11.11.2004

Opposition splinters before arrogant SWP

The latest meeting of the Socialist Alliance executive underlines the sectarian trajectory of the SWP. Mark Fischer reports

It was puzzling that some comrades at the Socialist Alliance national executive on November 6 complained of lack of clarity from the Socialist Workers Party. John Rees and his comrades actually made their intentions regarding the alliance admirably clear from the off - both in terms of the formal votes (the comrades had an effective seven to one majority of EC members present) and - perhaps more tellingly - in the surly, contemptuous demeanour they displayed throughout the meeting.

The key decision taken was that the alliance would effectively remain on ice. Its annual conference will be in February of next year, where the SWP will recommend that the prevailing situation should continue - that is, that SA members are urged to support Respect (comrades who were alliance members during 2003 and 2004 will be eligible to attend). In particular, comrade John Rees outlined the rationale for this with admirable pithiness. The SA had established a certain name and reputation, primarily through the work of SWPers, he said.

Given the new emphasis of this majority on building Respect, “it would not be helpful” if others effectively cashed in on this accumulated prestige by standing in elections, perhaps even queering the pitch for Respect candidates. The “reputation of the SA” would not be “used to damage Respect”, the comrade underlined.

Another vote of the SWP majority had set the tone earlier. As the first item on the agenda, Jim Jepps, a supporter of the Socialist Unity Network, proposed that, since CPGBer Marcus Ström, elected to the EC in 2003, had returned to Australia, I should be co-opted onto the EC as a full member. Clearly, this would have been appropriate. Formally, it is true that members of this leading committee were not elected on the basis of organisational affiliation. However, the reality was that the principal left organisations were involved in negotiations beforehand with the aim of achieving some sort of political balance. Everyone knew that comrade Ström was elected not as an individual, but as the representative of the CPGB.

Re-emphasising that the SWP has broken decisively from any remaining traces of inclusivity, SWP executive members (plus one ally from Tower Hamlets) voted as a bloc to remove the CPGB from the SA leadership. I was rejected by seven votes to comrade Jepps’s one. The comrades did not deign to give the meeting any reason for their decision.

In many ways, this gathering was a continuation of the farce that was the Respect conference of October 30-31. Clearly, the SWP is determined to seal itself and its periphery off from what it views as the baleful influence of the rest of the revolutionary left. In keeping with its dismal morality (which is more akin to that of a cult than a proletarian organisation), it is more than happy to use fair means and foul to achieve its irresponsible sectarian aims.

So the whole affair was a pretty frustrating way to spend a Saturday afternoon, both for the small, disparate opposition that has so far clung on to the SA and, I suspect, for the SWPers themselves.
The latter clearly found it distasteful to still be dealing with other comrades and trends on the left. In particular, new SWP recruit Nick Wrack, who chaired the meeting, spent much of the time hectoring speakers to shut up (he had granted us observers three-minute contributions at the beginning, as he did not want to “spend all day on this”) or trying to cut the debate off with abrupt moves to voting. Of course, comrade Wrack was never renowned for his gushing affection for the left, but he cuts a pretty wretched figure now. It is remarkable how quickly his recruitment to the SWP seems the have brought out the boorish, exasperated bureaucrat in the man.

Opposition comrades like Dave Church were reduced to forlornly appealing to the better nature of Rees and co - they should have some “compassion” and not “shit on us” - and calling for an “amicable divorce” where those who wanted to retain the SA were left to get on with it. This call for the SWP to bequeath the SA to the opposition was echoed by others including Steve Freeman of the Revolutionary Democratic Group and Toby Abse. Comrade Abse actually recalled the manner in which the Socialist Party left the alliance intact when it decanted in 2001 - conveniently forgetting that the SP were being outvoted when it flounced out, while the SWP still constitutes the majority in the SA.

