17.09.2008
Convention talking shop
Serious rethink needed - not platitudes, writes Chris Strafford
The forthcoming Convention of the Left (CL) - organised in Manchester as a ‘counter-conference’ to the Labour Party’s annual gathering from September 20-24 - has been touted by some as the first step towards yet another halfway house unity project.
Unfortunately, we all know that principled unity has not even been contemplated. Instead of working towards unification within a single Marxist party, over the last decade virtually every revolutionary group has aimed to protect its own sect integrity, while at the same time attempting to set up electoral fronts with those to their right - often with just about anyone who they think may help win them some votes.
This has been epitomised by the experience of the Socialist Alliance and Respect. The SA was made up overwhelmingly of members of the revolutionary groups, but for none apart from the CPGB was it viewed as an opportunity to take the limited cooperation achieved onto a qualitatively higher organisational level. The SA stood in elections on a left reformist platform, appealing to Labourites as Labourites.
Respect represented a retreat even compared to the SA. The Socialist Workers Party leadership thought it could make greater electoral headway by ditching most of the other groups and further watering down its own politics. Respect was a classic unpopular popular front. A whole range of principles - a woman’s right to choose an abortion, gay rights, open borders, a workers’ representative on a worker’s wage, republicanism, secularism, even working class socialism - were junked in order to accommodate George Galloway, Muslim activists, British-Bengali businessmen and trade union bureaucrats, in the hope that SWP comrades might be able to get themselves elected in the process.
Those involved in the CL include Galloway’s Respect Renewal, the Labour Representation Committee and eventually, after seeing the CL attract substantial forces, the SWP. It is obvious that both fragments of the Respect split are looking to make gains. RR will want to see similar events across the country, where it will hope to win people to its soft left politics. Respect is the biggest mover within the CL organising group and has made sure there will be no real discussion on the lessons to be learnt from its own experience. The LRC put up a lot of the money needed for the convention, and has meetings organised throughout the week featuring its leading members.
The very first session is titled ‘What unites us’, with John McDonnell (LRC), Tony Benn, Lindsey German (SWP) and Derek Wall (Green Party). This is intended to highlight the so-called 80%-20% principle, whereby we campaign only on those questions where we agree and ignore everything we disagree on. Many people might think that the left ought to be united on such questions as LGBT and women’s rights, but comrade German was responsible for downgrading such “shibboleths” when Respect was launched.
In reality, as Respect demonstrated all too clearly, such lowest-common-denominator unity cannot last. It leads to immediate crisis and the probability of splits when a practical question related to the 20% is posed by life itself. Such false unity has led to the disillusionment of thousands of socialists in Britain and left our movement more fractured and smaller than ever. If we are to achieve a genuine unity and not just end up with another Respect, then we are going to have to confront the issues which divide us in an open, honest and sharp way.
But for that to happen the left groups are going to have to abandon their bureaucratic centralism in favour of democracy and transparency. Members must be free to publicly raise differences in order to openly combat the sectarianism, economism and rank opportunism that is so prevalent.
Take the Socialist Party and its beleaguered Campaign for a New Workers’ Party front. The SP decided not be involved in the CL. Instead it is setting up shop down the road for a CNWP meeting. This will be held immediately after the anti-war demo on September 20, but it is very doubtful it will attract many. Surely the comrades would have had more luck getting people signed up at the CL.
Another highlight could be ‘Question time for the left’ on Wednesday September 24. This will feature, as well as comrades McDonnell, German and Wall, Robert Griffiths (Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain), Mark Serwotka (Public and Commercial Services union), Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper), George Galloway and Colin Fox (Scottish Socialist Party). It will be interesting to see how the various participants cope with what promises to be a chaotic Q&A session - but don’t expect anything more than the usual platitudes - or anything much in the ‘20%’ department.
While we welcome the opportunity to engage with so many factions, including those of the Labour left, it is clear that the event can only be a talking shop. It is certainly not a serious attempt to forge organisational unity - not even in the shape of another ‘broad party’ or ‘united front of a special kind’ that subordinates socialist politics to the requirements of the right in the vain hope of achieving a breakthrough.
Some of those involved in the CL say that any kind of organisational unity is unrealistic at the moment - all we can hope for is better coordinated action within various single-issue campaigns. Of course, there is nothing wrong with better coordination, but the problem is not the ineffectiveness of each campaign in and of itself: the problem is the lack of a democratic-centralist party capable of giving such campaigns a common direction. Working together does help build links, but to what end?
While the convention provides some limited space for communists to argue for the kind of unity I have outlined, it proposes no concrete steps. We are not going to even discuss what has gone wrong, let alone agree on any future action. Instead of opening the floor to suggestions on common aims, all we are going to get is a declaration of platitudes to be approved. There will be no motions and no votes. There is a proposal for a recall conference in November, but what it is supposed to be deciding on is unclear, as the organising committee is adamant that the CL should not be about setting up a new organisation.
Which makes you wonder, what is the point of the whole thing? Considering all the effort and money that is going into getting the left together, it is a pity that the organisers’ sights are raised no higher than better coordinated campaigns and perhaps a few local forums that are bound to be short-lived.
The left is in desperate need of a serious rethink, but the Convention of the Left proposes no such thing.
