After the elections
You’ll have noticed the advert for this Wednesday’s Socialist Resistance forum. I’ll be doing the introduction and just in case you will be one of the disappointed hopefuls turned away from the overcrowded auditorium the slideshow below gives a brief summary of what I’ll be saying.
1–2 minutes
32 responses to “After the elections”
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Quite interesting Liam. What do you mean ‘broad’ parties of the left, based on ‘broad’ socialist politics? Slide 12
Isn’t there a case that after the demise of SA, SSP, Respect (in its first incarnation anyway) that the broad mish-mash left doesn’t work?
If though by ‘left alternative’ (slide 14) you are prepared to work with all socialists, militants and campaigners who don’t merely see the alternative as an electoral formation- excellent.
Then we can perhaps have a regroupment with legs- not merely an idea of yet another electoral alliance.
Strangely though I get the idea that yet another electoral alliance is precisely where you see the future-
I think it has to be more than that. Perhaps, only time will tell. But if you are arguing to take Socialist Resistance into united fronts including with those on the left and the many not yet on the left then all well and good and time and the class struggle will indeed tell.An interesting article here from Mark Hoskisson http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=2151
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“If though by ‘left alternative’ (slide 14) you are prepared to work with all socialists, militants and campaigners who don’t merely see the alternative as an electoral formation-”
Oh Jason, we’d like you breathless enthusiasm for unity much more if you didn’t keep trying to reduce what those of us are doing in Respect as ‘merely’ an ‘electoral formation’.
The reality, as you well know from Manchester, is that Respect is trying to build an organisation that is much more than an electoral formation. Indeed our strategy is based precisely on not being an organistion that just contests elections – merely or otherwise.
As you know our members have been recently involved actively over a range of issues from academies to climate change, teachers strikes to shelter picket lines, stop the war to anti-racism and just once a year we have a bash at elections.
I’m happy that you wish to sit the last one out but some of us don’t. But perhaps it would be more constructive if you engaged with what we are actually trying to do rather try to demolish a one-dimensional chimera.
Anyway, always a pleasure.
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Our perspective from the very beginning of this process in the old SA has been to create a party. Electoral alliances very occasionally might be useful but are not adequate for the situation in which we find ourselves.
A party is something with an internal life, a plurality of positions, a system of press, functioning autonomous branches… All of these things were absent in Respect’s former incarnation when for most of the time it was little more than an electoral vehicle.
The relevance of the Italian experience is that the party’s politics has to be sharply counterposed to neo-liberalism if it is to survive a challenge from a resurgent right. That means that it has to be a party of class struggle and anti-imperialism. Marxists have to win those positions by force of argument rather than by weight of numbers.
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I am not really convinced by slide 13.
i think it is unrealisitic to expect Respect to gain much geographic spread or significantly extend into new areas (with one or two exceptions like Swindon or perhaps the MK/Luton area, where we have a toe hold and prospects) unless we first grow in terms of political credibility.
So I think slide 15 should be the tasks, but with a very broad attitude to who the rest of the Left includes.
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The difficulty with forming a party rather than an electoral alliance is that most of the left are already in one. Unless you can convince all these political parties to dissolve themselves and form a new one then the other option is to start from scratch and recruit new non-alliagned members. I doubt that this will be easy in the present political climate.
Contrary to the mistaken notion that the original Respect was just an electorial alliance it was attempting to build links in the unions and among students. It seems odd that this has been forgotten so quickly.
I think that The Convention of the Left is about the only chance the left has to reforge an alliance. If this doesn’t work then all the left parties including Renewal will struggle to grow. Renewal doesn’t have an exclusive magical formula that excludes it from the difficulties the other left organisations face concerning recruitment. The only way forward is for a broad left that includes revolutionaries and reformists.
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I hope this isn’t off topic – do you use these slides with the presentation? Do you find that helpful?
It’s not a tradition method of giving a talk so I’d be interested to hear how well this is recieved by the audience – although I note you don’t have any pictures… sorry, just interested about presentation styles.
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Jim – we are not quite that high tech. My handwriting is so bad that sometimes I can’t read it myself so I use the slides to structure what I intend to say.
Ray – most of the organised left is in propaganda groups at the moment and most of them have not yet reconciled the existence of their own group and taking part in a broader formation. Even electoral alliances need to reach out to other forces but that still does not make them into a party and people vote for and support parties rather than electoral coalitions which are mostly only seen at election times.
Andy – the Swindon leaflet identifies some of the key groups Respect should be working with.
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Yes Liam, I am sure we agree about who the potential audeince is for Respect, but spreading into new geograhical areas needs connincing key activists in new places to throw their lot in with Respect, and that will be hard to achieve.
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I’m not sure that it’s more likely that people will vote for a fully fledged party as opposed to an alliance. I also don’t think voters necessarily distinguish between the two.
Difficulties arise in an alliance when different factions want divergent political strategies promoted by the alliance. This causes inconsistancy in the political direction of the alliance. I don’t see how forming a party would alliviate this problem especially if the democratic structures of the party are not adhered to.
