15.09.2004

Which way to unity?

Mike Macnair reports from the last general members meeting of the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform

The Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform held its September general members’ meeting on September 11 in Birmingham. The meeting dealt with a number of issues, and elected a new committee, but was dominated by discussion of unity projects. The meeting was attended at its height by about 26 people, 17 from organised groups: four from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, three from Workers International, two from the CPGB, two from the Red Party, one from Workers Power, one from the Alliance for Green Socialism, one from the Revolutionary Democratic Group, one from the Critique Supporters’ Group, and one from the International Socialist League.

Rival proposals
The July SADP general members meeting had voted for a resolution proposed by Stockport Socialist Alliance. This called for a unity initiative in the form of an autumn conference of “those organisations and groupings which have declared their support for a new working class socialist party, organisation or network as an alternative to the Labour Party”. The object of the conference was to be the creation of a united campaign “in furtherance of socialist demands and the need to build a new workers’ party”, including a campaign in the general election expected in 2005.

On the basis of this resolution, the SADP committee wrote to a number of organisations with the proposal to co-sponsor the proposed conference. Only the Critique Supporters’ Group had responded positively by last Saturday’s meeting. AWL comrades had not been present at the July meeting, which clashed with their ‘Ideas for Liberty’ summer school. They independently entered into discussion with the AGS and Socialist Party, and issued at the end of August a public call for a limited form of unity - “a working class socialist electoral alliance for the general election”.

The AGS on September 4 replied to the SADP, copying their letter to the AWL and SP, arguing for a delegate meeting in October of “democratic left and green” forces who intend to contest the general election (excluding SWP/Respect) to plan cooperation. They rejected the proposal of a campaign for a workers’ party in the immediate term.

The SP has not as yet replied to the SADP proposal (and may not bother to do so). SP leaders have, however, indicated informally both to AWL and AGS comrades their willingness to engage at least in exploratory discussions along the lines of the AWL and AGS proposals.

Saturday’s SADP meeting saw a sharp debate about what attitude to take to the AGS’s proposal. Mike Davies of the AGS formally proposed that the SADP should accept it. He argued that the proposal was one for first steps towards practical cooperation. The problem with the SADP’s original initiative was that it made the ‘workers’ party’ question a precondition for discussions about what level of cooperation was possible.

Steve Freeman of the RDG gave a report of developments in the Liverpool Campaign for a Mass Workers’ Party project. The substance of what he said has already been reported in the Weekly Worker (July 29 and August 12). He also put forward an RDG proposal for more detailed steps “towards a temporary alliance of socialists”, which looked for slightly more than the AGS proposals.

Bernie from Workers Power argued that the objective situation demanded a vigorous campaign for a workers’ party. Rather that the limited proposals of the AGS, the SADP should launch a campaign for an open conference, inviting the FBU, RMT and as many trade union branches, and so on, as possible.

Discussion
The discussion was fairly wide-ranging, but repeatedly came back to the questions of how to fight for a new workers’ party and, connected to this, how to achieve some degree of unity among those socialists/supporters a new workers’ party who had not decided to join Respect.

Several comrades argued in the light of the developments in the Liverpool campaign that there was no use in a Socialist Labour Party mark II: ie, an attempt to overcome the sectarianism of the left groups by bureaucratic expedients. Several other comrades added that there was no use in a Socialist Alliance mark II either: ie, something which looked like a broad movement but was actually converted into a front for one left group.

Opponents of the AGS proposal emphasised the objective need for a workers’ party, the objective movement towards looking for alternative political representation highlighted, for example, by the RMT and FBU breaks with Labour, and the importance of the objective of a workers’ party as a political dividing line. Dot Gibson of Workers International, in the course of arguing against the AGS proposal, put the point very clearly that the effective split in the Socialist Alliance in spring 2003 was between proto-Respect supporters, who sought a new rainbow coalition, and supporters of a campaign for a workers’ party. Dot proposed that the meeting should reaffirm the July resolution. John Pearson of Stockport SA argued that the AGS’s proposal was fronting for a sectarian initiative by the AWL, the aim of which was to derail the project of launching a campaign for a new workers’ party.

Supporters of the SADP accepting the AGS proposal, including AWL and CPGB comrades, Pete McLaren and Mike Pearn among others, argued primarily from the basis of the current relation of forces. The SADP did not at present have the forces to run on its own or with the Critique Supporters’ Group a campaign for a workers’ party which would strike deep into the trade unions. The decision of the Liverpool Campaign to go for declaring a ‘United Socialist Party’ on the basis that groups if they joined must agreed to dissolve would block the national potential of that initiative, which was anyhow limited. In this situation the SADP had to be willing to engage in immediately less ambitious collaboration with other groups on the lines proposed by the AGS and AWL.

Several comrades - most clearly Dave Church from Walsall and Steve Godward from Birmingham - emphasised the depth of the crisis of working class political representation and of the left. Some action to address this problem was vital. The SADP was in danger of becoming part of the problem rather than part of the solution. These comrades, it seems to me, expressed more clearly a feeling which was common to many of the contributions: that of the sharp contradiction between the objective need for working class political representation independent of Labour, and the striking inability of the left to take any real initiative in this direction.

Manoeuvre
Symptomatically, before the vote there was a short, confusing discussion caused by an attempt by Mike Davies to use a traditional Labour Party and trade union bureaucratic manoeuvre, arguing that his resolution, having been put first, should be taken first. If this proposal had been followed, the next proposal would have been that the other resolutions were counterposed and should automatically fall.

