Can the forward march of Labour be restarted?

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The situation that the left finds itself in after the defeat of the McDonnell bid for the Labour leadership is a complex one. A bit of a debate has broken out about this around a statement issued by Socialist Resistance (SR) This was published on Liam Mac Uaid’s blog :

The key passage is: “McDonnell’s defeat throws the Labour left into serious crisis. No spin can hide it. The project of reclaiming the Labour or the idea that the Labour Party is a fruitful arena for the left to work in have been dealt a devastating blow.

“All this has implication for Respect, which should be taking the initiative to open or re-open a dialogue with those on the left who are currently not in Respect as to how they see the way forward.

“The Morning Star and the CPB are a case in point. They are likley to find it increasingly difficult to cling to a policy of reclaiming Labour. Apparently a new discussion has already opened up on this internally in the CPB. The Morning Star had already called a conference in June on “Politics After Blair” at which the issue will now be unavoidable.

“But Respect needs to be open and flexible in this situation to any new forces from the Morning Star or the trade union left. It should do whatever is necessary to ensure that new forces have space to make their influence felt. If it can do this it could break it out of its current impasse and open up a new stage of development.
“Respect’s task in this process is to turn the tide of politics back towards the left. Rebuild ideological and practical opposition to the market. Work with the left in the unions to build an independent pluralist left alternative alongside the struggle to regenerate the unions and rebuild trade union strength and organisation.”

To which I posted a comment to the effect that SR are making two mistakes: i) in not understanding that Respect is not a vehicle around which left unity can be built; and less explicably ii) that SR seem to completely fail to understand the political perspective of the CP.

I concluded my initial remarks by saying that currently “the building blocks for any serious alternative to Labour are utterly absent, but where the situation isn't hopeless either.”

Given the undemocratic manoeuvrings in and around Respect, the media galavanting of George Galloway, and the dispersal of the layer of left social democrats who had aggregated around the Socialist Alliance in various parts of the country, then I would characterise Respect thus: “Who is Respect? Galloway or the SWP? Anyone else? Will either of those forces play the productive role you are calling on them to play? If there is no actually existing force within Respect who will steer the organisation to play the role you think it could play, then how could it happen?

“Even were the SWP or Galloway to have a damascene conversion, would anyone on the activist left trust them? No-one is going to join Respect, or particularly want to work with them. The whole project is basically an embarrassment now.

“If we are looking for a left unity project, then we have missed the boat. The wave of left activists who left the labour party after Clause IV and over the Iraq war could have been attracted to an organisation that respected labour movement norms of behaviour. But were never going to be attracted to respect.”

SR are utterly self delusioonal if they believe that the CP or any significant left from the unions would touch Respect with a barge. Even were the Political Committee of the CP so minded, and I have no reason to think they are, then the membership would probably not agree to it.

The failure of McDonnell’s campaign has produced unhelpful knee-jerk reactions from Respect and the Socialist Party that the Labour Left should join them in their equally unsuccessful campaigns outside the Labour party. They remind me of the mayor of Amity, swearing that the water is safe. For example Thornett writes: "It¹s right to say to the Labour left, and those like the CPB (and some of the trade union left) who have clung to a Reclaim Labour policy for so long that after the McDonnell collapse the only rational conclusion in the cold light of day is that the Labour left has no useful future in the Labour party. There is no point in saying anything else."

In fact this approach is completely misguided. Instead of looking at whether we can reconstitute the greatly diminished left around already flawed projects, we need to take stock of the current political situation.

The overwhelming features are i) that the right within the Labour Party are utterly triumphant, and their victory is structurally irreversible. ii) The Labour party has failed to make the same shift to the right with its electoral base – the enduring progressive and social democratic attitudes of labour voters was well described recently on the SWP blog, Lenin’s Tomb ; iii) that the far left have failed to break that progressive base away from electoral loyalty to the Labour party; iv) the unions – on the whole - maintain ideological and political opposition to New Labour values, as can be seen by the way the unions make the running in opposing PFI, Academies and private equity. v) the structural problems of the unravelling British state.

So how can we seek to harness the positive aspects of the current situation to strengthen the left?

Alan Thornett has replied to me and asked whether I think Respect’s genuine electoral successes are the “wrong type of voters”. In a sense they are, but not in the sense he implies. Respect has done well particularly with that minority of voters for whom the war is the overriding political issue, but for the majority of the working class that is not the case, and opposition to the war has been subsumed into the general cynicism about politics.

This is where SR’s misunderstanding of the CP’s position is clear, because the CP are talking some sense over this issue:

As Robert Griffiths, the CP General Secretary: recently wrote : “But what is needed now more than ever is for the trade union movement, once again, to take on its historic responsibility to ensure the existence of a mass party of labour. For all the assistance that socialists and communists can render, the unions alone have the human, financial and organisational resources, as well as the class interest, to take the necessary steps.

