Introduction

In the second edition of this book I have corrected a number of silly mistakes. The wrong date for the 2001 election had been inserted in the text, for example. Style has been touched-up here and there; various political formulations sharpened. Besides these minor changes, the first two chapters have, in particular, been considerably expanded both in the light of developments after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US and in order to fully discuss the main submissions to the Socialist Alliance’s December 1 conference. Inevitably, many passages will become completely dated on December 2. Nevertheless the general thrust of the argument still stands. Whether it convinces, I leave up to the reader.

JC

October 16 2001

1. Looking beyond

“Without struggle there cannot be a sorting out, and without a sorting out there cannot be any successful advance, nor can there be any lasting unity” (VI Lenin CW Vol 34, Moscow 1977, p53). As will soon be appreciated, I take these profound words of Lenin’s - written in 1900 to a party opponent, Apollinaria Yakobova - to be axiomatic.

The purpose of this short book lies not in highlighting the 80% where the Socialist Alliance purportedly agrees. Others can do that much better than I, not least the legendary journalist, Paul Foot (P Foot Why you should vote socialist London 2001). My method is unashamedly polemical. Paradoxical though it may appear, in order to achieve meaningful unity in the Socialist Alliance there must be the jarring dissonance of argument. An open, honest and, if need be, aggressive discussion on the areas where we disagree. Unity that ignores our palpable differences, unity that refuses to provide wide channels for dissent lacks inner strength and will prove worthless as soon as it is subjected to any kind of serious political test.

Mine is necessarily a contribution to the Socialist Alliance’s debate on structure that is due to culminate at the Logan Hall membership conference on December 1 2001. But much more than that. The intention is to lift our sights far beyond those circumscribed limits. What the Socialist Alliance desperately needs is an ambitious system of practical work. A system that, stage by stage, brings about a rapprochement between our many and various constituent elements - both the supporting groups and the so-called independents - and which in the shortest possible timespan achieves the solid and durable unity which is only possible within a fully democratic and, equally to the point, highly effective, revolutionary organisation. Its scientific name being - Communist Party.

The decisions taken on December 1 can either help or hinder the process of building a party ... and it is certainly more than a pity that comrades living in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are still excluded from taking a full part in our deliberations and decision making. The word ‘criminal’ springs to mind. As we shall argue, the party that the left requires must of necessity operate against the United Kingdom state on every front (and in due course against the entire system of global capital in unison with other working class parties). The hopelessly fragmented response to the Bush-Blair ‘war on terrorism’ has two main sources - sectarian obstinacy and the fact that socialists have by default allowed themselves to be separated off into England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland royalist units. Feudal tombs can only but suffocate.

There is, unarguably, a single UK capitalist state. Tony Blair’s government directs nuclear-tipped all-UK armed forces that are an integral part of the so-called ‘crusade’ against terrorism. Exploiting the horror and outrage provoked by September 11, the very same entity is putting through a whole raft of interconnected ‘anti-terrorist’ measures throughout the UK - designed to secure national unity and augment repressive powers. Equipped with a unified party, the working class can confidently coordinate decisive resistance and in time come to overpower our main enemy. By the same measure, to argue for disunity is, consciously or unconsciously, to argue for defeat.

Structures may seem a dull, convoluted and altogether third rate subject. Especially to demagogues and the determinedly naive. But not to those who consciously inhabit history. Leninists inevitably recall the debate about membership criteria at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party in 1903. Unexpectedly for all concerned, the Iskraists suddenly found themselves cleaved into two bitterly opposed, factions - the Bolshevik (majority) and Menshevik (minority). The earth-shattering fault line lay hidden in what at first appeared to be a minor, structural, detail - membership criteria. What sort of structures the Socialist Alliance adopts, or aspires towards, reflects our programmatic goals and will likewise materially shape the future. By taking a wrong course, or leaving things as they are, which actually amounts to the same thing, the whole Socialist Alliance project is in danger of losing all momentum. Our majority faction in England certainly seems content to have the Socialist Alliance in the rearguard and ambling along to the slow, debilitating beat of routine election contests. Yet by adopting the right structures - backed as a matter of urgency by further programmatic invigoration - the opportunity exists whereby the left can be solidly united and through successive stages built into a viable mass alternative to Labourism.

When the Socialist Workers Party decided, at last, to throw its weight behind the Socialist Alliance with the June 2000 Greater London Authority elections, this gave us a vital qualitative boost in terms of resources, cadre and reach. The SWP’s entry cemented the Socialist Alliance as an alliance of socialists: principally Britain’s main left organisations. Something, it should be stressed, the CPGB consistently advocated and tenaciously fought to achieve. There was what might be called a price to pay. Insubstantial elements fell away. However, there were in both, material and political terms, big gains.

In every respect this enlargement has reoriented the Socialist Alliance towards an altogether more worthwhile destination compared to the shore hugging venture planned by the original Liaison Committee. Objectively things point towards a party - though it cannot be denied that the pro-party bloc still forms a minority.

The Welsh Socialist Alliance benefited in no small measure too from the SWP’s turn away from its unsplendid isolation. Numbers and political impact have grown markedly. As for Scotland, the Scottish Socialist Party gained a valuable addition when the comrades finally secured entry on May 1 2001 ... as proved by the relaunch of Scottish Socialist Voice as a 12-page weekly. Nevertheless, despite these overwhelmingly positive developments the burning question of ‘ultimate destination’, and therefore, of organisational ways and means, has been left hazy or has gone completely unanswered by us collectively. The general election fixed our priorities for the first half of 2001. Since then, and from almost every quarter, there has been a dawning recognition that ‘something must be done’. Good.

The Socialist Alliance has grown in leaps and bounds - above all with the 2001 general election. There were 98 candidates in England and Wales and some 57,000 votes. Many hundreds of recruits were signed up. Scores of new branches sprung into existence. Garnering trade union support is now within our grasp. Yet the structures of the Socialist Alliance act like a dead weight. Our elected officers operate as a body of rank amateurs and wield hardly a jot of authority. The absence of our top officers from London and from the platforms of our rallies over the country is noticeable. And for ongoing publicity and propaganda the Socialist Alliance is expected to rely on Socialist Worker, Weekly Worker and The Socialist. These small circulation rivals and our website.

Organisationally the Socialist Alliance is an ineffectual, ramshackle, not to say Ruritanian affair. We have two national addresses. One in London, the other in Coventry. Applicants for membership can write to either of these two addresses. They then have to have their details sent to Walsall and comrade Dave Church, our membership secretary. He then informs the appropriate local Socialist Alliance, if he knows of one. Cheques, on the other hand, are posted to comrade Declan O’Neil, the outgoing treasurer. The whole rigmarole takes at least a week.

Micawber-like finances are as squeezed as they are precarious. Local and regional finances remain a complete mystery to our leading committees and officers. The many-tiered membership system is bizarre. You might have to join four separate times in order to take a full part. There is no single membership system. We are an officially registered political party but employ no staff. We have a national office but most aspects of the Socialist Alliance are still run from spare bedrooms. Scotland and Wales are, perversely, treated as foreign countries, in no small part owing to an inverted English chauvinism. And as long as Tommy Sheridan occasionally nods in the direction of the Socialist Alliance, nationalism is said to be a purely a Scottish and Welsh concern. Unless you are Chris Bambery! What of trade union work? Despite a rash of disputes on the London underground and the crisis-ridden rail network, the Socialist Alliance has still not taken up the CPGB’s urgent call for a railworkers’ fraction, or the AWL’s generous offer of handing over their Tubeworker bulletin. What goes for the RMT, Aslef and TSSA, applies no less to the CWU, FBU, Unison, etc.