Many of the complaints of the opposition reflected little more than frustration with being in a tiny, impotent minority. Thus, they lacked any real political coherence and certainly have no vision of what needs to be done next. So comrades could list the breaches of the constitution made by the SWP-dominated executive, the failures to carry out agreed actions, the liquidation of the alliance contrary to resolutions passed by the last conference in March. All perfectly legitimate complaints, of course, but, frankly, so what?

John Rees - seated close to me in the meeting - produced the killer riposte when he calmly heckled the comrades making these complaints that they put forward a motion condemning the EC to the next SA conference and let the majority decide. Yes, this displays a contemptible attitude to the substance of genuinely inclusive democracy, but it should hardly shock us. The SWP’s purely instrumental attitude was illustrated at the recent Respect conference, where Chris Bambery was unmuzzled near the end to lead an assault on the proposal that Respect include the right for organised platforms to be included in its constitution.

Of course, where the SWP is in a minority, such as in the Scottish Socialist Party or the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire in France, it is more than happy to avail itself of the rights of minorities to form themselves into platforms. When it is in a majority, the minority is denied this basic right. The SWP’s approach to democracy is ‘Does it serve the narrow interests of our sect?’

Yet John Rees has a point about the reality of minorities and majorities in the movement. The SWP is qualitatively larger than any other section of the revolutionary left. Attempts to go round it in periods like this one will doom comrades to a sectarian Legoland, where they attempt to build mini-scale versions of initiatives like the SA. As I pointed out in my intervention, the forum to fight for principled left unity is now Respect. Any attempts to circumvent it and go ‘straight to the class’ - as some opposition comrades advocate - is to play fantasy war games with regiments we do not command. Frustration is understandable, but - as the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform-hosted meeting immediately following the EC starkly illustrated - all it produces is demoralisation and disorientation.

At this informal gathering, the lack of effective unity or clarity about tasks was evident. Some comrades (Toby Abse and Dave Church) announced their intentions of becoming involved, along with Dot Gibson, with the Liverpool dockers’ United Socialist Party - a misnamed venture if ever there was one, as comrade John Pearson from Stockport SA pointed out. Comrade Pearson himself - after a characteristically trenchant and systematic critique of the perfidious nature of the SA leadership - argued for us to organise what would effectively be a split conference at the same time as the proposed national conference in February (although the comrade was swayed a little by arguments against this). Comrade Jepps correctly suggested that comrades take Respect more seriously as a site for intervention, but drew from this that we must attend the SA conference with a resolution arguing that the alliance be officially closed - presumably in the interests of political ‘neatness’.

I made three points during this section of the day. First, we should not take responsibility for any final coup de grâce against the SA, even if today it lies in a vegetative state. The blood must be seen to be on the hands of the SWP.

Second, we would be doing the work of the SWP if we boycotted the February conference and organised a split. Nothing would please it more. In fact, we should go to the conference armed with resolutions demanding that SAers argue for principled working class politics in Respect. The SWP’s sectarian snarling is not a product of its confidence about its new orientation - quite the opposite in fact. We should look for every opportunity to engage with this organisation as its formal commitment to Marxism slips away.

Lastly, on the viability of the SADP itself, there is clearly a problem. There was a marked lack of unity amongst non-SWP forces when the SA actually represented something and had achieved a forward momentum. (Historically, the great missed opportunity was the refusal of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to join our organisation in launching a minority alliance newspaper. Effectively, this let the SWP off the hook and its disorientating effects linger on).

However, John Rees indicated during the SA executive itself that the SWP has no intention of challenging the legitimacy of the title ‘SADP’. Thus, with the SA itself in cold storage, the SADP is free to operate under its own name and programme as a separate organisation.

However, apart from coordinating activity for next February’s conference it does not constitute a viable party project in its own right. It is not a question of numbers: more of programme. There is no unity about what sort of party is needed. Some talk vaguely of a red-green party, others of a loose federation. Still others want a left reformist, centrist party.

In our view history demands something else, something altogether more definite and useful. A democratic centralist Marxist party of the new type, its scientific name being Communist Party