30.06.2004

Rough edges

Phil Hamilton looks at the website of the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform

This week has seen Respect reach a new low. Following the death of Leicester South’s Labour MP, Jim Marshall, Respect has nominated Yvonne Ridley to fight the July 15 by-election - despite Pat Kennedy of Save Our Special Schools having already been endorsed as a united left candidate by a convention of local activists. With an opportunist eye fixed on the ‘muslim vote’, the relevant press release (June 27) emphasises Ridley’s intent to become Britain’s first female muslim MP before moving onto the obligatory anti-war and anti-Blair comments. So Respect will be ploughing the muslim furrow once again, albeit with the familiar leftwing shopping list of demands.
With the exception of Scotland, for independent socialists and small groups who view Respect as a diversion from and/or an obstacle to the fight for a new workers’ party, there is very little by way of an alternative. For example, though there is critical distance between Respect and the Socialist Party, the latter is content with only making abstract propaganda around the workers’ party slogan rather than providing the necessary lead. In part because of the SP’s self-imposed sclerosis, there has been some movement around the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform.

Its website makes clear at the outset that the SADP has been “established to act as a link for SA and other activists fighting for socialist working class representation”. It then discusses the SADP’s endorsement of the policies contained in the SA’s People before profit manifesto, the inclusive democratic practices outlined in its constitution and finally briefly notes the circumstances under which the platform was formed. For comrades interested in learning more, viewers are invited to join the SADP discussion list as well as the platform itself.

Seeing as list applications take a little time to process (applicants are expected to submit a number of personal details), the navigation box provides the quickest introduction. The first interesting link is ‘SADP leaflets and publications’, which carries a collection of material dating back to last October’s founding statement. The statement itself is split into a number of sections. The introduction accounts for the SADP’s formation against the backdrop of the SA’s effective liquidation by the Socialist Workers Party, before the statement correctly moves onto giving the democratic and political demands of People before profit their proper emphasis.

This discussion leads into the necessity of upholding democratic rights in the SA, and its indispensability for the functioning of a future workers’ party. It discusses the pragmatic relationship the SA should have with the then-unnamed Unity Coalition, as well as “petty bourgeois democrats” generally, before ending with a list of positions which the SADP fought for at the SA’s March conference. The section also carries a number of other leaflets that were handed out on a number of occasions, including the election edition of the irregular Unite, the bulletin of the Liverpool-based Campaign for a Mass Party of the Working Class.

The ‘Minutes and discussions within the Democracy Platform’ page at present only carries the minutes from the April 3 meeting, but, seeing that the relevant details from the June meeting have been widely circulated on the lefty e-list grapevine, it is not too much of a problem that it has yet to appear here. The ‘Elections’ page links to www.sademocracy.org.uk - a mini-hub of the local campaigns SADP comrades fought under the Democratic Socialist Alliance banner. Full results of their performance are available, as is the campaigning literature from Stockport, Sheffield, and Exeter. Sadly what it really lacks is an analysis and evaluation of these results.

The next page carries material about the SA itself, both official minutes of meetings and reports by CPGB and Alliance for Workers’ Liberty comrades. Again I feel more could be done here, such as the inclusion of a perspectives document that further elaborates on SA-specific points of the founding statement. Continuing the unintentional truncated theme, ‘Reports about Respect’ offers two old reports by Martin Thomas and Manny Neira. Considering nearly every SADP member has been broadcasting their opinions about Respect in a variety of ways for the last nine months, I was surprised to see such a limited collection.

It is unsurprising that the website is slightly rough around the edges considering the disparate politics of the comrades inhabiting the group. Nevertheless the website’s message is clear: the SADP is unambiguously partyist. Secondly it has already shown a willingness to turn itself outwards from the left by contesting elections, showing it to be a serious project too.