Simultaneously the six principal supporting organisations patrol the ideological seas with six rival flagship publications. Besides that they employ a posse of full time workers, and four of them run commercially viable print shops. So the Socialist Alliance still operates more as separate parts than as a single whole. This semi-unity, fledgling stage is itself endangered from within by the misjudged actions of one of our six principal supporting organisations - namely the Socialist Party in England and Wales. It has been systematically diluting or wilfully sabotaging common efforts: eg, running a semi-detached general election campaign: eg, operating an effective boycott across whole areas of the country. Serious involvement is almost entirely at the top. Worse, far worse, in the London borough of Hackney, Socialist Alliance candidates found themselves opposed by supposed allies. Such a state of affairs makes us a laughing stock. It was never tolerable. We must end it forthwith as an integral part of a December 1 structural revolution.

The structural alternatives on offer for December 1 frequently overlap but essentially revolve around two basic models - federalist and centralist. Proposals come from the SWP (supported by the International Socialist Group, John Nicholson, Mike Marqusee and Nick Wrack), the Socialist Party in England and Wales, Pete McLaren, Dave Church, the Revolutionary Democratic Group, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Workers Power and the Communist Party of Great Britain (five of whose members are also founding signatories of the ‘For a democratic and effective SA’ platform). We shall touch upon all of the submissions. But I think it will be most useful if our discussion concentrates on, or broadly follows, the SWP’s draft. Not because it is the best. Not because it is the worst. The reason is straightforward. In all likelihood the SWP’s proposed constitution is set to become the substantive one on December 1; then to be subject to debate, negotiation and amendment.

The SWP - the majority faction in England - argues that “one of the major weaknesses of the general election campaign nationally was that lines of responsibility and accountability were blurred and this also meant less coherence, more caution and weaker responses to changing events” (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p3). In other words, there was no clear chain of organisational command. Definitely true. But surely the localist make-do and lack of an authoritative leadership, the disconnected and uninspired propaganda and technical shortcomings, have deeper causal roots? In the last analysis everything goes back to programme. While there are some valuable nuggets to be found in the SWP’s proposals: eg, the election of executive officers, a single membership system - it does not surprise me at all that, taken as a whole, the SWP cannot produce what is required. Neither the programmatic positions the SWP defends within the Socialist Alliance nor the sum of their organisational proposals meet the needs of the day.

Let us take an initial, exploratory foray into the programmatic thickets. Instead of taking as its point of departure the Socialist Alliance’s general election manifesto, People before profits, the SWP prefers to keep one foot firmly in our pre-history. There is a passing reference to our general election manifesto and how our policies will be “the matter for continual debate and refinement” (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p19). However, the bulk of the SWP’s ‘delete all’ amendment actually endorses and entrenches the clumsy, unedifying and syrupy formulations that introduce A fair society, social justice and ecological sustainability: ie, our antiquated standing constitution, which was agreed, despite stiff CPGB opposition, at the March 1999 conference in Birmingham (perhaps this dubious continuity represents the price exacted by John Nicholson in return for his support). Speculation aside, for all its limitations, People before profit is an altogether superior document. It was the result of skilled compositing and intensive debate. Moreover it involved a much wider and, no less germane, a far more politically sophisticated membership.

Frankly the programmatic formulations that validate A fair society, social justice and ecological sustainability as a whole - and by default the SWP’s subsequent structural proposals - are deeply embarrassing. They owe everything to Proudhon, nothing to Marx; everything to the abstract, nothing to the concrete; everything to petty bourgeois protest politics, nothing to working class self-liberation. The less the original - disillusioned Labourite - drafters had to say, the more banal the content of their proclamations (the only other active defender of the March 1999 ‘statement of aims’ is Pete McLaren - seemingly a true believer - who as a corollary urges the ‘re-establishment’ of the antediluvian ‘Network of Socialist Alliances’ title). That the SWP decided not to dump the entire sorry mess demonstrates once again that the comrades fail to take programme seriously. They should have replaced the long-winded existing aims and methods with a much simpler, more pointed, statement.

The SWP’s ‘delete all’ constitutional amendment expects members of the Socialist Alliance to “broadly” agree with its inherited ‘statement of aims’. What are these aims? Practical proposals and goals are absent and, substituting for them, we find a string of grandiloquent sentimentalities and empty phrasemongering. Where there might have been crisp, historically established principles and demands for definite rights and freedoms, there are instead good intentions about a “fair and sustainable society”, “social justice”, “a popular republic”, “peace”, ending “discrimination” and “economic exploitation”, etc. Take the call to promote “peace nationally and internationally”. This soggy nonsense can obviously serve all manner of political evils: eg, the promotion of peace is also in present-day official society a cynical cover for the preparation of war. Another obvious problem: when has a society proclaimed itself unsustainable or under the protection of injustice? Equally half-baked is the formulation that “economic exploitation” will be replaced by a society which secures for the people “the full return of all wealth generated by industries and services of society by means of common ownership and democratic control”. No society can do away with the necessity of putting aside reserves for emergencies or using surplus product to maintain or augment overall productive capacity. Similarly the SWP promises that “where necessary”, we shall restore “such biological diversity as is essential to the viability of both global and local ecosystems”. Could that require the depopulation of London and allowing the Thames to regularly flood low lying areas in the name of restoring the “local ecosystem” to its supposed pristine glory? Who knows?

From lack of real content there logically flows empty methods. Hence the transition to a “fair and sustainable society” will, it is said, require “fundamental social, political and cultural changes” (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p19). There is no concept of state power or of a revolutionary rupture. “Change” will come through a “variety of avenues”, we are vaguely told, and changes must be “valuable in themselves” and “stages towards greater change”, etc. In exactly the same inane spirit, the SWP’s ‘statement of aims’ informs the reader that the Socialist Alliance aspires as an objective to “offer organisation, facilitation and encouragement” to whatever efforts are “contributing to that process”.

Such barren formulations are verbose ways of saying precisely nothing - which is always the prime purpose of moralistic terminology. No one can really disagree with the slippery phrases; and they have the great virtue of not frightening off liberal radicals, greens and reformists; and not committing their authors to anything serious by demanding revolutionary deeds.

Blair and New Labour are roundly condemned as a matter of routine. Labour has abandoned “whatever aspiration” it had toward ‘socialism’ and is now in partnership with “multinationals and media tycoons”. Yet - ironically - ‘socialism’ as a positive goal is entirely missing from the SWP’s proposed ‘aims’. Amazing but true. Yet though the ‘s’ word hardly rates a mention, the SWP is, of course, peddling what we call ethical or sentimental socialism. Like state power and revolution, the working class and the class struggle are also entirely absent. And, as Karl Marx sharply observed, “Where the class struggle is pushed to the side as an unpleasant, ‘crude’ phenomenon, nothing remains as the basis of socialism but ‘true love of the people’ and empty phrases about ‘justice’” (K Marx, F Engels SW Vol 3, Moscow 1975, p92). In practice, we must add, that ‘socialism’ without the rule of the working class only exists as its opposite: eg, Stalin’s USSR, Attlee’s Britain, Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, Olaf Palme’s Sweden.

Clarity is needed - especially when it comes to the greens. Every genuine socialist is, of course, an environmentalist but the problem is that very few greens even formally adhere to socialism. Terry Liddle, speaking from first hand experience - he was coordinator of Greenwich Green Party and is currently treasurer of Greenwich Socialist Alliance - insists that there is a definite element in the Green Party which is “actively hostile to socialism” (Weekly Worker October 11 2001). Greens occupy a petty bourgeois class-political position and contain within themselves a wide spectrum ranging from the critical-utopian to the semi-fascist: eg, David Icke, Third Wave, Green Anarchist, etc. Its best thinkers have written savage indictments of capitalism which supply wonderful ammunition for revolutionary socialists and communists. Despite that, most green ideas are confused, naive and at the end of the day reactionary.

The solution to the world’s ecological crisis lies for the greens in nature itself - now, of course, humanised. Deep greens, and those of a similar hue, oppose global capital. But they do so in the name of an imagined self-sufficient past, not a future of freely associated producers. There is an underlying prejudice against economic growth and technological progress. In parallel the Green Party programmatically insists upon a thoroughly inhuman, Malthusian, reduction of the number of people in Britain from 60 to 20 million, presumably along with draconian ‘non-racist’ immigration controls in order to prevent ‘overpopulation’. Africa, China, India and the ‘overpopulated’ ‘third world’ are viewed with the same bilious eyes. People, not alienated capitalist social relations and production for its own sake, are for them the fundamental problem. Follow that route and you eventually reach the jaws of hell.

