Email: workersrepresentation@yahoo.com
Links: Socialist Alliance; Socialist Alliance index page on Workers' Liberty website
At a meeting in London on 25 May 2003, some twenty Socialist Alliance activists from various local branches decided to work towards launching a "Network for Working-Class Political Representation/ Independent Socialist Alliance" as a faction within the Socialist Alliance. The political statement is now circulated for discussion and amendment.
This is the text of the main statement adopted by the meeting:
At the Socialist Alliance conference on 10 May 2003 the majority adopted a perspective of "relaunching the Socialist Alliance as part of a coalition of broader left wing forces" (as Socialist Worker put it). Everyone in the Alliance is in favour of reaching out broadly, especially now when there is some revival of assertiveness in the trade unions, and when large numbers of people have been politicised or re-politicised by the anti-war movement. The majority perspective was however, specifically counter posed to "campaigning for a workers' party". It looks like the leaders of the majority want to sink the Alliance in a popular-front-type pink-green bloc, if they can manage it. This will contradict and abort what the Socialist Alliance started out to do: work to re-establish a working-class socialist presence in electoral politics. It will also block the development of a real political life in the Alliance, and movement towards it being a genuine party-type organisation. Both the enlargement of the Executive, and the taking of an effective majority on it by the SWP and its allies, will help free the hands of the top officials of the Alliance to make whatever blocs they wish. We believe this poses a threat to the political purpose for which we joined the Alliance, and resolve to organise to combat that threat. This meeting resolves to work towards launching a "Network for Working-Class Political Representation/ Independent Socialist Alliance" as a grouping within the Socialist Alliance.
This grouping will:
We will circulate the following short statement as a draft political basis for the Network, with a view to calling a meeting in a couple of months' time to amend and adopt the statement and launch the Network.
1. New Labour is progressively depriving the working class of any independent political representation.
2. The working class needs to re-establish its own independent political representation.
3. No self-selected group can substitute for the working class in this. However, activists - the organised sections of the working class, in the trade unions, and in the first place the socialist activists - must play a leading role. We will fight for the trade unions to reassert themselves politically.
4. We will fight for the socialists to unite in a new socialist party, with ample rights of tendency on the model of Rifondazione Comunista or the Scottish Socialist Party, which can become the leading political force in the fight for a re-born mass workers' party, and within that re-born mass workers' party once formed.
5. In the fight for independent working-class political representation, a central task is to make the trade unions assert themselves politically against the Blair government.
6. This includes taking up the fight for a concerted trade-union struggle against Blairism and for trade-union and working-class interests inside the Labour structures, and the fight for accountability of the union reps in those structures. It would be short-sighted to sidestep that struggle by advocating that individual militant unions disaffiliate from Labour.
7. To play a positive role in the struggle to re-establish independent working-class political representation, independent socialist candidacies must be based on clear working-class principle and a consistent effort to develop working-class self-organisation. Inside the Socialist Alliance, that will be our basic measure by which to judge all proposals to support broader coalitions or candidacies.
8. We are concerned about the reported moves in Birmingham to set up a "Peace and Justice" candidate for the Euro-elections over the head of the Socialist Alliance. Although we deplore the attacks on Galloway by the Blairites in the Labour Party for his anti-war speeches, and the attempts to smear the anti-war movement by the bourgeois press, we note that Galloway has a history of relations with the Iraqi government and other anti-working class forces that any socialist would be ashamed of. In light of this, we oppose the decision to renounce Socialist Alliance fringe meetings at this summer's union conferences in favour of helping with Galloway fringe meetings. We will oppose sinking the Alliance into unprincipled electoral blocs, and consider that a bloc organised with George Galloway would not be principled.
The meeting also adopted some detailed proposals for action:
We resolve to campaign inside the Alliance for the Alliance to make the political principle outlined in its 2001 "priority pledges" a precondition for entering any "new coalition":
"Our candidates offer a working-class alternative. If elected they will be workers' MPs on a worker's wageÉ We propose an emergency plan to meet the demands and needs of workers and the jobless, and to defend and extend democracy".
We recall that at its October 2002 conference the Socialist Alliance voted to campaign for "no to the euro", but proclaimed it would do so on a socialist basis free of nationalism. We note, however, that at the 10 May 2003 John Rees announced that he would be talking to the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) about a common slate for the euro-elections in 2004. The CPB/ Morning Star has a long-established nationalist and popular-frontist position against the euro. We resolve to argue inside the Socialist Alliance against any bloc with the CPB for the Euro-elections, and in favour of a bloc with forces such as Lutte Ouvriere and the LCR in France, and Rifondazione Comunista in Italy.
We resolve to campaign inside the Alliance for democracy, and in the first place:
We deplore the Socialist Alliance's decision to renounce an independent presence at trade union conferences this summer in favour of helping with George Galloway fringe meetings. We will seek to establish contacts in various trade unions with Socialist Alliance activists and other rank-and-file forces that stand for trade-union democracy, with a view to organising an independent socialist presence and to make the case for labour representation at trade union conferences this summer.
The meeting had a short discussion on the threat posed by the British National Party, and the need for a socialist response based on independent working-class politics and grass-roots work in communities. The sentiment of the meeting was in favour of the proposals that had been put to Socialist Alliance conference by Dave Landau, including the parts of those proposals amended out by the conference; in favour of a campaign to make sure that those proposals from Dave Landau adopted by the conference are actually carried through by the Socialist Alliance; and in favour of a campaign for the principle summarised in a defeated amendment at that conference, from the CPGB, which called for an independent working-class response to the BNP without blocs with Lib-Dems and Tories.
To endorse the Network statement, or to make inquiries, contact: Phil Pope or Martin Thomas.
Email: workersrepresentation@yahoo.com
Postal: 20 Oval Way, Gerrards Cross, SL9 8QD
Phone: Phil 07957 994 286 or Martin 07748 185 553.