WeeklyWorker

10.10.2001

Liaison Committee

SA debates the war

Delegates gathered last Saturday in Birmingham for the final Liaison Committee meeting of the Socialist Alliance before the December 1 conference on structure. While it was one of the more political Liaison meetings, there was a certain torpor as the dead hand of SWP hegemony prevented the meeting taking any steps towards increasing the alliance?s profile in the anti-war movement.

However, the meeting also reflected the Socialist Alliance?s willingness to move away from its parochial amateurism. Comrade Declan O?Neill, our treasurer, announced his resignation from the post. He said that it was an odd state of affairs that saw the alliance with a treasurer in Oldham, a membership officer in Walsall, an address in Coventry and a national office in London. This explicit recognition of the need for increased centralisation and professionalism shows how much the SA has matured. Two other officers from the early days of the alliance - John Nicholson and Pete McLaren - also figure much less. And politics is openly coming to the fore.

It was the war, its nature and the response of socialists that was rightly the main business of the meeting. While the debate on our attitude to the war was quite sharp at times, there was little depth. Comrades did not have adequate time to develop their points and the current SWP majority means that everything for the moment goes the way John Rees decides.

This lack of space for full debate points once again to the absence of a Socialist Alliance political newspaper. While it is fine for Globalise Resistance and the anti-war movement to have their own journals, it appears that the line of the SWP?s Lindsay German?s - that the SA ?needs a paper like a hole in the head? - still holds. Yet with our own newspaper different positions could be developed with clarity, and debates - at the Liaison Committee and throughout the SA - would have far more depth. Instead the discussion on the war was often at cross purposes - a kind of dialogue of the deaf.

Dave Nellist, in introducing the session, said that a war situation offers socialists the opportunity to speak to thousands more people about our ideas. This was disputed by Mike Marqusee, who suggested that to talk of a war in those terms was out of order. The war, he said, was a humanitarian disaster and would throw back class consciousness. But of course war does provide revolutionaries with opportunities. In fact, while war situations can initially find us swimming in a sea of reaction, the crises they engender can see socialists make great steps forward - much more than in ?normal? times. And of course socialists are not pacifists: we are for war - the war of our class against their class.

There were three main motions put forward in the debate. The SWP proposed that the SA should throw its weight behind the Stop the War Coalition. While this was in itself uncontroversial, its purpose was to limit the role of the alliance to that of tailing. The SWP leadership hopes that in this way initiative will remain with itself - and hence recruits will come its way.

The two political motions came from Workers Power on the one hand and jointly from the Alliance for Workers? Liberty and the Communist Party of Great Britain on the other. The essential difference was between Workers Power?s defence of Afghanistan and its Taliban regime and the following motion from AWL/CPGB:

?We urge all local Socialist Alliances and all Socialist Alliance members to build anti-war activity and to establish a clear socialist profile within the broad movement around the following themes:

In speaking to the motion, Martin Thomas of the AWL said that, while imperialism at home was our main enemy, we cannot duck the question of fundamentalism. He said that in countries where it was in power fundamentalism represented reaction. The closest we have in western Europe to movements like the Taliban or al Qa?eda is fascism.

This basic point was greeted with incredulity from leading SWP comrades. They argued that by coming out against fundamentalism and for secularism we are not only cutting ourselves off from a dialogue with muslim youth, but are giving comfort to the ?racist? islamophobes in this country. Comrade Rees did, however, sympathise with the ?Defend Afghanistan? position of Workers Power, but felt that this could give out the wrong message. So, best just not to mention fundamentalism at all - that was the conclusion of the SWP.

Mike Marqusee expressed some agreement with the AWL/CPGB motion, as did Declan O?Neill. However, comrade Marqusee provided cover for the SWP position of political minimalism and a tendency to liquidate into the pacifism of the CND types in the Stop the War Coalition. Slogans are generally too simple to sum up the complexity of the situation, he said.

Mark Hoskisson of Workers Power rebutted this easily enough: ?You just can?t win, can you?? He said that if he had presented a 5,000-word treatise, it would have been dismissed as too detailed. A pithy slogan or two is dismissed as too simplistic. Again, this demonstrates the urgent need for an SA paper to allow comrades to develop their rounded positions in front of the whole membership, our supporters and the class.

Both positions were voted down by the SWP majority: the AWL/CPGB motion received seven votes; Workers Power three.

The Socialist Party moved a long motion trying to give context to the role of the Socialist Alliance in the anti-war movement. Its intent was to continue the ?Kidderminster argument?. That is, that the Socialist Alliance should not get too uppity and attempt to lead anything. The SP also moved an amendment criticising the way the SWP had downgraded the Socialist Alliance and organised the initial anti-war meetings, both nationally and locally. This won the support of just about all the non-SWPers present (still not enough to get it carried), though Mike Marqusee did point out that this was a bit rich coming from the SP.

Ironically, as the SWP puts the SA on the backburner while it turns to its bright and shiny anti-war campaign, the SP is pretending to champion the role of the SA in a sectarian dig at what it views as its deadly rival.

The meeting then went on to discuss a motion from Vauxhall SA, seeking to overturn the previous decision on anti-fascist work; a report on trade union activity; and an uncontroversial report on the December 1 structure conference.

Comrades may remember that at the last Liaison Committee meeting, the SWP removed all the decent politics from a motion on anti-fascist work which was moved by Workers Power. Crucially the following had been deleted: ?We oppose any calls on the racist police or the home secretary to ban fascist marches. Every ban by the state is used primarily against the left and the anti-racists.? Stuart King from WP and Vauxhall SA argued that this should be reinserted, given the recent bans on ANL activity while the police often protect the events of the BNP.

Comrade Rees argued against, saying that we are not opposed to all calls to ban fascist marches, but would just not call for them ourselves. Steve Score of the Socialist Party said that we should be opposed to all bans, as they are used to demobilise mass action against fascism. Cleverly, Dave Nellist asked comrade Rees from the chair if it would be acceptable if the motion were to read: ?The Socialist Alliance will not call on the police or home secretary to ban fascist marches.? Cornered, comrade Rees was forced to agree and the amendment went through, strengthening the SA?s position on fascism.

The only other controversy arose with the report on a proposed conference for Socialist Alliance trade union activists presented by Alan Thornett of the International Socialist Group and Mark Hoskisson. The report implied a broadening out of the conference beyond the ranks of the SA.

This was opposed by ourselves in the CPGB and by comrades in the Socialist Party. Dave Nellist argued that we needed to assess our own forces in the unions before organising a broader conference. The SWP, no doubt viewing trade union work as something beyond the remit of the alliance, voted the report through unamended. Unless comrades see sense, the conference is in danger of being turned into a rally or talking shop, and not an event for the mobilisation of SA rank and file activists in the union movement.

Despite the sometimes fractious nature of the meeting and the unsatisfactory nature of many of the decisions, we are set to step up our work in several spheres, not least the anti-war movement. As we approach December 1, there is an urgent need for the highest possible organisational unity, enabling us to achieve much more in all those spheres.

Marcus Larsen
SA executive committee member