This common practice of the Labour movement is in fact systematically anti-democratic, since it denies voters real choices. The correct approach is that if resolutions are not counterposed, they are all put to the vote for and against in the ordinary way. In this case the order of voting on them is immaterial. If they are counterposed, they should be voted for one against the other (for No1; for No2; abstain) - by exhaustive voting until a decision is reached if there are more than two. The order in which they are voted on is again immaterial.

In fact, the chair, Dave Spencer (Coventry), ruled that the motions were not counterposed, and we voted on them all. The resolution to reaffirm the July resolution was passed 21 for, two against and four abstentions (the AWL abstaining). The resolution to accept the AGS proposal was passed 16 for, seven against and three abstaining. Workers Power’s resolution was defeated six for, 14 against and four abstaining. The RDG resolution was defeated eight for, 12 against and four abstaining.

The AWL considers reaffirming the July resolution “unrealistic” (‘Left unity for general election?’ http://www.work-ersliberty.org/node/view/3069). But it seems clear that Dave Spencer was correct not to rule that the motions were counterposed. Obviously, the SADP cannot without substantial co-sponsors run a large-scale campaign for a new workers’ party, and should take up whatever offers of more limited cooperation are available. In that sense the proposal of the July resolution has simply failed. But that does not mean that the SADP should wholly give up on campaigning for a new workers’ party in favour of the minimalism which is all that is at present acceptable to the AWL, AGS and SP.

Respect
The ghost at the feast of the discussion was the Respect project. In organisational terms Respect is a front controlled by the Socialist Workers Party and, so far, lacking independent life. Politically Dot Gibson was correct to characterise it as a rainbow coalition project. Respect’s votes in June and in the July by-elections placed it largely, though not completely, in a ‘muslim community’ ghetto. They also had the consequence that Respect did not achieve results which would marginalise other left electoral projects.

The Millwall council by-election suggests that Respect may be able to obtain broader success in getting working class support. The test will be the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election at the end of this month. In the Euro-elections Respect achieved one percent in Hartlepool. If it breaks beyond this level to achieve, say, 10%, a bandwagon will begin to develop, and Respect will begin to get support among trade unionists and non-aligned activists well beyond its current supporters. In this case, neither the bad politics of Respect nor the undemocratic practices of the SWP will justify the SP, AGS and SADP standing against Respect, and all attempts to create socialist unity against it will be marginalised. The task of Marxists will then clearly be to fight within Respect for class politics and political democracy.

In contrast, if Respect gets no more than a standard far-left vote (up to five percent) in Hartlepool, the anti-democratic and frontist character of the SWP’s operation will make it hard to sustain enthusiasm for the project beyond the SWP and its immediate collaborators. Respect will then be in the eyes of wider layers ‘just another left group’ and a unity project based on the small forces of the SADP, SP and AGS, plus anyone else who could be drawn in, would have some political purchase.

But there is still an underlying difficulty. In the first place, Dot Gibson is wrong to claim that the SADP simply represents a ‘workers’ party’ wing of the Socialist Alliance. The convenor, Pete McLaren, is an advocate of some form of ‘network’; the AGS, which has members in the SADP, is itself a ‘red-green’ project, a kind of rainbow coalition. It is thus less different from Respect than comrades may think.

Secondly, the SADP includes people who are for a party in principle, but think that a new workers’ party is only possible when the trade union bureaucracy moves to create an alternative to Labour, or when mass struggles (somehow spontaneously?) create an alternative, or that unity of the Marxist left in a party is only possible through levels of agreement which would amount to the rest of us joining them (the AWL). This last idea affects also the proposed coalition partner, the SP.

The common ground of the SADP is, in reality, what its name - Democracy Platform - expresses: hostility to the bureaucratic and frontist methods of the SWP in the Socialist Alliance, culminating in its effective closure of the SA in May 2003.

Thirdly, comrades said at the meeting that they did not want either a repeat of the Socialist Labour Party (Scargillite bureaucratism), or of the Socialist Alliance (SWP frontism). But then comrades’ discussion of the Liverpool initiative - especially the comments of those who were sympathetic to the course followed by the dockers - showed that there is a dilemma involved. If you set out to exclude the groups or force them to dissolve, this bureaucratic ruling sets you on the path to an SLP mark II. If you do not, however, the groups will come in if the new initiative becomes at all successful, and the bureaucratic centralism of the SWP - or, for that matter, the SP - will allow them to convert the organisation into a front.

At the end of the day, the crunch question is for the larger existing organisations of the far left to break from bureaucratic centralism, at least partially, or break up. The existence of the Scottish Socialist Party (with all its defects) was made possible because Scottish Militant Labour, then the strongest far-left group in Scotland, was prepared to go for a multi-tendency party which was more than a ‘united front’.

The problem this poses is, how do we get there? The answer has to be a combination of being willing to work with the bureaucratic centralists in united activity to the extent that that is possible, while opposing their bad politics and in particular their bureaucratic centralism. In practice, by voting to support the AGS proposal, the SADP has voted to take a variant of this approach in relation to the SP.

But then why not in relation to the SWP and Respect? The AWL, of course, thinks that the Muslim Association of Britain is a far-right group and George Galloway someone the left should have nothing to do with, so that working in Respect is a class betrayal (although somehow unconditionally voting for New Labour is not). But that is their problem. Most SADP comrades do not share the AWL’s views, but are unwilling to be again in a common organisation with the SWP.

This is understandable. But the truth is that it is mistaken; and the policy leads away from overcoming the disunity of the left, not towards it.