07.02.2002
Neither localism nor bureaucratism
More teething problems, it seems. As comrades get used to the new Socialist Alliance constitution, it seems a combination of stubborn localism, cack-handed bureaucratism and at times sheer idiocy has led to a falling out in some local alliances. At present we have ructions in Hull and East Yorkshire and in Bedfordshire. We have already heard one side of the story from Bedfordshire Socialist Alliance in the form of a submission from Revolutionary Democratic Group comrades (Weekly Worker January 31). The editor has invited the Socialist Workers Party to give its side of the story, but no luck so far. Fortunately we have had a response from the SWP in Hull. At the heart of these two disputes is residual localism. A clear majority of all members (and a majority of non-SWPers too) have opted for a single structure, based on unitary organisation. In effect, local alliances are branches of the national SA - with, of course, a considerable degree of autonomy. Some comrades still feel that minorities have the right to veto the decisions and activity of the majority. The time for provisos that guarantee such vetoes, if they ever were relevant or useful, has passed. There is also a grudging hostility towards the SWP, particularly from people who have been through the 'SWP experience'. However, the idea that building a strong, open and democratic culture is about getting one over on "the Swampos" is childish and counterproductive. The SWP is our ally - albeit at times a difficult ally - in building the Socialist Alliance. Even so, its response to petty differences in local SAs has sometimes been clumsy. A case in point is the Hull and East Yorkshire Socialist Alliance (Heysa). The January 30 meeting saw a walkout by seven comrades - all SWP members. What was peculiar about this was that these comrades, far from being a minority, constituted the absolute majority of the meeting, attended by 12 Heysa members. The walkout came after a motion that Heysa should affiliate to the Socialist Alliance nationally was declared "not carried" - despite having the support of nine comrades, with only two voting against. How could this be? The answer lies in the peculiar, bureaucratic constitution adopted by Heysa when it was set up in the summer of 2000. According to this constitution, members of affiliated organisations (there were two - the SWP and Socialist Party) are disenfranchised: only unattached members of Heysa have an individual vote. In order to be successful any motion must have the support of a majority of both independent members and affiliated organisations, which have a single vote each, irrespective of their size. This arrangement placed in the hands of either organisation exactly the kind of veto we need to leave behind. For example, the single SP member present last Wednesday, Keith Ellis, could if he so wished have prevented not only national affiliation, but any other proposal he alone disapproved of. Locally the SP did not really have much credibility after failing to support the Socialist Alliance candidate, Roger Smith (an SWP member), in the general election. To be fair to comrade Ellis, he had stated that he would not use his veto on this occasion and, if a majority of independent Heysa members voted to join the national body, he would abstain. But it did not come to that, since the four independents split two-two when the vote was taken. Thus two comrades were able to thwart the wishes of an overwhelming majority. This is the sort of dynamic "consensus democracy" that the Socialist Party wished us to adopt for the SA as a whole on December 1. A recipe for paralysis. For two people to stand against not only the majority in attendance on January 30 but the decision of the December 1 conference is petty-minded localism. However, the fact that only four non-aligned members turned up to the meeting shows a lack of pulling power that has also been in evidence throughout the SA. It has to be said that this bizarre constitution of electoral colleges and entrenched stalemate was actually agreed to by the local SWPers who helped establish Heysa. Obviously the SWP centrally was not too pleased with its comrades supporting such a set-up. It did not repeat that mistake again. In my opinion the SWP tactic of walking out and forming another Socialist Alliance was wrong. I think it would have been far better to continue attending and campaigning through Heysa, bringing national campaign material and priorities to the local alliance. Given that it was only two independents who blocked the vote to recognise the national constitution, it would not exactly have been hard to win a majority of non-aligned comrades at a future meeting. Probably the next one. If the Socialist Party then chose to use its veto, the majority of such a meeting could politely show the SP the door - veto or not. Bedfordshire seems a different case. Whereas the situation in Heysa is untenable (with the SWP correct in principle, a tad clumsy in practice), in Beds the SWP seems set on getting rid of three people who are either in the RDG or influenced by it. In doing so, the SWP comrades have managed to unite the existing active membership of the local alliance against them. If you sign up 27 people to a meeting and win votes 26-22 - the situation described by the RDG - your victory is Pyrrhic. Yet the RDG itself is playing a poor role - siding with the most backward, most localist elements. In last week's paper, the RDG comrades wrote: "What took place in the BSA was a direct result of the decisions of the December 1 conference. It gave the SWP the green light. It was obvious to everybody but the most naive political ignoramuses that after the Socialist Party had been pushed out the next target would be the BSA and the RDG." Let us make no mistake. The Socialist Party was not "pushed out". It walked. Frankly, the Taaffeites had been trying to engineer a situation where they could split from the alliance ever since the SWP threw in its lot with us. The RDG is acting as the attorney of Taaffeite sectarianism by suggesting the SP was somehow forced to turn its back on unity. Attempting to martyr yourself before what you see as the SWP behemoth is not serious politics. What seems to be at the heart of the Beds fiasco is the fact that the incumbent officers and the majority of members are reluctant to surrender unnecessary and proscriptive clauses in their local constitution. By contrast the SWP - foolishly - seems to be taking the line of 'no local constitutions required'. Both positions are ill-considered. According to the current Beds SA constitution, acceptance of the political programme of the local alliance is a condition of membership. The December 1 constitution ought to have changed that. Bedfordshire comrades are part of a national organisation whose main policies are contained in our general election manifesto, People before profit. Of course, Beds SA is free to pass whatever programmatic document it wishes. However, it cannot be a condition of membership for people to have even read the document, let alone accept it. On the other hand, for the SWP to say that there should be no constitution locally is, frankly, barmy. I would say any decently