Weekly Worker 656 Thursday January 18 2007 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

Socialist Youth Network round-up

Weekly Worker ‘my favourite’

Tony Benn was one of three Labour Party politicians who addressed conference as guest speakers. His introductory speech was fairly standard, noting the warmongering, anti-working class policies of New Labour. He said New Labour had been set up on the basis that the only way to win elections was to adopt Thatcherite policies.

According to comrade Benn, “a lot of people in Britain feel they are no longer represented - they are managed”. He informed us that we were the only generation in human history to have both the capacity to destroy humanity as a whole through nuclear annihilation and, on the other hand, enough “cash” to be able to create a truly egalitarian society. This is why he feels it is so important to get behind John McDonnell and his challenge for the Labour Party leadership.

Most people in the movement will have heard Tony Benn speak numerous times - he certainly did not renege on his promise to get more involved in general left politics following his resignation from parliament. So it was nothing new to hear him express his despair at the way the current left is (dis)organised. Reeling off a list of many of the groups and groupuscules that exist, he commented: “The sectarian left drives me crazy ... there are too many socialist groups and not enough socialists in the Labour Party.” In the question and answer session a comrade from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty wondered why his organisation had been missed off the list. Benn assured him that he regularly reads Workers’ Liberty, along with numerous other left papers, “but my favourite is the Weekly Worker”.

It was clear that comrade Benn does not agree with our politics, but he acknowledges our paper as indispensable for those wanting to understand today’s left. However, despite regularly turning to our press for information, he displayed a profound misunderstanding of our political approach that is not uncommon amongst readers who simply skim for information. Comrade Benn felt that the Weekly Worker is flawed because it takes a purist approach, in which “St Marx, St Lenin and St Trotsky” cannot be criticised. The Weekly Worker is, of course, one of the most outspoken critics within the left of this approach.

Benn also informed us that he had bought a copy of the paper that morning, only to find an “attack” on “this very meeting”. Suffice to say, it was the bureaucratic shenanigans of the organisers (principally SYN chair Owen Jones) that we felt the need to “attack”, not the SYN conference or SYN itself - both of which we seek to strengthen through our involvement.

Dave Isaacson

Good AWL Labourites

By far the biggest section of the organised left at the conference was the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and its Education Not For Sale campaign. But the comrades certainly punched below their weight and their intervention as a whole was rather subdued. Indeed, when I enquired why they did not get up and speak a bit more I was told that the AWL did not want to dominate proceedings. But why turn up in such numbers if not to try and positively shape things?

Sacha Ismail, however, had already admitted on the SYN discussion list that the AWL had agreed a compromise on the question of Venezuela, removing all reference to Hugo Chávez as a Bonapartist from the proposed CYN position. While I may have reservations about the AWL position, it is far better than the uncritical tailing of Chávez favoured by the soft left. In my view, the AWL should have stuck to its guns. Even if its position had been defeated, it would at least have been raised at conference for debate and discussion.

Daniel Randall and David Broder did make some good points - particularly their emphasis on socialism as the conscious control of society from below. However, in the debates on a ‘living grant’ and ‘living wage’ the AWL let slip its narrow, economistic approach to politics. When asked just where he had got his figure of £150 a week for a student grant, comrade Randall beautifully summed up this approach: NUS had called for £120, he said, and he wanted to demand more than that. This is, unfortunately, an all too common attitude - rather than call for what we need, follow the lead of the reformist right (perhaps with a bit more added on for luck).

Rightly, comrade Robin Sivapalan ridiculed that approach, but he would not support the CS amendment. Although it called for the minimum wage to be “determined by a democratically elected and accountable working class commission”, it did not contain the phrase, ‘working class struggle’! An adequate minimum wage can, of course, only be won through working class militancy, but this is hardly in contradiction to the call for a commission to determine precisely what our demands ought to be.

Had the AWL comrades voted to support our amendment (instead of voting against or abstaining) then the politics of SYN would have been significantly strengthened. That they did not is a shame, but in many ways reflects their overall approach - playing the role of good left Labourites, instead of revolutionaries looking to intervene in the Labour left in a principled manner.

Perhaps that is why the comrades failed to back James Turley, CS candidate for the SYN executive. I was assured by both comrades Ismail and Broder that they personally had voted for James as their second preference, but this was obviously their own individual choice - if the whole AWL/ENS delegation had voted for him, then he would easily have been elected. By contrast CS comrades, despite our numerous political differences with the AWL, voted as a bloc for comrade Broder as a second-preference candidate in order to strengthen the left on the executive.

Ben Lewis

Alphabet soup

One wonders if guest speakers John McDonnell, Tony Benn and Katy Clark MP were aware exactly who they were calling “the future” in their conference speeches. Possibly they weren’t able, in their half-hour visits, to gauge the real make-up of the conference.

The fact is, probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the turnout were not innocent Labourites at all, but a neat cross-section of those alphabet-soup groups most keen on the party. By far the largest segment was the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Having recently given up on their old course of deep entry, they nonetheless snapped right back into form and helped vote through plenty of left reformist fare, with a couple of unambitious motions of their own thrown in for good measure. It’s like they’ve never been away ...

