Weekly Worker 682 Thursday July 19 2007 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

Brown and a new socialist alliance

Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group calls for the left to get its act together in response to the change at the top

The new Brown government demands a response from the left. The pro-business, privatisation politics and anti-union laws will continue. Brown will maintain Labour’s centre-right, pro-market position. The trade unions will be in the forefront of defending the social gains of the working class. But without a workers’ party able to wage a political struggle against Labour, the trade unions can only expect a further political battering.

It is therefore imperative that we step up the fight for left unity and a new party. We need a new socialist alliance, bringing together the Labour Representation Committee, the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party and Respect. This time we should not stop at the Scottish border, but invite the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity into the process. The same applies to Wales. I would go further in seeking to involve socialist organisations in Northern Ireland.

On one level the Brown government is a continuation and extension of Blairism. However, this is not the full story. The small matter of the Iraq war has changed British politics. Over 20 years ago Thatcher won the Falklands/Malvinas war. The Tories exploited this politically at the next election. Now we have the opposite. The Iraq war did fatal damage to Blair. It created conditions for Brown to take over.

War produced opposite outcomes for Thatcher and Blair. But in both cases, mass movements played major roles in their defeat. It was the anti-poll tax movement that forced the Tories to replace her with Major. It was a mass anti-war movement that turned progressive opinion against Blair. So, while Brown will continue with Labour’s pro-capitalist market economics, he has to distance himself from Blair if he is to win the next election. The emphasis is therefore on ‘change’.

Iraq remains a major problem. Inside the Labour Party the most successful campaigns were those critical of the war. John McDonnell did not make it onto the ballot paper, but his campaign for Labour leader won significant support from trade union and rank and file party members. Harriet Harman’s campaign for deputy leader was unexpectedly successful at least in part because she took a critical line on the Iraq war. She won majority votes in Labour’s constituency section in each round of voting. Her critical comments on Iraq and Guantanamo Bay struck a chord with party members.

Brown is stuck in Iraq. He cannot withdraw because the British state and its imperialist interests depend on the United States. As long as US imperialist forces occupy Iraq, the British army will remain, if for political rather than military reasons. Any decision to withdraw will be taken in Washington, not London.

Iraq will, therefore, remain a major factor in British politics, not least because of the threat from terrorist bombs on our streets. But there is one way Brown can distance himself from Blair on Iraq. The code word is ‘trust’. In domestic politics ‘trust’ is a reference to the prime minister who took the country into an illegal war and misled parliament, and to people who promote dodgy dossiers about weapons of mass destruction only 45 minutes away.

Crisis of democracy

‘Trust’ connects Blair to a much bigger issue which will come to dominate British politics - the crisis of democracy. British democracy is in a mess. Nobody trusts it or really believes in it any more. We regularly hear about failing schools and failing hospitals. But failing parliamentary democracy is moving up the agenda. Even the Tories, notorious for constitutional conservatism, set up a ‘democracy task force’. When conservatives think the status quo is indefensible, then something is happening. Respect is now the only party apparently satisfied with the present system and having no proposals for democratic change!

The UK has long been described as an elected dictatorship in which power is highly centralised and concentrated into the hands of the prime minister, a few top civil servants and the security apparatus. The full weight of that dictatorship was deployed against the miners in 1984. It gave Thatcher the freedom to impose the poll tax. It gave Blair the freedom to make a deal with Bush to invade Iraq, before parliament or the cabinet knew anything about it.

The beauty of the constitutional monarchy is precisely the freedom it gives to the executive and the state, in proportion to the freedom it denies to the people. A clear example was the Blair government launching an illegal imperialist oil war whilst two million people were protesting on the streets. At the last election 40% did not vote. Only 22% of the electorate voted Labour. The rigged voting system turned this into a massive Labour majority.

Under Blair “government in Britain has become ever more presidential” (The Economist June 30). More power concentrated in the centre went hand in hand with half-baked and half-hearted constitutional reforms undermining the old structure. The Scottish parliament and the Welsh assembly have settled nothing. But they have thrown up an emerging English question. Scottish MPs voting on English matters poses the question of a parliament for England, the logical extension of a semi-federal constitution.