Making it a prerequisite that the left works together as a party isn’t going to work because I doubt very much whether any left organisation will risk dissolving itself into one larger organisation. Especially after the acrimonious experience of Respect.
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1. Problem is, most leftys and left organsisations seem simply not to like or trust each other, and hold grudges for decades- how do you build up this trust again?
2. Any political party is, by its nature, an alliance based on the 80% people agree on, and agreeing the 20% should not divide the party. For the left, that threshold seem to be 95%.
3. Its not ideal, but the only model I think will work for the english left is an SSP type one, with organised platforms within the party, with the option to opt out with honour on an issue if needs be, and to work on individual issues of interest to the group in addition to
work for the party.4. Any solution must include the SWP.
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There is a long tradition of multi-tendency parties with many different models available.
The original LRC/Labour Party in Britain had a quasi federal structure allowing autonomy for individual parties such as the ILP, BSP etc.
A number of the broad left parties in Europe formed over the last decade have had structures that enable a plurality of component parties.
The central difference between a (multi-tendency) party and a coalition/alliance is that in a party the components do agree to subordinate some of their own organisational form to the wider needs of the broad party. A coalition/alliance is reduced to a ‘lowest common denominator’ agreement that constricts development and particularly allows a large component to have a veto on development (sound familiar?).
Since everyone in Respect Renewal seems to be convinced of the need for a broad party, rather than the coalition model, it needs to hammer out how it sees that working in practice and whether there are others outside Respect who are also interested in working in that way. Those who only want a ‘broad party’ based on their own coalition/alliance model will be confined to the sidelines and irrelevancy.
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I agree with Jim Page that the SSP model with platforms is the best that has been developed, but why do you say that it *must* include the SWP? The SSP was set up without the SWP and has continued since it left. It is up to the SWP whether they wish to participate or fly their own kite – they cannot veto what others do.
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one interesting issue for ISR is what has happend to the monthly newspaper……….it has gone. Has the handing over of this publication to RR been worth it.. it has only appeared 3 times this year!! The ISR appears to have liquidate its organisation for RR and Galloway adn looking at his track record I fear it will end in tears. Any revolutionary organisation which hands over its main publication to see it become irrelevant to that organisation must question the wisdom of that course of action..surely?
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TH – the new issue of Respect’s paper was produced at the weekend and should be back from the printer today. The elections disrupted the schedule.
The next issue of Socialist Resistance magazine has been written and is now with the designer. It should be out in mid-June.
We are organising a major (by our standards) event at the end of the month with a range of British and international organisations, have public meetings in London and Birmingham over the next couple of weeks and will have another large SR event in the autumn.
We haven’t quite got the hang of how to liquidate properly.
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Give it time Liam. Give it time.
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“Oh Jason, we’d like you breathless enthusiasm for unity much more if you didn’t keep trying to reduce what those of us are doing in Respect as ‘merely’ an ‘electoral formation’.
The reality, as you well know from Manchester, is that Respect is trying to build an organisation that is much more than an electoral formation. Indeed our strategy is based precisely on not being an organistion that just contests elections – merely or otherwise.
As you know our members have been recently involved actively over a range of issues from academies to climate change, teachers strikes to shelter picket lines, stop the war to anti-racism and just once a year we have a bash at elections. ”
Hi Clive I think you misunderstand what I am saying here.
It’s not in any way to impugn the good work members in Respect do. It’s to say that we shouldn’t just see everything in party terms- something I’m fairly sure you’d agree with.
You want to build your version of Respect, Ray his, others yet other organisations. All fair enough. But I am sure that you and others don’t just see participation in the wider class struggle as building the party even if it is a party wider than the ones we are already involved in.
It was to emphasise that the left need to also go beyond the idea of winning recruits to parties, all of which is absolutely fine, to also try to rebuild a combative working class.
Hence we should joint conferences of different left wing forces and individuals, drawing in the wider network of activists involved in anti-militarist, anti-globalisation and anti-racist campaigns not only to form a new party (which may be possible in the longer term) but also to strengthen the links between these forces, to address immediate tactical questions of how we can win in particular struggles and also address strategic questions of how we can win.
Part of the answer to this may indeed be to form a party- but we should see it in much wider more organic terms. I am hoping that Liam and yourself as well as other contributors to this blog may agree. If so then this does help give some focus to the Convention of the Left as well.
Yours in good humour (despite being stuck in my house due to a plumbing emergency- not quite ankle deep in water but would be if hadn’t turned off the stop-tap!)
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This was may be unclear
“Part of the answer to this may indeed be to form a party- but we should see it in much wider more organic terms.”What I mean is that having a party may be part of the solution to this- I think it is: you think it is- even if we disagree about what sort of party.
But what you and I think is not so important as what the many millions already involved in class struggle think- we need ways of connecting with their struggles, methods of connection that go beyond the simple plea to ‘join us’- though of course we can say that too in the meantime!