What the Socialist Alliance must get to grips with is the task of constructing our own, Marxist approach to ecology. Grafting greenism onto socialism always fails - motivated as it is by a vain opportunist search for popularity, not intellectual rigour. However, John Bellamy Foster, amongst others, has shown beyond doubt that Marxism alone makes possible ecological ways of thinking that are both thoroughly materialist and thoroughly human: eg, in The German ideology Marx and Engels explain that, “As long as man has existed, nature and man have affected each other” (quoted in JB Foster Marx’s ecology New York 2000, p226). Men - and women - are part of nature and as such rely on nature. In other words, there exists co-evolution. Attempts by humanity to arrogantly rule over nature like a conqueror over a conquered people, like something standing outside nature, result in dire, totally unforeseen consequences: drought, soil exhaustion, erosion, flash floods, desertification. Nature “revenges” itself, writes Engels, and shows in no uncertain terms that “we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage of all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly” (K Marx, F Engels CW Vol 25, London 1987, pp460-61). Capitalism has, though, alienated humanity from nature. There is a profound metabolic rift between humanity’s productive activity and the ecosystem. All progress under capitalism is bought at the expense of the worker and of nature. The task of socialism and then communism - associated humanity - is to bring about a return of humanity to nature and nature to humanity and through that establish a sustainable balance and interchange between the two.

For a - Victorian and low-tech - picture of the communist society we envisage pick up a copy of William Morris’s futuristic novel News from nowhere. The distinction between town and country has vanished. England is a garden scattered here and there with airy workshops. Nothing is wasted. Nothing despoiled. Production is organised not for profit but for genuine use. Humanity lives in harmony with humanity; therefore humanity lives in harmony with nature. Maybe the Socialist Alliance has its apprentice William Morris in China Miélville. Either way, let us have an ecology commission, which, beginning with first principles, painstakingly takes us from mere good intentions to a fully rounded programme.

Still hankering after a red-green popular front, comrade Pete McLaren, editor of the Socialist Alliance’s defunct The All Red and Green, actually warns of the danger of “direct clashes” between ourselves and the Green Party in elections - as happened on June 7 2001. In the same manner Ian Birchall fantasised a while ago - as an SWP “exercise in political science fiction”- about a “possible” reformist “coalition” government consisting of greens, the Socialist Alliance and independent Labour leftists (Socialist Review December 2000). His ‘science fiction’ served not to sound the alarm but was supposed to inspire. Heaven help us. Nevertheless those siren voices that seek “positive links” with the likes of the Green Anarchist or who would turn the Socialist Alliance into a rainbow coalition are nowadays increasingly marginal. The Socialist Alliance unites reds as reds. Excellent.

The reader is bound to ask whether communists actually want green socialists to join the Socialist Alliance? Absolutely - as long as they accept democratically agreed aims and policies as the basis for united action, and abide by our rules. Socialist greens should be offered the hand of friendship and positively welcomed: eg, the vote by the Green Socialist Network to affiliate to the Socialist Alliance - at its October 6 2001 AGM - is cause for celebration (Weekly Worker October 11 2001). Not because of its claimed 300 membership, but because its represents a distinct socialist viewpoint which has been won to put its efforts into the bigger Socialist Alliance project. Naturally this unity does not put an end to polemical exchanges. On the contrary, as stated above, unity for us is premised upon constant political debate.

The ‘background and aims’ proposals drafted by the Socialist Party in England and Wales in its alternative constitution have, in comparison to the SWP’s the decided advantage of being compact and actually upholding the goal of “a socialist transformation of society”. True, the approach to the Labour Party is rigidly closed-ended, but then the same goes for the SWP and the standing constitution. We are told with absolute certainty that the Labour Party cannot reverse its embrace of the “free market”. The idea that present-day monopoly capitalism has anything in common with a “free market” is a complete fallacy, of course. Furthermore, the Labour Party - be warned - would quickly repaint itself deepest red, if socialism once again grew in popularity. There is, however, a definite sub-text in the ‘aims’ which by rather plodding implication seeks to legitimise Peter Taaffe’s altogether problematic, not to say hostile, dealings with the Socialist Alliance. The Socialist Alliance “will attempt to support groups of workers who take steps towards ... independent representation” (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p21): eg, SPEW standing against us under the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation umbrella or Hackney shop stewards. The Socialist Alliance could just about live with the comrades’ cut and paste ‘background and aims’, but we prefer something for the ‘Statement of aims’ along the following lines:

But let us pick up on our discussion of the SWP’s proposals. Having dealt with the ‘statement of aims’ we reach ‘membership’. In general this section has the definite virtue of moving the Socialist Alliance decisively beyond being an amorphous “confederation” of political groups and individual members who might or might not be factionally attached. Individual membership would constitute the bedrock of the Socialist Alliance. One system of membership operates - dues are collected below and after deductions pass upwards or visa versa. There is no mention of trade unions or the political groups being granted special access to leading committees, though clause B6 does somewhat obscurely talk of “other forms of affiliation”. At our stage of development this is quite acceptable ... there is no pressing need to give concrete answers on trade union affiliation, etc. The SWP’s proposals must, however, be improved by some judicious amendments.

Running through clauses B1, B3 and B4, one finds repeated formulations that it would be best for all concerned to swiftly cut out and discard. And then there is the truly toxic clause C13. Here is what we are complaining about: members have to “abide” by the “anti-sectarian, cooperative and positive way of working” (B1). Membership “assumes” a “commitment to the anti-sectarian and cooperative way of working, looking to build unity rather than set out a position to create discord, positively supporting and encouraging the notion of alliances and ensuring that any critical debates are conducted in a positive manner and without personal attacks” (B3). “Individual members are thus welcome from other groups and organisations and membership of these should be declared on application/renewal of membership” (B4). And then there is clause C13. It gives despotic powers to the executive. At a stroke it can “disaffiliate” local Socialist Alliances, “remove individual membership” and “refuse to ratify” candidates if it is “concluded that the basic statement of aims has been breached”. Such clauses are either irrelevant pieties, in which case they should be deleted, or sinister. These formulations could be used to expel almost anyone: eg, is SPEW consistently “anti-sectarian, positive and cooperative” in its ways of working with the Socialist Alliance?

There must be specific rules making it a disciplinary offence to support candidates running against the Socialist Alliance. A code of membership duties is needed as well as rights. For our part we can agree with a good deal of the SWP’s four ‘requirements of membership’ (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p21). No one can argue with the fourth criteria on the obligation to pay the “relevant membership fee”. However, we do have differences, albeit those of detail, with the first three. 1. Members must “support” Socialist Alliance “candidates and campaigns in elections” - why support just elections? This formulation is both too broad and too narrow. Replace it with a members’ duty “not to oppose Socialist Alliance candidates or campaigns”. That would represent a vital step forward without running ahead of ourselves. 2. Members must behave “in a democratic and cooperative manner”. Moralistic and again much too wide. Why not simply say that members are obliged to “accept” the rules of the Socialist Alliance? 3. “No racist, sexist, homophobic and discriminatory behaviour”. Something along these lines could be included in our constitution, as an aim, not a membership requirement. Society at large is still riddled with racist ideas (not to mention an overarching national chauvinism). What of sexism and homophobia? Can any of us really say with hand on heart that they are completely free of sexist or homophobic attitudes? And do not attitudes reflect themselves in behaviour, even if that is only at the level of body language? Should the Socialist Alliance set up special courts to vet recruits and expel miscreants? I think not. Racist, sexist and homophobic behaviour ought to be combated within the Socialist Alliance - and we ought to promise that that will happen. But how?

