Liam redux

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Blimey! What a sh*t storm

The piece on Tami applying to join Labour (they may choose not to accept her) caused quite a kerfuffle. Here’s an attempt to deal with some of the issues. I’m going to start deleting any comments which are personally abusive, no matter how much I agree with them. That even includes unfavourable remarks about Sham…

Liam
4–7 minutes
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The piece on Tami applying to join Labour (they may choose not to accept her) caused quite a kerfuffle. Here’s an attempt to deal with some of the issues. I’m going to start deleting any comments which are personally abusive, no matter how much I agree with them. That even includes unfavourable remarks about Sham or Dan. Nobody minds a bit of rough and tumble around the ideas but I draw the line at personal insults.

From what I know of the majority of the comrades who have contributed to the discussion on Tami’s decision to leave Socialist Resistance and join the Labour Party consider themselves on the revolutionary left. The issue that we are trying to grapple with is where will the forces that will comprise the membership of a class struggle party come from. In the case of the revolutionary Marxists this will also mean the people who will join a mass revolutionary party.
The one book that everyone who is interested in this question should read is Pierre Broué’s “The German Revolution”. It’s now available in English and when I read the last hundred pages later this week I’ll write something about it. In many ways the story of the creation of the German Communist Party has a lot more to teach socialists in England than the familiar accounts of the creation of the Bolsheviks. The German communists too had to work out how to relate to a large Social Democratic party and a trade union movement which organised millions of workers but was politically subservient to Social Democracy. Very crudely you can summarise it as the pressure of an imperialist war, an economic crisis and splits and fusions of a number of organisations. It had very little to do with recruiting the occasional radicalising individual.

But the differences between the SPD and the German unions compared to their contemporary British counterparts are enormous and not simply due to the passing of time. One had a large, active working class base and organised a spectrum of social, cultural and intellectual activities which dominated German working class life. Even after World War One the German working class displayed a willingness to fight which makes the British working class today look comatose.
Now it’s not out of the question that at some point in the future supporters of Socialist Resistance might find themselves in the Labour Party. Some of us were before. I even tried to get myself selected as a council candidate in Newham but failed when I told Duke Robin Wales that I wouldn’t do anything that detrimentally affected working class voters. But those were different times. Local government unions were having real fights against the Tories. There was a BIG class struggle group of Labour Party members you could relate to and a group in the middle which could be persuaded. That was a real audience for revolutionary politics which was also willing to discuss a range of international questions too. Yes there was some clientalism and a well organised right but it felt like a living working class party. The fact that I saw my mission at the time as being to split it taking out tens of thousands of the best people was all part of the fun.

The valid point that Dan made was “Despite the fact that thousands of LP socialists have ripped up their party cards over the past decade, in the last elections to the Labour party NEC, left candidates won the top 4 out of 6 positions.” The obvious rebuttal to this is “what difference does it make?” Maybe I’m reading the wrong papers but can anyone recall the last example of a group of Labour councillors which had a public fight to stop council house sell offs or job outsourcing. From that point of view Labour is dead.

I’ve said before that I’d love to see John Mc Donnell become leader of the Labour Party. We would be in a pre-revolutionary situation. But even though I wish him well his election campaign is the swansong of the Labour Left. He has not found a group of MPs to come out and back him in public obliging him to run himself ragged doing two or three meetings a week. The hard left in the Labour Party is as weak as the hard left outside it and the contributions of the small number of comrades who have rejoined it are not likely to reverse that. My prediction is that after the brief excitement of the election campaign, if he gets that far, they will quickly become demoralised by the intense horror of a Brown led Labour Party.

We are in a situation without any obvious quick solutions. I have no problem with long-term entry work if the situation warrants it. For the last several years it just hasn’t and any judgement about what you want to do politically has to be based on an accurate judgement of the current situation. The whole dynamic of Labour’s evolution since Kinnock’s leadership has been to weaken the party’s connections with the working class. Blair has explicitly modelled himself on Thatcher and has created one of the most aggressively neo-liberal parties in Europe. Those class struggle socialists who remain inside it have not been able to change one comma in Blair and Brown’s ideological shift to the right. Moreover the militant young workers who may once have been interested in joining the party and constructing a force inside it just are not interested.

