Weekly Worker 368 Thursday January 25 2001

Preamble

The Socialist Alliance is not yet fully a political party as such but in many respects already closely resembles one. We have an elected leadership and local and regional affiliates. Beginning as a loose alliance established in 1997 between socialists from a variety of backgrounds, we have over the subsequent years been working together in an ever closer way. We are supported by the principal left organisations - the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Communist Party of Great Britain, International Socialist Organisation, Socialist Party in England and Wales, Socialist Workers Party and Workers Power.

Besides members of those organisations, there are a wide range of individual socialists within our ranks. Indeed independent socialists have from the first played a leading role.

The Socialist Alliance is committed to coordinating and, in the spirit of working class solidarity, unifying our campaigning, electoral and other relevant work, with comrades organised in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Together we are confronted by a common enemy - the United Kingdom state and the British capitalist class. The Socialist Alliance is internationalist and seeks to promote the unity of workers throughout the world. We are for the globalisation of the world’s working class movement and its struggles.

Having stood in the 1998 Euro elections and the Greater London Assembly elections in May 2000 with some success, we took the decision in December 2000 to draw up a common programme. The publication of this programme represents a historic milestone in the struggle to unify the forces of socialism and to equip the working class with the weapon it needs in order to overthrow the UK constitutional monarchy and, in time, the global system of capital.

[Our epoch] [Capitalism in Britain] [Immediate demands] [Character of the revolution] [The transition to communism] [The Socialist Alliance]