[Marxism] British SWP proposes socialist unity effort to oppose bourgeois parties

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Following are communications that have recently appeared on the UK-Left
mailing list. Basically the Socialist Workers Party of Britain has proposed
the formation of a common party to challenge the Labor Party, Tories,
British National Party, et al, in the election.

This indicates, though it may not really signify, a major change in
orientation by the SWP, which has recently suffered some major
tactical-strategic setbacks.

This initiative by the SWP seems to be getting some positive responses, at
least so far in the enormous family of Trotskyism in Britain.

The proposal seems to reflect an impact in Britain of the initiative of the
LCR in France in dissolving itself into the Anti-capitalist Party.

It is also an example of the Socialist Alliance project in Australia, a less
well-known attempt in a similar direction initiated by the Democratic
Socialist Perspective of Australia, The latter failed over a period of years
as a socialist unity project, for reasons describedb from one poin of view
(in a way that seemed broadly credible to me)in a recent interview with
Democratic Socialist Party leader Peter Boyle in a recent interview on the
Socialist Voice list http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=400.

The DSP has yet to determine definitively its relationship satisfactorily
its relationship to the circle of anticapitalist-minded non-DSP activists
who were won to the SA perspective through the project.
Fred Feldman 




1. Open Letter from the SWP
Dear comrade,

Labour's vote collapsed to a historic low in last week's elections as the
right made gains. The Tories under David Cameron are now set to win the next
general election.

The British National Party (BNP) secured two seats in the European
parliament. Never before have fascists achieved such a success in Britain.
The result has sent a shockwave across the labour and anti-fascist
movements, and the left.

The meltdown of the Labour vote and the civil war engulfing the party poses
a question?where do we go from here?

The fascists pose a threat to working class organisations, black, Asian and
other residents of this country?who BNP führer Nick Griffin dubs "alien"?
our civil liberties and much else. History teaches us that fascism can be
fought and stopped, but only if we unite to resist it.

The SWP firmly believes that the first priority is to build even greater
unity and resistance to the fascists over the coming months and years. The
BNP believes it has created the momentum for it to achieve a breakthrough.
We have to break its momentum.

The success of the anti-Nazi festival in Stoke and the numbers of people who
joined in anti-fascist campaigning shows the basis is there for a powerful
movement against the Nazis.

The Nazis' success will encourage those within the BNP urging a "return to
the streets". This would mean marches targeting multiracial areas and
increased racist attacks. We need to be ready to mobilise to stop that
occurring.

Griffin predicted a "perfect storm" would secure the BNP's success. The
first part of that storm he identified was the impact of the recession. The
BNP's policies of scapegoating migrants, black and Asian people will divide
working people and make it easier to drive through sackings, and attacks on
services and pensions.

Unity is not a luxury. It is a necessity. If we do not stand together we
will pay the price for a crisis we did not cause.

The second lesson from the European elections is that we need a united
fightback to save jobs and services.

If Cameron is elected he will attempt to drive through policies of austerity
at the expense of the vast majority of the British people. But the Tories'
vote fell last week and they are nervous about pushing through attacks.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne told business leaders, "After three months
in power we will be the most unpopular government since the war." We need to
prepare for battle.

But there is a third and vital issue facing the left and the wider working
class. The crisis that has engulfed Westminster benefited the BNP.

The revelations of corruption, which cabinet members were involved in, were
too much for many Labour voters, who could not bring themselves to vote for
the party. One answer to the problem is to say that we should swallow
everything New Labour has done and back it to keep David Cameron, and the
BNP, out.

Yet it would take a miracle for Gordon Brown to be elected back into Downing
Street. The danger is that by simply clinging on we would be pulled down
with the wreckage of New Labour.

Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the PCS civil service workers'
union, has asked how, come the general election, can we ask working people
to cast a ballot for ministers like Pat McFadden.

McFadden is pushing through the privatisation of the post office. Serwotka
proposes that trade unions should stand candidates. Those who campaigned
against the BNP in the elections know that when they said to people, "Don't
vote Nazi" they were often then asked who people should vote for.