I’ve discussed at length elsewhere what I think went wrong with Respect (click on the Respect tab) and Andy describes very well the major political weaknesses contributing to the SWP’s inability to build it. Its failure to grow has been an enormous defeat for the class struggle left in Britain. Nonetheless parts of what is now Respect and people who are presently in the Labour Party will be components of whatever new mass party does emerge. We are not able to guess how that will come about. It may be another imperialist war. It may be new waves of industrial struggle. It may be New Labour amalgamating with the Tories. Who knows? But papers like Socialist Resistance are there to hold together the small numbers of people who are committed to the creation of a new, mass working class party.

15 responses to “Blimey! What a sh*t storm”

  1. Sandra Avatar
    Sandra

    Well, I have to say that catching up with the debate on Tami’s decision reminds me of how relieved I am to be out of the far left. It’s one thing to have a robust debate on the best politics of the age – it’s a nother to put someone down because they think a different strategy is needed.I joined the LP some months ago and I could care less what anyone thinks of that. OK – some people think it’s a waste of time. Some people see Blair and Brown and consider me a sell-out. Bt I have prioritised a fight inside the LP. Membership of the LP has given me a more credible voice in my union despite being in a non-aligned union. It gives me a valid political focus in my local area – where my branch is not perhaps active as such but surviving for the moment. I also think that John is worth campaigning for – and the success of his campaign will allow oher leftists to emerge from the shadows.And, in the end, if it doesn’t and I have to admit defeat – at least I will have given it my best shot. I will be leafletting for John on Saturday and I happen to think it will be be most valuable leafletting I have ever done on a demo.Liam – no doubt you disagree and think I’m deluded but I would hope that you at least respected the argument I make and acknowledged that my decision was taken with the best of intentions. In the same way I’ve always considered you to be a fellow traveller with different specific politics/ideas from mine.Sandra.

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  2. George B Avatar
    George B

