31.03.2004

Build the Democracy Platform

Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group considers whether the failure of the SWP-led Socialist Alliance is the end of the road, or whether a new Socialist Alliance can rise from the ashes

On Saturday March 13, the Socialist Alliance (mark 2 version) suffered a mortal blow. A successful motion, submitted by the SA task group, which prevents the SA standing its own candidates in the June local elections, will prove fatal. This SA will surely be ended by the next conference in October.

Yet there is a little bit of optimism that the SA will continue. In the opposition to the Socialist Workers Party and International Socialist Group majority, we can see the beginnings of a new Socialist Alliance. The Democracy Platform of the SA established itself as the leadership of all those opposed to the liquidation of the SA. This may be just as significant, and in the long run more significant than the passing of the task group motion.

In the struggle for the leadership of the SA, the baton passed to the opposition. Whether they will be able to run with it remains to be seen. But the fact that there was organised resistance to the SWP-ISG shows that the SA project is not dead.

But it is wrong to think a new SA has been born. It has not. The old SA is now merely pregnant with the possibility. A new mark 3 version could easily miscarry or simply die from premature birth. If it is to be born alive and well, the next nine months will be crucial. If the DPSA manages to grow successfully in the womb of the SA, we will have a smaller, organisationally weaker, but politically stronger alliance.

The fight for the ideological and practical leadership of the SA has passed through various stages. The first stage, SA mark 1, was led by the Socialist Party and associated with Dave Nellist. This was transformed into SA mark 2 by the arrival of the SWP. The SWP brought resources, cadre and greatly expanded the scope of the SA. In People before profit the SA created a new republican socialist programme and a new constitution. An ideological opposition formed around the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Communist Party of Great Britain, Revolutionary Democratic Group and Workers Power.

When the Socialist Party left the SA, its transformation into a mark 2 version was complete. The SP left partly due to the treatment meted out by the SWP - threatening, as now, to block candidates. The SWP opposed the SP standing in three out of the 19 constituencies where it had been doing serious work. It was a breach of trust on which the SA depended. When the SWP followed this up with constitutional proposals that could increase the threat to SP candidates their exit was predictable.

After that the hegemony of the SWP was complete. The role of the opposition now passed to the AWL, CPGB, RDG and WP. Could the SWP lead the SA more effectively than the SP? We have seen the results. The SA (mark 2) had many more members. It became more professionally organised, but began to fail politically. The SWP viewed it as their electoral front. But the SA tended to die outside elections (which meant failing in elections as well, as a series of disappointing results showed).

It should be recognised that the AWL, CPGB, RDG and WP were unable to unite and form an effective opposition. The attempt to launch a paper floundered on deteriorating relations between the AWL and CPGB. Workers Power remained determined to plough their own furrow. At the beginning of 2002 the SWP began its efforts to oust the RDG from the leadership of the Bedfordshire SA. It was a battle which culminated in the SWP’s failed attempt to expel two of our comrades on trumped up charges. The opposition remained weak and divided until the 2003 SA conference, which produced the M3 committee and later the launch of the Democracy Platform.

The decisive event for the SA (mark 2) was the war in Iraq. The mass opposition engendered in the build-up to war was a turning point, not only for the Blair government, but for the alliance itself. The SA failed to intervene as the SA. All the component elements of the leadership went their own way. The SWP intervened as the SWP. Since it has been the major component of the SA, the alliance has virtually disappeared.

This was not an organisational matter. Placards and leaflets were produced and hard work put in by the likes of Rob Hoveman and Will McMahon. The problem was political. The SA had nothing useful to say about the war, apart from the fact that we were against it. Only if the SA had been able to enter the anti-war movement with campaigning objectives linked to the SA programme would members have felt inspired to carry out SA agitational work. Why would any SA member want to go to the anti-war movement and say, ‘Look, we are against the war’?

The failure of the SA to develop a distinct political and ideological space within the anti-war movement must be laid squarely at the door of the SWP leadership. We should have intervened on the issue of democracy, highlighting the failure of parliament to represent the people and expose the secret war pact between Bush and Blair. We should have made the case against a system of government that concentrated power in the hands of Blair and the state bureaucracy. This gave the ruling class all the instruments for manipulating public opinion and dragging the country into war.

It was not sufficient to be against all these things. We had to put forward a programme for democratic change. In calling for an end to the elected dictatorship, we should have looked to the mass movement to bring about a new, democratic and republican system of government. We had to transform the anti-war movement by making it conscious of its own democratic and republican logic. Had we begun turning the anti-war movement into a pro-democracy movement, we would have been planting the seeds to be harvested now.

The radical democratic and republican demands contained in People before profit could easily have been used for this purpose. We could have all united around our own programme. We could have fought together, not only against the war, but to win broader support for democracy and socialism amongst new sections of workers mobilised against the war. The SA failed to take up the fight for democracy in the biggest proto-democracy movement for many, many years, thanks to the SWP’s economistic politics.

The SA (mark 2) shows that the SWP’s organisational strengths can be more than cancelled out by its political-programmatic failure. Its organisational strength was evidenced as the backbone of the Stop the War Coalition. But its political weakness now reappears in the guise of Respect. Respect will reflect the organisational know-how of the SWP, but all its political failings will be magnified.

Just as the SWP-led SA ignored the question of democracy during the war, Respect decided to ignore democratic and republican demands in a spectacular fashion at its founding conference. The SWP came forward to defend the constitutional monarchy against the republicans. Economism has rotted and corrupted the British left to its core. In its opposition to republicanism the SWP reveals its contempt for democracy. This is now built into the foundations of Respect.

