The Socialist Alliance had a special I conterence on March de towards
discussed its attitude towards Respect - the Unity Coalition. About 200 people attended the event, some of whom had come prepared for a split and had had the foresight to book a room nearby.
The conference voted to welcome the establishment of Respect. It also called on members to support Respect actively and financially. This means campaigning for
candidates in the forthcoming European and Greater London Assembly elections. This process has already started.
The conference also decided that the Socialist Alliance will not stand any candidates in these elections. However it did give leeway for local branches to support socialist candidates following a discussion with the local Respect organisation (which often contains many of the same people and a referral to the Alliance's National Executive.
The most adamant resistance to this line came from the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform. This incorporates members of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (some of whose supporters are also in the Labour Party, the Revolutionary Democratic Group and a number of individual members.
Some of these are hostile to the very idea of supporting Respect in the upcoming elections and are preparing to stand a handful of "Continuity Socialist Alliance" candidates to demonstrate this hostility.
Something that struck a number of participants was the high average age of the participants. The overwhelming majority of the conference was long-term political activists and the bulk of them were in organised groups. The anti-war movement and the young people who have been politicised by it were not drawn into the Socialist Alliance
One of the reasons for this was the attitude of the Socialist Workers Party towards both the Socialist Alliance and the movement against the war. It chose to use the enormous demonstrations as opportunities for recruiting handfuls of individual members.
Yet it was obvious that the anti-war movement was creating a hunger for a party to represent it. There was a possibility that the Socialist Alliance could have filled that space if the commitment had been there on the part of the SWP.
Nevertheless the SWP cannot be held responsible for everything that didn't work out. The Socialist Alliance demonstrated that the far left could maintain a reasonable level of coop. eration for quite a long time but this was with predominantly older comrades and lacked a big unifying theme.
It took the imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to create a real movement which began politicising millions of people at the same time as the link between some unions and Labour started to weaken. This is the soil on which Respect will grow.
Yet some lessons have still to be completely learned. Supporters of Socialist Res had argued that every Respect support the anti-war demonstration on Marc raise that organisation's profile
We wanted Respect to be seen major anti-war party on that day. All o porters were handing out Respect and placards for the entire morning.
What was regrettable was that the used it as just one more demonstrat which to sell papers and recruit a co new members.
The stakes are now much higher tha Respect is giving us the opportunity to a new class struggle, anti imperialist p Britain. That's what Socialist Resisto committed to, and that's how we int participate in it.