Socialist Resistance normally retails at a very reasonable 80p. Affordable luxury, like a good bar of chocolate. The May 2007 issue will be selling at £10 a copy. Think of it as an investment opportunity. In years to come it will be worth as much as a Penny Black with the queen’s head missing.
As you can see we made bit of a miscalculation about John Mc Donnell’s chances of getting on the ballot paper for the Labour leadership. This issue was sent to the printers before the results were announced and we had to take a gamble. The plan is to get another front page printed in the next few days. That’s the plan. Thank Christ the back page is on Palestine.
Now that the dust has settled slightly it gives an opportunity to survey the landscape after the leadership battle that never happened. And what an interesting landscape it is.
In his comment on my previous Neprimereye asserts that Labour has been in long term decline. I think Simon answered him well. You can’t abstract the development of political organisations from the underlying social conditions. It’s true that in some parts of the country some local Labour organisations are in reasonable health but still far weaker than they used to be. The Mc Donnell campaign shows that there is a small number of MPs and sufficient activists to put up a pretty good rearguard action in opposition to Brown’s neo-liberalism. But they lost and they lost very decisively.
It is no longer possible to make a serious case for staying inside the Labour Party and fighting. The fight has been lost. That said, the worst possible outcome would be if hundreds or thousands of socialists left the Labour Party as pissed off individuals. Experience shows that they would drop out of political activity quickly or, and this is very very rare, join Respect or the Camaign For a New Workers’ Party. It’s much better that they preserve the networks developed in the campaign and start having real collective discussions about whether or not Labour is their party anymore.
I’m not in a position to pass judgement on the CNWP’s internal life but I do know that Respect’s development was badly stunted by the absence of serious numbers of members with an understanding of Labour Movement democracy. That’s why events like the Morning Star conference on politics after Blair has suddenly become very important. (I’ve used the link from the SUN blog because it’s the best description I’ve found.) That audience in the Communist Party and Labour which believed in holding on in and around Labour must be in reflective mood after John’s defeat and a message of “let’s carry on doing the thing that didn’t work” is not very convincing.
These are the sort of people who would be essential in creating a serious class struggle party in Britain and that would have to be done in conjunction with both Respect and the CNWP. The occasion demands that those of us looking for an alternative start having these real and virtual conversations with each other.
Liam redux 
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