeing up the union finances in order to be able to support candidates of other parties which are more in tune with the union?s aims and objectives. We need to go down this road in other unions. I see the rail unions as being prime targets in this respect, not only because of the presence of SA and Socialist Labour Party members on their executives, but also the hostility within those unions to the Labour government?s attempt to part-privatise the London underground and its continuing support for privatisation on the railways.