It is with regret that we announce our resignation from Socialist Alliance. We are members of the party who have been involved in the 21st Century Socialism Tendency, and some who have not been. We include the overwhelming majority of active members of the party’s Brisbane branch, as well as individual members from other branches.
The tendency launched approximately two months ago, based on concerns that had been simmering in the party for at least the previous four years. Following a series of individual and group efforts to raise questions regarding the political orientation of the party, and questions around party democracy and organisation, a small number of members were faced with a decision to leave the party, or to stay and test the capacity of the party to change. A decision to do the latter resulted in the formation of the tendency some months after the last National Conference.
Prior to and since the formation of the tendency, criticisms of the party’s political and organisational approaches have been met with a contrarian attitude by the party’s entrenched leadership layer. For some years, this layer has consistently treated those who have raised differences with hostility and suspicion, while, in general, refusing to seriously engage with criticisms and proposals. Leading party activists have been driven out of the party. Others have found their positions on leadership bodies systematically undermined, leading to resignations. Others still have been simply locked out of leadership bodies by bureaucratic and self-perpetuating organisational practices that privilege a permanent, clique leadership and its allies. Chief among these is the practice of outgoing National Executives submitting an “open slate” of hand-picked incoming NE members to National Conference.
While tendencies/factions are technically permitted in Socialist Alliance, it quickly became abundantly clear that any serious challenge to the party’s entrenched leadership layer cannot be tolerated. Publicly, the response from leadership was limited to a statement declaring an “appropriate” future time for engaging with the tendency’s documents, until the party’s recent National Council meeting (June 11-12). It has become evident, however, that a concerted smear campaign has gone on behind the scenes. The virulent open hostility demonstrated on social media towards tendency members was a crude public expression of this fact. Some of these attacks led to a complaint being lodged by the tendency with the NE. The NE’s delayed response urged tendency members not to pursue the complaint further, threatening “counter claims” against tendency members.
Behind the scenes also was the frenetic manoeuvring to ensure a compliant youth leadership was elected. Not-so-privately was the extraordinary National Executive motion, ruling by decree, to ban broad youth participation in Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance’s (RYSA) recent leadership election via online means. The recent assaults on youth autonomy have crushed any hope that the party can rebuild its youth wing. The unwillingness of the clique to allow any level of youth autonomy has coalesced into a cynical new approach to youth that demonises autonomy and forces top-heavy centralist organisation on youth leadership. Those youth willing to accept such a regime number around five individuals. Beyond this “acceptable” youth leadership layer, there are no prospects for rebuilding a youth wing of the party. Indeed it is clear that the leadership of the party is not interested in making the changes necessary to allow for this. Rather, the orientation is towards a youth leadership that exists largely to organise youth conferences and implement the will of the NE and National Secretariat, rather than empowering youth to debate, decide and lead.
The recent National Council also demonstrated, finally, a crystallisation of the leadership’s abstract line on electoral work: that running candidates is in itself a moral good; that any electoral “intervention” is a success, no matter the outcome. This has been counterposed to proposals that the party needs an electoral strategy based on quality analysis of the political landscape and the real prospects and space available to socialists. The strong sentiment is that this status quo is to remain.
Proposals for a more considered analysis of the effectiveness and value of Green Left Weekly have been met with hostility. Calls for long term statistical analysis including distribution of those statistics have been rejected. The prospects for genuinely improving or replacing Green Left Weekly with a superior media project in any sort of responsive timeframe are nil. As such, for many in the party, Green Left Weekly remains an unconvincing and extremely costly project. The leadership’s response to challenges to accepted wisdom on the paper has been to simply repeat decades-old slogans that lack any serious evidentiary basis.
Important to note is the fact that this National Council meeting featured the explicit point that the way we conduct our electoral work and Green Left Weekly as it stands are the defining features of Socialist Alliance, and those who find themselves at odds with these aspects of the party must necessarily find themselves at odds with the party as a whole. It was made clear that the views expressed in the tendency’s party building counter report were incompatible with Socialist Alliance.
