At the recent Respect conference supporters of Socialist Resistance clashed sharply with the SWP. The debates revolved differences which go back to the pre-Respect Socialist Alliance - how in this period can moves towards building a broad socialist party be built, and indeed is that a useful and necessary objective. Socialist Resistance looks to formations like the Scottish Socialist party, the Left Bloc in Portugal and other inclusive and pluralist left formations in Europe as examples of what can be done. We are publishing here an article written by Alan Thornett at the time of the Socialist Alliance which poses the question: how far will the SWP go? Will they really break with the past? This summary is, we believe, of considerable relevance to contemporary debates.
A number of factors make the SWP a particularly interesting far-left organisation at the present time. Since the mid-1990s - following the collapse of the Communist Party, the sharp decline of the Militant/SP, and the general decline of the left - it has emerged as by far the biggest revolutionary socialist organisation in Britain and amongst the biggest in the world. Now, after years of sectarianism and putting its own interests first, it has taken a dramatic turn towards working with the rest of the left in the Socialist Alliances, in some of the campaigns, and is beginning to end its isolationism in the unions. In Scotland it is moving towards joining the Scottish Socialist Party.
This dramatic change of line has opened up the possibility of forging a new broad political alternative to Blairism initially in the form of the Socialist Alliances, but later even the possibility of a new party to the left of Labour. In the longer term it poses the issue of recomposing the far-left itself. The SWP has taken this turn in an undoubtedly genuine and whole-hearted way, at least on the part of its leadership, but it has also taken it in a relatively untheorised way as far as the longer term implications are concerned - either for itself or for the broader formations it is creating. This makes it potentially politically unstable on the new orientation, but it also makes it open to influence as far as its future development is concerned.
The SWP was, like the Militant with Ted Grant and the SLL/WRP with Gerry Healy, the creation, principally, of one man - Tony Cliff. It was moulded and shaped by his strengths, weaknesses, theories and quirks - not least, in many ways, his quirks. At its core are Cliff's twin theories of state capitalism, which rejected Trotsky¹s analysis of the class nature of the Stalinist states and the permanent arms economy which purported to be an explanation of the post war boom in the capitalist west. This went alongside Cliff's, at least partial, rejection of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, and his particular brand of economism, socialism from below, and rank and fileism - the refusal to take positions in the unions above the rank and file level. This also reflected a view of the bureaucracy which tended to see it as an alien class rather than a bureaucratic layer of the working class - an idea linked to the theory of state capitalism in the Stalinist states.
The IS/SWP is a strange political organisation in that it was founded on an analysis of the Stalinist states (and some tactical positions and assessments) rather than on a programmatic basis. Of course the theory of state capitalism has programmatic implication, but, apart from in the Korean war, the SWP has managed to be on the right side against imperialism despite the logic of state capitalism, when there is a "state Capitalist" state involved. This was the case by the time of Vietnam. But the SWP has never adopted a series of programmatic positions as the basis of its organisation.
Much of this comes out in his recently (and posthumously) published autobiography A World to Win . It provides a useful short history of the SWP from Cliff's own particular, and partisan, point of view. This text draws on it as a point of reference for Cliff politics and positions. In A World to Win Cliff argues that his differences with Trotsky, particularly over the class nature of the Stalinist states, were not a break with Trotskyism as such but brought it into line with the main body of the Marxist tradition. It is a difficult argument to sustain.
Cliff went over to the theory of state capitalism, which had already become a debate within the Fourth International in the immediate post war years (1947/8), with his text The Class Nature of Stalinist Russia. It was later published as Russia a Marxist Analysis in 1955 and as State Capitalism in Russia in 1974. Cliff formed the Socialist Review Group (SRG) in 1950 after the RCP dissolved. The SRG was entryist into the Labour Party and had a loose and Luxemburgist structure, but its main reason for a separate existence from the FI was the advancement of Cliff's theory of state capitalism,
The SRG existed for about 10 years as a small group of a few dozen people. It became the International Socialism group (IS) in 1962 with about 70 people and a paper called Labour Worker. According to Cliff the membership of IS reached 200 by the mid-1960s after work in CND and the launching of the Young Socialists (YS) by the Labour Party, which it entered, even though it was squeezed by the SLL (overwhelming the biggest far left organisation at that time) with its youth journal Keep Left. The SLL made the most gains out of work in the YS and won the majority to break away and become effectively its youth organisation. The IS also began work amongst students in 1967/8 with a group established at the LSE.
