The Socialist Alliance in England and Wales and the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) are crucial to the future of the left in Britain. They are part of a larger political development taking place across Europe in response to the reshaping of the traditional parties of the working class. A hugely positive initiative, the Socialist Alliance has come a long way. Here Socialist Alliance National Executive members ALAN THORNETT and MANDY BAKER look at how has it developed and where it needs to go.
The collapse of Stalinism was followed, during the 1990s, by the
collapse of European social democracy into neo-liberalism. The traditional parties of the working class began to jump ship, becoming ardent enforcers of the Maastricht neo-liberal agenda.
In Britain, where the trade unions suffered heavy defeats in the 1980s, Blairism captured control of the Labour Party and took it further to the right, abolishing Clause 4 and demolishing its internal democracy. The Labour left went into steep dedine.
The result was a crisis of working class Isolationist attitudes are receding, as members of organisations antagonistic to one another collaborate in a range of partial collapse of support for Labour in its vote into traditional Tory constituencies. A gap was opening up to the left of Labour looking for a new political home. sation movement. This new movement has survived the war drive that followed September 11 and been further radicalised by these events.
These developments created a new political landscape. Previously revolutionaries could provide an alternative to social democracy and Stalinism in the labour moverent by a class struggle stance.
The task today is different. Whilst fighting for revolutionary change we need to create a vehicle that can give real political expression to those disenfranchised to the left of New Labour. This means the creation of new, broad, pluralist, democratic and socialist parties.
The left began to take up this challenge at the European level during the 1990s. Communist Refoundation emerged in Italy from the break-up of the CP, the United Left in Spain, the Left Bloc in Portugal, and the Red Green Alliance in Denmark. The expression of this in Britain was the Socialist Alliances in England and Wales and the SSP in
The SSP has rapidly emerged as a significant force in Scottish politics, and is set to improve its position at the forthcoming Scottish Parliamentary elections. Opinion polls over the last three months have constantly shown support for the party at around 8 per cent.
Today the way forward is through such parties. Revolutionaries must work to build them in a pluralist and democratic
n this context, the far left is changing. range of campaigns. They are working most significantly in the new broad politOld divisions are disappearing. The fault lines that have divided the far left for over 60 years - the class nature of the and the process of transition to capitalism, a theory. This is a sea change from the of the LP respectively.
Since then the Alliance in England has established itself as an organisation. It has held a successful constitutional conference, gained some credible election results and organised a very successful trade union conference. It has intervened into the unions on the political fund - an issue that goes to the heart of the relationship between the unions and new Labour. It has also been in the forefront of campaigning against the war drive and in defence of the Palestinians. Momentum of the Socialist Party from the conference.
Despite these successes and the ongoshould develop beyond its present stage.
At the moment the Socialist Alliance therefore not - as the SWP argues - a political issues and with the objective of
WAR to bring them into existence. The Alliance needs new successes and a new intake of recruits breaking from new Labour and emerging from the new radical layers, to complete this process.
But this must be clearty understood and discussed in advance if the move is to be made successfully even when the conditions are right. to be day underso as we. he nature of such a party needs
We are not talking about a revolutionary party. That is for the future. Those who advocate it risk reducing the Alliance to its revolutionary components. At this stage in the struggle we are talking about a radical left party based on a programme of action in defence of the working class, and with the aim of creating a new broad-based alternative to Blairism.
While the conditions for such a party are not likely to exist by the time of the AGM, which is only a few months away, ....
the AGM could set the move to full party functioning as a medium-term objective This would give shape and perspective to the development of the Alliance Functioning as a party of the SSP/Communist Refoundation type means moving towards a situation where the agitational work of all those in it, induding the far left groups existing as plat forms within it, is channeled through the party itself. This is the nettle that has to be grasped. The SWP continues to argue that there are certain times when only a far left party like the SWP can take the necessary initiative. They point to the launching of the antiwar movement, which was carried out by the SWP, as an example. But why should the elected leadership of a broad party, which was acting as a party on a wide range of issues and developing collective experience, not be able to take such an initiative? It leams how to do so by functioning as a party. The antiwar movement has been highly success.... Socialist Alliance conference on Europe October