Rebuilding the SSP: a submission for the SSP National Council on 13 May 2007

Submitted by martin on 17 May, 2007 - 5:13

From Workers' Liberty supporters in Scotland.

OPEN UP DEBATE AMONGST THE MEMBERSHIP

If the SSP is to rebuild after the elections, then it needs more than an open discussion throughout the membership about the causes of its electoral collapse. Just as much, it needs a proper discussion about what political initiatives and projects the SSP should be focussing on in the immediate future.

And let’s be clear: engaging in a full discussion about the causes of the SSP’s electoral debacle and about ideas for future political campaigning is not the same as what this week’s “Scottish Socialist Voice” refers to as “imploding for months on end to indulge in self-recrimination and doubt before tentatively hitting the streets again.”

AGAINST AN SNP GOVERNMENT

The minority SNP government which is now likely to be formed will be a straightforward pro-capitalist government. A pro-capitalist and pro-independence SNP government is no advance on a pro-capitalist and pro-Union Labour (or Labour-Lib Dem) government.

From a socialist point of view, the attitude of ‘anyone but Labour’ is politically bankrupt. Despite the Blairite project of driving the organised working class out of politics, Labour remains based, in part, on the trade unions. The SNP, on the other hand, is completely independent of the working class.

The SNP has slightly more than a third of the seats in the Scottish Parliament. It won just under a third of the votes in the elections. Taking into account the turnout in the elections (52%), only 16% of the Scottish electorate voted for the SNP. The weakness of the SNP government should make it an easy target. The SSP should help to mobilise trade union and working class opposition to the SNP minority government.

TURN TO THE TRADE UNIONS

The SSP needs to make a turn to systematic workplace and trade union activity, and to helping build rank-and-file groups in the different unions. The immediate focus for reviving trade union work is to try to build for strike action against the government’s two-year 2% pay limit for public sector pay rises (although how that will be applied in Scotland is likely to differ from in England).

All public sector unions (apart from the EIS, as Scottish teachers pay is covered by a separate agreement) have policy in favour of industrial action against the pay limits. But putting those policies into action will require sustained campaigning at rank-and-file level. SSP trade unionists should take the lead in initiating local alliances of public sector unions.

The SSP also needs to formally abandon the long defunct ‘Make the Break’ campaign. What’s needed instead is to organise in Labour-affiliated unions for them to fight for their policies inside (as well as outside) the Labour Party. The most obvious recent opportunity for this was the John McDonnell for Leader campaign – something not even covered in the pages of “Scottish Socialist Voice”, despite the divisions this opened up in the TGWU in particular.

LABOUR MOVEMENT CAMPAIGNING

According to this week’s issue of “Scottish Socialist Voice”: “As agreed at the Executive Committee on Sunday, we are going to draw together the disparate forces, including the SNP and Lib Dems, and representing the majority of the population of Scotland, calling for a local income tax to replace the Council Tax.”

This points in exactly the wrong direction. What’s needed is an orientation to organising specifically working-class and trade union campaigns – not working with the likes of the SNP in the cross-party Independence Convention, or allowing the SSP to be dragged into the Independence First campaign (as is current SSP policy), or, still less so, a joint SSP-SNP-Lib Dem campaign against the Council Tax.

LEFT UNITY IN CAMPAIGNING

Whatever the causes of the collapse of the SSP vote a fortnight ago, one thing is clear from the election results: it can no longer be said that the Left in Scotland equals the SSP.

Left re-unification in Scotland is not a realistic prospect in the short term. The political trajectory for nearly a year has been in the opposite direction. What does remain possible, and necessary, however, is joint campaigning by the different sections of the Left.

This means genuine attempts by the SSP to build ‘united front’ campaigns with other socialist and working-class forces in Scotland, such as the Scottish Campaign for Socialism, left Constituency Labour Parties, other forces who have come out in support of John McDonnell’s attempt to stand for Labour Party leader, and also Solidarity and (insofar as it exists) the SLP.

The “disparate forces” to which the SSP should be reaching out are not “the SNP and the Lib Dems” but the scattered forces of the Left in Scotland, and in Britain as a whole.

A CLASS APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGNING

The SSP needs to sharpen the political profile of its campaigning around international issues. Sometimes it looks as if the SSP has nothing to say about Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, other than ‘troops out’ or ‘troops out now’.

In fact, in relation to Iraq, SSP policy is not just to oppose the occupation of the country but also to build support for the new trade unions emerging in post-Saddam Iraq. A similar class approach needs to be extended to other international issues as well: the enemies of American imperialism can be every bit as much the enemies of the working class.

SSP policy of supporting Maoists in Nepal, Stalinists in Cuba, and a boycott of Israeli goods likewise has nothing to do with socialist internationalism. The SSP needs to begin a process of reassessing its overall approach to international issues.

DEFINING SOCIALISM & SOCIALIST STRATEGY

Socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class. It is not a ‘mixed economy’ (i.e. a capitalist economy with some nationalised industries) plus a welfare state. It is not something to be achieved through a series of parliamentary reforms. And it certainly is not something to be achieved by voting for the SNP in the first-past-the-post constituencies a fortnight ago.

With some local exceptions, political education in the SSP has generally been a long way down the agenda. In recent months it has tended to fall off the agenda completely. Alongside of campaigning and organised intervention into the labour movement, the SSP needs to develop and promote at branch level an educational programme which equips its members with an understanding of class-struggle socialism, which, for us, means the Marxist tradition.

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