WeeklyWorker

29.11.2001

Anti-privatisation

Sectarian shadow

The November 24 founding conference of the Socialist Party-inspired broad lefts? anti-privatisation campaign took place in the same building and at the same time as the No Sweat anti-sweatshops conference, at which Indonesian activist Dita Sari was speaking. Dita Sari and her comrades have had to deal with terrible state repression. Dita has been jailed. It has often been a struggle just to operate at all.

In the absence of this level of difficulty in our work, the British left seems intent on creating problems of its own. So it was at Saturday?s anti-privatisation event. The left and the labour movement are littered with multiple campaigns on the same issue, often doing pretty much the same work. This is ridiculous. It sets back the struggle, as efforts are divided, and it loses us support in the broader movement when we look like we are competing needlessly.

It is unfortunate that there have been two anti-privatisation conferences/campaign launches within a few weeks of one another. The organisers of Unions Fightback did our best to stop this happening, but could not get the SP to agree a joint date. At Unions Fightback, we unanimously agreed to appeal to the November 24 conference for a united conference early in the new year to create one, united campaign.

People who subsequently added their name to that unity appeal included London Unison convenor Geoff Martin, secretary of the PCS branch for the Brent Jobcentre, plus striker Chris Ford (the strikers have now been all out for over 12 weeks), and a host of other people from across the unions. In other words, the obvious, uncontentious, essential need for a united campaign was immediately recognised within the labour movement itself. Mark Serwotka, general secretary-elect of the PCS, who was speaking in a personal capacity, ended his speech to Saturday?s conference by calling for unity with Unions Fightback.

The organisers of the SP event, however - and it was very much an SP event: there were about 70 people there and the vast majority of them were SP members - refused to take a vote on the unity appeal. Indeed, the conference ended with the rather farcical situation that - despite having distributed voting cards to everyone who registered - there was not even a vote on the founding statement, to avoid having to vote down the unity appeal in public. The message was crystal clear: the Socialist Party wants its own, SP-dominated campaign. This is a sorry state of affairs.

So what now? The conference was sponsored by various public sector broad lefts, although obviously not that actively (at least two of them held their own, different meetings on the same day). The SP said they would take the unity appeal back to the individual broad lefts for discussion. We need to ensure that happens. People need to be arguing strongly within their own union lefts for a joint campaign if possible and certainly maximum unity around activity. The conference statement calls for a ?liaison committee? of three delegates from each broad left. We should seek to get unity-minded people delegated.

We also need to get on with the business of building Unions Fightback. The campaign will continue to seek maximum unity with the SP-inspired campaign and all other anti-privatisation initiatives. It is just a shame that we will, despite our best efforts, not be able to put a truly united face to the labour movement. The blame for that lays squarely at the door of the Socialist Party. It would appear that its industrial leadership has learnt very little from the debacle that was their behaviour in the PCS general secretary election.

Sectarianism is not just about multiple campaigns of course. Bill Jeannes, writing in last week?s Weekly Worker, is wrong to suggest that the setting up of an anti-privatisation campaign should have been done through the Socialist Alliance (November 22). If Bill thinks the way to maximise a fightback against privatisation in the unions is by narrowing the base of the campaign only to those who support the SA, he has got either a somewhat exaggerated estimate of the weight of the SA or a sectarian conception of how socialists should operate in the unions.

SA supporters should be central to initiatives like Unions Fightback and, more importantly, to actual struggle, but we should seek the broadest support in the movement we can get on the basis not of how leftwing people claim to be, but on the basis of class: anyone who wants to fight back should be welcomed, and the debate about how they vote can come during that work, not as a precondition to it.

Alan McArthur