    Liam has put forward a serious and considered polemic, in contrast to his initial, somewhat intemperate response to Tami’s decision to join the Labour Party as an alternative to remaining in Socialist Resistance.I must confess to being something of a novice in the blogosphere and I have read only a handful of the 28 (!) posts that appeared after Liam’s initial posting, so I apologise if I am raking over old ground. I was struck, however, by Liam recapitulating aspects of other contributors’ arguments and perhaps modifying his own position somewhat in the interim.I think that much of Liam’s description of the contemporary Labour Party is indisputable and, in fact, if one listens to John McDonnell speak at a campaign meeting he will often refer to Labour as a “ghost party” or a “shadow”. There is little doubt that regardless of the decision by Tami and others to join or rejoin Labour in response to the McDonnell campaign, individual membership has been in freefall over the course of the new century. Nationally (and by this I include Scotland and Wales), I think that it would be charitable to suggest that the remotely active membership in the party is more than 25,000-30,000. Largely, of course, that collapse of Labour membership has not translated into gains of any great consequence for the would-be revolutionary left or the various broad, left reformist organisations that most of us have been involved with over the course of the past decade to varying degrees. Respect, for example, is evidently a smaller organisation at the end of 2006 than a year before not very long after the election of its first MP in the person of Galloway and local election results in May 2006, which some hailed (falsely in my view) as a breakthrough.For now, I’ll leave to one side any commentary on the deficiencies of its programme, the character of its internal regime and evidence of rather corrupt ethnic clientelism at a very early stage of its existence. (Liam’s earlier points on this latter score are uncontentious with regard to the history of the Labour Party, despite the existence of mechanisms that might have curbed such deeply unhealthy tendencies).Even in Scotland, allowing for the damage wrought by Sheridan’s putrid performance in court and the subsequent split from the SSP, the latter owed its position in no small measure to proportional representation, which is not yet an option foreseeable at the next Westminster election. While the SSP’s progress was almost certainly more significant than anything achieved by either the Socialist Alliance or Respect south of the border, it was still very modest and it does appear on the verge of a sharp fall in its share of the poll at the Holyrood elections in May.Unquestionably, though, Liam is right to suggest that we on the British far left have much to learn from the emergence of the KPD (German Communist Party) as a mass organisation in the context of an existing hegemonic party in a highly developed, imperialist country. Needless to say, the German SPD on the eve of the First World War compared favourably to the British Labour Party in many, many respects at any time in its more than a century of existence. Of course, it also had a very different genesis and to oversimplify matters the German unions were almost as much a creation of the SPD as Britain’s version of social democracy was a creation of the unions or more particularly important sections of the union bureaucracy. And I’ll return to the question of the unions and the bureaucracy before concluding.I don’t for a moment suggest that Liam is pointing to an especially pertinent historical analogy between the situation in early 21st century Britain and Germany in the aftermath of the ineffable horrors of the First World War, though clearly the bloodbath in Iraq, however damaging to Blair and his heir apparent, is not of remotely comparable magnitude. Likewise, I for one (along with comrades in Permanent Revolution) do not believe that this is a period of imminent capitalist crisis. I am not sure of Liam’s assessment in this regard, but I would certainly not have characterised his views as “catastrophist”.I absolutely agree that participation in the Labour Party never has been a matter of principle for British revolutionaries in the Marxist tradition, though it has often been a correct tactic in my view – obviously, a view Liam has shared in the not entirely dim and distant past. Ironically, I find his recollection of the party in the 80s/early 90s somewhat rose-tinted, but I would also concur that the picture has changed in some ways almost beyond recognition. (By the way, I think that the ISG’s long-term intervention in the Labour Party was rather ambiguous on the question of whether Labour could be transformed into a vehicle for socialist transformation. Liam writes of breaking “tens of thousands from Labour”, but I often had the sense with other ISG comrades that the objective was to change the Labour Party itself into something it never was and in my estimation never could be).In contrast to an earlier, absolutist contribution by Andy N, I would suggest that Liam’s approach towards Labour is dialectical to use once more that much abused adjective from the Marxist lexicon. By that I mean he allows for alternate outcomes and the possibility of a rejuvenation of the organisation’s ranks. He mentions the possibility of revolutionaries once more working in the party. For example, without reading too much into one ICM opinion poll we could well be looking at a rather short stay at No 10 for Gordon Brown and the arrival of a Tory majority government or at least a Cameron-led coalition. Against that background, I don’t for a moment preclude some repetition, albeit on a smaller scale, of what we witnessed at the start of the 1980s – an upsurge in Labour Party activism and a renewal of a Labour left. Not by any means the most likely scenario, but I don’t consider it all far fetched. Of course, we are now moving into the realm of speculation so I’ll plunge further – on the one hand, I would not exclude the McDonnell candidacy as the very last gasp of the Labour left and, if so, I would suggest that there is a serious question that none of us have answered in an entirely satisfactory way. Namely, how do we relate to the “last gaspers” before they draw their final breath (in rooms that are doubtless now smoke free)? These people are much fewer in number but still include some serious class struggle militants, as Liam himself recognises.While the answer from where I sit does not necessitate joining/rejoining Labour I think that it does warrant a serious assessment of and orientation to the McDonnell campaign, not least because this has the potential to become a flashpoint in battle with the most slavishly pro-Brown elements of the union bureaucracy (Prentis in UNISON, Simpson in Amicus and to a lesser degree the top brass of the T&G).Undoubtedly, the unions are a much diminished force in Britain as a result of the defeats inflicted in the 80s, important structural changes in the British working class and the strengthening of the weight of bureaucracy v lay activists/rank and file militants among the key factors in this decline. Even so, the TUC-affiliated unions count more than 6.5 million members, however passive in recent times. They bankroll much that is progressive in the society, including the anti-war movement, and yet despite that they continue also to bankroll New Labour, one of the most shamelessly neo-liberal mainstream parties in western Europe. And, yes, they do bankroll Labour because despite the shift towards individual contributions and business donations in the Blairite years, Lord Levy and co ultimately failed to reduce the party’s historic dependence on trade union money.Time and again, the union bureaucracy has actually chosen not to wield political influence, settling instead for the paltry concessions embodied in the all but forgotten Warwick agreement. The big four union affiliates
    in particular have backed away at party conferences from major confrontations with Blair over the Iraq war. Prentis and Simpson back Brown publicly even though McDonnell’s positions on most every issue are in line with many of the policies adopted at their respective union conferences. Surely, there is a contradiction worth highlighting and exploiting?Finally, turning to those relatively small but undoubtedly important and combative unions now outside Labour’s ranks (I’ll exclude the much larger PCS, which has a political fund on the basis that it will not support any political party) – the RMT, expelled for the affiliation by some branches to the SSP, and the FBU, disaffiliated by virtue of a conference vote after the bitter reality of the 2002/03 pay battle, have not really gone elsewhere. Both unions have parliamentary groups convened by John McDonnell and still made up largely of Labour MPs. The executives of both unions have more or less unanimously backed McDonnell’s candidacy and are giving material support, however modest.In short, Liam may be advocating the search for new vanguards in the environmental, Latin American solidarity or broader anti-imperialist movements. That was how I read some of his initial post on Sunday night. But for those who still see the centrality of the organised working class to a revolutionary project, I think there are important questions left unanswered.

