15.11.2007

Can the SA arise from the ashes?

Dave Craig thinks the Socialist Alliance might have a future

On November 17 the Socialist Alliance will be holding its 10th conference since it was founded in 1996. It will also be the second conference since it was reconstituted in 2005 by those members who opposed its closure by the Socialist Workers Party. The SA is now officially registered with the electoral commission and this conference will be looking at how we can rebuild.

It is remarkable that the SA has survived at all, given that its membership is now down to a small hard core. This testifies to the enduring strength of the SA's central message of socialist unity - the demand that the left must unite. In 2001 the SA was able, albeit temporarily, to achieve the highest level of left unity in England since the defeat of the miners in 1984-85. The SA brought into one organisation the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, SWP, Socialist Party, International Socialist Group, CPGB, Revolutionary Democratic Group, Workers Power and Walsall Democratic Labour Party, as well as many independent socialists.

The SA in 2001 was the high watermark in the building of a 'halfway house'. It was certainly an improvement on the previous sectarian politics, with the left out in the cold without any kind of house at all. It confirms the point made by Boris Kagarlitsky at this year's Communist University. A genuine halfway house is a step forward - since it is halfway from where we are to where we want to be. The problem is to distinguish the genuine halfway house from the dead ends. This is down to the politics.

It was obvious at the founding conference of Respect that it did not have the necessary politics to build a halfway house. Respect wedded itself to Labourism, an ideology of the past, not the future. It rejected republicanism, democracy and secularism - a strategic failure that would inevitably come to a head, although not quite as spectacularly or as quickly as recent events. If you do not respect democracy in the wider world, you will not respect it in your own organisation.

In 2001-03 the key question for the SA was halfway to what end? The SWP, which led the SA until 2003-04, never provided a credible answer. It was the SA left, organising around first the so-called 'M3 Committee' and then the SA Democracy Platform, that came up with an answer. The SA should be the first step, or halfway, to a workers' party. At that time the RDG first raised the argument that a new workers' unity party could not be either Labourite or Trotskyist. It could only succeed in the form of a republican socialist party.

Following the attack on the Twin Towers and the war in Afghanistan and then Iraq, the SA, under its SWP leadership, was unable to rise to the challenge of a mass anti-war movement. Instead of becoming a leading force within it, the SA was parked at the side of the road. The SWP got out and climbed into another car - Respect - and drove off. The recent debacle in Respect is merely a repeat performance of the SWP's failure to lead and build the SA.

The SA in 2001 and Respect in 2004 replicated the economism and Labourism that prevents the left becoming a much more effective political force. Economism - or the failure to relate correctly to the question of democracy - remains a major barrier to building a real, effective halfway house.

The SA has begun to take on board some of the lessons from the previous failures. Sometimes identified as SA3 or SA (Arise), the reconstituted Socialist Alliance, despite its small core of members, maintains the traditional commitment to unity, aiming to bring socialist groups and independent socialists together in one organisation.

The term 'Arise' is used by some members as an acronym, to identify the SA as an 'alliance' for 'republicanism', 'internationalism', 'socialism' and 'environmentalism', and against racism, fascism and specific oppressions. The SA differs from previous alliances because it is pro-party, committed to campaigning for a new workers' party, identified in the constitution as a "republican socialist party".

With so few members the SA is a socialist alliance in name only. It is not a halfway house. It is really a campaign for a Socialist Alliance or, if you prefer, a campaign for a halfway house. As such the SA aims to promote the unity of the Labour Representation Committee, the Campaign for a New Workers' Party, Respect (both versions) and the rest of the left into one united socialist alliance. In achieving this aim the key question is not whether it adopts the name 'Socialist Alliance', but that it is a socialist alliance. The conference will have to discuss how we can promote socialist unity when the left is splitting rather than uniting.

Historically the British working class movement has produced three kinds of party around the ideas of Chartism, Labourism and Marxism. We now have a myriad of pro-party campaigns which reflect that history - there is the Labour Representation Committee (campaign for a new Labour Party) and the Campaign for a Marxist Party. What is missing is a campaign for a new Chartist party (ie, a republican socialist party). The CNWP is the third campaign which has not yet decided where to position itself, beyond rejecting the call for a new Marxist party. The Merseyside-based United Socialist Party can be added to that list.

As I say, the SA has formally adopted the call for a republican socialist party in its constitution (clause A3). But so far differences within the SA executive have prevented the SA from pressing that point. What is agreed is that a major priority for the SA will be campaigning for a workers' party. In 2003 the M3 Committee and SADP called for a workers' party. This slogan was taken up by the CNWP. The SA has now worked mainly through the CNWP. At the last CNWP conference the SA won our resolution to include democratic republicanism in the CNWP policy platform. That was significant victory and one small step in the right direction.

At the last CNWP executive the SA delegation came forward with positive proposals about how to take the campaign forward. The Socialist Party was sympathetic to our arguments. But so far there have been little, if any, results. The question for the SA conference is how we can press the CNWP to transform itself from largely a paper campaign controlled by the SP into one controlled by its members.

SA has given its support to Hands off the People of Iran in line with our internationalist principles. We will also be discussing the 'Charter for a Democratic Republic', whose six points call for a written constitution with a bill of rights, the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords, proportional representation, annual parliaments, MPs subject to recall by a vote of their electors, and devolved power to community-based local government. The six points of the charter are provisional. At some point its supporters and sympathisers will hold a conference to put it onto a democratic, membership basis.

Rebuilding the SA is still primarily an ideological question. Some progress has been made, but there is much further to go. A proposal for an educational event in 2008 should go some way to making the SA more effective. The conference will be an opportunity to see whether the SA has made any progress in establishing a clear and relevant political identity and perspective for the coming year.