The IS began looking towards industry in the same period, first gaining a base at the ENV engineering plant in West London. From that Cliff launched, in 1966, the London Industrial Shop Stewards Defence Committee. This was in the same period as those of us in Cowley, under the influence of the SLL, launched the Oxford Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions and the CP launched the LCDTU. Cliff backed up his work in the shop stewards movement with the publication of a book on productivity bargaining: Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards. In 1970 he followed it up with another book The Employer Offensive: Productivity Deals and How to Fight Them. These were publications which Cliff clearly attached great importance to in the development of the IS since he refers to them repeatedly throughout his book. Certainly they played a significant part in building the IS at that time.
The momentous year of 1968 - May-June in France, the Prague spring, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and the civil rights movement in the North East of Ireland - was an important stage in the development of the far-left in Britain. The IMG emerged as a significant force and the SLL grew substantially in that period. It was also an important stage in the development of the IS (despite its initial welcoming of British troops into Ireland - which Cliff defends as a temporary necessity). Cliff claims that IS membership rose from 400 to 1000 between April and October 1968. But this was not simply one to one recruitment as he suggests. The IS issued an open letter to the far left at that time calling for regroupment and a number of groups joined as a result. Cliff's turn to Leninist conceptions of party organisation, with the adoption of democratic centralism, came out of this with the need for a centralist structure to deal with the resulting internal debates. Most of the groups which joined, however, were later expelled or left. Any mention of this is completely absent from A World to Win.
The major growth of the IS came during the militant years of the Heath government of 1970-74. This was the "turn to industry" period of the IS with the publication of a series of rank and file papers in different sections of industry and a turn to rank and file organisation. Although student work continued with the launching of the IS Student Societies in 1974 - which later became SWSS.
Cliff claims that IS membership went from 880 at its Easter 1970 conference to 2,351 by Easter 1972 and to 3,310 by Easter 1974. These figures need to be treated with a bit of caution since, for example, Cliff claims, at the end of his book that the membership of the SWP in the late 1990s was 10,000 - which seems to be a substantial over-estimate, even a doubling of the real membership. But the earlier figures are clearly more accurate than that and they do show the general way the IS grew in that period. It was approaching the size of the SLL/WRP which was in turn entering a period of further political degeneration as well as a bitter factional struggle with those of us who were expelled and launched the WSL in early 1975. The IMG reached about 700 at that time and the Militant somewhat smaller.
In 1973 the IS's turn to industry was pushed forward with the replacement of geographical branches with workplace based branches, which went alongside moves towards launching a national rank-and-file movement. The IS held its first National Rank and File Conference in 1974, which according to the its internal report attracted an impressive 500 delegates from 270 trade union bodies - and more such conferences were to follow. Cliff claims that by the end of 1974 the IS had 38 workplace branches.
The National rank and File Movement came to a shuddering halt just a few years later, however. This was the direct result of Cliff¹s conversion to his famous (or infamous) "downturn" theory in 1977. Cliff declared that a "downturn in the class struggle" had been taking place since 1974 and that it was time that this was recognised. He was later self-critical that he had not seen earlier. Moreover, the problem, he said, was located in the working class itself, taking the form of a "collapse of militancy of the working class". This was partly the result, he argued, of what he called the bureaucratisation of the shop stewards movement - in particular the rise of the number of full-time convenors in that period.
In fact the rise in the numbers of full time convenors was an important material gain of the militant struggles in the late 60s and early 70s, but here were no half measures in what Cliff argued. The chapter in A World to Win dealing with the downturn is entitled "From Beautiful Spring to Freezing Winter" i.e. from the beautiful spring of the 1970-74 period to the freezing winter of the post 1974 period - including the years 1974-84. This freezing winter, he claims, went on for nearly 20 years until the early 1990s, when it was replaced by a partial upturn. This downturn/upturn theory has been, and remains, such a major part of the politics of the SWP over the past 20 years that it is worth looking at it a bit closer.