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  3. Dave Riley Avatar
    Dave Riley

    This is an interesting debate that has developed. I think it has gross parallels to the exchanges we have had here in Australia, going back over 20 years to the break out by the Nuclear Disarmament Party in 1984. Whats’ missing is a sharper consideration of options and elsewhere I have said that The Greens must be part of the pot.The other point i think is that while I look forward to an exploration of the German CP’s tactics after WWI the key difference is that today , despite the workerist fetishes of some socialists who equate the LP with the working class, social democracy is very much in decline. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a continuing parliamentarist role for a ‘liberal bourgeois party’ such as the LP, but its social democratic attributes have almost dissipated in the wake of the collapse of the USSR et al. Thats’ why the space exists left of Labour like it hasn’t for so long –and that is an international phenomenon.Of course seeing that and then doing something about it isn’t so easy…

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  4. AN Avatar
    AN

    Firstly Liam, I don’t think the term “Shit Storm” is really an accurate description of a debate that while robust was (IMO) not particularly bad tempered, and certainly had no personal abuse. At the end of it I did feel I had a more rounded understanding of Tami’s position and had increased respect for her – though I was more than ever convinced her political position was mistaken. With regard to George B’s response here, it is the nature of the medium that if you engage in a debate via the comments on a blog, that the positions taken will be polemical and polarised to a certain degree. I am not sure at what point Sandra thinks that people were “put down” during the debate in the earlier thread, but I note some interesting points in her comments, firstly the remark that joining the LP is a withdrawal from the far left and certainly I can think of some indvicuals where joining the LP to support McDonnell is a pretext for a more general rightward drift of their politics, secondly Sandra admits that her LP ward is inactive. I’m sorry but having an active ward and participating in it is the meat and potatoes of LP entrism, not the once in a decade leadership campaigns. To a certain degree campaigning groups such as J4L and F4L and outwith the structures of the party, and therefore are more analogous to the far left groups than they are to the routine humdrum of ward and GMC meetings. The evisceration of conference as a forum for debate will also make routine entry work much much harder.So of course George B is correct that the McDonnell campaign and the general evolution of the LP permits multiple outcomes. That is precisely why in my longer more considered piece on the SU blog I focus on the importance of the McDonnell campaign as setting the context for the next stage. http://socialistunity.blogspot.com/2007/01/forward-march-of-labour-halted.htmlBut also note that if McDonnell fails to achieve 44 nominations then the Cruddas campaign will be very important, and some comrades who are supporting McDonnell because of his politics and not Cruddas because of his are missing the point about this leadership challenge being about establishing the largest possible left vote in opposition to neo-liberalism.However, while we do require a nuanced understanding. Marxism is also a guide to action, and therefore the “absolutism” of my judgement that a revival of the Labour left is not going to happen. The nuance might be that it is only highly improbable, rather than impossible. But as a general map of the political prospectives, we should not be orienting on the individual members of the LP through the grind of ward meetings, etc; nor is it my experience that LP membership is an asset nowadays in the unions. And for many in the peace and environmental movements LP membership would be regarded as an idiosyncratic anachronism!I largely agree with George B’s overall assessment of the situation, and it is not very different from what I have been saying about the tension between the neo-liberal agenda of the LP, and the social democratic agenda of the TUs. I would extend this further and say there is also a tension between the still generally progressive electoral base of the LP, and the rightward positions that the party stands on, and this is best exploited by standing against the LP in elections, which actually requires that you be outside. However, the lack of a credible national organisation does severely hamper that electoral challenge.Dave Riley’s point about the Greens is a serious one. After all over 800 people voted for a Marxist to be their “leader”, and it would be possible to run explicitly socialist election campaigns under the green banner.

