Over the last few months we have commented in Solidarity on the talks between various leftists and left groups on working together in the General Election. And comment is all we have been able to do, because those talks were held behind closed doors. We, and others have been excluded from the “process”. The information we had about the talks was limited to the bits and pieces that “leaked” out. Now, what has emerged, is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). A loose assembly of socialist groups and individuals who expect — so they say — to stand candidates in around 50 constituencies.
How does TUSC look now?
It is still mainly a Socialist Party project, despite the recent arrival of the SWP and two small Scottish socialist groups. Individual leftists are also involved. If so many people have “come together” is it not, therefore, a reasonable stab at “left unity”? No! It is the hasty clubbing together of groups and individuals under a convenient and limited electoral banner — time-limited local campaigns, mostly tied to either the local SP and SWP, which will for a certainty, do their own group-building thing on the ground, irrespective of “TUSC”.
Let’s be clear — we are not being critical here of attempts to run local socialist election campaigns as such or of group building. We are critics of the pretence that this is a united, properly democratic, socialist coalition.
In our view open, on-going democratic discussion is the only way to forge solid and genuine left unity and for creating a united left that can present a clear socialist political presence on the doorsteps in this election, and indeed outside of elections! That is not how TUSC came into being. That is not what TUSC is.
And the politics of TUSC? In all likelihood there will be nothing very objectionable in any platform — if the local campaigns follow, more or less, the line of the TUSC platform. Even the SWP, which has spent the last ten years advocating and practicing political accommodation to Islamist clerical-fascism, will most likely, following past patterns, argue unobjectionable social-democratic — that is tamely reformist — demands in this election. (That’s what they do anyway!)
To have been really useful in this election an alliance of socialists would have had to thrash out a programme in open democratic discussion. It would not be presented as a fait acompli. Such a process would have been more likely to have got to grips with the strategic needs of the working-class movement as it faces its most serious attacks for decades.
That said, TUSC’s programme is better than it might have been.
The Socialist Party was aligned with the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) in last year’s European election in the No2EU coalition. We opposed that coalition on the grounds that opposition to the EU as such was wrong. To that reactionary nationalistic “spin” we counterposed a united working-class fight against the European bosses throughout Europe. The SP’s adaptation to nationalism was particularly shameful, something of a departure for them, which they did not deign to account for. The CPB as an organisation has now fallen away from this coalition and without their particularly malign influence the anti-EU propaganda is limited to opposition to the Lisbon treaty.
That is one positive. So is the fact that the coalition does not involve, as it looked for while as if it might, George Galloway.
But we have other more longstanding political concerns. If you are minded to give the Socialist Party or the SWP the benefit of the doubt right now — for the sake of left unity — think again about their recent forays into electoral activity — the Socialist Party’s No2EU adventure, the SWP’s alliance with George Galloway and the British offshoots of the clerical-fascist Muslim Brotherhood.
Nonetheless many TUSC candidates, and other independent socialist candidates will be putting forward anti-capitalist and general socialist ideas in this election. In general terms, it is right in principle that socialists should stand in elections to make this kind of propaganda. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty is standing such a candidate against Harriet Harman in south London.
For this reason we will back those TUSC individuals who have good records in the labour movement or on the left. We will work for the best candidates, people like Darren Ireland in Merseyside for example.
On the other hand, a few TUSC candidates may be “beyond the pale”. Tommy Sheridan, for instance, who for egotistical and foolishly personal reasons nearly destroyed the Scottish Socialist Party.
So socialists should not give blanket, unconditional or uncritical support for TUSC.
We continue to advocate left unity, but if this is to be achieved it will only be by way of open and critical discussion of the tasks which face the labour movement.
In the general election the AWL’s main activities will be:
1. to advocate what we think are the necessary tasks for the broad labour movement within the Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and the Fascists;
2. to develop the necessary socialist ideas in our campaign for Jill Mountford in Peckham and Camberwell.
We urge all socialists who want to discuss with us and be involved in these activities to get in touch.