Socialist Alliance conference 10 May 2003

Submitted by martin on 15 May, 2003 - 12:40

The Socialist Alliance (England) met in conference at Islington Green School, London, on 10 May 2003.

Read the AWL briefing distributed at the conference here.
Report by Gerry Byrne

The tone of the whole Socialist Alliance conference, held in London on 10 May, was set by the first motion.
It was an emergency motion which expressed "wholehearted support"" for George Galloway and urged all members and "everyone in the anti-war movement" to raise support for him. Not only the AWL motion questioning Galloway's politico-financial connections, but also a "middle-road" motion for critical support fell. In other words, no criticism, and the entire SA turned into a Galloway fanclub. The SA had already published a pro-Galloway leaflet and decided to back Galloway fringe meetings at union conferences this summer, instead of having its own meetings.
A long but vague motion on "a new initiative for left unity" was moved by Alan Thornett (an ally of the SWP) and passed.
It called on the Executive "to initiate discussion (formal or informal as appropriate) with those political parties, organisations, campaigns and trade unions or trade union activists, which it judges to be possible partners in such a project". This should be "without constraints, limitations and preconditions", and the motion was specifically counterposed to ones calling for the SA to campaign for a workers' party.
Who will be the "partners"? To guess that we have to go by the Galloway emergency resolution and an announcement from John Rees that he was speaking to the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star). It looks like the SWP wish to deliver a tamed SA, with all critics marginalised or silenced, as foot soldiers for a bloc with Galloway, the CPB, or others.
Thus, the rather peculiar affair of the Executive elections and the slate. Rob Hoveman (SWP) reported that only one slate had been proposed for a vastly expanded committee, with 36 of the 41 nominated.
Hoveman said there had been controversy over whether to exclude Martin Thomas (AWL) on the grounds of the AWL's "disgraceful" position on Galloway (cue for booing and hissing the AWL). Apparently the SWP had wanted to exclude Thomas, but after a revolt by the CPGB, Workers' Power and others they felt it wiser to back down.
All that happened behind the scenes. SA members who had wanted to submit amended versions of the SWP-drafted slate were told that they had missed the deadline and that was that.

Other conference motions, on the war and on racism and fascism, followed a similar pattern. The SWP majority repeated their message: the role of socialists is to be the "best builders" of broad movements, not to "go in with a programme which distinguishes us". That had been done in exemplary fashion in the Stop the War Coalition. The SA had profited: witness its success in electing a councillor in Preston. We must go forward on the same lines, with "deeds, not words, not sloganeering, not pointless resolution-mongering" (John Rees). There had been nothing wrong with the SA's approach in the last year. There was no distinctive role for SA politics separate from the various SWP-dominated fronts (StWC, ANL). There was no need to question or self-criticise. Follow the SWP's lead into the "new coalition"!
The abysmal fact that at least a million marching against the war, explicitly against Blair's New Labour, translated into one council seat in the local elections for the SA while the BNP got 16, was trumpeted as our greatest success.
The SSP now has 6 MSPs and won 6.2% of the constituency vote, with Tommy Sheridan increasing his vote from 21.5% to 27.9%. The SSP, in contrast to the SA, campaigned under its own name and banner against the war!
Great success for the SA? The SWP have lost all touch with reality. Activists up and down the country have reported that local SAs have not met for months. The biggest political ferment in decades has almost completely passed by the SA.

