Socialist Alliance

No more Socialist Party brinkmanship

With the general election just a few months away, the Socialist Party core leadership of Peter Taaffe and Lynn Walsh has decided upon a course of brinkmanship. At the executive meeting of the Socialist Alliance on December 16, representatives of the SP anarchistically demanded the right to unilaterally declare Socialist Alliance candidates. This is a flagrant breach of our election protocol democratically agreed at the September 30 conference at Coventry.

The protocol clearly states: "Local Socialist Alliances/groups should seek to build the broadest, most inclusive and united organisations possible." Further, it continues, "Local Socialist Alliances/groups in negotiation with affiliated political organisations will have responsibility for electing their own candidates." In case of any dispute, the protocol says that the Liaison Committee meeting shall act as the clearing house and will "endorse SA candidates formally".

Things could not be clearer - or so you would think. Political forces affiliated to the SA nationally have an obligation to build "inclusive and united" local alliances which have the "responsibility for electing their own candidates" ... there are also provisions to ensure an overall gender, ethnic and political balance. Yet the Socialist Party is intent on its own 18 self-declared candidates who have in some cases simply announced themselves as 'Socialist Alliance' without referring to other affiliated local forces. Not only that: in areas where the SP has been active, there has been no attempt to build Socialist Alliances unless such a course has been forced upon it by other groups, or by 'wayward' non-sectarian elements within its own ranks. Coventry and Lewisham, where the SP has been involved in maintaining low-level alliance work for several years (but not without putting its 'Socialist Alternative' nom de guerre to the fore) are exceptions, not the rule. Yet Taaffe's organisation is using its own failure to build SAs as an excuse for its arrogant and narrow self-promotion. 'There are no local Socialist Alliances in these areas', says the SP leadership. Well, whose fault is that, comrades?

It has been left to the 'Johnny-come-latelies' of the Socialist Alliance to start organising SAs in many such areas. As the Socialist Workers Party pursues what is in spite of its 'united front' theory a proto-party orientation, SWP branches are creaking into gear. Attempts to include other forces and decide matters democratically have been dishonestly presented by the SP leadership as demands to accept SWP diktat (the SWP outnumbers the SP just about everywhere). While no doubt decades-old confessional hostilities exist, and it is clear the SWP is attempting to ensure its hegemony over the Socialist Alliance project, it is not - in the main - doing this through stacking of meetings or flagrantly undemocratic measures ... although it manifestly still fears serious political debate below and does everything to avoid open polemic above.

The case of Wakefield constituency is instructive. The SP unilaterally declared Mick Griffiths as the Socialist Alliance candidate. The SWP said there should be a selection meeting and formed an ad hoc planning group for a Wakefield Socialist Alliance. Nationally and locally, the SWP has said that it will support Mick Griffiths as the Socialist Alliance candidate. This has not stopped the local SP branch declaring in print: "We are not prepared to submit our already launched and planned campaign to SWP approval, or that of an ad-hoc Socialist Alliance planning group" (emphasis added). Quite amazing.

The SP has laid sole claim to 18 constituencies in this way. It is saying that when asked what its intentions were for the general election by the SA officers nationally, it clearly stated that it wanted to stand in these constituencies. For its part, the CPGB has said it wants to stand in four constituencies. However, this request was for organisations to indicate their intentions as a basis for overall planning, not as a fait accompli. There has been no attempt at negotiation between the parts until now.

The Socialist Alliance is a unique opportunity for the left to unite, both nationally and locally, to begin with in a 50-plus-seats campaign for the general election. However, for Taaffe, the Socialist Alliance is a flag of inconvenience. The leadership seems determined to pursue narrow, Socialist Party campaigns in a desperate bid to try to hold together its own declining and fragmenting organisation. The perspective is clear. In 1996, in line with the name change from Militant Labour to Socialist Party, Taaffe declared for a "small mass workers' party" - the SP could go it alone and have tens of thousands of members within five years. However, with the entry onto the SA scene of the SWP, it has been thrown into deeper and deeper crisis and into unfounded and unusual polemical invective. Without "real" forces, the Socialist Alliances are just a talking shop for "petty bourgeois sects", according to Taaffe. Remember the GLA elections, Preston, Hackney Wick, Tottenham, etc.

Hannah Sell said at the Socialist Alliance national executive meeting on December 16, "We are not in favour of arguing with the rest of the left over what goes in election leaflets" - that is, they are not interested in the basic democracy of local Socialist Alliances. In Peter Taaffe's article in April's Socialism Today, he declared the SWP impossible to work with unless other forces came into the alliance. At the executive meeting none of the SP members (comrades Sell, Clive Heemskirk and Dave Nellist) retracted this worrying assessment.

In fact, the SP three issued a 'counter-motion' to that passed by the London Socialist Alliance earlier that week. The LSA motion "condemns" the activity of the SP in declaring candidates unilaterally. The seat of Leyton and Wanstead being a case in point. The SP has declared Simon Donovan as the Socialist Alliance candidate without even contacting other local forces on the matter, let alone trying for a united campaign: no call to build a local SA; no pre-selection meeting.