“Together with the non-sectarian left, they need to work out a political strategy which takes account of current realities. For example, most major unions remain affiliated to the Labour Party and are unlikely to leave it in the near future.
“The first steps in this direction might be for all the major unions to affiliate and participate fully in the Labour Representation Committee. Deals between union leaders in smoke-free rooms to win resolutions at Labour Party conference are not enough. The active involvement of unions and their members in the LRC would be the clearest declaration of political intent.

“The LRC could itself go the extra mile and allow full membership status to socialist organisations including the Communist Party, respecting their right to participate independently in elections in return for an agreement not to campaign for the dismantling of the Labour Party through further union disaffiliations.
“In their relations with the Labour Party, unions should stop all financial, logistical and political support for MPs who consistently vote against key union policies. “

SR are correct to highlight the Morning Star conference as important, not least because the CP still able to punch above their weight, and alongside John McDonnell, we also have Ken Livingstone and Jon Cruddas attending. At the deputy leadership hustings at GMB congress last week Cruddas came out in favour of starting to renationalise public utilities.

The Labour Left were crushingly defeated in the PLP, but the McDonnell campaign has gathered together a nucleus of activists, who are less isolated and more motivated than they were before the campaign. It is as fruitless for us to argue with then that they should leave the party as for them to argue we should join it – comrades need to come to their own conclusions.

The way forward is for all the left, inside and outside the Labour party, to promote the trade unions in exercising their own political voice. By and large, the unions will not abandon their stake in the labour party until they have exhausted its historical usefulness. But currently they are not making enough demands on the party, and so not testing the usefulness of the link.

The Labour Representation Committee could become a vehicle for the unions to exercise collective political voice and if a substantial section of organised labour is to draw the conclusion that a party of labour needs to be refounded, as they effectively did in 1931, then the LRC could be the body around which that debate tales place.

Of course there are serious obstacles, not least of which is the LRC’s requirement for Labour Party membership, which is a serious obstacle to many grassroots trade unions and community activists. But again the way forward is for local trade union bodies to affiliate and open a dialogue about being able to send delegates who are not individual LP members.

In the meantime, we have largely missed the boat in England of building an electoral alternative to New Labour. There may still be a case of standing against Labour, but this can only be done by building grassroots links first, not by building the roof before the walls like Respect and the CNWP have done.

There is serious work that can be done, but the vehicle for that work is not Respect nor the CNWP, the focus remains where it perhaps always should have been, with organised Labour in the mass organisations of our class.

More debate in SWP's international

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Back in March this year, I made a post on this blog asking where the SWP’s international group, the IST, was going, and pointing out that there had been a series of splits in most sections. This post caused a lot of debate, including contributions from Canada, France, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand from members of IST affiliates, and from the groups with similar politics but outside the IST.

The need for an open international debate about the IST is clear, given the fact that there seems to be little principled political difference between the groups within and without the IST, although there are differences of strategy and tactics, as you would expect in any living political tradition.

Earlier this month, the New Zealand affiliate of the IST, Socialist Worker(NZ), published a statement calling for the IST to have a more positive alignment towards the Venezuelan revolution, and querying some organisational changes proposed by the British SWP’s Alex Callinicos (pictured above reviewing the troops).

Today, the Socialist Worker(NZ) have issued the following call for a debate on their website, UNITYblog. They want “to start a debate among all serious socialists and revolutionaries, inside and outside the International Socialist Tendency, on how we should be responding to the Bolivarian revolutionary process in Venezuela. Please send your contributions to UNITYblog . All serious contributions to the debate will be published. Silly and/or sectarian stuff will be binned with a grin.”

This follows the reply by Alex Callinicos, which they have also published . In view of the fact that UNITYblog have issued this call for a debate about Venezuela, it seems much better that the debate is carried out there rather than here, so I will make no further comment about the specific issue of Venezuela.

However, one comment by Callinicos is especially illuminating:
“As we put it in our ‘International Perspectives 2005’ …the most important front in the struggle against US imperialism is in Iraq.’ It is the resistance in Iraq that is in the process of inflicting the most serious defeat American imperialism has suffered since the Vietnam War. By tying down the Pentagon’s military machine in Iraq, the resistance has made a decisive contribution to creating the space that has allowed the resistance in Latin America to develop and, in the cases of Venezuela and Bolivia, to develop a more explicitly anti-capitalist dynamic. Therefore we believe that the most important single internationalist task of revolutionaries today is to build the international movement against the ‘war on terrorism’. Defeating the Bush administration’s imperialist offensive is critical to the success of every struggle against neoliberalism and capitalism, including those in Venezuela and Bolivia. This is particularly important for revolutionaries in the advanced capitalist world since it gives a task that relates directly to the politics of our own societies rather than merely leave us to cheerlead for Latin American revolutions.” (My emphasis)

It is entirely characteristic of the SWP to overemphasise the significance of the Iraq war, and to overestimate the degree of political radicalism which opposition of the war engenders.