The fact that there is no single, united left alternative to Labour means
there was no clear answer available. The European election results
demonstrate that the left of Labour vote was small, fragmented and
dispersed. The Greens did not make significant gains either. The mass of
Labour voters simply did not vote. We cannot afford a repeat of that.

The SWP is all too aware of the differences and difficulties involved in
constructing such an alternative. We do not believe we have all the answers
or a perfect prescription for a left wing alternative. But we do believe we
have to urgently start a debate and begin planning to come together to offer
such an alternative at the next election, with the awareness that Gordon
Brown might not survive his full term. One simple step would be to convene a
conference of all those committed to presenting candidates representing
working class interests at the next election.

The SWP is prepared to help initiate such a gathering and to commit its
forces to such a project. We look forward to your response.

Yours fraternally,

Socialist Workers Party


2. Replies by Workers Power
Dear comrades,

We support your open letter initiative and the proposal for a conference. We
would like to work with you on this project, so please do get in touch with
plans for the conference, or, just to discuss the initiative further with
us. Below, you'll find our political response to the letter with an
assessment of the current situation and the tasks of the left.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours fraternally,

Luke Cooper
Workers Power
07816 327 646
www.workerspower.com

****

Dear Comrades,

Workers Power welcomes the Socialist Workers Party's Open Letter to the
Left, It's Time to Create a Socialist Alternative.

In particular, we support your proposal "to convene a conference of all
those committed to presenting candidates representing working class
interests at the next election."

We believe there is an urgent need for such a conference, which could draw
in representatives from socialist groups, campaigners against fascism,
antiwar activists, existing left wing electoral initiatives and above all
trade unionists in struggle against the effects of the crisis and this
rotten government.

There is every possibility that a conference of this type would draw support
from members of unions which have broken with Labour, like the RMT, and from
the PCS, whose leader Mark Serwotka has, as you note, expressed his support
for electoral challenges to Labour. It could also attract support from the
growing numbers in the big Labour-affiliated unions who are trying to break
the link with Labour, including from the CWU which is right now debating its
affiliation.

Above all, we believe that a conference of this type would be a chance to
take a step which could transform the situation in the class struggle in
Britain: to form a new political party of the working class.

The historic meltdown of the Labour Party's vote was part of a general trend
across Europe ? a collapse in support for the established parties of Social
Democracy. The reason should be clear to all socialists ? in the context of
a huge economic crisis threatening millions of jobs and deep cuts in
services, the SPD in Germany, the SP in France, the Labour Party in Britain
are all tarnished by years of carrying out pro-market, pro-capitalist
policies.

Everywhere the main beneficiaries of this collapse in working class support
for the traditional reformist parties were the centre right Conservative
parties and even in some countries the far right and fascists.

In the UK, the rise in support for the fascist BNP and the far greater surge
in support for hard right parties like UKIP were a product of this. But
whereas in Germany and France a clear pole of attraction existed to the left
of the Social Democracy, in Britain there did not. So in the European
elections the Left Party in Germany won eight MEPs; in France the new Left
Front scored over six percent and the New Anticapitalist Party won nearly
five percent.

Despite the absence of a strong and well-prepared leftwing challenge, two of
the leftwing lists in the UK won around 300,000 votes between them. But
their message was diffuse, they were not widely recognised, they offered no
unified pole of attraction. They won just under a third of the votes of the
BNP, but a single nationwide campaign could surely have won many more.

The broad mass of the people do not understand non-party alliances,
platforms, joint lists and blocs. In elections they vote for those
organisations that have the self-assurance to constitute themselves as
unified formations with a set of policies and which aim for power. That is
what a political party is. The dangerous reality is that the fascists have
formed a party while the socialists have not. All the socialist groups in
Britain are propaganda societies, not parties: in a sense we are factions of
a party that is yet to be built.

The time to build a new party is now. Labour's collapse has hugely weakened
the argument of those on the left who want to focus on reforming Labour. The
shock of the BNP's advance presses home to many thousands across the left
the need to create a strong pole of our own. An initiative for a new party
would ? if it came from serious forces in the movement ? doubtless meet with
an enthusiastic response.

