09.05.2013

Left Unity: Need to engage with existing left groups

In April, the CPGB applied for observer status at Left Unitys May 11 gathering. Here is the exchange of letters that resulted

Kate Hudson to Mark Fischer, May 4

Thank you for your request, Mark.

Our forthcoming meeting is an internal meeting rather than a conference, so we aren’t having any press or outside observer spaces available on this occasion.

We may be having a national conference later in the year, in which case we may decide to welcome observers or press on that occasion.

Best wishes

Kate

Mark Fischer to Kate Hudson, May 7

Thanks for your reply of May 4, which we found disappointing. Left Unity is at an embryonic stage, but it is clear from the reports we have gathering from around the country that sections of the organised left are already involved at a local level alongside ‘independent’ activists - in fact a number of CPGBers have been delegated to attend the May 11 “internal meeting”, as you frame it.

So it is clearly wrongheaded to think of the CPGB or other left groups as “outside” elements, particularly as the whole project is branded ‘Left Unity’. Aren’t the CPGB, the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party or socialist organisations in the Labour Party all component parts of the left that should be united?

This is not to minimise the difficulties associated with an orientation like this. You will be aware that we have comprehensively documented such problems over the years in initiatives like the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance, Respect, etc. Indeed, we have not simply chronicled the trials and tribulations of the fight for left unity, but have been harshly and openly critical of the groups’ sectarianism that has derailed it time and again. However, we have never ceased to regard this section of the movement as an essential element of the answer, not simply part of the problem. We note from the prominent role played in LU by Socialist Resistance comrades that you have a version of this approach, but applied rather selectively, it seems.

Ideally, we believe that what is needed is a unity conference of the left, something that would require frank and open prior negotiations between the respective leaderships of the groups and a commitment to abide by the majority decisions taken at it by all those who attend. We are obviously some way from that, but LU can make a useful contribution if it invites left organisations, even those that have been critical of the initiative so far, to attend as observers with full speaking rights. It seems to us that a unity project that does not make real efforts to engage all elements of the actual left, as it exists in the here and now, may be off to a rather shaky start.

We presume the decision you convey has been made either by the LU’s organising committee or a working group delegated from it to handle arrangements for the meeting. Could you clarify this for us, Kate? Many thanks.

With communist greetings