Some groups never even got over the entry bug. For Socialist Appeal, this was another part of the grand plan which sees - via some kind of Marxist conjuring trick - workers flooding into the Labour Party in their hundreds of thousands upon a serious capitalist crisis. Why? They just do! Predictably (for them), they offered a fawning motion on Chávez and some interventions on uncontroversial issues, and hung around selling their simply irresistible eponymous magazine - the latest issue carries the shocking revelation that Blair said Iraq was a disaster on TV. A scoop only slightly undermined by its prominence in all mainstream news outlets two months ago.

It would be nice if, some day, one of these Labour-left gatherings might pass over without the backroom dealings of Socialist Action ... but this wasn’t going to be it. As is the way with this extremely secretive, semi-Stalinist grouping, one was only able to identify them by employing one’s sixth sense - there are two on the executive. Those standing were asked to give all their organisational affiliations and, sure enough, these comrades listed fronts dominated by Socialist Action. Anything up to eight other SA people may have been there. But who knows? If Appeal are wizards, Action are ninjas.

Then there were the two Socialist Students comrades left outside in the cold January air, boycotting the whole thing and attempting to lure the unwary with a nice, safe ‘Save the NHS’ petition, before, one assumes, informing those who stopped to sign of the futility of the conference and the thoroughly bourgeois character of the Labour Party, now that their parent body, the Socialist Party, no longer enjoys Labour membership.

While you could say that breaking with Ted Grant’s entry fetish was a positive step, the sectarian attitude to Labour now displayed is hardly an improvement.

James Turley

Engaging with youth

Ben Lewis spoke to Marsha-Jane Thompson, SYN co-chair and one of the conference organisers

Looking back to the conference, how do you think it went?

I think it went extremely well, although it’s sometimes hard to tell from the chair. It got a really good write-up on various blogs and in the Morning Star - it’s good to see someone else confirming my opinion.

The exec will be meeting soon to progress what conference agreed and the website is currently being updated with all the motions passed. I think it was absolutely amazing that we got through all 19 motions and yet had so many contributions - there were 11 speakers on one of them.

John McDonnell’s speech was very well received, as were the contributions from Tony Benn and Katy Clark, and, of course, supporting John in his campaign for Labour leader is one of the main things SYN will be getting stuck into.

Were you pleased with the turnout?

For a founding youth conference it was very encouraging, given the current climate, where young people don’t tend to get involved with political parties, and I’m looking forward to building on this.

I was especially impressed with the number of women present. In our movement I’m so used to being one of very few or even the only woman at various events. Typically though, the men hogged the platform, speaking on all the motions - even the abortion rights and feminist motion - but I was pleased to see them supporting women’s rights in relation to these particular issues.

While we’re on the subject, just a quick plug - there is a Feminists for John meeting at 7pm on January 24 at Portcullis House - which SYN members will be actively involved in - Mary Partington has organised it and I will be chairing.

Some of the resolutions passed (open borders, socialisation) are actually a lot more radical than what the Labour left usually says. How do you view this?

It is a positive development - after all, another world is possible. And  wouldn’t you expect the youth wing to be to the left of the rest of them?

In the run-up to conference, it was argued that Communist Students were wreckers, out to destroy the organisation. What did you think of the CS intervention on the day?

I’m not sure anyone argued CS were wreckers in the way you suggest. Valid concerns were raised that we would have to completely change the SYN constitution if your emergency motion had been passed. So I was pleased it was withdrawn. In the conference I think CS behaved themselves - although one person did insist on speaking twice in some debates, eh, Ben?

Overall I think the conference was handled in a comradely manner by all, building on all the things we agree on - which I must say is what we must do to organise effectively on the left.

You were once a member of Respect. Why did you leave?

I briefly thought Respect held some answers to the New Labour problem - but quickly found I was wrong. When I got further involved in trade union work I realised there were still significant numbers in the Labour Party who share my politics, so I joined Labour to help them in the struggle to win back our party. Unions should be pushing for Labour to implement union policy and indeed the policies of Labour Party conference itself.

SYN should win over disillusioned Respect members, as indeed it has - some others on our exec are also ex-Respect. But we can’t have people with dual membership, as we would cease to be the youth wing of the Labour Representation Committee.

It seems to me quite odd that it was only members of Respect that weren’t allowed to take part. As we both know, there were other groups present that didn’t get treated in this way. Why was this?

We did not explicitly ban Respect members only. SYN rules state that to be eligible for membership you cannot be a member of another political party that stands candidates against Labour. That’s why Respect members were not able to join - though they could attend as observers.

I know you thought this was simply an anti-communist witch-hunt, but I can assure you this was not the case - otherwise why would we have allowed members of Communist Students to stand for election to the exec and submit motions?

As co-chair, I strongly agreed with the position we had discussed at the steering committee, and the amendment carried at conference, to restrict our membership to those in the Labour Party and those who are not members of another political party that stands candidates against Labour - and I was pleased that Communist Students who are not members of Respect participated.

It seemed to me that the clear majority at conference were actually part of the organised left. This surely raises the greater question of how a higher form of united working class political organisation is to be achieved. What is your take on this?

I disagree. Although some members of the organised left were present, the majority were independent (for want of a better word) left trade unionists and students. Of the 20 members on the exec, only six are from the organised left. I think this shows what broad appeal SYN has.

We need to experiment with different ways of organising - and that’s what SYN is trying to do. Another world is possible - but only if we find new ways of engaging with disenfranchised and disillusioned youth.

Finally I would urge all readers of the Weekly Worker and members of Communist Students to join the Labour Party in order to vote for John McDonnell.

Read on: Weekly Worker archive Young people and students Labour and Labour left

Print this page