18.11.2004
One more dead end
Socialist Alliance member Charlie Pottins is circulating this departure letter, which holds out hope for the thoroughly undemocratic United Socialist Party
I have today cancelled my standing order subscription to the Socialist Alliance. It is not a huge sum, and I don’t suppose it will make a big difference, but it seems a logical if belated step, which others might take. I am not the kind of person who lightly flits from an organisation and withdraws support at the first dissatisfaction or disagreement, and I would not, indeed have not, in this case. When I joined the Socialist Alliance I had great hopes that it meant we were all, whatever our political backgrounds, abandoning old sectarian and opportunist ways and recognising common purpose. I considered it a matter of responsibility to the British and international working class that we challenged Blair’s New Labour and unite in raising again the red banner of hope, and socialism. I have been unhappy for some time with the way the alliance was not only held back from developing - for instance, from having its own paper - but was increasingly sidetracked and run down by those charged with leading it. In particular, the dominant Socialist Workers Party faction, having assured control of the alliance, has been intent on relegating and now liquidating it. I nevertheless clung to the hope that we might yet reverse this turn, and get back onto the road again. I regarded the departure of Workers Power and others while the fight was still on as desertion. I have worked with, and learned to respect and like, SWP members as comrades. I hoped - still hope - that SWP members and their allies might re-evaluate the Respect experiment and return to the socialist path before it was too late (ironically, Respect’s much-trumpeted success in Tower Hamlets was won by a trade unionist candidate and what could have been a socialist campaign). But I thought that if they went ahead and wound up the Socialist Alliance, we who disagreed with liquidation, such as the comrades around the SA Democracy Platform, could defiantly refuse to disband and keep the alliance going. Unfortunately, neither possibility now looks feasible, and there seems little point in continuing to subscribe to a charade - indeed a company that has ceased to trade! Since its last conference the Socialist Alliance has ceased to campaign, and I understand its office has been closed. SA branches, which met infrequently, have ceased to meet at all. The only communications we receive are from Respect, which appears to have inherited the SA mailing list regardless of whether we wished to join Respect. The SA leadership’s only action in the June 10 elections was to forbid members and branches from standing in the Socialist Alliance name. In some cases branch funds that might have been used were transferred to the national executive for ‘safekeeping’. What is the SA national executive doing with the funds we have paid in? Mention of funds also leads me to the improprieties alleged by former Socialist Alliance chair Liz Davies, who found that her name had been forged on cheques. Have we had a satisfactory explanation, or an apology? Instead, John Rees is reportedly threatening the Socialist Unity Network, the voice of ‘reasonable dissent’ in the SA, with legal action for publishing Liz Davies’s and Mike Marqusee’s letter about this. I hope he is not going to be able to use SA funds for this, and I hope SWP members will object to their own hard-won funds being squandered in such litigious tomfoolery. If it goes ahead, the resultant claims and counter-claims could not only keep our lawyer comrades (who include Nick Wrack and Liz Davies) in work, but provide sniping columnists in the capitalist press with hours of fun at the SA’s expense. We had thought the future of the Socialist Alliance might be resolved this autumn, but it now seems the special conference will not take place till February. Meanwhile Respect has had its founding conference, where the ‘loyal opposition’ on the left were given short shrift, and the same SWP group’s grip on the SA executive has tightened (Nick Wrack has joined the SWP, and non-SWP members are not being replaced). The only reason they seem to be holding on is to prevent anybody else doing anything and make it easier to liquidate the alliance altogether, discarding us as an unwanted toy. So far as the public and the labour movement is concerned, even if they had heard of the Socialist Alliance before, they assume it has long ceased to exist. Why go on supporting this? There are other options on the horizon - the sacked Liverpool dockers, for instance, have proposed setting up a new mass workers’ party, and decided to go ahead with launching a United Socialist Party. Whatever its political shortcomings, it could be open to discussion and development, its founders are not just using it as a ‘front’ to build some other party of their own, and it starts with something the alliance lacked: a group of tested militants rooted in the struggle of the working class. I will give it serious consideration. Meanwhile I might as well stop paying out to an alliance that is being wound up. And I urge other comrades (if they have not already done so) to do the same.
I was disappointed when the Socialist Party - a major, and founding, section of the alliance - turned aside from this task to go its own way, whatever its criticisms. I thought we could show them they were mistaken.