functioning alliance needs a constitution, however brief. How else is it to be determined how officers are elected and made accountable, how often meetings are to be held, etc? However, any such document must not be in contradiction with the national constitution. Here are the relevant clauses: "D1: Local and regional organisation will have to be flexible to take account of the fact we are a small but growing organisation and the fact that effective campaigning and fighting different kinds of elections will require different organisational forms. These local and regional alliances must, however, demonstrate that they comply with certain common criteria in order to be viable (to be further developed by the executive during 2001-2002 for presentation to the 2002 AGM): (a) the alliance has an organising group (or steering committee) with specific named responsibilities (including treasurer and membership secretary); (b) the alliance has a regular meeting, publicly advertised, open to all members (and potential new members); (c) the alliance maintains an up-to-date membership list and provides membership details to the national organisation as required." "D3: Local Socialist Alliances should operate on similar principles to the national executive, trying to reach agreement where they can but deciding issues by majority vote where they cannot." This seems clear and reasonable enough and surely must be regarded as a democratic foundation upon which a local constitution can be based. It is time to put pettiness and localism behind us, but the majority should exercise patience with comrades who are slow or reluctant to accept the decisions of December 1. Marcus Larsen national executive member Heysa minority statement Issued by Steve Radford The Socialist Workers Party withdrew, suddenly and dramatically, from the Hull and East Yorkshire Socialist Alliance on January 30 2002. The walk-out came in the middle of a Heysa general meeting which was forced to conclude prematurely when all the SWP members, including the meeting's chairman, suddenly got up and left the room. They did not say why they were going - merely that they would not be coming back. The walk-out came seconds after a proposal from the SWP that Heysa should affiliate to the Socialist Alliance national organisation, and tear up its federal constitution to adopt the national rules instead, had failed to get the support of a majority of independent members (ie, those who were not members of an affiliated political party). Heysa is a genuine alliance which, until January 30, consisted of the SWP, the Socialist Party and independent socialists. Heysa, unlike the Socialist Alliance national organisation, has a federal constitution which guarantees that no political party can exercise a dominant role. This federal structure has allowed the Socialist Party and independent socialists to work alongside the SWP on the many areas where they are in agreement without fearing that the SWP (by far the largest left group in East Yorkshire - as they are nationally) would dominate and control the organisation. In December 2001, the SWP used its superior numbers to impose a constitution in the Socialist Alliance national organisation which, effectively, turned it into a political party under their control - an alliance in name only. This new national constitution also sought to turn every local Socialist Alliance (previously independent local or regional organisations) into mere branches of the national organisation. This in turn required all local members to become individual members of the national organisation, or be expelled from their local alliance. Heysa is one of the few local alliances with a federal structure. This meant the SWP were unable to simply pack a meeting with their members and force through a decision to merge with the national organisation. Having agreed to the federal structure when Heysa was set up in 2000, the SWP suddenly demanded that it be torn up to allow each SWP member a separate vote - giving them control of the organisation. When the proposal failed to get majority support from non-SWP members of Heysa they walked out en masse in an attempt to demoralise the remaining members and persuade them to give up and dissolve Heysa in its existing form. It is now planned for the remaining Heysa members to meet again in February to decide whether to maintain the alliance locally without the SWP (by far the largest and most active group involved in all Heysa activity since it was established) or to give up and dissolve the organisation. Whatever Heysa members decide, it is expected that the SWP will set up a rival 'alliance' organisation in the Hull area (perhaps even using the same name), which they can more easily control. Commenting on the debacle, Heysa secretary Steve Radford said: "It's a great pity that our friends and comrades from the SWP felt obliged to act in this disruptive and negative manner. I presume this was the line their party leaders told them to take and, as loyal members of a democratic centralist party, they had to follow that line. However, the whole sorry episode shows that we on the left can only build an effective alliance if it is formed on federal principles which prevent domination by the largest group. The SWP are the biggest party on the UK left nowadays and they seem determined to make sure that the Socialist Alliance does not offer activists an alternative organisation to join which is outside the SWP's control." SWP statement Issued by Geoff Collier (former chair of Heysa) and Roger Smith (Hull North general election candidate) On Wednesday January 30 the Socialist Workers Party resigned from the Hull and East Yorkshire Socialist Alliance and were followed by two of the four independent members present at the meeting. This was caused by the alliance voting not to affiliate to the Socialist Alliance nationally, although 75% of the people in the room supported affiliation. Such was the effect of the peculiar constitution that Heysa had adopted. The main issue was the structured voting system that gave a single vote to each affiliated organisation and to those who were not members of an affiliate. A motion had to have a majority of votes of both affiliates and non-aligned members. Unfortunately we achieved affiliation from only the SWP and the Socialist Party (Other organisations supporting the SA nationally may be able to say why their supporters wouldn't affiliate in Hull), which had the effect of giving either affiliate an accidental veto. This could even happen when there was total unanimity on the part of the non-aligned members at a meeting (ironically, this actually happened on a motion that would have given the latter more rights). Obviously the constitution was incompatible with that of December 1 and affiliation on that basis would have required alterations to it. The SWP proposed affiliation on that understanding but could not get a majority of the non-aligned members present (it was two each). As a result we left the alliance with the intention of forming a new one on the basis of the national constitution. Let nobody be under any illusion that non-aligned members had any rights in the existing set-up. The new one will provide them.
Worker