In his speeches before becoming prime minister, Brown proclaimed that “one of my first acts as PM would be to restore power to parliament in order to build trust of the British people in our democracy”. A democratic programme would thus fulfil two functions. It would seek to address a real problem, whilst at the same time covertly criticising Blair and distancing Brown from Blair’s Iraq adventure.

Brown’s democratic programme

Brown is proposing a written constitution or bill for rights. His ‘not the Blair government’ is making constitutional reform one of the main planks of its new programme. According to The Independent, “Brown’s constitutional reforms aim to restore public trust in politics” (July 3). The Economist says: “If Brown really means what he has recently been saying about humbler and more democratic government, he will finish the job of Lords reform and address the most important defect of the British system - the over-mightiness of the executive and weakness of the legislature - by handing real authority to parliament” (June 30).

On July 2 Brown unveiled his plans in the Commons. He spoke of a radical plan and a constitutional shift. He offered a route map to reform. Some royal-prerogative powers on war, dissolving parliament and ratifying treaties would be removed. There would be a new constitutional settlement. All the political parties and the British people would be invited into this process. Those who wanted a constitutional convention, as happened in Scotland, will be disappointed. Jack Straw is planning to organise a series of talking shops.

Nobody should be under any illusions that Brown or Labour can reform the constitutional monarchy. The ruling class and the interests of capital will not tolerate anything more than cosmetic surgery - a bit of nip and tuck. The headlines are designed to appeal to democratic and progressive opinion. But the devil is in the detail. Remember the Tories’ ‘care in the community’ policy, which sounded progressive but closed hospitals and provided no care and no community? Brown’s constitutional proposals will be just as empty, whilst carrying dangers for civil liberties. Real democratic change will only come from below by extra-parliamentary mobilisation.

The Labour Party is not a workers’ party. It is a people’s party or popular front which claims to represent the interests of all classes. New Labour made the popular-front character of Labour politics more explicit, by promoting the market, privatisation and tax breaks for the rich. Millionaire businessmen were queuing up to fund the party and collect honours. Brown is promoting and extending popular frontism, calling for “a government of all the talents” (ie, all classes). He has brought in Tories and Liberal Democrats and the former bosses’ leader, Digby Jones.

Brown’s popular front is necessary for constitutional change. The last thing the ruling class will want are divisions over reforming the constitutional monarchy. All the major parties will agree that the working class movement must be excluded from any reformed parliament. That is what it is all the more important that the working class organises a new party. It has to be a workers’ party which fights to change the political system and opens up the way for the working class to win political power.

Republican opportunity

The left has been presented with a major opportunity to win working class support for its democratic programme. But this requires a sharp distinction between patching up the constitutional monarchy, on the one hand, and, on the other, scrapping the old structure and replacing it with a democratic republican constitution. If Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Tories open up the democracy question, the left must take up the issue of democratic republicanism from below.

Fighting for democracy can unite the left. The Chartists were the first mass democratic workers’ party. They mobilised a massive extra-parliamentary working class movement. Democracy was not seen as an end in itself, but a means by which the working class could bring social change. In Scotland the link between democratic change and the formation of new workers’ parties was proven when the arrival of the Scottish parliament saw the successful launch of the Scottish Socialist Party.

The slogan of a republican socialist party is therefore a call for the left (eg, LRC, Respect, CNWP) to unite in a single workers’ party. It is a party which fights for a democratic republic on the road to socialism. In effect this means a minimum and maximum programme. A republican socialist party is not another Labour Party, nor another Trotskyist party. It stands in a democratic working class tradition going back to Chartism. The Iraq war, the mass anti-war movement and Brown’s liberal democratic programme now offer the possibility and opportunity for the left to form itself into one republican socialist party.

The gap between where the left actually is and where it should be is massive. In 2001 the left reached its high water mark in terms of unity. In England and Wales, the Socialist Alliance (mark two) contained the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Communist Party of Great Britain, Walsall Democratic Labour Party, Revolutionary Democratic Group, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party, International Socialist Group and Workers Power, as well as a range of independents, some from the Labour left. In Scotland the left had successfully formed itself into one party as the SSP.