The SA conference had originally been planned for March, but postponed due to the war on Iraq and the feeling that activists would be all involved in anti-war activity. Put that another way, the largest group in the SA, the SWP were concentrating all their forces on the Stop the War Coalition, and saw the SA purely as an electoral front, to be put aside between elections.
The abject failure of the SA to put forward a socialist case against the war and in solidarity with the peoples of Iraq, as opposed to a broad popular frontist alliance with anyone and everyone, and its equal failure to do anything distinctive in the firefighters' dispute, had already led to wide discontent.
A week before the conference, a caucus of AWL, CPGB, RDG and a number of SA independents had agreed a couple of joint motions, on a campaign for a workers' party (a motion from Merseyside SA) and for a regular SA paper (Cambridge SA). At the conference they went down in favour of the "new coalition" motion.
Supporters of the defeated "Workers' Party" resolution met in a fringe meeting immediately after conference. It was a packed meeting, maybe a quarter of the conference. Unfortunately, it was also ill-organised, formless, with no clear agenda or proposals, and heated (on the Galloway issue) without much political clarification.
A further meeting, initiated by Solidarity and Workers' Liberty, but open to any SA members or groups want to debate the basis of moves towards a workers' party. Should we base ourselves on working class independence, or be beholden to reactionary regimes? The meeting has been called for 25 May (ULU, London). Hopefully a more structured discussion of the way forward will be possible there.

Galloway no-show
Galloway no-show

George Galloway had been invited to the conference as a guest speaker, and as of a couple of days before was said to be coming.
He didn't come. It seems that Galloway was not willing to face an audience where his socialist critics, the AWL and others, might be able to ask pointed questions, or, at least, that the SWP (the dominant faction in the Alliance) decided that it was prudent not to subject their maybe-delicate relations with Galloway to the test of such questioning.
That we avoided having the conference centrepiece a standing ovation for Galloway was a victory. Unfortunately the conference saw few other victories for principled socialist politics.
The SA will now be backing a series of meetings, at trade union events and locally, where socialists will be invited to defend George Galloway.
One such was held on 7 May in Lewisham. On the platform with Galloway were Ghasayuddin Siddiqi of the Muslim Parliament, Bruce Kent of CND and Lindsey German of the SWP. When, after the meeting, two AWL members asked Bruce Kent how he could justify Galloway's comments in his 1994 address on Iraqi TV, Kent said it was "intimidating" being in the presence of a dictator and that Galloway had "enough problems" without the left criticising him

Socialist Alliance results in the 1 May local elections

In the local elections of 1 May, the Socialist Alliance won its first councillor, SWP member Michael Lavalette in Preston Town Centre.
A key factor was support from Saeed Ahmed, the imam at the local mosque. Saeed, speaking at the Socialist Alliance conference in London on 10 May, said: "None of us have any links with the Muslim Association. In fact the Muslim Association has very little support in the Muslim communities".
There were a few other places where the Alliance collected sizeable protest votes from Asian communities, but overall the 164 candidates (out of about 10,000 seats contested) averaged 116 votes each, a total of 18,954, or about 4.3%.
Two Workers' Liberty activists were among the Alliance candidates. Alison Brown gained 8.1% of the vote, standing for the third time in Burngreave ward, Sheffield, and Beth Aze got 3.4% in Barlow Moor, Manchester.
The Alliance campaign was weak in major cities: only 32 candidates in Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton, Bristol, Coventry and Newcastle combined, with Alison Brown's 8.1% and Madeleine Henneghan's 8.8% in Granby, Liverpool, the best percentage scores among them.
The seven "Firefighters against cuts" candidates won an average of 113 votes each.
The Socialist Party got an average of 252 votes in 31 seats. Karen McKay retained her council seat in Coventry, where Rob Windsor and former Labour MP Dave Nellist are also SP councillors.
Overall, the "anti-war" vote mostly went to the Greens and the Lib-Dems. Only a tenacious battle for the principle of independent working-class representation can generate a real revival of socialist electoral politics.

We asked five delegates to the Socialist Alliance conference what they made of it all... and what we need to do next to build left unity.