It is true that the 1970-74 period (more precisely the 1968-74 period) was special in terms of the level of class struggle. There were two successful miners strikes in 1972 and 1974, the second of which brought down the government. There was the opposition to In Place of Strife. There was the Pentonville five and the occupation of UCS - along with numerous other factory occupations. There were political strikes against the Industrial Relations Bill and the huge TUC demonstration against the Bill.
It is also true that very important changes, political and economic, occurred in the mid-1970s, which made the industrial struggle more difficult. The first was the end of the post war boom, the onset of recession, and the start of the long recessionary wave, which still predominates today. The second was the election of the Labour government and 1974 - brought in by the defeat of the Tories by the miners. The third was a systematic fight-back by the employers against the gains of the working class in the previous period. All his made struggles increasingly defensive, not just in Britain but across Europe. But there was not a crisis of the militancy of the working class. That was invented by Tony Cliff. In fact high levels of militancy, with minor fluctuations, continued from the late 1960s until the defeat of the miners in 1985.
Consider the figures. In the 5 years from 1970-74 there were 70m days lost in strike action and in the 5 years from 77-81 there was only slightly less with 65m days lost. That was a collapse of militancy of the working class! It beggars belief. If that period was a freezing winter the "upturn" of the 1990s was an ice age, since the days lost in the 5 years 1991-95 was just 2.6m! (see attached list of post-war strike figures). And the second 5 years of the 1990s were much worse.
There was indeed a reduction in the level of struggles for two years - 75 and 76. There were only (sic) 6m days lost in 1975 and 3.2m in 1976 against 14.7m in 1974. But this went back up to 10m in 1977 and a staggering 29m in 1979 - the highest since the general strike of 1926 and 6m more than the highest year in the 70-74 period. Duncan Hallas in a lengthy article polemicising against entryism in 1982 talked on ³the profound downturn in the industrial struggles of the past few years².
The two low strike years of 75 and 76 were produced by the way Labour came to office. Labour had broken from its confrontationist stand in the 1960s and was now working closely with the union leaders. This has been achieved during the Tory years by the Trade Union Labour Party Liaison Committee. The pay-off for this was the support of the trade union leaders and the TUC for its initial stages of incomes policy and its 12 month rule (which outlawed pay claims with 12 months of the previous one). There were numerous strikes against Labour¹s initial stages of incomes policy the most important being the 13 week national fire fighters strike against stage three after it had been defeated against Jack Jones at the TGWU conference in 1977. There were other strikes as well, in the car industry, for example, including a 15 week strike at BL Speke. There was the battle at Grunwick which started in August 1976 - which got solidarity action from the Postal workers.
The winter of discontent itself came out of confrontations with Labours stage four 5% wages policy which was smashed by it. The wages log jam burst in 1978/9 in a massive strike wave with the 29m days lost, as quoted above. This was led by an immensely powerful fuel tanker drivers strike which broke the 5% policy, a massive lorry drivers strike which paralysed large sections of industry with the strike committees issuing chits for the movement of essential supplies. There was a spontaneous strike across all Ford plants which smashed through the incomes policy. There were public sector strikes in the hospitals (with coal miners coming out in support of nurses), in local government, and amongst refuse collectors.
And major strikes went on after the winter of discontent. There was a 15 week steel strike in 1980, strikes in engineering and cars in 81 and 82, and the printers strike in 1983. There was then the miners strike in 1984.
The hard evidence Cliff advanced for the downturn was weak in the extreme. The most unreal being the figures he quotes (in A World to Win) which he claims show a "massive collapse of militancy" in the mining industry:
"There was a massive collapse of militancy thought the mining industry, as can be seen from the following figures: the number of days lost - over 10 million in 1972 and over 5 million in 1974 - collapsed to 52,000 in 1975, increasing to 70,000 in 1976, 88,000 in 1977 and 176,000 in 1978".
This is a collapse of militancy? Not only that he is comparing two years when there were national strikes in the industry with four years when there were not, and this to prove that a section of workers who were to mount an astounding year long strike six years later had lost their militancy!