Here is an example of good practice your writer witnessed. I was pleased to attend the SSP’s 2nd conference in Edinburgh as a visitor. One of the most contentious debates on the first day surprisingly concerned clause 28. A handful of SSP members rose to argue against backing the abolitionists. Their excuse was that the SSP would drive away wide swathes of the Scottish population if it “sided” with homosexuality. One million people in Scotland did indeed sign up to Brian Sutor’s bigot’s referendum to retain clause 28 (so much for Scotland being far ahead of England and Wales in terms of political consciousness). Anyway what impressed me was not so much the passionate rhetoric directed against these prejudiced souls. Rather it was the fact that no one threatened them with expulsion. That approach is the correct way to overcome backward ideas. Note the SSP went into the June 7 2001 general election with a manifesto commitment to oppose homophobia.

The Socialist Alliance should move by degrees - as fast as possible, as slow as necessary - towards achieving the fullest unity in democratically agreed actions. As a precondition the right to criticise before and after must, of course, be enshrined. Such discipline is an aspiration though and must primarily be brought to life through common political struggle, patient education and raising consciousness. There should be no right of minorities to “actively” campaign against the Socialist Alliance during an action, as proposed by the Workers’ Liberty comrades (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p26). That would be to positively institutionalise disunity. Membership should carry “an obligation not to obstruct” campaigns decided on by the Socialist Alliance, if by that is meant a definite action.

The Socialist Alliance must stress unity in action, not unity in thought. Catch-all ideological offences must certainly be avoided. Sectarianism, for example, is in the eye of the beholder. It is also one of the most notoriously misused words in the lexicon of the workers’ movement. As a grapeshot insult it is meant to send every critic, every thinker and virtually every left group flying. Sectarianism is often casually equated with all small groups as such and, more to the point, holding strong principles. Sectarianism is actually putting the interests of the part above the working class as a whole. True, many left and revolutionary groups function as sects: ie, their overriding reason for existence is the promotion of some special discovery or unique ideological recipe, the SWP and SPEW being prominent examples. But such essentially ‘honest’ sectarianism cannot be abolished by decree (or membership clause). It can only be overcome through joint work, exchanging ideas and the subsequent growth of trust. Ending sectarianism must be envisaged as a process.

Leave aside the SWP’s threat to “remove” members or candidates who “breach” the rambling nonsense in the “basic aims” (C13), what of debate being “conducted in a positive manner and without personal attack”? This again can easily be transformed into a catch-all which permits an irresponsible majority to witch-hunt any dissenting minority that is considered a nuisance or a threat. Is this book “positive”? It will, I sincerely trust, “create discord” in certain quarters. And the author makes no apology for attacking individuals when and where he considers them to be in the wrong. I am confident that hardened politicians such as Peter Taaffe and Clive Heemskirk, John Rees and Lindsay German, Martin Thomas and Mark Hoskisson are not going to wilt. They will, if they see fit, reply, no doubt in kind. Certainly when it comes to acidic invective few of us can match the greats: eg, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, etc. Marx was once described by an infuriated opponent as an insult on legs. He was determined to expose ridiculous ideas by making them appear ridiculous. That method is one that we should not be afraid to emulate. The benchmark of a civilised political culture is the right to insult and offend others, though there is no need to include the right to insult and offend in our rules.

Purging and witch-hunting? Are we suffering from paranoia? Or do real grounds for concern exist? Forget the SWP’s murky internal life, the tangled history of expulsions and the recent excommunication of the International Socialist Organisation. The SWP’s sister organisation in the USA suffered a rude expulsion from their International Socialist Tendency over what appears to be pure semantics. Was the Seattle movement anti-capitalist or anti-corporate? Look at our own Socialist Alliance. Not so long ago within the Socialist Alliance, yes, despite its “commitment to the anti-sectarian and cooperative way of working” the CPGB found itself on the receiving end of a whole series of attempts to bar or browbeat. Shamefully, both the SWP and SPEW involved themselves in such moves. Charges invariably referred to the Weekly Worker’s failure to abide by what might be called the “commitment to the anti-sectarian and cooperative way of working”. Polemics and reporting disputes - signs of a healthy political culture - were equated with sectarianism and were therefore by definition outside the norms of the Socialist Alliance. Thankfully, for the moment at least, wiser councils have prevailed.

In light of that background we view the SWP’s membership clause B4 with some trepidation. The clause is directly carried over from the March 1999 original. “Individual members are ... welcome from other groups and organisations and membership of these should be declared on application/renewal of membership of the Socialist Alliance” (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p19). Five brief points. One, our present membership forms do not ask for such information. Two, a central membership list which includes factional affiliation would superbly expedite any witch-hunt. Neil Kinnock would have given his right hand for such a weapon as he rounded on Militant in the mid-1980s. Three, justification for requiring a declaration of factional affiliation derived from the elaborate collegiate elections envisaged by the Liaison Committee in 1998-99. Four, the SWP’s constitutional amendment contains no such collegiate system. It proposes election by slate. Five, there is no need to introduce a declaration of factional affiliation on membership forms and every reason to remove the formulation from our constitution.

It is SPEW that needs to maintain B4 if it is to fulfil its mission of squeezing the Socialist Alliance back into a loose conglomeration of local and political groups. SPEW and its anarcho and localist allies of convenience are even less ambitious for the Socialist Alliance than the SWP. When not holding back finances in their “war” on the SWP and those “heavily inclined to support” them, SPEW is set upon little more than an election non-aggression pact (SPEW national circular, December 21 2000). Along with Bakunin, their organisational totem is federalism. Therefore SPEW’s constitution provides for what it calls members’ platforms. Let us call one of them the Socialist Party platform. These members’ platforms possess awesome power, including arbitrarily vetoing decisions at a local and regional level. Changes to the constitution by the annual conference are also subject to a members’ platform veto. Put in a nutshell, the SP platform has the anarchistic right to do as it pleases while being able to bureaucratically overrule any majority. With two-faced cynicism this is all proposed in the name of winning workers and those entering into struggle. A worthy objective. However, the constitution proposed by SPEW does not attract. Rather it repels. Militant workers know from bitter experience of the real world the benefits that come from effective organisation. Few have the slightest trouble understanding the advantages of democracy. Trade unions expect minorities who have voted against strike action to abide by majority decisions and to respect picket lines. Minorities certainly have no right of veto. The Socialist Alliance should embody democracy and effectiveness in its constitution. The scabs’ charter drafted by SPEW must be rejected. We would propose instead the following three membership clauses:

The annual conference, in SPEW’s constitution, decides the policy of the Socialist Alliance. This will be “open to all members”. The SWP uses the same C1 formulation so a specific comment on the annual conference is necessary. Obviously a strong geographical bias is inevitable, if we leave conference - that is, conference votes - open to all members. Those chosen ones living near the chosen location will find it easy to attend; those living far away will not. That is why a system of elected delegates is far more democratic. We look forward to such an arrangement. There should be encouragement for minorities to be generously represented: eg, if a local Socialist Alliance is given five delegates, the executive committee could recommend that two of them represent minority viewpoints.

Not surprisingly, the executive committee proposed by the SPEW comrades champions the parts rather than the whole. Six officers - party leader, treasurer, etc - will be elected by single transferable vote. Then we have six “representatives” of individual members; three “representatives” of the Socialist Alliance’s Euro-MPs, MPs, councillors, etc; five trade union “representatives” who “must be either a national officer, or executive member of a TUC-recognised trade union”; and finally there are the members’ platform “representatives”. Through this collegiate system, with its complex set of restrictions, women-only places, etc, SPEW could find itself eclipsing the SWP as the dominant faction on our leadership.

All such constructs now represent an obstacle to deepening unity and effectiveness. The same goes for special “guarantees”. Workers Power, for example, not only wants automatic representation for the six principal supporting organisations on the executive: it would give the same status to all “affiliated labour movement or community organisations” (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p23). That is to ask for our executive committee to be flooded with “representatives” of hollow trades councils, defunct union branches and dubious local campaigns. A factionalists’ dream-world. A nightmare for the Socialist Alliance.

