Socialist Party

At the Left Unity Liaison Committee meeting on 13 June, the Socialist Party said that it is not interested in a new Socialist Alliance for now. Instead, it hopes to continue its “No2EU” alliance with RMT general secretary Bob Crow, the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star), and the Alliance for Green Socialism, into some “son of No2EU” coalition for the general election. The Socialist Party has also responded to the SWP’s call for unity, by rehashing an argument the SP had inside the Socialist Alliance which led to it leaving the alliance in December 2001. Its argument about the SWP is apt...

Open letter to the left from the SWP; and the AWL's reply An open letter to the left from the Socialist Workers Party It’s time to create a socialist alternative Dear comrade, Labour’s vote collapsed to a historic low in last week’s elections as the right made gains. The Tories under David Cameron are now set to win the next general election. The British National Party (BNP) secured two seats in the European parliament. Never before have fascists achieved such a success in Britain. The result has sent a shockwave across the labour and anti-fascist movements, and the left. The meltdown of the...

At a public meeting in Leeds on 1 June, ostensibly to get people to vote for No2EU, hardly any of the 40 people present, including the platform speakers, could muster much enthusiasm for the project. None of the three platform speakers - ex Labour MP Alice Mahon, Mike Davies from the Alliance for Green Socialism, and Jackie Grunsell, a Socialist Party councillor - talked positively about the actual national platform No2EU is standing on. Instead they all talked about seizing the chance to build a left political platform with the RMT even if the undemocratic way it had come about and its...

Maria Exall, a member of the Executive of the post and telecom union CWU, spoke to Solidarity about the union's conference coming up on 7-11 June. In the telecom sector conference, the big issue is “Service Delivery Transformation” for BT Openreach engineers. BT is demanding: • A new “foundation grade” which will put all new workers on £4000 lower wages. • A change in attendance patterns so that workers lose premium pay for Saturdays. • Working up to 9pm without any premium pay, and being obliged to work up to two hours extra on any shift if management requires it. The telecom sector Executive...

It is an emergency! For the 2010 general election we should recreate something like the Socialist Alliance of 2001 — a coordination of the activist left able to offer voters a third alternative, a working-class socialist stance opposed to the mainstream parties and to the racist populism of the BNP. The fascist BNP may well win a Euro MP in the 4 June elections. With the economic crisis, and the growing discredit of mainstream politicians, it can place itself to make serious advances in next year's general election. Forming a new Socialist Alliance would be difficult? It would. But what is...

The expanded platform published on the website of the No2EU campaign for the 4 June Euro-elections denounces "the so-called ‘free movement’ of labour" in the EU and "the social dumping of exploited foreign workers in Britain". More on this: www.workersliberty.org/no2eu and www.workersliberty.org/no2eu2 . How can this be read as anything other than a "left" version of the chauvinist cry: "Kick out the Poles and other migrant workers"? As a macabre addition, the No2EU website has as its masthead, above all such policies: "It's a black and white issue". You have to assume that this is bungling...

Click here to download as pdf . Among those who criticise AWL for openly proclaiming our policy on the Middle East — Israel out of the Occupied Territories; two states, i.e. a Palestinian state alongside Israel; hostility to political Islam and Islamic clerical fascism — on the Gaza demonstrations have been members of the Socialist Party. This is of interest because the Socialist Party agrees with Israel’s right to exist, or used to anyway; and because the SP’s own behaviour on the Gaza demonstrations offers an object lesson in how socialists should not behave. On both the 3 January and the 10...

The leaflet distributed by the Socialist Party on the 3 January and 10 January 2009 Gaza demonstrations. Click here for a critical discussion of the leaflet .

Some on the left seem to have decided that the size of the leaked BNP membership list is bad news for the fascists. “A weak divided party exposed”, the Socialist Party headline tells us: the list “makes it clear that the BNP is a relatively small party... with just over 3,000 members classed as activists, it is welcome news that the BNP has capitalised so little on the enormous anger against New Labour, Tories and Lib Dems that exists.” The coverage in Socialist Worker has been more ambiguous on this point, but SWP members have also been using the argument that the BNP is still a very small...

Labour's youth movement in the early 1960s was the seedbed of the revolutionary left of the late 1960s and the 1970s: download our pamphlet as pdf.