At one point Cliff recognises that there were strikes taking place in the second half of the 1970s but seemed to confuse the hardening attitude of the employers, which certainly was taking place, with the lack of militancy from the working class:
"The extent of this retreat becomes clear if one follows what happened to wage levels. There were many industrial disputes under the Labour government of 1974-1979. But they were radically different to those of the proceeding period. The disputes were far more bitter and lengthy; the employers were far more aggressive and quite often unready to concede anything except after a long battle; lockouts were back with a vengeance; and the proportion of disputes ending with workers defeats or partial defeats was much greater than in previous years".
Yes, there is some truth in that. It is exaggerated and one sided since many of the struggles in the 1970-74 were defensive as well and there were victories in the second half of the 1970s like the smashing of the incomes policy. But in what sense does this amount to a collapse of militancy of the working class. In fact the political problem remained the same from the late 1960s up until the defeat of the miners - strong trade union organisation and high levels of militancy but insufficient political development to deal with the trade union leader in either their social democratic or Stalinist form.
Cliff says he realised there was a downturn already taking place was during the fire fighters strike, in November 1977. He points to a conference of the National Rank and File Movement, which he says was only 200 people and smaller than the previous conferences, and which adopted a resolution calling for a day of strike action in support of the fire fighters. The day of action, he says, was a failure. No one came out on strike and this proved to him definitively that the movement was in a downturn, and one stemming from a crisis of militancy of the working class.
I attended it that conference (and spoke at it) and I remember it as a lot bigger than 200, although probably smaller than the previous ones. But as I recall there was not, in fact, a direct call for solidarity strikes with the fire fighters, as such, but a general call for solidarity with them within a longer resolution.
Be that as it may, however. But the idea that the isolation of the fire fighters could be circumvented by a call for unofficial solidarity strikes from a conference of 200 (or even 400 as I remember it) delegates organised mainly by one far-left current was a problem in itself. In fact examples of direct unofficial solidarity action by one section of workers in support of another engaged in a sectional struggle are extremely rare and difficult to achieve. It was difficult even against the In Place of Strife and the Industrial Relations Act even though these were issues effecting the whole movement equally.
But more than that it completely ignored the role of the trade union leaders and the TUC who were fighting might and main to keep to the 12 month rule and current 10% limit in tact. The fire fighters held a massive lobby of the TUC when the General Council voted on a resolution urging them to accept it. Leaders of one million authority workers and leaders of another million workers in the NHS were accepting the 12 month rule against pressure from their members to break it. Tanker drivers, power workers, and other were holding back for the same reason. It was the political fight to break that log-jam, which was delaying the looming confrontation over wages, which was the key to breaking the isolation of the fire fighters.
Rank and filism led the SWP to see the trade union bureaucracy as irrelevant and therefore unable to combat the betrayals which they were perpetrating. It is still the same today. In the trade union session of Marxism this year the main speaker said that it was almost irrelevant who was the general secretary of a union since everyone (more or less) does the same once they are in that position. So forget about them and organise at the base!
Another factor which fed into Cliff's downturn theory was the experience which the IS/SWP (the IS became the SWP in January 1977) had in standing candidates for Parliament on the second half of the 1970s starting with the Walsall North and Newcastle Central. The idea was that working class was breaking with Labour because of its incomes policy and other right-wing policies, and were open to a revolutionary alternative. This assessment turned out to be wrong, of course. The results were extremely poor and got worse as more initiatives were made. Even worse for Cliff was that the SWP
did worse than the IMG's Socialist Unity campaign where they were both standing.
The rise of unemployment which took place whilst Labour was in office had led the IS to launch the Right to Work Campaign in 1975. It followed the Right to Work campaign launched by the WRP in 1973. The first (IS) Right to Work march - Manchester to London - was in 1976. The National Rank and File Movement and the RTWC worked in tandem, but both were the victim of the down turn theory.