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Tut, Tut Liam. 50 years of pabloism and still not liquidationist enough to dissolve your own paper and start selling Tribune?
… unlike Gerry Healy in the 1950s! 😉
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Well Mark we are thinking of setting up a series of front organisations which we tightly control and can use as recruitment tools. No one on the English speaking left has tried that before. Any idea about who to ask for advice?
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Amusing though such historical and present allusions may be I think we should try quite hard to get over the impression that to be a member of the left you have to use arcane vocabulary and obscure references.
I liked your presentation, Liam, though as I said previously i think the conclusion needs to be a bit more than we need another broad party.
To have a meanigful mass party we need a mass movement and for socialist politics to reconnect with people’s struggles and concerns. I’m sure we’d agree on a lot of practical details even whilst having some nuanced differences over parties.
Jason
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Liam this is useful and good. Any scoping to go forward needs to go way beyond the left. What is missing in this country is hope. Not in an Obama style but hope that things can get better and there is a better life and future for our children.
Not necessary a new Party but a wide spectrum of people who want a change. Lets call them the Progressives. The old 1917 Bolshevik style was great in 1917 but we are in 2008. At least seeking solutions and working together is a start.
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“Well Mark we are thinking of setting up a series of front organisations which we tightly control and can use as recruitment tools. No one on the English speaking left has tried that before. Any idea about who to ask for advice?”
Can this comment be moderated?
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Jim Page writes above that ‘any solution must include the SWP’. Of course Jim is in the overwhelming majority on this point. The SWP’s cadre are seen as indispensible to any future ‘left party’ project. But I have to admit that I find this really quite bizarre. Looking at the history of that organisation’s interventions in the SA, SSP and Respect we can see a clear and consistent pattern. The SWP’s goal is to build its own organisation and at the same time to prevent the emergence of any credible left alternative that might threaten its position of big fish in a small pool. Inviting them back into the fold – well, the only analogy I can think of right now (and I’m sorry if it offends people) is that of an abused person returning to their partner because they believe that this time he has ‘really changed’. The widespread distrust of the SWP on the left is, IMHO, fully justified – and I for one wouldn’t want to be party to spreading illusions in the notion that this particular leopard has either the desire, the intention, or the ability to change its spots. Working with the SWP in single issue campaigns is part of everyday political life, but looking to anything beyond that seems tremendously naive to me.
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Let’s look at the history. The SWP wasn’t the only organisation to move on from SA. If the SWP are culpable for the demise of SA what about all those organisations and individuals who thought it a good idea to form Respect? The only thing that hasn’t changed is that a minority on the left who orbit Socialist Unity have fetishied the SWP as evil. That’s what prevents them (not anyone else on the left) from pursuing some form of unity in the future.
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Er…I don’t ‘orbit Socialist Unity’ (I imagine Andy Newman would be horrified at the suggestion). And I don’t think that the SWP is ‘evil’ – that’s a reductio ad absurdum if ever there was one.
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Briz Blogger
I can only talk of my own experience here. I am painfully aware that the SWP have made mistakes, like withdrawing from the SSP (who i always vote for) , but they are also capable of inherently good activities, such as joining the SSP in the first place, and generally acting in a comradely manner while in it.
Ok, you distrust the SWP. Fine. But in the long term, if they are part of the solution, picking up the phone now and inviting them to the meeting as observers will do no harm. There is, quite rightly, a lot of introspection in the left as a whole after the London Election results in particular- the last Socialist Review shows this. Now would be the good time to hold out the hand of freindship.
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The fact that the paper hasn’t appeared for months on end shows the priority of this organisation. It shows little in terms of building nertworks and fighting politically within the movement for socialist politics. The ISR are from a tradition that continually looks for short cuts and this is no different. Liam, I would have thought that the absence of any sign of marxist influence over Galloway and Yaqoob must be worrying.
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Make your mind up Alice. You criticise the paper for not appearing and then when it does you quip that no one will read it (see other thread). It must be so nice to live in your bubble. Considering the ‘other’ Respect took a decision last November to produce a publication but as yet the ‘working party’ has made no progress I think we’ve done quite well.
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Alice – make an effort to get you initials right – who are the ISR? If you are going to criticise a tendency/organisation for not doing something, one must at least know what tendency/organisation you are talking about.
Liam is an editor of SR and an organisation involved in SR is the ISG. If you bother reading our publications, you may get the initials right and also improve your politics beyond point scoring. Perhaps you should subscribe to SR so it comes out more often.
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How did the meeting go Liam?
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Alright I think. It was a bit of an opportunity to explore post election politics and to get our heads around some of the themes for the dayschool.
Perhaps someone less biased who was there might care to comment.
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Lots of information in the presentation, as someone said, the debate afterwards was a bit of all over the place. Perhaps indicative of the ISG’s predicament in being a revolutionary organisation in a broad party; similar to the SWP in Respect but not in control. The conclusion appeared to be to campaign on a few issues, such for example, war, housing, NHS but also to raise the political debate. Numbers, about 20+.
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Liam redux 
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