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  5. Dave Riley Avatar
    Dave Riley

    Don’t go joining the greens because I say so.(Huh!)But I urge the debate there in the UK to be more considerate of them . Not because I know all there is to know about political greenery in the UK but because the Green patent is an international phenomenon which is a product of the context where ‘liberal bourgeois parties’ have failed to consolidate the support they had historically garnered.This is party making being sentenced to history. You can’t control where the dynamic — all that subjective stuff Lenin told us about — will lead.If you can wean your outlook from this workerist prism through which the LP is viewed then you can see the world with fresh, or at least different, eyes.I don’t mean to suggest that thereby the whole working class thing is passe but really for ‘a worker’ to shift their support from the LP to the greens has to be seen as a major gain, surely? This IS PROGRESS. Even now. Britain 2007, don’t you think? So are the ‘workers’ doing that or what?You will get the psalm singing about the LP vote as being a class question –always a class question! That logic will simply lead you around in circles because it always leads you back into the arms of Laborism.Ergo: the very reason why we are now discussing this topic. Aren’t some bolshies heading back to New Labour for that very reason? And who led them to believe that Labour was where the class was at?The other part of the show and tell is that the whole regroupment thing –while it definitely requires considered fostering — will have to in Britain go through further experiences before it can take conscious organisational form. If RESPECT isn’t that and other avenues –such as the SA –are history then that’s the way the world is, at least in your neighborhood. Even here in Australia the Socialist Alliance experience is handicapped by the political context such that it cannot advance sharply for the moment.New struggles have to be notched up before a major regroupment surge can occur again.But then we have this tool, that deserves preserving and consolidating and pushing forward as much as we can under the present conditions.And we’re doing allright, thank you — without the active support of the far left groupuscules.(When you look at the SSP split you gotta count your blessings in that regard)I guess the most potent lesson I have learnt from my time in the SA is that it is overwhelmingly a political dialectic that cannot so easily be hammered into an organisational form. There is this difference from our my experience of Leninism which I tended to see structurally and organisationally. Well it’s not like that; not that crude. The SA is sustained and enriched by a succession of relationships and partnerships which are held together by the most conscious adherents to the project.Primarily that is the DSP cadre but it also includes a layer of others in the solidarity, trade union and indigenous movements who are keen SA loyalists and proponents.. It is these partnerships that give the project life and drive it forward and encourage its creativity and buoyancy.Formatting that into organisational form isn’t so easy. Your challenge it seems to me is that you don’t have a consensus whereas here we’ve had a succession of those — primarily with the shift to a keener party mode three years back ( ie:a 75% ‘conferencing consensus’) and since then between those who adhere to the project and the DSP membership (although not all the DSP membership as you may know).Because the DSP was such a significant factor in hard left politics here in Australia, the SA has survived the shenanigans of the smaller Marxian outfits to derail and warp this regroupment trajectory because that partnering has not been broken despite the denunciations. Thats’ a major advantage. We have begun to transcend the narrow outlook of the inner urban left ghettoes and prosper in regions that haven’t known socialist politics for decades. And this is despite our lacklustre electoral returns. So here it’s steady as we go… I fear the initial successes of the SSP has lulled many into thinking some formula was involved–that all you needed was a template.No. It’s not that easy.