The battle, by Cliff, to convince the IS/SWP of the downturn took several years after he had first proposed it internally in February 1978. It was eventually formalised at the 1982 conference. In A World to Win Cliff says the following:
"By the 1982 conference we had done it, abandoning all pretensions to build a rank and file movement in the present period: "Instead we emphasis the following: (1) Politics is central to our ability to build. Without a clear Marxist understanding of society, comrades cannot survive in a hostile world. (2) The geographical branch has to be the main unit of the party. Individuals on their own will move to the right. Hence the need to attend weekly meetings in order to develop a clearer understating of the world and to get political direction from other comrades on how to intervene in the work place. (3) Socialist Worker is the key to building a periphery by providing the means to identify the once and twos who are interested in our ideas".
But it was not just the rank and file orientation, and later the right to work campaign, which suffered from this. Women's Voice and the SWP's black section paper (both of which Cliff has been distant from) were closed as well as Cliff guarded against what he saw as a drift towards movementism as a response to the decline of industrial militancy.
The IS/SWP lost ground, particularly in industry, during the protracted internal battle over the downturn. But what limited the damage was the launching of the Anti Nazi League (ANL) in 1987-8. It was a response to a sharp rise in the activities of the far right and took off rapidly with, at least on paper, some broad support. The first Anti Nazi League Carnival (ANL) was a huge success with 80,000 attending. It was followed by a series of Rock against Racism carnivals around the country and the ANL ran for 5 years. It was not a united front initiative, despite the many eminent sponsors. It was controlled by the SWP which had decided when it has existed and then it has not ever since. But it was hugely successful and the SWP recruited heavily out of it.
The beginning of the 1980s saw the rise of the Bennite movement and the SWP was presented with another political problem. Cliff rejected the view that the Bennite movement was a product of the industrial militancy of the 70s, which had created a political movement inside the LP against the right-wing policies which had been pursued. He argued instead that it was a product of the downturn. In A World to Win he says:
".. since workers did not have the confidence to take on their employers in the workplace, many of the the looked for a political solution outside the workplace. They turned to a saviour from on high - the Labour Party".
The focal point of the debate over the nature of Bennism was the famous Debate of the Decade held in central Hall Westminster in March 1980. It was seen as a strategic debate on the future of the left with Tony Benn, Stuart Holland, Audrey Wise, Hillary Wainwright, Paul Foot and Tariq Ali speaking. Benn, though openly arguing for a left-reformist solution, trounced those, including Paul Foot, who simply denounced the Labour left as irrelevant, refused to be a part of it, counterposed work in the LP to the building of a revolutionary organisation, and called on everyone to join the SWP.
As a result of this the SWP was side-lined by the Bennite movement and the initiative was handed to the Militant, which built massively out of it even if it did not actually become a part of the Bennite movement. By the mid 1980 was substantial bigger than the SWP with something like 8,000 members.
By the time of the miners strike, in 1984, the approach of the SWP was dominated by the downturn theory and its attitude was one of deep pessimism. This verged on the view that the strike was impossible to win - which was not the view of the Thatcher government which at one time thought they were going to lose. So the defeat was nothing to do with the TUC who had accepted the Tory anti-union laws or the trade union leaders who had left the miners isolated! The problem remained the lack of militancy in the working class itself. In A World to Win Cliff puts it this way:
"In 1994 the miners strike broke out and they fought bravely for a whole year. Alas, the long period of downturn, of declining militancy, led to the final defeat of the strike².
The SWP stayed outside of the miners support groups until very late. It argued that the strike could be won by mass picketing (of which there was no shortage) rather than breaking the isolation of the miners though other sections coming out on their own claims and opening a second front - something which involved taking on the trade union leaders and the TUC.
Cliff eventually declared the end of the long downturn came in 1989, when the level of the class struggle was a shadow of that which existed when he declared it. After that the situation, according to him, was "neither upturn or downturn" This has remained the analysis of the SWP during the 1990s despite the further disastrous collapse of trade union struggle in that period.
The second half of the 1990s saw an important rise in the level of class struggle across Europe triggered by the mass strikes and demonstrations in France at the end of 1995 which triggered a series of mass strikes and general strike right across the EU against the Maastricht criteria. This was reflected at the global level where a fight-back was also beginning against the effects of globalisation and the neo-liberal offensive.