SPEW adds another bureaucratic twist of its own by inserting a clause which limits the influence of political organisations. No more than 40% of officers “at all levels” shall belong to any one members’ platform (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p23). Unless “all” members’ platforms “agree”. To ensure this, SPEW has to have the B4 declaration of factional affiliation. On the contrary, we say voters: ie, members or delegates in the Socialist Alliance must be free to elect whomsoever they see fit. Presumably in the SPEW system successful candidatures would be declared null and void and comrades would be turfed out if they took the quota of their political organisation above the 40% cut-off? And who decides which candidate is to be given the boot? What happens if one of the unaligned national officers subsequently decided to join a members’ platform and thereby took it over the fixed quota? What happens if the SWP absorbs the International Socialist Group? Would lists of nominations “at all levels” be policed by the executive committee? The SPEW constitution is actually not designed to work. It is unworkable. But it does serve as a - threadbare - propaganda cover for SPEW’s anarchist rejection of Socialist Alliance democracy.

So how should the executive committee be elected? As mentioned above, the SWP proposes election by slate. A number of other submissions, including the CPGB’s, uses exactly the same formulation. After thinking about it, I now believe this to be a mistake. How it is supposed to function can be gleaned from the SWP’s ‘national policy-making structure’ section. The ‘alternative vote’ system suggested by the SWP means that members/delegates will chose between rival slates. If no slate gains an absolute majority then the slate with the least votes will be eliminated and those votes distributed according to the next preference. In the course of that process one slate sooner or later gains an absolute majority. The 20 or 30 comrades on that slate now constitute our executive committee.

What are the pitfalls? Ownership of the slates lies not with the conference. The parts, the factions, draw up their preferred list and bargain with various individuals and competing factions. At present that means the SWP rules supreme. Everyone else can only hope to gain a place on the leadership of our organisation at the behest of that faction. Backroom deals will determine the content of the majority slate. There is no transparency. No democratic supervision. Dave Church, the Socialist Alliance’s membership secretary, is not off the mark when he says that individual, unaligned, members are “becoming wary” that our present arrangement could leave them in the position of being “used” by the principal supporting organisations (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p10). That wariness can only but be compounded by introducing the SWP’s slate system.

A couple of other objections. One, the existence of excluded, oppositional, factions is encouraged, not discouraged. Two, non-factional individuals: ie, those unaligned ‘independents’ not included on the majority slate, have no chance of finding their way through. Popular, but perhaps difficult, comrades will either have to draw up their own, or stand on equally no-hope slates. That or kowtow before the dominant faction. A bad atmosphere, which rewards toadying, not forthright criticism. No doubt the SWP has every intention of being generous. The five other principal supporting groups and a favoured selection of aligned independents will be included. But that is not the point. No one denies that the majority has the absolute right to determine the composition of leading committees. But such a right can either be exercised with a heavy hand or through a much lighter, indirect touch.

A recommended list drawn up by an election preparation committee benefits the whole while taking nothing away, in terms of rights, from the majority or dominant faction. How does such a system work? The retiring executive committee appoints an interim election preparation committee, whose remit is to draw up a list of comrades to be recommended to the Socialist Alliance’s annual conference. There are guidelines which stipulate the need to achieve a balanced list: eg, gender, ethnic background, political faction, experience and geography. The idea is not so much to achieve fairness in an unfair society, rather the election preparation committee has the job of considering what collectivity would give us the best Socialist Alliance leadership. An alloy that fuses diverse strengths makes the sharpest, toughest sword.

Once conference opens, this committee immediately becomes the servant or property of the members/delegates. The election preparations committee must be democratically confirmed and can be changed. The chair of the election preparation committee begins by delivering a preliminary report to conference. Members/delegates each receive a printed list of all the nominations to the executive committee along with initial recommendations. There will be a number of other similar reports at set intervals. The election preparation committee meets in almost permanent session. Members or delegations can oppose or support this or that candidate or combination of candidates before the committee. Are there enough women? What about this prominent Socialist Alliance councillor? Why is that windbag included? Subsequent deliberations are reported to conference by the chair and can, of course, be challenged. Another plus: members/delegates can actually listen to and judge various candidates in the course of the conference and its deliberations. Both those who are and who are not on the recommended list. Excluded minorities, awkward but valuable individuals, have the distinct possibility of breaking the recommended list ... if the election preparation committee has steered in the direction of exclusion as opposed to inclusion. Voting is, after all, by named individual not a take-it-or-leave-it slate. Every member/delegate has a set number of votes, say 20, and can cast them for any nominated comrade they wish. For the sake of illustration that could include 19 votes for those on the recommended list and one who is not. Inclusion invites votes for the whole list and vice-versa.

A final point. There is no ban on factions, or even non-factional factions, drawing up their own recommended lists. But instead of setting up one slate against another in a winner-takes-all gladiatorial contest, the election preparation committee and individual voting system advocated here institutionalises the huge advantages to be gained from collectively drawing upon all talents, all factions and all strengths. The dominant faction is subject to moral pressure and scrutiny. No more. The recommended list system is not perfect. No system can claim that. It is, however, admirably suited to the Socialist Alliance.

The CPGB welcomes the proposal coming from the SWP that officers should be directly appointed by the executive committee itself. C5 actually says “from amongst” the executive. The treasurer, chair, nominating officer, trade union organiser, etc, should be elected when and where needed, not according to some snap-shot popularity poll by an atomised membership. That is right. The mayoral or presidential system never had a legitimate place in our tradition. It crowns would-be labour kings like Arthur Scargill. Officers should be strictly accountable to their peers. They should be elected and replaceable by those whom they work alongside. If a comrade drops out because of illness, pique or work pressures, another comrade can easily be elected. By the same measure, those officers who fail or who become isolated from the political majority can be replaced without humiliation or the drama of a full-blown special conference.

Incidentally, while on the subject of officers, there have been some foolish mutterings warning us against the idea of authoritative leaders. For example, having clashed with Dave Nellist, our chair, on more than one occasion, John Nicholson, our joint coordinator, says he wants to avoid what he calls the “cult of leadership”. He has floated the suggestion of two co-chairs. His model is the Green Party. Ours in the Socialist Alliance should be the Bolshevik Party and Lenin. August Bebel, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky could also be cited. Communists and revolutionary socialists treasure and well know the value of tried and tested leaders. Tommy Sheridan has for instance played an outstanding role in the Scottish Socialist Party as an acknowledged leader - putting to one side ideological criticisms of his left reformism, nationalism, etc. As long as there is the robust culture of questioning, regular elections, recallability and the right to form temporary or permanent factions, then there should be no fear of ‘leadership cults’. Certainly what the Socialist Alliance has suffered from is lack of leadership, not the cult of leadership. We therefore seek to create the conditions for more and better leadership.

Having said that, what rhyme or reason is there in listing six named positions in the SWP’s constitution - unless there is a legal requirement? We support the principle of every level of the Socialist Alliance electing, and if need be recalling, its officers. But flexibility when it comes to specific positions and responsibilities is the best way to proceed. The executive should also be able to appoint officers and subcommittees from outside its ranks too. The idea of cooption, albeit by a two-thirds majority, included in C7 is not, however, one we would support unless those elected were limited to a voice but no vote on the executive committee. Cooption with a vote is prone to flagrant abuse. That way a majority can make itself into an overbearing one.

There is a constitutional time bomb ticking in the SWP’s constitutional clauses C9 to C14. The comrades call this time bomb the Socialist Alliance’s ‘national council’ (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p20). Their national council will consist of members of the executive committee along with one delegate from each affiliated local and regional Socialist Alliance. The national council “will be able to determine policy” and in parallel to the executive committee “will be responsible for the running of the national organisation, for finances, membership, arrangements of national meetings, communications with local groups and individuals, national bulletin production and distribution, liaison with other groups and organisations, arrangements for seeking and enabling electoral unity; and any other matters delegated to them by the annual conference” (C12).

