11.08.2004

United or republican?

On Saturday August 7 the Campaign for a Mass Party of the Working Class met in Liverpool to discuss the name and constitution of the proposed new party. It was a relatively short meeting. I will concentrate on the party name and look at the constitutional issues on another occasion. A number of names and constitutions had been put forward at the previous meeting - ‘United Socialists’, ‘British United Socialist Party’, ‘United Socialist Group’, ‘Unified Socialist Group/Party’ and ‘Republican Socialist Party’.

A brief glance at these names shows that they basically boil down to variations on ‘United Socialist Party’ and an alternative - ‘Republican Socialist Party’. The Revolutionary Democratic Group argued that the meeting should see if we could agree to reduce them to the two main alternatives. The committee could produce a paper setting out the pros and cons of ‘United’ versus ‘Republican’ and we could circulate it to supporting organisations to seek their views. But the chair and the committee were insistent that we should decide there and then. They believed that matters were urgent and we could not afford to wait any longer.

At the beginning of the discussion the proposal for ‘British United Socialist Party’ was withdrawn. It was soon clear that the other ‘United Socialist’ options would fall into line behind USP. The RSP was therefore the only alternative. But, given the tightness of the agenda, there was no time to debate the relative merits of these. One of the committee said that the RDG paper had caused him to rethink and our proposal was worthy of further consideration. Another comrade spoke against ‘Republican Socialist Party’ on the grounds that republicanism was not popular and would put people off voting for us, especially if we were bold enough to include it in the name. It was the same notorious argument used by the Socialist Workers Party when it opposed republicanism being included in the policies of Respect. As time was running out, that was about as much debate as we had on the substance.

The chair urged the meeting to unite unanimously behind ‘USP’. But the RDG refused. Ex-Liverpool councillor Tony Mulhearn spoke up, defending our rights as a minority. It meant there would have to be a vote. The majority voted for ‘United Socialist Party’ with one vote against. We reserved our right to put the case for ‘Republican Socialist Party’ to the full meeting. On the question of the draft constitution there was a wider disagreement and the meeting decided that further discussion would be required.

Ultimately the name is not the key issue. If Respect was a republican socialist party or a coalition moving to such a party, I would be one of the first to join. I would not let the fact that it has a crap, meaningless name put me off. But it is not republican. It is hardly socialist and is not a party. At the same time we should not underestimate the importance of the name. It reflects the real politics hiding behind it. Deciding the name before the politics is putting the cart before the horse. The United Socialist Party might be the name given to a republican socialist party, but much more likely we are dealing with another Socialist Labour Party (mark II).

We live in a constitutional monarchist state. Respect showed its abject political opportunism when it deliberately chose to ignore or avoid republicanism. It collapsed under the weight of the prevailing bourgeois ideology of monarchism. This is no accident. Steering clear of republicanism has deep roots in the British working class movement. It is economism (see Jack Conrad Weekly Worker August 5), found in the bourgeois politics of Labourism and trade unionism. This debilitating disease is just as prevalent in the ultra-left-posing SWP and the various Trotskyists as it is amongst left reformists.