But the strike struggles across Europe did not effect Britain, where by the mid-1990s the level of strikes had plunged to the lowest since records began in the last part of the 19th century. As a result the employers have been able do almost anything they have wanted (shut anything down, sack more or less at will, and restructure working conditions etc) usually without resistance. This was not an upturn or even the absence of a downturn, it was a disastrous situation. The only victory was against the poll tax in the early 90s and the fight-back was outside of the unions and did not have a long term effect other than the removal of Thatcher.
The political consequences of the low levels of trade union struggles in Britain in the 90s were the development of social partnership in the unions and Blairism in the Labour Party. And Blair was a new type of Labour leader liked to the neoliberal agenda and with a project of turning it into a straight capitalist party. As a result of Blair's advance the political situation shifted to the right the left (far left and social democratic left) shrank dramatically - although unevenly.
This SWP¹s refusal to accept the realities facing the working class in the 90s, and today, remains a huge illogically in the its analysis. It means it had no analysis of the depth of the defeat of the miners and subsequent events. It means it has no analysis of the decline of the shop stewards movement or the situation of activists (and the lack of them) in the workplace. Presumably after most of the full-time convenors got sacked or their full-time facilities abolished things got better! And it has no analysis of the strength of the employers today, the degree with which they can impose their will and the massive restructuring in the work place. This was the case at Marxism this year where in the trade union session the message was that everything was on the up. One more heave by the socialists everything can be achieved. Small advances, which are happening of course, were seized upon and used to paint a completely unreal picture.
Despite this unreality the SWP has been the major exception to the rule as far as the shrinkage of the left is concerned. One factor was the way the SWP was able to use its relative size, material resources, and insularity, to protect itself from the cold blast of politics outside. The other was and the upturn theory itself, which undoubtedly played a positive, if completely unreal, role. Things were just not as bad as everyone else though they were, SWP members were told! And the SWP could maintain it own round of internal and external events to prove the point and boost morale.
The other factor was the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the USSR and the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe. Cliff presented it as a massive vindication of his theory of State Capitalism. This gave the SWP members confidence at a time when the Communist Parties went into free fall in many countries including Britain and sections of the far left, including sections of the FI, drew deeply pessimistic conclusions out of it.
Yet Trotsky characterised Stalinism as a counter revolutionary force on a world scale. He argued that whilst control of societies by the working class had been destroyed the mode of production had not been changed. In fact it is this analysis of Trotsky¹s which was confirmed so convincingly by the collapse of the USSR, not the theory of state capitalism. In any case you did not have to be a state capitalist to be unencumbered by the fall of the wall. That was for those who attributed something progressive Stalinism.
None of this was a factor or a debate inside the SWP, of course. The organisation has existed on the basis of the theory of state capitalism for so long that his theory was not going to be questioned at the point Stalinism collapsed. Cliff had no problem convincing SWP members that his theory had been vindicated and that this was why the SWP was now on the ascendancy.
The SWP has also, like the rest of the left, had to relate to important political developments in the 90s. The rise of the new Labour reshaped politics at every level. The Tory party was semi-destroyed in the 1997 election and is attempting to rebuild itself on a new right-wing agenda. The Liberal party, the Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party have found themselves well to the left of new Labour. And we have seen the establishment of the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament, and later the GLA. We have also seen a rapidly growing gap between the Blair leadership and socialists at the base of the party. This opened space to the left of Labour and concentrated minds in the far left as to how it could be filled, not least the SWP. This has become the driving force for the most dramatic turn outwards towards the rest of the left ever made by the SWP in the whole of its history.
And sections of the left begun to reorganise themselves to face this situation. There has been the emergence of new radical layers of direct action, anti-capitalist, anarchist and semi-anarchists who have responded to developments in the global economy and the environmental crisis produced by capitalism. In most cases, other than with the Liverpool dockers, the are outside the labour movement and act independent of it.
The far left also responded by beginning to reorganise itself. Scargill's SLP was the first in the field but degenerated into Stalinism. The SP retrenched after initially broadening itself out and launching some of the early Socialist Alliances. But both initiatives were new forms of organisation to the left of Labour involving a return by the left to the electoral arena as an aspect of its work - something which was boosted by the introduction of forms of PR in the Euro-elections, the Scottish Parliament the Welsh Assembly and the GLA.