Why two committees and the entwining of powers? Revolutionary socialists and communists have in general opposed bicameral constitutions as much as they have the election of monarchial officers. The executive-national council division is a recipe for generating tension, though the eventual triumph of the executive over the national council is almost inevitable. One meets frequently, monthly, and consists of those with the levers entirely in their hands. The other is slow, quarterly, and easily thwarted. Frustration, however, breeds resentment and even revolt. An appeals committee, or control commission, would be an excellent idea. But two centres of executive power will structurally imbalance and weaken the Socialist Alliance.

In the midst of a big political challenge, general election, outbreak of war, etc, that could prove very harmful. A concrete example. The Socialist Alliance executive committee agreed to condemn the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The SWP found itself in a small minority. The subsequent Liaison Committee - to all intents and purposes the national council by another name - meeting on October 6 2001 had a clear SWP majority. It could have easily reversed that “condemn” formulation with the SWP’s “we cannot condone”, if the issue had been pressed. At present that would not trigger a constitutional crisis. The Liaison Committee elects the executive. What happens though when that is no longer the case? What happens when two committees are elected according to two different systems and therefore rest on two different sources of legitimacy - on the one hand the annual conference, and on the other a quarterly mixture of executive members and branch and regional delegates?

Calling regular delegate meetings to discuss and vote on specific questions would be beneficial. Votes have an indicative status - a declaration, a call, a considered opinion, etc. But introducing a second centre of power, a House of Lords, is to set the stage for a damaging clash. Much better to have a clear line of responsibility going from the top to the bottom - at the apex stands the annual conference with legitimacy running down from there to the executive - which represents the whole in between annual conferences - and then to the regions, workplace and geographical branches, and finally the individual member.

Hence, we propose the following ‘organisational’ formulations:

One notable lacuna in the SWP’s constitution is the “right to form distinct temporary or long-term political platforms” (‘For a democratic and effective Socialist Alliance’ - see Appendix 1). This right is supported under a variety of guises by just about every other faction and prominent personality: eg, “caucuses”, “members”, “platforms”, “affiliated organisations”. Sectionalism should not be encouraged, but if black-British or Asian-British, female or gay comrades wish to form distinct platforms/factions, so be it. That should be their right. (We distinguish between such platforms and formally established Socialist Alliance committees with a special remit to promote our agitational and propaganda work amongst women, youth, homosexuals, the black-Asian and Black-British, etc, sections of the population.) Such a right needs to be emphasised, especially given the often appalling anti-democratic regimes that have marred the internal life of the sects. As to the sects themselves, Dave Church is again quite right when he argues that the Socialist Alliance should “not require” the dissolution of the existing supporting organisations. For Socialist Alliance purposes they can transform themselves into “affiliated/confederated” national organisations. Put another way, there must be the right to continue in the form of factions, platforms or caucuses in the constitution.

Unlike Workers Power, SPEW and the AWL, communists do not propose any automatic representation for these, or any other, parts. Consistent democracy would surely see those factions/caucuses that commanded any degree of serious support - judged politically, not by an arbitrary mathematical formula - included on the executive committee. As a fallback we have suggested that recognised platforms - set at an extremely low limit of 20 paid-up Socialist Alliance members - ought to be entitled to send a representative to the executive, with speaking but no voting rights. These platforms ought also to have the constitutional right to submit motions to the executive and conference under their own chosen name.

The SWP has flatly rejected all such proposals. Outside the frame of the constitution it is prepared to admit the existence of factions and the need to incorporate them into the executive committee, especially those who have “successfully collaborated in the building of the Socialist Alliance” (Pre-conference bulletin 2001 p28). But why not go the whole hog and recognise the right to form factions? The answer is not hard to find. The SWP has no desire the lead the transformation of the Socialist Alliance into a fully-fledged party, factional rights being, of course, an organic feature of a party not a ‘united front’, which our Procrustean SWP has as its chosen ideal for the Socialist Alliance. Here, in this category, is to be discovered the theoretical origins of the SWP’s misplaced opposition not only to factions, but to a Socialist Alliance political paper, serious internal political debate and education, a rounded revolutionary programme, etc. Evidently the SWP is at one and the same time our biggest asset and our biggest problem.

Officially the SWP designates the Socialist Alliance as a united front between revolutionary socialists and left Labourites. The International Socialist Group and the Revolutionary Democratic Group echo this warped viewpoint. What is a united front? In the canon of Marxism: eg, the 4th Congress of the Communist International, a united front refers to a particular tactic, or set of tactics, designed to win over the working class to the side of communism. By entering into negotiations and agreeing to jointly campaign with social democratic misleaders, communists gain the ear of their followers. The aim is to put us, the communists, at the forefront of the workers’ day to day struggles and in the process secure mass support. So the united front is an initiative whereby communists actively fight alongside the mass of workers in order to defeat and replace reformist traitors.

That hardly describes the Socialist Alliance. The unity we have achieved is between a range of overwhelmingly Marxist or at least Marxian individuals - often former members of extinct and extant groups - and the revolutionary groups themselves. The largest being the Socialist Workers Party, of course, which still counts its membership in the few thousands, not the tens of thousands ... certainly not the millions necessary for a decisive socialist breakthrough in a country like Britain.

It is not a matter of abstruse theory. By designating the Socialist Alliance a united front, the SWP implicitly limits us in terms of tempo and scope to what it reckons is acceptable to left reformism. Apart from the historic bankruptcy of left reformism the unsoundness of the argument is immediately apparent. Where are the left reformists? Mike Marqusee hardly fits the bill. Nor do Nick Wrack, Dave Olser or Anna Chen. The Socialist Alliance has never contained anything more than a smattering of groups and individuals whom the SWP and co might care to define in terms of the tradition of social democracy: eg, Leeds Left Alliance, Democratic Labour Party (Walsall) and the now defunct Independent Labour Network. Even then we would do well to actually listen to these comrades and their accounts of why they broke with Labour. Dave Church, former leader of Walsall council, tells how the rightwing labour bureaucracy used to label him a communist. Within the Socialist Alliance, the comrade freely talks of his politics using Marxist categories. The Socialist Alliance must encourage Labourites to break from Labourism. Not perversely attempt to keep Labourites as Labourites - albeit in exile - for the sake of an abstract schema.

Of course, the comrades have their sights set upon the mass of Labour voters. To ensnare those who are becoming disillusioned with New Labour and to provide them with what appears to be a comfortable political home, the SWP bloc desperately tries to adulterate or tone down our commonly held principles and would-be programme. This is done so as to fashion us into a trap. The Socialist Alliance is privately visualised as a transmission belt into the SWP - supposedly the revolutionary party, but in actuality a state capitalist confessional sect. Today they join the Socialist Alliance. Tomorrow the SWP. That is the plan. So instead of thrashing out our own common ideas as Marxists and revolutionaries and then unashamedly and confidently presenting them to the working class, the SWP et al do their best to ensure that we routinely stand on priority pledges which, taken as a package, can best be described as warmed over social democracy. Stop the closure of X. Cut spending on Y. Don’t privatise Z. Not that we should belittle or ignore such matters - the role of revolutionary socialists and communists is, however, to generalise, to raise and integrate all grievances and demands and immediately direct them towards the overthrow of the existing state.

Mistakenly there is no recognition that militants - and in time the broadest layers, having fallen out with Blair’s Labour Party, and establishment politics in general - can be won to full blown Marxism by a direct course, or leap, as opposed to some dishonest and programmatically unviable halfway house. Real people and real change are absent from the schema. Of course, as a rounded body of historically accumulated knowledge Marxism can only be grasped through painstaking, extensive and ongoing study. However, Marxism’s straightforward insistence of the reality of classes and class struggle, consistent promotion of extreme democracy and its heaven-storming mission of universal human self-liberation means that millions of so-called ordinary men and women can quickly, easily and passionately come to see Marxism and its ‘big ideas’ as their own. Individuals invariably have their Damascene conversion, the decisive moment when they suddenly see the light.