The SP motion to the Socialist Alliance executive refers to the imposition of "SWP-controlled candidates". Just who these candidates are is not made clear. Are they the members of other left organisations? CPGB? AWL? Hardly. Are they the likes of John Mulrenan in Peckham, Jo Hearn in Luton South, John Clegg in Withington? Was Terry Cartwright in Preston just an SWP automaton? The claim is ludicrous. The SWP is in reality desperate for independent "viable" candidates outside the revolutionary left. And it is finding that 'united front' shibboleth difficult to achieve. But it is actually bending over backwards to accommodate the SP. If anything it is too tolerant of Taaffe's antics.

All this might well, for some, call Dave Nellist's position as Socialist Alliance chair into question. Will he, as declared 'leader' of our Socialist Alliance 'party', uphold the Coventry protocol? Or will he follow the sectarian position of Taaffe and co?

At the national executive meeting, comrade Nellist said that the Socialist Party had the "most to lose and least to gain out of joint work". An amazing statement from the national chair of our Socialist Alliance. Why engage in joint work then? What is his perspective for the Socialist Alliance? Does he not realise that the SP, like the rest of us, has nothing except our sects to lose and everything to gain in the form of a single democratic centralist revolutionary party which would really be capable of attracting advanced workers in their thousands within five years ... perhaps sooner.

When I pointed out to the SP comrades that they were engaging in brinkmanship, Clive Heemskirk unashamedly agreed. However, he then stated that it was up to the rest of the alliance executive - nobody else backed the SP - to "stand down". This piece of bravado was greeted with incredulous laughter.

The tactics of the SP are hampering the full development of our unity. We spent three hours dealing with all these related questions. Then, in the final hour of the executive, we turned to the practicalities of the election campaign. John Rees of the SWP suggested a press conference in early January, to feature candidates already selected. This proposal was scotched by the SP comrades, who declared it "premature". Selecting candidates has to be solved first.

At last Saturday's meeting, it was agreed to lay both the LSA and SP motions on the table pending negotiations between the SWP and the SP, to be held with an independent third party in the chair. However, it must be emphasised that this dispute is not simply between two important elements of the Socialist Alliance: i.e., the SWP and the SP. That is what the Taaffe leadership would have us believe. It is actually a problem between the SP and the Socialist Alliance as a whole.

Quite frankly, the Socialist Alliance cannot be held to ransom. The SA itself must choose its candidates. This question cannot be decided by diktat. Otherwise the alliance and its democratic decision making will count for nothing, damaging its chances of becoming the alternative pole of attraction for the increasing layer of disaffected working class voters.

Comrade Heemskirk declared the SP was prepared to negotiate. When I asked him about the self-declared candidature of SP member Simon Donovan in Waltham Forest, comrade Heemskirk said there was a perfectly good constituency next door for the Socialist Alliance to stand in. Some negotiation. The SP branch in Wakefield used the same formulation, which indicates that the SP considers itself to be 'more equal' than all the other parts of the Alliance when it so chooses. Mick Griffiths writes: "If you cannot accommodate our proposals [the fait accompli of his own candidature], then the Socialist Alliance [should] consider standing in the Pontefract constituency."

Such an approach is unacceptable. In all but a few of the 18 constituencies, the other components would have no problem with an SP comrade being the Socialist Alliance candidate. The difficulty lies of course in the fact that the Socialist Party is at the moment unwilling to participate in the "broadest, most inclusive and united" campaign possible, to quote our Coventry protocol. The SP wants each group to organise its own separate campaign. It actually fears steps towards closer unity.

Comrade Heemskirk compared the situation to the Labour Party of the 1980s, where different activists would travel across the country to support the individual candidate they preferred. This is entirely against the spirit of the Coventry protocol. And such a fragmented election campaign, amounting to no more than a non-aggression pact, is against the objective needs of the working class. The SP continues to mouth its hollow and abstract call for a new mass party of the working class, but is actively sowing the seeds of division through obstruction, prevarication and downright sabotage.

We must ensure that the SP-SWP negotiations are subordinate to the discussions and decisions of the Liaison Committee and its executive. We cannot accept a carve-up between two organisations. The bottom line must be that, whatever is decided, all local candidates should be prepared to attend selection meetings of the Socialist Alliance. If no local alliance exists, it is beholden on the main political force in a given area to seek to build one. Unilaterally declaring candidates is simply unacceptable.

As chair and official leader of the alliance, Dave Nellist must take a firm stand in the interests of the whole. We hope and trust that he will fight for the implementation of the Coventry protocol in full, whatever difficulties this brings with the SP leadership around Taaffe.

We have a fantastic opportunity before us to fight against Blairism and for revolutionary democracy and socialism in the ballot box. We must not balk nor buckle. We must fight for a united Socialist Alliance election campaign and leave behind all brinkmanship and other such irresponsible tactics.