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  6. AN Avatar
    AN

    The big issue that Dave Riley highlights is forging some sort of consensus about which way forward.What is interesting to me is that both Louise and Tami have said that if something better than the LP was on offer they would join it. Perhaps if they were in Scotland they wouldn’t be in the LP.The reason I didn’t join the Greens, and probably won’t (despite Dave’s Svengali like infleunce!), is that I couldn’t convince anyone else that it was a sensible strategy. he is howeevr correct that the Greens are at least as viable an option as Respect, or the LP, as an arena of work for socialists.Personally I think the tasks we have at the moment are quote limited but important. i) defending and advocating the idea of a broad socialist party, icluding advocacy for the SSP and SA(oz). ii) netweorking those socialist who do support a broad socialist party; and iii) participation in the mass movements and campaigns; iv) the same as iii but with added emphasis – particpiaption in the unions to rebuild workplace organisation.If these are the tasks – and I think they are but am open to peesuasion otherwise – then it is of secondary imporetnace which organisation or arena we work through.

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  7. splinteredsunrise Avatar
    splinteredsunrise

    It’s an interesting question, and I’m not dogmatic about what people might find useful. There’s an odd phenomenon in Dublin where a small but significant layer of leftist youth have joined the Labour Party and are browning off the party leadership.The thing about these kids is that they’re exactly the sort who five years ago would have joined the SWP. In general they went into Labour Youth because they saw the SWP in action in the antiwar movement and were unimpressed. That also explains their allergic reaction to “Leninism”, or at least what goes by that name.If I was a socialist militant in Dublin, these kids in Labour Youth would probably be worth keeping an eye on. (Unfortunately, in Belfast there is no such layer.) But would that mean joining the LP? I don’t think it would be necessary, and I’m not sure it would even be an advantage.

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  8. AN Avatar
    AN

    Another issue that is obliquely raised by discussing the KPD, is that since the fall of the Comecon governments much of the historical baggage that divided the left coouls potentially be put behind us.So the granddaughter organisation of the KPD, now with some 60000 plus members, is a key participant in the still promising realignment of the German left in the PDS – WASG merger.

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  9. Jim Denham Avatar
    Jim Denham

    Try answering some of Tam’s points, Liam: eg: Galloway’s love of dictators; the SWP’s uncritical defence of this reactionary popularist; their support for reactionary Islamism; the corruption and mysogeny invoved in the selection of “Respect” candidates in Birmingham…and. finally, “Socialist Resistance”‘s miserable record of covering up for the SWP in all of this.

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  10. Louisefeminista Avatar
    Louisefeminista

    “Duke Robin Wales”Hey Liam, I heard he is known as the “Outlaw Josey Wales”.. ;)AN: I have stated, well on the SUN blog for starters, that I would probably join the SSP if I lived in Scotland as it does orientate towards the working class and has socialist principles. But, alas, I don’t live in Scotland….

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  11. AN Avatar
    AN

    JimI think enough has been said and we all know where we stand on most of the issues you raise about respect.Those of us who were prepared to work in respect did so with our eyes open to some of the drawbacks and risks, but becasue the outcomes were not predetermied we felt it was worth trying, even if the prspects for success were slim, it was owrth trying. Many of us saw that the task was impossible after a few months and left immediataly after the first conference, SR took longer to reach that conclusion.BUt with regard to what you describe as SR’s misirible record in covereing up for the SWP, I wouldn’t have put it like that, but I think SR did misunderstand the best way to relate to the SWP, and were far to reticent about the defficiences of Resepct and the SWP’s way of working in it until recently. And SR actually played a role in supporting the SWP in preventing SA candiadtes standing in local elections in 2004, which contributed to an active layer of SA membeship becoming antagonistic to resepct – which was something the SWP probably explicitly wanted. They like to be the only socialists in the broader front organisations.SR’s criticisms were a bit of the johnny Mathis, Too much too little too late.BUt looking forwards rather than back , SR are now in a position to learn from the expereince, if they are prepared to have a critical self-assessment of thier time in Respect

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  12. Sham Avatar
    Sham

    JD, I couldn’t have put it better myself! ;)Sir, I salute you!!!