In 2003-04 the SA divided and split. The right formed itself into Respect and rejected republicanism and a workers’ party. The left formed itself into the SA Democracy Platform in favour of both. The latter called for a “campaign for a new workers’ party jointly with other socialist and trade union organisations and activists committed to that goal”. In Scotland in 2005-06 the SSP split over the handling of the Tommy Sheridan court case.

Meanwhile the Labour left began to organise itself around into the Labour Representation Committee. It fought its first major battle in the McDonnell (John for Leader) campaign. It put forward a socialist case against Brown and won support from trade unionists and Labour Party socialists. The relative success of this campaign despite its inability to make the ballot paper now poses the question of ‘what next?’

The Brown government faces a new left divided into three main organisations - LRC, Respect and the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party - and two in Scotland - the SSP and Solidarity. In England the ‘big three’ symbolise the weakness and rampant sectarianism of the left. The movement towards one republican socialist party still has a long way to go. The LRC is not in a favour of a new workers’ party. It is ideologically committed to Labourism and indifferent to republicanism. Respect is opposed to secular republicanism and opposed to workers’ party. It is trying to recreate the values of Labourism outside the Labour Party.

The picture is even worse when we take account of the bitter divisions in Scotland and the growth of nationalism. This is reinforcing the split between socialists in England and Scotland. Should we throw up our hands in despair at this sorry mess? No - we should continue the fight for socialist unity. Faced with the new Brown government, we need a new socialist alliance.

New socialist alliance

A new socialist alliance must bring the LRC, Respect, CNWP, SSP and Solidarity into one organisation. This may seem ambitious, but it is a necessary response to Brown’s democratic programme, popular-front politics and attacks on the working class. The working class movement cannot afford the sectarian rivalries of the left. The trade unions will be hammered by Brown unless the socialist left can get its unity act together.

We are speaking here of an alliance of socialists, not necessarily an organisation called ‘Socialist Alliance’. All communists should be in the forefront of the fight for socialist unity in a new socialist alliance. For some this may seem like going backwards to 1997 or 1999. In one sense that it true. But in reality the experience of the Scottish SA and the SA in England and Wales changed the left. We have a real experience to be exploited for the future. The SA at its best still has much of value that is relevant for today.

A communist perspective should be to intervene and agitate for a new socialist alliance in all of these organisations. Of the ‘big three’ in England, only the CNWP is openly calling for a new workers’ party and has adopted republican and socialist demands. The socialist alliance perspective could be adopted by the CNWP. This has two sides. On one hand, the CNWP could take up the call for a wider alliance of socialists. But rather than simply waiting patiently for a response it should transform itself into a socialist alliance-type organisation.

At present the CNWP, for all its undoubted and obvious weaknesses, is the closest to the direction we need to go. The CNWP positives are the call for a new workers’ party. The recent conference adopted a proto-programme which recognised democratic republicanism in its minimum section and socialism in the maximum. In this sense it is closer to a republican socialist party than either the LRC or Respect.

The major problem is that the left needs to move forward much more quickly. The CNWP is stuck in the mud. It needs to transform itself rapidly into a socialist alliance-type organisation. This is not to substitute itself for a ‘big three socialist alliance’. But rather the CNWP should lead the left to a socialist alliance by example.

The Socialist Party has rightly resisted the adventurist idea of prematurely launching its own workers’ party and substituting itself for the advanced part of the class. In resisting one error it is now committing the opposite mistake of ‘snail’s pacism’. The Brown government requires and demands that the CNWP go much faster. It must reform itself or become completely irrelevant.

A socialist alliance is not a party. It is and should be a ‘halfway house’ between a campaign for a new workers’ party and the party’s founding conference. Therefore the CNWP needs to transform itself from a campaign into a republican socialist alliance if it is to relate to the democratic programme and popular front politics of the Brown government.

A major barrier lies with the Socialist Party failing to draw the correct lessons from the experience of the SA. The SA failed because the SWP defined it as no more than a short-term electoral front. With that aim, it could dispense with the SP and just as easily take up with Galloway. But if a socialist alliance is properly defined as a step on the road to a new workers’ party, then it is more necessary today than ever. The socialist movement has been derailed by the collapse of the SA and the split in the SSP. It now has to get back on track.

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