That is why Workers Power welcomes your call for a conference, commits
itself to work hard to build the conference among workers and youth, and
will attend such a conference with the aim of persuading the delegates that
it is time to go beyond alliances and joint tickets. Instead we should agree
to set up a new party and begin a democratic debate on its structure and
above all on its political programme.

A new workers' party should by no means be just a vehicle for elections ? we
need a party that is so much more than this. It would give us the chance to
commit many thousands across the country to campaigning on the estates and
the streets against the lies of the racists and nationalists and for a
working class answer to the crisis. It could prove to workers that migrants
aren't stealing jobs and that capitalism is to blame for job losses and cuts
in services. It could capitalise on anger at the system and the rich elite
and express it in socialist rather than nationalist terms. It would oppose
the slogan `British Jobs for British Workers' and fight for jobs for all. It
would break the sickening situation in which the BNP is able to pose as the
main anti-establishment party.

Creating a new party would also help unlock that other key element of the
situation you identify in your letter: the need for `a united fightback to
save jobs and services'. There is a jobs massacre in progress across
manufacturing and the service sector, but the leaders of the biggest trade
unions are blocking action and bending the knee to the employers and the
government. These self same leaders are supporters of the Labour government
and of Gordon Brown. A strong political challenge to Labour's hold over our
unions can only help to coordinate action against the will of these leaders
where necessary, to bypass and unseat the sell-out right wing union leaders
and replace them with fighters under the control of the rank and file. It
could rally workers around the need for action in the here and now, for
strikes and occupations against job cuts, around the slogan `we won't pay
for their crisis.'

In short, the need for a new party is posed not just by the elections, but
by the state of the fightback against the recession and by the need for a
political fight against the BNP. Your open letter deals with these three
things separately. We think the formation of a new party would be a way to
respond to them all and link them together.

The experience in France of the formation of the New Anticapitalist Party
shows that it is possible to form a new workers' party without waiting for
the approval of the trade union leaders. By contrast, the process in which
the Left Party in Germany was created gave a privileged role to former
Social Democrat MPs, former East German party apparatchiks and union
officials. It is no accident therefore that the NPA in France has emerged as
an activist party which rejects the idea of governing in alliance with
pro-market parties and which is developing a fighting policy, while the Left
Party has entered a ruling coalition with the pro-market Social Democrats in
Berlin, and has carried out anti-working class neoliberal policies.
In both cases, the approach socialists took to the way the party was formed
had a powerful effect on the type of party they got.

Closer to home, as we know from a succession of our own experiences in
Britain over recent years, giving privileged role to labour movement
celebrities is not a short cut to success but a road to catastrophe.
We fully accept that it is essential for the new initiative you are
proposing to draw in broader forces from the labour movement. One of the
great weaknesses of the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party
was that they began as little more than agreements between socialist groups.
We think it is possible to combine a broad appeal to the most determined
sections of the labour movement with an approach that does not grant
existing MPs and union leaders a veto in advance over the form and policy
that the new party will take.

How? Alongside your call for a conference, let's link the campaign for a new
party to the fightback right from the start. Local committees could not only
spread the idea of a new party amongst wider layers, they can also lay the
basis for a fighting party, by helping to co-ordinate resistance to the
crisis. In the unions many of the activists who see the need for a new party
also want greater coordination of the struggles too.

And while we're at it, why not contact the other left parties in Europe
facing the same economic crisis, in France, in Greece, in Portugal, invite
them to share their experiences and opinions, and help create a real
practical and political coordination of the socialists across national
boundaries.

It is no secret that there have been several unsuccessful electoral
initiatives of the left since 1997. There are many criticisms that can be
raised but one point above all needs to be borne in mind. Not one of them
aimed to establish a unified and democratic all-Britain political party of
the working class. It would be a failure of imagination and of will if we
bypass this opportunity once again.

We look forward to continuing this discussion, confirm our support for the
conference proposal, and commit ourselves to working with you on this
project.

Yours fraternally,
Workers Power




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