In Prague, Nice and Genoa SWP contingents chant flamboyant - anarchist-style - anti-capitalist slogans. But that heady brew is not for the consumption of the mass of electors in Britain. Here, through the Socialist Alliance, the SWP ventriloquist speaks on behalf of the dead body of old Labour and offers a series of emaciated priority pledges that in their totality fail to transcend the system of capital or even the constitutional monarchy system. Democracy and high politics, which alone can forge the workers into a potential ruling class, are only to be found tucked away in the nooks, crannies and crevices of our 2001 general election manifesto. Put another way, the SWP - and the wider Socialist Alliance majority - is still yet to break with economism. At this juncture the SWP cannot therefore properly lead the Socialist Alliance despite the welcome flexibility and initiative displayed by the post-Cliff quadrumvirate of Chris Bambery, Alex Callinicos, Chris Harman and John Rees.

What of SPEW? Peter Taaffe is galled by the prospect of his rank and file mixing with other forces on the left and being contaminated by the dangerous ideas of unity. He is also blindly searching for a prophylactic formula that will magically restore the fortunes of his rapidly declining and fragmenting organisation. Incapable, it seems, of putting the interests of the whole to the fore, his sole concern has been his survival as general secretary of an accidentally but appropriately named sect. Politically, it hardly needs adding, SPEW constitutes the right wing of the Socialist Alliance. Under the banner of Marxism it advocates a completely bombastic and apocalyptic version of left reformism. Note: SPEW’s hopes for socialism rely on a cataclysmic economic slump. Moreover, as an opportunist chameleon, SPEW colours red everything that suits - Kier Hardie, the Labour Party, Stalin’s five-year plan, Assad’s Syria, Gorbachev’s counterrevolution within the counterrevolution, Burma, the black separatism of Panther (UK), Scottish nationalism, feminism, the petty bourgeois fuel protests, etc.

Obviously the Socialist Party in England and Wales fears being swamped by the SWP. Peter Taaffe’s ‘Ken Livingstone and a new workers’ party’ article which appeared in the April 2000 issue of Socialism Today, ended in an anti-SWP diatribe. Interestingly it earned a stinging rebuke from the SSP’s international secretary, Frances Curren. She accuses SPEW of making a number of big “mistakes” in London and of a “yearning for a return of the glory days of entryism” in the Labour Party. Instead of idle chatter about a new mass party she rightly urged SPEW to throw its diminished weight behind the living Socialist Alliance project (CWI Members Bulletin May 2000). The CPGB is convinced that the best way to overcome fear of SWP, or anyone else’s, domination is to consistently strengthen democracy and, yes, build a strong common leadership through inclusion (that is why we advocate an elections preparation committee and a recommended list which draws upon all talents).

What of the CPGB itself? Inevitably, as we think of ourselves as amongst the most far-sighted, consistent and selfless components of the Socialist Alliance, the CPGB has tried to present radical, ambitious and yet fully realisable and coherent proposals. It may be said without exaggeration that what the Weekly Worker proposes invariably finds confirmation in the grain of events which we have helped to direct and shape. Though SPEW likes to peddle the myth of a long and undeviating involvement, it was the CPGB that took the initiative in establishing the London Socialist Alliance in January 1999. SPEW hardly lifted a finger. Our comrade Anne Murphy subsequently broke the SWP’s two decades of auto-Labourism and in a small way helped to edge the comrades towards the strategic-tactic of revolutionaries standing together in elections. She secured active SWP support, standing as the Socialist Unity candidate in the North Defoe ward (Hackney). Having a fully theorised understanding of the agitational purchase and educational importance of the election tactic in the present period of reaction sui generis, we did everything within our power to stand slates of Socialist Alliance candidates in local, regional and European elections. >From the start we argued for, and in due course won, a full list in the GLA elections.

On the Liaison Committee our delegates were, to begin with, alone in flagging the target of 50-plus candidates for the June 7 2001 general election and calling for a London headquarters. Others wanted six candidates; others 20: nothing more could be afforded. We were also determined to provide practical means whereby coordination between ourselves and the Scottish Socialist Party and the Welsh Socialist Alliance could be democratically facilitated. The CPGB proposed that election committee seats be reserved for the SSP and the WSA and that together with these comrades we set the target of 100-plus candidates on a UK-wide basis and thus secure the right for a nationwide TV party political broadcast (the election committee is now our executive committee). And thankfully what began as CPGB ‘madness’ now finds acceptance as the bottom line of Socialist Alliance common sense. Furthermore, the CPGB has also distinguished itself by steadfastly championing an ever widening and ever deepening democracy in the Socialist Alliance. That is why we champion the freedom to dissent; it creates the best conditions to centralise agreed actions.

At the Socialist Alliance’s Coventry conference in September 2000 the CPGB and its co-thinkers were able to act as ‘king makers’ and score a string of successes which advanced the mutually compatible principles of democracy and centralism. The shameful Mike Marqusee-SWP ban on selling partisan literature was reversed: a body blow against bureaucratic centralism. Yet, as we freely admit, in terms of numbers the two -conservative - blocs dwarfed us. It should also be pointed out that our motions recommending the Marxist vision of socialism as an act of working class self-liberation to be included in our 2001 election manifesto were soundly, but revealingly, defeated by their combined votes. Our SWP and SPEW partners voted in that regressive way as a direct corollary of their self-serving perspectives. Opportunist narrowness either holds them back or actually throws them back. The CPGB’s intention, as authentic Leninists, is in contrast to pull everybody and everything forward. That explains our desire to give form and breathe life into the forces of pro-partyism - hence the ‘For a democratic and effective Socialist Alliance’ platform (see appendix 1).

Since its launch this pro-party bloc has won an impressive and steadily expanding body of support. Diffuse though we still are, everything suggests that our forces have now overtaken SPEW in terms of support within the Socialist Alliance Through this bloc must come a hegemonic Socialist Alliance majority that is committed to the positive supersession of the sects. We are neither anti-SWP nor anti-SPEW. Their tireless dedication, cadre and undoubted achievements command our respect. Yet the age of the sects has passed. The time has arrived when energies and resources must be devoted to an immeasurably more rewarding task: building the Socialist Alliance as an all-Britain combat party of the working class.

2. A political paper

Besides a common executive committee, common regional and local structures, a common programme, common rules and constitution, and common election candidates and campaigns, the Socialist Alliance requires in addition - as a matter of urgency - something else. In our opinion, a common political paper. True, when we first presented this proposal a year ago , a majority stood against us. At the December 2 2000 meeting of the Liaison Committee a sullen sea of hands outvoted us.

Collectively, a high price has been paid for this regrettable decisions. We fought the June 7 2001 general election campaign as if with one hand tied behind our backs. Swift tactical turns and national initiatives proved virtually impossible. The executive could neither speak directly to potential voters nor to the membership. Nor could the membership speak horizontally to the membership. Therefore there was no flow of information, discussion and lessons from top to bottom or from bottom to top. While advanced ideas failed to be generalised, mistakes were. Constituency organisations were left to fend for themselves with routine national leaflets, amateur bulletins, personal agitation and a rather ham-fisted SWP big brother. In the circumstances sterling work was done at every level. A promising national profile was established. The Guardian rated the Socialist Alliance as one of the major-minor parties. Gaining only 57,000 votes disappointed many; nevertheless this was a solid start considering where we began - in many places with nothing. A much wider constituency in the working class was also discovered, with whom a meaningful engagement on one level or another began.

Following the general election, however, the Socialist Alliance appeared to close down as far as the overwhelming majority of these people were concerned. Without a political paper that cannot but happen. There existed no means whereby the Socialist Alliance could maintain an ongoing dialogue with our voters and would-be voters. Much of what had been won through a tireless combined campaign therefore quickly ebbed away. What a waste. What a squandering of efforts. When the Socialist Alliance stands in the next round of local elections in 2002, or the next general election in 2004 or 2005, things will presumably have to start again virtually from scratch. That denotes an altogether frivolous approach to the Socialist Alliance and our tasks. Indeed we appear to have condemned ourselves to a labour of Sisyphus, an endless and essentially pointless cycle of expending precious funds and untold energy. For, every time we perform a minor miracle and gain a social hearing, we seem content to let everything roll back almost to our original starting point.