James White
My view is that the Labour Party is finished as any kind of vehicle for the representation of working people, and increasingly we have a US-type situation where the working class is being asked to choose between two variants of bourgeois capitalism.
The key strategic task of socialists is to make the case in the movement for a new socialist party.
At the conference the SWP and its allies, for their own sectarian interests, succeeded in sidestepping that, and left the Socialist Alliance with nothing to say on the issue. The case for a new workers' party is strong, and we need to make it both inside, and increasingly outside, the Socialist Alliance.
Where will a new workers' party come from? We're seeing new layers of people being drawn into trade union activity, for example around the FBU dispute, and in the anti-war movement. Two million people on the big anti-war demonstration - if one tenth of them joined a new party, that's 200,000.
But there needs to be a subjective factor. The trouble is, the SWP think they're it.
If we see a desire for a new party emerge in the trade unions at the top levels, that will open possibilities. But I'm sceptical about people like Andy Gilchrist and Bob Crow taking that step. I think the unions are going the same way as they have gone in the USA, where they back the Democratic Party.
The "new initiative"? If there are opportunities to discuss with other forces on the left on working more closely together, or blocs around particular elections, I'm not averse. But I think it will be a lot of talk and not much action - avoiding the main task, which is to raise the need for a new party in the movement.
The Socialist Alliance backing Galloway fringe meetings at union conference? It's another missed opportunity. Even if all they were doing was going along and plugging the Socialist Alliance, it would be better than being cheerleaders for Galloway.
However, I don't really agree with your position on Galloway. I don't care how bent he is, he is seen as a spokesperson for the anti-war movement, so you have to defend him critically.

Roger Silverman
It was not an honest discussion. It was a jamboree. The whole business with the slate [for the Alliance Executive] was a sleight of hand.
If it had not been for the accident of the war and the Socialist Alliance finding a friendly imam here and there, there could have been no hiding the complete failure of the Socialist Alliance to organise disillusioned Labour voters. The SWP is doing what Scargill did to the Socialist Labour Party - throttling at birth a potential new party for fear that it will develop beyond what they want.
The "new coalition" proposed at the conference? I didn't understand what they were on about. They have got to have something to cheer the conference about, but I don't think it will come to anything. At best it is staggering on from one facade to another - imams one day, George Galloway the next.
It's from the unions that something has got to come. En route it might make a fleeting contact with the Socialist Alliance, but that is all.

Dave Landau
I was concerned about the triumphalism about our results in the local elections. By all means celebrate our successes, but recognise that it was but nothing compared to the successes of the BNP, not only in seats won but where they did well. Where we had cause for cheer was for the Scottish Socialist Party. But conference did not seem to learn the lesson by declaring a clear aim of trying to build an organisation like this or Rifondazione Comunista.
I would have to add the confusion with this aim and the issues surrounding George Galloway did not help clarify the issues in the minds of the SA rank and file like it should have.
Finally, despite these reservations, I believe that the Socialist Alliance remains the only vehicle for building a united socialist movement and we must take it forward.

Dave Osler
All of the characteristics that make the English far left demonstrably the least effectual in the entirety of Western Europe were on depressingly prominent display. At this rate, Liechtenstein will build a new workers' party long before we do.
The Socialist Alliance evinced about as much political maturity as a bus full of teenage schoolgirls on laughing gas. Then again, given the backroom carve-up that saw the de facto imposition of a leadership that nobody voted for, the AWL's toddler tantrums over Galloway, and the continuing inability to offer an honest account of the Liz Davies debacle, even that assessment is probably far too rosy.

Phil Pope
The elections to the executive failed to live up to my own very low expectations of how democratic, constitutional or transparent the process would be. The most prominent dissenting voices were excluded from the executive and those few independents on last year's executive who were willing (though not always able) to put a different point of view have been swamped by a massive influx of SWP members and sympathisers. If future conferences are to be this amateurish they should dispense with the pretence of debate, dialogue and democracy and save the expense. The leadership of the SWP and others in the Alliance seem to have no understanding of the values upon which the SA was formed - of working together on what unites us, of consensus and inclusion. The most disappointing thing from a day of many negatives is that the SA has confirmed everything that its critics have said about it, making the already difficult job of building the organisation that much harder.

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