The SWP, however, initially held back the Alliances. In Scotland it stood some candidates, but in its own name¹ and it was not involved in the Scottish Socialist Alliance or later in the SSP.
This began to change when the SWP became involved in the LSA mark 1 for the European elections in 1998, but withdrew when Scargill headed an SLP list. At that time the SWP was conducting an internal debate on the electoral tactic. This was concluded by the time of the run-up to the election for the GLA and they became fully involved with a completely new level of commitment. Out of this development came the successful LSA interventions in the GLA election and then in the Tottenham by-election. This has transformed the possibilities for the Socialist Alliances, in particular for a viable SA challenge in the general election next year.
It was a turn which quickly went beyond simply the involvement in an electoral alliance to a completely new attitude to the rest of the left. At the major preelection rally of the LSA Paul Foot spoke on the same platform as Tommy Sheridan and Alain Krivine, on the theme of rebuilding the left across Europe. Only a year or two ago such a thing would have seemed inconceivable.
And all the indications were that this was not a shorter tactic but a new and much longer term orientation of the SWP. The impression was reinforced by the way the SWP could be influenced in the process. Although they came into the LSA with all the old control freakery baggage of the past, that could be changed in discussion. We also found that we could change their line in the course of discussion. For example they were initially strongly opposed to local alliances London and this changed in discussion with ourselves. At least it changed at the level of the leadership, which then began to campaign for such change in their branches. We also found that we shared important tactical agreement with the SWP, for example on the structure of the campaign, its broadness, the need to involve the Labour left and an opposition to standing against left Labour candidates in the general election.
When it comes to the longer term future of these developments, however, the situation is completely different since what is involved is the emergence of some kind of new formation which is not the SWP. The SWP therefore has no strategic view of the longer term future of the alliances. Yet it is clear that the SAs are a stage in the process of the longer term recomposition of the left, and cannot become permanent formations in their resent form. A number of the constituent organisations of the LSA, including the Socialist Party, Workers Power, and ourselves, have the perspective, in various ways, of a new party to the left of Labour. The SWP have not drawn this conclusion and are extremely reluctant to be drawn into the discussion on it.
Of course there is not yet agreement, amongst those who favour such a development, on what the political character of such a party would to be. Workers Power, for example, clearly think that it must be a revolutionary party and anything else would be a defeat. But at least a dialogue it taking place. Despite the SWP's blind spot on this issue, however, the turn it has made and the opportunities it has opened up for the left remain extremely important. And whilst the alliances remain successful there is a logic involved which, in practice is difficult to resist. It is a logic which which we can play an important political role.
The issue of far left unity is a related but separate thing. It is also, even if possible, on a longer time scale than the development of the alliances or even the prospects of a new broad party to the left of Labour.
Here the big issue with the SWP is that of internal democracy. It does not have much that we would recognise. The IS/SWP have never tolerated internal oppositions and the result has been the expulsion of those who have found themselves in opposition. The SWP's leadership structure today is a CC of 10 - full stop. Ultimately Cliff was never prepared to countenance any view other than his own once he had made up his mind. It seems to be what he saw as leadership. The SWP is a top down organisation and political, issues within it are often settled by personal contact and individual pressure rather than open debate.
Cliff claims in that the biggest split the SWP ever had was the split with those in Birmingham who became the Worker¹s League and published a paper called Workers News. There were 150 of them and they were led by Jim Higgins Roger Protz and John Palmer. The split was over the decision to stand a Rank and File Movement candidate in the AUEW elections rather than supporting the Broad Left candidate. But there was a number of splits including the whole of the left faction, of which the comrades who are now Workers Power were a part, which took place at an earlier stage.
Apart from democracy, another problem for us would be the SWP's conception of internationalism and the structure of an international. The FI seeks to build sections on the same programmatic basis but with their own tactical approach to their national situation. The SWP builds parties its own image and with a tactical approach worked out in the class struggle in Britain - and of course they have to be state capitalist. In fact this is very much the image of the SWP's international which comes through in A World to Win.
It will be interesting to see whether those leading the SWP today after the loss of Tony Cliff will be able, or will want to, sustain the model Cliff has left them in all its aspects. Only time can tell, but it is a process in which we may be able t o have some degree of influence.