Workers' Liberty

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty in Britain sends its best wishes to the Australian Socialist Alliance conference for further progress towards the development of an open, pluralist, multi-tendency socialist party.

In England and Wales that project has had a setback with the effective liquidation of the majority of the Socialist Alliance into the Respect coalition, a narrower, non-socialist, electoralist enterprise built around the dubious personality of George Galloway MP.

We continue, however, to maintain some local Socialist Alliance groups, collaborating with a range of other comrades in the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform to try to continue what the SA started out to do.

In Scotland we participate in the Scottish Socialist Party. The SSP's results in the 2003 elections - 7.7% of the list vote and 7% of the first-past-the-post vote across Scotland, and 15% in Glasgow - are evidence of what can be achieved by consistent electoral work with a clear message of socialism and independent working-class representation, and linked to ongoing non-electoral work on basic working-class issues like the SSP's free school meals campaign.

We are involved in initiatives and discussions towards setting up a campaign in solidarity with the new workers', unemployed, and women's organisations in Iraq, on lines similar to US Labor Against the War's Iraq Labor Solidarity Fund. We hope that this campaigning can be coordinated and extended on an international scale.

Martin Thomas

for the Alliance for Workers' Liberty