The March 13 SA conference was therefore significant in two ways. It finally confirmed the bankruptcy of the SWP’s leadership of the SA. But it equally highlighted the evolution of the original opposition. For a whole period Workers Power, the CPGB, AWL and RDG have been arguing about what should be done and criticising the SWP. Now at this moment of crisis it was time to put up or shut up.

The first fact was that Workers Power was not there. They ran off last year. Tested and failed. One down and three to go. Next up was the CPGB. Could they lead the opposition to the liquidation of the SA?

In the last month or so they also failed the test. As I have argued before, the CPGP poses left and acts to the right. This weakness in its politics was exposed again when it walked out of the DPSA, apparently on a point of high principle. But the fact that this happened two weeks before the decisive battle in the SA meant that it either could not or would not lead the opposition.

There were two reasons for this. First both the CPGB and RDG agreed that membership of the DPSA should be open to SA members only. In my view the DPSA majority made a tactical mistake two weeks before the conference and opened us up to a split and criticism that we were in breach of the constitution. But the RDG did not walk out because the overall interests of the working class and the SA demanded a united opposition. We upheld the spirit of the SA’s democratic constitution, but did not desert or split the opposition. Unfortunately, the CPGB did the opposite.

The second reason the CPGB gave for its behaviour was the need to maintain contact with the SWP. This is not a question of geography. We can still operate in the vicinity of the SWP without joining Respect. Keeping contact can also mean moving politically to the right with the SWP. The SWP’s actions have made clear that they see no future for the SA. The CPGB became the spokesperson for this view.

Before the conference the CPGB had made demagogic statements that the SA was dead. The fight that took place at the conference showed this was simply untrue. Intellectuals often ‘see’ the future, extrapolating current social and political trends. But instead of acting on fact, they acted as if their theoretical extrapolations were current reality. If the SA was really dead, why attend a conference which should not have taken place! When the CPGB said the SA was already dead, it was getting carried away with a propaganda line that supported a rightward-moving SWP. In walking out of the DPSA, the CPGB blew it. It may say that it did not fail to provide revolutionary leadership for the opposition, because it was not actually trying.

Now let us turn to the main focal point of the opposition to the liquidation of the SA. The DPSA was set up as a united front of SA comrades who wanted to defend SA democracy, support People before profit and campaign for a workers’ party. Within this framework, there are quite different views on the crisis of democracy in Britain and the attitude we should take to the Respect unity coalition. These strategic differences within the DPSA are most clearly articulated by the AWL and the RDG and show themselves in their tactics.

The RDG took the view that the key question at this conference was the right of local SAs to stand candidates. A decision by conference to bar local candidates would inevitably lead to a split in the SA, as local branches were forced to act autonomously from the national alliance. This was to repeat the issue that led to the split with the SP. The SWP is not stupid. It is well aware of the damage to the SA its policy will cause. Its intention is surely to demoralise the opposition. It can then dispose of the SA without challenge.

Therefore to fight the splitting policy of the SWP it was necessary to oppose the task group motion and consider carefully all three amendments. The most difficult of these was submitted by Will McMahon, John Nicholson et al. This was supportive to Respect and it was in any case not clear that it would enable local SA branches to stand candidates.

Before the meeting the RDG argued that the McMahon amendment could only be understood in the context of the policy of the SWP. If the SWP supported McMahon, then it would be clear that this was to be used to block candidates. In which case, the RDG would vote against it. On the other hand, if the SWP opposed McMahon, it would mean the SWP saw it as unhelpful or worse. In which case we would vote for it.

The AWL by contrast was primarily motivated by opposition to Respect. It has taken a stand of principled opposition. Even the Labour Party does not enjoy this level of hostility. In a contest between Blair’s Labour Party and Galloway’s Respect, we wait with interest to see how the AWL will act and vote. So, when the AWL looks at the McMahon amendment, it sees not the opportunity to stand candidates, but a motion supporting Respect. Naturally it has to vote against it.

It is clear that the DPSA, like the SA itself, has quite different views on Respect. Some have joined the coalition. A majority of the DPSA voted against joining, but even these are divided between those opposed on principle, such as the AWL and Stockport SA, and those like the RDG who are against joining now. Don’t get on the Titanic for the maiden voyage! I don’t mind waving goodbye from the quayside. But I intend to be in New York if the ship arrives. In this we are closer to the CPGB, which is determined to grab one of the few remaining deckchairs.

These different views on Respect were reflected in the conference agenda. The AWL with Stockport SA submitted a motion in section 2 opposing Respect. But the RDG, CPGB, David Landau and Sue Blackwell had motions in the section of the agenda called ‘What the SA does in Respect’. No doubt none of our proposals were supported by the SWP, but it shows we are all ‘interventionists’.

So when the votes took place on the McMahon amendment, there were two blocs. The SWP opposed the amendment and was supported by the AWL, Stockport SA and others in the DPSA. The SWP was voting to split the SA. The AWL line was objectively ultra-left, because it put AWL votes with the main rightwing splitting organisation. The root of this unholy alliance was in the AWL’s determination to put the question of Respect above all other tactical considerations, including standing SA candidates. I still take the view that ultra-leftism is Labourism in disguise.

Voting with McMahon were the RDG, CPGB, Sue Blackwell, Lesley Mahmood and David Landau, because our prime concern was standing candidates and thus avoiding being forced into a split by the SWP.

What conclusions does the RDG come too? First, do not leave the Socialist Alliance. Stay until the next conference. Second, do not leave the Democracy Platform. On the contrary the fight to build the DPSA now assumes much greater importance. With its development and maturing we should expect the clarification of different tendencies within it.