11.08.2004

Putting our own house in order

Terry Teague is secretary of the Liverpool-based Campaign for a Mass Party of the Working Class. Peter Manson spoke to him

What led to the formation of the campaign?
It came about in December 2003. We as the former dockers were approached by the surcharged 47 councillors. They were part of the Militant-led council that put in place a progressive programme in Liverpool in the early 80s. A lot of expulsions took place after the Labour Party started to boot out Militant and they were surcharged and removed from office. But they kept their movement together from the 80s and it’s still going today - they have their own centre and website.
There was a lot happening politically in Merseyside, like in the rest of the country. The biggest issue is to do with the political voice of the working class - who actually speaks for them? We saw the mass turnouts during the anti-war demonstrations, but who was providing a voice for all those individuals

So the former councillors approached us with a view to both groups getting together to try and analyse the state of the political system within the United Kingdom. Was there any chance of the Labour Party reforming itself to actually represent the working class? There was also the point of view from the dockers - we’ve got our own building right in the city centre, which houses a number of trade union and political meetings. In all those meetings there arises this one common complaint: no matter how we proceed in terms of coming up with good policies in the interests of working class men, women and children, there is no organisation taking up their case and providing a political voice - where it really matters, in the chamber of parliament. There had also been a massive sea change in the way the trade union movement had taken up the fight of working class people.

We were only too glad to get involved in that discussion with the 47 surcharged councillors to try and work out where it had gone wrong and, more importantly, what can be done to re-enact a real working class party, with the main emphasis being on a movement to try and unite the different factions within the left.

There was also the point of view that both the Liverpool councillors in the 80s and the Merseyside dockers in the mid-90s had run campaigns which had started off on a local issue but had mushroomed out on a national and international basis. They had gained prominence in the UK and other countries, not just in Liverpool.

Both organisations had the experience of running mass campaigns and winning support from all quarters in the labour and trade union movement. So the thing was, if anyone can get things going again, surely we can. Like us the surcharged councillors are an ageing group of people - all around the 50 mark, but if there is anything we can put back to try and set up a new and vibrant, more youthful movement to challenge the established parties, then we are only too willing to do that.

How many of the 47 and how many ex-dockers are still active?
There are 15-20 councillors still active, I would say. As for the dockers, well, our membership base is still 200. We set up a workers’ cooperative at the end of the dispute - the Initiative Factory. Everything in the building and the property itself belongs to the sacked dockers, who elect a committee to run it.

We hoped initially that the cooperative would see us back on the docks. But unfortunately, because of political reasons and because individuals were being blacklisted, etc, we were never able to achieve that. There were background manoeuvres conducted by the port authority to make sure we never got back in the industry where we had spent all our lives.

So we had to look at ways of retraining, because in 1998, when the dispute ended, there were a lot of people with no money to support their families. We tried to find them other jobs, but no-one was going to do that for us - we could only look to ourselves. We were able to provide IT training and a good number of people found alternative employment.

We got a grant from the European Social Fund, so that the sacked dockers could write the history of their own dispute - a CD, a web page and in time a book. That helped provide the computers we needed. Now we are self-financing through some works programmes, although we do get core funding for the essential workers from Liverpool council.

As you say, your dispute ended in 1998 and the councillors were surcharged in the 80s. Tony Blair has been Labour leader for 10 years. So why form a new organisation in 2004? Some might ask, what took you so long?
We’ve had enough battles of our own - for example, to democratise the Transport and General Workers Union, which is still ongoing. Also people in the movement that came together to support the dockers have moved on to take up other battles - Reclaim the Streets, the Stop the War Coalition.
We never went away. We were heavily involved in running benefit gigs, attending solidarity demonstrations for other workers in struggle. But you can never escape the big picture - the political scene has shifted in a massive way over to the right.

We had to determine what was the best way forward. Was it to move away from the parliamentary system altogether, maybe joining the Reclaim the Streets and anti-globalisation forces? Or should we try and reclaim the Labour Party? In my view, and the view of a number of people, Labour is beyond reclaim. If that was the opinion of the majority, which it turned out to be, the only other alternative was to try and unite the left with its different factions to set up a new, democratic socialist party.

Should it be like old Labour or something different?
When you say ‘old Labour’, you have to be specific. It would be a party that would have a lot of the aims and objectives of, say, Clem Attlee’s manifesto in 1945 or Harold Wilson’s in 1964 - without the attacks on the trade union movement, of course. But it would contain many of the policies for social change. It would have nothing to do with the manifesto of 1997 or 2001.

A few of the dockers joined Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party in 1996. Were you one of those?
Yes, a good number of us joined and I did too. The SLP came right at the end of our dispute, and what a breath of fresh air that was. Certainly I remember in Liverpool there wasn’t enough room in Central Hall to accommodate us all. That should have provided the catalyst for all of us, but you know yourself what happened. There were that many splits - people are blaming the leadership for being too dogmatic when it came to bringing in other parties and leaving no room for manoeuvre. Unfortunately it fragmented and many people that joined have now left, including some of the leading lights. For me it was a crying shame. I left in about 2001.

My view is that the SLP failed because Scargill wanted to control everything and refused to tolerate views other than his own. He didn’t try to bring the existing left groups together.

I don’t entirely disagree, but I think that in the first instance the likes of Arthur Scargill needed to be really firm. I went to all the founding meetings in Liverpool and there were a number of groups who joined that were using it for their own ends. But the leadership might have gone over the top. The left needs to start trusting one another.

