Socialist Party abandons Welsh Socialist Alliance

[Ed George <edgeorge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Open letter from Socialist Party Wales to the Welsh Socialist Alliance
National Council

Socialist Party Wales has decided unanimously at its all-members meeting
on 20th October that we have been left with no choice but to withdraw
from the Welsh Socialist Alliance. This decision has not been taken
lightly nor does it indicate a change of approach by the Socialist Party
on united fronts of the left. Recent events in the Welsh Socialist
Alliance have confirmed to our party that the Welsh Socialist Alliance
has ceased to provide a vehicle for the left to work together in Wales.
Instead it has become an impediment to a united front of socialists in
Wales.

In particular the manoeuvres to prevent Socialist Party candidates from
standing in the Assembly elections under the banner of the WSA in
Swansea, together with similar efforts in Cardiff have convinced us that
the only way to stand in future elections is to withdraw from the Welsh
Socialist Alliance and stand Socialist Party candidates independently in
consultation with all other socialist organisations.

The WSA which was set up partly to enable all socialist trends to stand
in elections is now being used by the Socialist Workers Party and its
supporters to prevent the Socialist Party from standing in elections.
The packing by SWP members of the Swansea WSA branch meeting to decide
the Assembly candidates for the Swansea seats and other manoeuvres were
aimed not at maximising the impact of the WSA, but purely at driving the
Socialist Party out of the electoral field in Swansea.

The Socialist Party has the greatest weight on the left in the Swansea
working class and youth and a long and distinguished history in the
Swansea labour movement. In previous elections in Swansea, we have
achieved some of the best electoral votes of any socialists in Wales.
Nevertheless we still bent over backwards to work together with other
members of the WSA in Swansea for the Assembly elections. We stood down
from our original choice of Swansea West where we stood in the General
Election in favour of another candidate and proposed instead standing in
Swansea East. The use of dishonest tactics to prevent a Socialist Party
candidate from standing under the banner of the WSA, by packing the
meeting to `win' the vote and announcing an SWP candidate for Swansea
East at the last minute, has given the Socialist Party little choice but
to stand independently.

Some may question why the Socialist Party too did not pack the meeting
and win the vote at the Swansea WSA meeting. Certainly in the short term
it would have been to the advantage of our party to have won the
selection for one of the seats. But such tactics are incompatible with
the idea of a socialist alliance, in which should exist a spirit of
co-operation and compromise. Dishonest and underhand methods are a
recipe for turning the WSA into a sectarian battlefield, an alien arena
to the working class and to the layers of anti-capitalist youth looking
for an alternative.

When the sudden appearance of a third candidate for the two Swansea
seats was announced we suggested delaying the decision to allow a
discussion between all interested parties to reach an amicable
resolution of the problem which was immediately rejected by the SWP.

The Welsh Socialist Alliance was founded nearly five years ago by the
Socialist Party, Cymru Goch and other socialists to provide an
organisation in which socialists in Wales could work together in an
electoral front ensuring that all trends of socialist opinion could
stand candidates under one umbrella and could play a role in other
campaigning issues. At that time it was envisaged that as the WSA gained
the support and credibility of the working class in Wales it would take
on real flesh and would evolve into a closer union of socialist forces
in Wales.

All socialist organisations were invited into the WSA including the
Socialist Workers Party. The SWP however declined because of its
principled opposition to standing in elections. Even then we and the
rest of the WSA bent over backwards to work with the SWP and other
socialists outside the WSA. When the SWP changed its position and
decided to stand in the 1999 Assembly elections, but still refused to
join the WSA the Socialist Party and the majority of other members in
the WSA entered a pact to stand in the elections with the SWP under the
banner of the United Socialists.

Since the belated entry of the SWP into the WSA we have attempted to
work with them in the WSA, but this has increasingly become difficult as
the SWP struggled to gain control of the organisation. An attempt to
remove the rule ensuring that no party can gain more than 40% of the
leading positions of the WSA at the 2002 conference was thwarted by the
wide opposition of WSA members, but other conference decisions have been
undermined or distorted by the SWP members in leading positions to
ensure that the SWP retains a disproportionate influence over the WSA.

The decision of the conference to produce Welsh Socialist Voice on a
monthly basis was sabotaged by the SWP who put insuperable obstacles in
its way so that when the editorial board collapsed the SWP's position,
defeated at the conference, of a quarterly journal under the control of
the WSA officers was implemented.

Similarly the proposals by the SWP organiser of the WSA day school
excluded the Socialist Party and Cymru Goch from having any of the 13
speakers at the day school. It was only the intervention of a Socialist
Party member on the organising committee in the face of SWP opposition
that enabled each of these organisations to have one speaker each in a
four way debate.

With the exit of the Socialist Party most of those who helped found the
WSA as a non-sectarian and pluralist socialist alliance have left. There
are less branches than at the WSA conference at the beginning of the
year and the ones that still meet are (apart from candidate selection
meetings) small and irrelevant as the SWP concentrate on its other
fronts. Following the disaffiliation of Cymru Goch this means that both
the founding organisations of the WSA have felt compelled to leave. To
lose one founding organisation could be unfortunate; to lose both can
only mark the decline of the WSA as a genuine alliance.

Socialist Party Wales has been forced to leave the WSA with some
reluctance, but certainly no pessimism. We look forward optimistically
to taking part in the struggles of the working class and leftward-moving
youth and also to working with others on the left, including those in
the WSA, in the battles that lie ahead, on the electoral front, in the
trade unions, in the anti-war campaign and wider community-based
campaigns. We will support co-operation by the left and new alliances in
fighting for socialist policies in the trade unions, community campaigns
and in elections. But this co- operation can only succeed if the left
has an open, flexible and democratic approach, where we work together on
the issues that unite us whilst respecting the right of all trends to
put an independent position.





Socialist Party Wales PO Box 589, Cardiff, CF24 1YG

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