17.10.2001

Move to party

We reprint here an article by Alan Thornett which appears in the October issue of Socialist Outlook, the monthly journal of the International Socialist Group. Comrade Thornett is a leading member of the ISG and the Socialist Alliance. His article is of particular interest because it represents a public divergence of views between the ISG and the Socialist Workers Party. The ISG has tended to keep its criticism of the SWP a private, diplomatic affair. This is because up until now the SWP, through its absence of any clear idea of where it wants to take the SA, has been content to let things take their course - and the logic of the SA has been in a partyist direction. But the SWP has decidedly put the brakes on and now constitutes the major block preventing the SA becoming a party. In so doing, it has consolidated the pro-party forces, despite its intentions. It seems the ISG now finds itself repelled by the deadening hand of SWP hegemony. Of course, comrade Thornett remains circumspect in his criticism, but his words are clear and to my mind express a much stronger pro-party sentiment than has previously emanated from the ISG. He explicitly states that in order for the Socialist Alliance to be effective it will need its own publication. The comrade also rejects the previous formulation of the SA being a ?united front ?,saying: ?It is a political organisation with an extensive programme and an elected leadership [which] has a global political view of the world.? This seems to me to point to the Socialist Alliance becoming a political party at the earliest possible opportunity. A position at loggerheads with that of the SWP. Comrade Thornett says: ?There is a danger that the SWP will see the alliance as just one of several united fronts dealing with aspects of the struggle.? Behind the diplomatic phrasing lies, of course, the recognition that this is indeed how the SWP is treating the Socialist Alliance already. Just one of many transmission belts into the already existing ?revolutionary party?: ie, the SWP itself. Such a situation is untenable. And it is a position that is uniting almost all the alliance against what is a narrow, sect-building perspective. The more independent activists enter the SA, the greater the demand will be for a party, of course. But we need to establish the basis for such a transformation now. Crucially, the pro-party elements need to unite to push for the most effective and democratic structure to be adopted at the December 1 conference, which will clearly open up the way for the Socialist Alliance to become a party. That is why it is disappointing that the ISG has not so far supported the platform, ?For a democratic and effective Socialist Alliance?. There is no coherent reason why not - other than an unwillingness to upset the SWP and a knee-jerk anti-CPGBism from the ISG?s more sectarian quarters. I welcome Alan Thornett?s article and trust it opens the way to building an even broader and more united pro-party bloc within the Socialist Alliance. Marcus Larsen SA executive committee

Should the alliance have taken the lead?

It is important that the Stop the War Coalition has got off the ground as strongly as it has - and it is all credit to those who have been involved. But the process by which it did so - an appeal by the Socialist Workers Party for an anti-war rally (which it organised), followed by an organising meeting to set up a campaign (chaired by Lindsey German) - effectively bypassed the Socialist Alliance and holds some lessons for its function and its future.

The way this happened was not just the responsibility of the SWP, however. None of the organisations involved in the Socialist Alliance (including the ISG) or the independents took the initiative in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the WTC to call for an emergency meeting of the alliance executive committee to discuss both the events and the alliance?s response to them. But it is a problem.

After a few days Mike Marqusee drafted a statement on the war for the alliance which was quickly agreed, and then the CPGB called for an emergency EC where the issue was eventually discussed. By then the SWP had already called the rally and invited platform speakers. An alliance speaker was agreed in retrospect.

This did not stop the Stop the War Coalition getting off the ground - and in the immediacy of the situation that was the most important thing. But it did make the process more fractious and does raise the issue of what the alliance is for between elections.

Surely this is an example of a time when the alliance itself should have taken the initiative to convene the rally and launch the call for an anti-war coalition. It is after all the organisation which contains the bulk of the far left, including the SWP, in alliance with the independent socialists. John Rees argued at the EC that such an initiative needs to be taken by a relatively highly organised party like the SWP - but does this argument hold water?

True, the alliance would need to be more politically geared up and organised (probably with its own publication) than it is at the moment to play such a role, but why shouldn?t it be if we are to build it as an alternative to Blairism? If the alliance is not to take such initiatives, then its role between elections is one simply of supporting and mobilising the campaigns which exist around the various issues - like Globalise Resistance and the Anti-Nazi League.

It is true that the SWP has the resources and the organising ability to do such things and that it is important today, given the decline of the CP and the Labour left. But there is a danger that the SWP will see the alliance as just one of several united fronts dealing with aspects of the struggle - in this case electoral interventions.

But the alliance is not a ?united front? in the way the ANL and the GR seek to be. It is a political organisation with an extensive programme and an elected leadership. Obviously it should support important initiatives like the ANL and GR, but it is not the same as them. It has a global political view of the world and that means that there will be times when it takes initiatives which are not elections, in its own right.

It may be that all this reflects the debate as to whether the SA should remain an alliance in the longer term, or whether it should become a new party of the left. In Scotland, for example, it was the Scottish Socialist Party which made the call for an anti-war movement, rather than an individual component of the SSP.

If that is the case it needs to be discussed, because it is hard to see a long-term future for the alliance unless it establishes itself as a political force between elections as well as during them - and that means intervening and taking initiatives in its own right when it is appropriate to do so.

Unfortunately, in some places, there was a local expression of this problem as well. Some of the local alliances (my own in Southwark, for example) were faced with anti-war meetings fully organised in advance by the SWP, and were given no more than the opportunity to endorse them.

Of course, many of these were successful meetings (including the Southwark one). But the issue is not the short-term success of the meetings (important as that is): it is the long-term development of the Socialist Alliance as a united political alternative to New Labour.

The emergence of the Stop the War Coalition as a broad campaign embracing a wide variety of political currents now gives an opportunity to build anti-war campaigns nationally and locally in a positive framework.

But this experience should serve to remind us of the parallel issue which will be crucial for the development both of the Socialist Alliance and of the SWP and the wider British left: the importance of being able to build a united front against the war or on other central issues of British and international politics, on a correct political basis, and in an open and democratic way.