The only point I could never be reconciled with was Arthur Scargill’s dogmatic attitude - join and dissolve your own party. To me that was asking a hell of a lot, when you think that people have spent 20 or 25 years within their own party and they have a tremendous belief in what they’ve been doing. A certain period of time could have been allowed where dual membership was accepted. But that’s all in the past.

The Campaign for a Mass Party of the Working Class is proposing that all the groups close down their publications within a year of its founding. Do you think those who publish the left’s three weeklies, the fortnightly and all the monthlies and quarterlies will agree to shut down and instead send the odd article to Unite? It doesn’t seem likely to happen.
It most probably won’t, but you’re not facing up the reality of what’s going on. In the June council elections, there was the Socialist Party, Respect, the Socialist Alliance, the International Socialist League and various other leftwing groups. They all stood on good platforms with their own publications. But if you add all their votes together, they still wouldn’t have touched the BNP. People might want to pat themselves on the back, but meanwhile the far right is growing and they don’t want to face up to this fact.

You can say all you like, ‘My paper’s better than yours and we’re going to keep it going’, but I’ll tell you what - there’s a massive movement now from the far right and it’s going to smack people in the face: not just the BNP, but the United Kingdom Independence Party - some of their policies are extreme, to say the least.

All we’ve said - and it’s only a draft document to try and get debate going - is that you do need to put a time limit on it, because at some point, instead of me speaking for the dockers and the Socialist Party speaking for themselves and so on, there’s got to be a united voice. We need a common identity. So that’s why we said, ‘Let them all come in, maintain dual membership, but only for a certain time.’ But that 12 months could well be amended.

When it comes to fighting elections, what’s the point of one left party getting 100 votes and another 250? We have to show everybody we are united, with one publication going out in every ward, not all coming out with different messages. The far right goes onto the big estates with the one message and no infighting about ideology: the reason why your sons and daughters are not working is because there are too many immigrants, they say. Sadly they’re getting support and I’m not going to sit back and let that happen. If people don’t want to unite to fight that, they’ll never unite to fight anything.

You’re expressing a very healthy desire for unity within a single party, which we in the CPGB share. But I don’t think it’ll be done through ultimatums. What’s wrong with the different groups coming together behind the paper of the party, while at the same time being able to publish their own particular viewpoints as well? That’s what we proposed in the Socialist Alliance.
That might be the case. We’re in the middle of a series of sub-committee meetings and the initial discussion paper has already incorporated lots of amendments.

We’ve now agreed on the name, which is the United Socialist Party, and when we do go back to the mass meeting, we’ll be putting that name forward. Most of our inspiration came from when Tommy Sheridan came down to address us. I know the Scottish Socialist Party has been going for five years, but they were able to bring the forces of the left together and we want to take a leaf from their book. All the groups came in and were allowed to a certain extent to form platforms.

So it’s not by diktat. We’ve put down a document and people can agree, delete, amend and change it. Our next full meeting should be in September - we’ll send you an invite. We’re hoping to have at least a starting constitution, which could cover everything up to branch structures. But we’re not going to get involved in national structures, because first of all we need to set up on Merseyside. We’re only talking about Merseyside, but at least we’re doing something.

We’ve got contacts in Wales, where there have also been moves to start a left organisation, and the London support group want to get meetings going down there. We’ve also been invited to Bristol, where the RMT have started something rolling. We need to set up a group in Merseyside with a clear identity and at some point a manifesto.

Surely what we need is a national structure from the beginning?
I just don’t think that would take off and that’s the view of the majority. The Socialist Alliance fragmented into the Democracy Platform and so on because it was too big a step to start off with - certain areas of the country fell in line almost immediately, but …

Actually the SA contested 98 seats across England and Wales in the 2001 general election. It certainly did work out on a national level, but it was closed down by the Socialist Workers Party because they wanted to move on to Respect.
All we’re saying is that on Merseyside the fragmentation is leading to disillusionment. We need to get our own house in order first. If we get sorted out here, we can go out around the country like Tommy Sheridan does.

So you’re asking the national groups that are involved to close down their publications for a party that will only operate in Merseyside?
No, we couldn’t ask, say, the Socialist Party to dissolve nationally - that would be impossible. But what you can say is that on Merseyside we’re going to take on the battle against the far right and stand people in elections. But we don’t want five or six different publications representing our candidates. We want one clear line and one publication.

After all, it’s happened before. The Merseyside branch of the SP did dissolve itself when they split with Peter Taaffe. The same thing happened in Scotland, so we know it can be done.

All we can do is start something and only time will tell. If we speak again in 12 months I might say, ‘You’re dead right’. On the other hand, if we take off, I am absolutely certain that there’ll be a benefit not just in Merseyside, but in a lot of areas in the country.

Plus the fact that many of the so-called leftwing groups have never met the working class. They never go to workplace or trade union meetings. They should come to one of our dockers’ meetings - it’s no good having all the highfalutin political theory if you can’t bring those people with you. It’s going to be a hard enough job doing that here in Liverpool, but to try and do it on a national basis will be absolutely impossible.

But our meetings will start to grow and grow. It won’t be just shop stewards - we’re starting to see some factory workers. I think we’ve got to aim at them and what’s left of the industrial base within Merseyside.