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  13. Dave Riley Avatar
    Dave Riley

    I’m a bit confused as to what are SR’s present perspectives. I studied the recent reports and video on the review in regard to Respect but what then replaces that orientation?I know that Liam referred to socialist ecology being a marker and I think that’s fine. But if you are going to be environmentalist like that what then is your approach to the Greens?I don’t think I’ve seen an analysis of the English greens except some thoughtful musings by Jim Jepps. My point I guess is this: IF SR and/or Andy Newman aren’t going to go anyway in way of joining already existing outfits (& thats’ fine as I have no issue with that as you KNOW what’s what and I don’t)– I think some sort of generalised perspective needs to be drawn together that says to those outside this immediate blogosphere circle ‘this is where regroupment seems to be at ‘. It’s all very well to be sharply critical of Respect but at some level that becomes, as we’ve seen, negative politics and fosters responses like this enthusiasm for John4Leader. And when John4Leader goes down….What then?

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  14. AN Avatar
    AN

    That is a good question Dave.Personally I think we do need an overall analysis of what the options are, and this is compliccted by the fact that a number of comrades symapathetic to a regroupment project are dispersed into different directions, some in the LP, some in the greens, or no party. And there is a difficulty (that I think we see with this) that comrades who join the LP or Greens based upon them being the best of a bad lot, then over-justify that decision by exaggerating the value of LP or GP membership. (I think Loiuse and Tami both do this for the LP)We can start to pull the strands of an analysis together now, and continue networking, but the next few months will see greater clarity. Firtsly the May elections will be vital for the SSP, even if they win no MSPs, they may win a raft of local councillors as the local government elections are conducted under PR for the first time. But equally the performance of Solidarity will have an impact on the English situation. As will the perfoemcne of Respect – If lavallette loses his seat, and no SWP members are elected yet again, then the SWP may start becomming more lukewarm on the whole thing.It is also important that the MCdonell campaigners start to develop some sort of end game starategy – whether or not he gets on the ballot (and it looks unlikely) he isn’t going to win, which raises the question for the Labour left, what do they do after this?Also if McD fails to get on the ballot, are they going to support Meavher and Cruddas, whih I beleive we must, but is an unpopular view on the left!Finally, the RMT initiative to try initiate a nwtwork of trade union activist is an importnat development, and until after the next conferecne, I don’t thiunk we can decide whether that is going to progress or not.

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  15. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Just as an aside I think it’s very unlikely that Lavalette will lose his seat in Preston in May. Respect only came 7 votes short of unseating the sitting Labour councillor (and a former Tribunite MP) with an unknown candidate, while Lavalette has a very high public profile. In particular, he’s been front page in the local press for most of the last 10 days as he’s leading the opposition to the privatisation of a new local health facility. Next Saturday [3rd March] will probably see the biggest demo in Preston for decades. Lavalette’s role in securing support from the council and forcing the Labour group into opposing a central tenet of Labour policy has been educative for many politically conscious local people. Having a revolutionary socialist as a councillor has definitely been very significant and while there are still problems with the SWP’s approach in Respect, it has nevertheless been an important step forward.Certainly there is nothing else locally on the ground remotely resembling an alternative for the left to working in Respect, and even half the Labour Party seem to work with Respect these days – there was a big Respect presence at the recent John McDonnell meeting for instance. And it is very significant that the most important figure on the left of the Labour Party in Preston, former council leader Val Wise, has publicly resigned from the Party and openly works with Respect (she is speaking at the building fighting unions meeting in Sheffield this Monday, for example). If she stood as a Respect supported candidate in the next general election, as is openly being talked about, then most of the remaining rump left in the Labour Party would probably defect to her side.Fighting in the Labour Party might be in a option in one or two parts of the country but as a general tactic it would cut people off from a lot of radicalisation – it would be absolute lunacy in Preston where the direction of travel is all the other way.FG

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