The same problem affects our membership and base organisations. Following the general election, especially in the big cities, they have been demobilised. Branches are, in general, ghostly. Our general election candidates are all but publicly invisible. Socialist Alliance activity on the ground is almost patchy or nonexistent. For the leading faction in particular, other priorities intervened. There is a war going on, they indignantly tell us. Yes, comrades, we know. But instead of working through your Socialist Alliance so that we - the combined revolutionary socialists and communists - are in the forefront of the campaign against the Bush-Blair ‘war on terrorism’, you, the leading SWP faction, preferred to use other channels. Except in Scotland, where the SSP put its foot down, John Rees organised platforms and committees according to SWP whim or fancy. The Socialist Alliance has been left to endorse and tag on behind SWP initiatives nationally and locally, little more. Here is the bitter fruit of treating the Socialist Alliance as a mere united front. The Socialist Alliance is now on the back burner for the SWP, presumably to be dusted off and wheeled out again for the 2002 local elections. The SWP’s indifferent attitude is vividly testified to by its unwillingness to have our chair, Dave Nellist, address the Friends’ Meeting House anti-war rally in London on September 21 2001. Obviously there must be a broad anti-war movement. Within it, however, the Socialist Alliance ought to be taking the lead both organisationally and politically.

As far as most rank and file SA members are concerned, what has been going on must be a complete mystery. They might read in Socialist Worker about the rain-sodden Globalise Resistance-Green Party-Socialist Alliance-sponsored demonstration outside the truncated Labour Party conference in Brighton (to get reliable information on the deliberations and decisions of the executive and liaison committees, they will have to turn to the Weekly Worker). But there is no common source of regular news and views - let alone corporate and convincingly transmitted initiatives - coming from the Socialist Alliance itself. Without that there can be no close identification with the project. The local branches of the Socialist Alliance operate in the dark or as on-off factional appendages. Without a transparent internal life, without knowledge of who stands for what and why, or for that matter whether or not we still exist as a viable political project, it is hardly surprising that the flow of finances coming in to centre is little more than a trickle. Again and again the principal supporting organisations have had to come forth with the necessary funds to keep things afloat. Obviously not a satisfactory state of affairs.

The political landscape that lies stretched out before us is daunting and dangerous and yet holds out huge opportunities. Social democracy is in decay. Post World War II gains are under attack. Capitalist decadence is leaving whole tracts of the so-called ‘third world’ to rot. The end of the cold war system heralds neither peace nor prosperity. Blair has constituted Britain the junior policeman in the US attempt to forcibly impose the new world order. The crusade against terrorism means war against Afghanistan and who knows where next. There is an attendant threat to democratic rights and liberties. Besides that, the US-EU-Japan metropolis is sliding into deep economic depression. In answer, anti-capitalist sentiments are growing amongst a layer of radicalised young people. Disillusionment with Labour is nowadays a material factor in British politics. And then there are the votes by the FBU, Unison and the CWU on democratising their political funds. All this and more demands that the Socialist Alliance be built into a social force, a nationwide political-organisational focus for the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, who are yearning to do something against imperialist warmongering and capitalism itself. But, and it cannot be emphasised too strongly, success will come only on one condition: if we manage to change ourselves and become an active agent.

A Socialist Alliance paper would not only send out an inspiring message to our constituency amongst the politically advanced section of the working class. It would set in motion an organisational logic, which, if consistently and energetically followed through, would enable us to steadily tighten, deepen and massively extend our activity and political scope. Indeed, to the extent that we publish frequently, develop the sinews and muscle weight needed to raise the finances and quickly deliver to newsagents, bookshops and into the hands of activists in the workplaces, colleges and on the estates, and thereby build our day by day influence, to that extent we can judge our real progress. In Where to begin?, Lenin famously likened the role of the political paper to the scaffolding that is erected around a building under construction. The scaffolding marks out the contours of the future structure and facilitates communication between the workers as they engage in their various common efforts and particular tasks. No chicken or eg. From the scaffolding comes the building; from the paper comes the party.

A collective organiser, distributed in the tens of thousands throughout the country, and uniting our network of branches into a single whole would enable us to swiftly manoeuvre and take advantage of our enemy’s exposed flanks and momentary vulnerabilities. So a political paper more than complements and enhances our electoral interventions. It gives us the means, which at present we lack, to build and maintain our organisation - here is the most challenging immediate task facing the Socialist Alliance. Standing 98 candidates in the Westminster general election was in comparison mere child’s play.

In terms of getting our message across to a mass audience the Socialist Alliance is at present almost totally reliant on occasional leaflet shots and our press team. Hence a paper brings with it another obvious advantage. Operating in tandem with, and powering, the SA website, we would have in our collective armoury an uncensorable independent voice. The Socialist Alliance should not have to bank on the generosity, or gullibility of The Guardian, the BBC or the Murdoch empire. Use them when we can. But let us primarily look to our own strength.

Our paper must combine the role of agitation with education. Without a collective educator there can be no consistency of principle on the ‘big questions’. Nor can there be a speedy and generally agreed response to the countless new challenges brought forth by the maelstrom of socio-economic, parliamentary and international events. For certain the trade unions, the anti-capitalist movement, the campaign around student grants, the ecological crisis, the stubborn national questions in the United Kingdom, etc, all cry out for Socialist Alliance political answers. And what about the Bush-Blair war on terrorism? Today we in the Socialist Alliance have before us the comparatively easy task of helping to build a broad anti-war movement. Tomorrow we might have to fight on more difficult terrain: for example, if terror comes to London or Edinburgh. Tomorrow, perhaps, we might also have to support British-Asian opposition to the war in Afghanistan as it takes to the streets of Bradford or Oldham, while at the same time skilfully countering the pernicious influence of the mullahs and fundamentalists. Denied a political paper, the Socialist Alliance leadership as a Socialist Alliance leadership is completely immured. Our would-be thinkers are unable to flesh out common Socialist Alliance policies and principles. Controversy takes place, but usually in code in the self-contained factional press or in meeting room soundbites.

More is required. For example, what has the Socialist Alliance to say about the Taliban in Afghanistan or the situation in Pakistan? How exactly can we stop the war? Should the Socialist Alliance concentrate on highlighting welfare as opposed to warfare? Does CND pacifism arm or disarm the working class? Do we defend the Taliban against the USA because Afghanistan is an oppressed country? Is there a third camp which champions democracy, secularism and socialism against the twin evils of imperialism and Taliban medievalism? Where is the analysis? Where is the argument? Has the Socialist Alliance a viewpoint on islamic fundamentalism? Is it counterrevolution or a form of deflected permanent revolution? No agreed answers from the Socialist Alliance.

Doubtless it will be argued by those stubborn forces still trapped in yesterday, including those selfishly attached to the notion of the Socialist Alliance as a transmission belt or an ineffective federation, that the working class already has all that it needs for a rounded political diet. Each recommends their own tried, tested ... and insubstantial speciality. And there is an overabundance of choice. Attend any all-London or national gathering and you will be overwhelmed by choice. There must be well over two dozen papers and periodicals inhabiting our SA space. Besides the Weekly Worker there are two other well-entrenched weeklies - Socialist Worker and The Socialist. There is one fortnightly, the AWL’s Action for Solidarity. The above clutch of factions also publish Socialist Review, International Socialism, Socialism Today and Workers’ Liberty as offshoots or leftovers. Then, slipping down the evolutionary ladder, come the cold-blooded monthlies Socialist Outlook and Workers Power and their altogether obscure auxiliaries. And in the furthest reaches the intrepid explorer will find Republican Communist, Workers International, Red Shift and a host of other equally worthy publications, whose names do not spring to mind or still remain to be discovered by science. But, and this is the point, none of these publications, neither any one of them, nor the lot taken together, can lift the Socialist Alliance in terms of education, organisation and rapprochement to the necessary plane of readiness and combativity required if we are to do our duty by the class in whose name we all speak.

Frankly, we expect factional centres to persist within the Socialist Alliance for some considerable length of time. And that goes for factional publications too. Expecting anything else