A proposal to begin a process for the democratic amendment of the party’s constitution coming out of the National Council was rejected. Fundamentally undemocratic aspects of the party’s structures face no prospect of changing. No attempt has been made to respond to the serious concerns raised in the tendency’s launch document beyond “Accountability Sessions” that simply reaffirmed that party’s security culture and failed to answer questions around the long term health of Green Left Weekly or party membership figures. Security culture has now been turned against the party’s membership. The information we need to inform our decisions on our priorities is to be kept from us for fear of the “internal threat”.
Apart from what has been discussed here already, the decision to leave the party is based on our conclusion that there are no longer sufficient forces remaining in the party such that progress on key political and organisational questions is possible. The National Council meeting hosted just over 30 delegates. The 2015 National Conference was barely larger. Many branches are collapsing or have collapsed: Canberra, Wollongong for instance, while other branches are just managing to maintain at best the minimum administrative functions and political activity. While the situation is different in Sydney and Melbourne, this reflects the leadership’s long-term focus on these branches being the centre of the party. Other branches have long been ignored or at best deprioritised and neglected. Financial crisis and huge deficits loom large, further asset sales are on the cards. Activists are being burned out due to a culture of hyper-activism produced by an unwillingness to recognise the limited resources of the organisation and openings for the left and a seemingly moral commitment to being active in every possible arena of struggle, rather than a strategic assessment of what will take the left forward. The spiral shows no realistic signs of being arrested, and the fundamental reasons for this spiral are defiantly defended.
The final straw for many of us however has been the extraordinary events immediately following this recent National Council meeting. On Monday, June 13, less than 24 hours after the National Council had concluded, a Brisbane branch co-convenor received a call from Socialist Alliance national co-convenor Alex Bainbridge. Alex announced that he had decided to move to Brisbane from Perth. That night, Brisbane’s branch coordinating committee wrote to the National Executive expressing their serious concern at the lack of consultation and process, and the aggressive nature of this move, and the negative impact it would have on the party and on Brisbane branch. Alex replied that the decision had been made. No response has been received from the NE. Alex intimated that he would arrive within two weeks. The following night he arrived. Alex has advised that he and the Perth branch convenor were to move to Brisbane. This decision had been made with no discussion on any elected party body. The fate of Perth branch is unknown, but it would no doubt suffer a considerable loss.
For those of us leaving, this situation confirms a heavy-handed, anti-democratic approach amongst the party’s leadership that is incompatible with our remaining in the party. The political and personnel gains Brisbane branch built up, with almost no national support, subjected to suspicion and attacks from national leaders, would not survive this extraordinary, paternalistic move. Resignations in their ones and twos would be the outcome if we stayed. We are not willing to sacrifice years of hard work at the altar of obedience to a bureaucratic leadership in whom we have no faith. In a fundamental way, Socialist Alliance has now become a fetter on the political project that has been built in Brisbane, one that in many ways and for some time has shown signs of learning the lessons from and correcting the mistakes of the party as a whole. Instead, we have chosen to part ways with Socialist Alliance.
Against its detractors, we maintain that as an experiment, the Socialist Alliance was a worthwhile initiative, and its core tenets of an open, non-sectarian, engaged and non-dogmatic approach to revolutionary politics remain as important as ever. Unfortunately, at this stage, the Socialist Alliance is no longer capable of making good on those core ideas. Many of us have grown as activists through our work in the party, and for a long time held a deep affection for it, but we feel there is no alternative now but to move on. We thank many of our comrades who we leave behind. For those tendency members who have chosen to remain, we wish you the best in your endeavours. We hold out hope that the left can work together in a healthy way, and that we will all work together again in a future common political project. A discussion has already begun as to what kind of new political project can truly rebuild the anti-capitalist forces in this country. We look forward to discussions with others on the Brisbane and national left in this regard.
Sincerely
Andrew B
Angus McAllen
Ben Colm Felix
Brodie Carter
Conor McGovern
Daniel Elliot
Evan V
Ewan Saunders
Feargal McGovern
Hannah Reardon-Smith
Harrison O’Carroll
Jayden Oxton-White
Kade Hamalainen
Lauren Cameron
Leela Ford
Liam Flenady
Lucinda Donovan
Murray Taylor
Nicol Brown
Sarah Oakhill
Sean Brocklehurst
Sian Cumberland
Stephanie Green
Stuart H