In fact, the war is not even the most important issue on domestic British politics, as housing and job insecurities are the biggest cause of friction between New Labour and its traditional electoral supporters; and pensions and privatisation are the biggest friction between the trade unions and New Labour. A correct strategic orientation in Britain on how to reverse the neo-liberal consensus would therefore be concentrating less on Iraq, and more on the issue of public ownership, and council housing. The victory of the right over these issues has largely been because of the idea, as Thatcher argued, that “there is no alternative”. The significance of Venezuelan solidarity work is of course that it demonstrates that there is an alternative. The Bolivarian revolution has started to turn the tide.

Callinicos’s comments about the IST itself are also illuminating.

He says: “The SWP in particular has argued that Seattle opened a new period of anti-capitalist struggle that has created major opportunities to renew the revolutionary and radical left. We have accordingly been pursuing dialogue with other currents and exploring the possibilities of regroupment on a very extensive scale.”

Seattle was a long time ago. What is more, the social forum movement is becoming increasingly attenuated. An Italian friend of mine who attends the European Social Forum meetings (ESF) observes that the SWP’s policy of opposing the Social Forums in Britain, while simultaneously attending the ESF meetings as the British delegates, has now given way to there being no participants from Britain.

Furthermore, within Britain the SWP wound down the regroupment exercise of the English Socialist Alliance, in favour of a creature that excluded the rest of the activist left, Respect. This process was described succinctly recently by Charlie Pottins : “As for the Left, having gathered some strength (including former Labour Party actvisists) around in the Socialist Alliance, the SWP was quick to liquidate it so they could form a local Respect, though so far it has been almost a non-runner, and at best an also-ran. The sad thing is that some of the local SWP actvists are old-campaigners, better known and respected in the area under their own flag, whereas people just scratch their heads or look away when they turn up as Respect.”

In contrast, Callinicos describes Respect thus: “Our domestic experience has demonstrated, positively with Respect and more negatively with the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party, this process involves opening out to more than the established revolutionary left.”

I was recently discussing Respect with anti-war activists from Bristol and Oxford, both non-members of the SWP, but positively inclined towards them. They told me that in Bristol, none of the former labour lefts who were active in the SA have joined Respect, and the comrade from Oxford resigned from Respect because all decisions for the local branch were taken in advance by the SWP caucus, and if the Respect branch reached a decision about something that the SWP had not previously worked out their position on, then it would be overturned by the SWP at the next meeting. This is not what we mean by regroupment!

Callinicos then says: “The IST has a very simple structure. It consists of organizations sharing a common tradition and approach to revolutionary politics. Its meetings are devoted largely to political discussions, with very few decisions being made. These decisions are normally taken by consensus: the only real exception was the exclusion of the ISO (US) in 2001, which followed the ISO intervening to help to engineer a split in our Greek sister organization, SEK.”

We are entitled to ask, why was the ISO allegedly trying to cause a split in the SEK an offence requiring expulsion. Whereas Tony Cliff boasts in his autobiography that he split the German and French groups? And Callinicos himself sought to engineer a split in the ISO(USA). why is there one rule for the goose, and another for the gander?

We are also entitled to wonder whether this consensual model is true, given that Callinicos also says that one of the tasks of his proposed committee is “addressing problems in specific groups”. That is interfering in the internal lives of other affiliates, as Cliff used to do, and Callinicos did with the American ISO.

Callinicos claims that hitherto, the leadership of the IST has been run from London because “the British SWP … has far greater resources and partly because of the political authority its leadership has enjoyed in the Tendency.”

But on what basis has the SWP greater political authority? Surely not on the basis of achievement, as they are a fraction of their former size, with a much reduced influence in the unions and workplaces, and their activities in the Socialist Alliance, Respect and SSP have earned them enormous distrust from other socialist activists.

Indeed, the reduced authority of the SWP is one of the reasons why so many organisations that share their basic politics, such as the American ISO, the Socialist Alternative group in Australia, or the Socialisme Internationale Group in France are outside the IST.

The debate that is being opened up is an entirely welcome one.

Socialist Alliance's funds -national secretary responds

Following the earlier post about the remaining balance of £2500 of the former Socialist Alliance’s money that remains unaccounted for, I have now received a response from Rob Hoverman, former national secretary of the Socialist Alliance, and who seems to now work for Respect.

Rob responds: “the public will surely have been waiting with bated breath. Why Heather and I have been singled out for a response I do not know, and care less. You were a complete tosser the last time you flickered on to my radar and clearly nothing has changed. Now flicker off.”

I should point out that under the terms of the closing motion of the Socialist Alliance the former national executive elected in 2003 stays in office until the funds are dispersed and the bank account closed. This situation was not intended to last, but due to failure of the officers to close the account, we still have a moral responsibility to provide scrutiny. I wrote to Rob not only in my own capacity as a (former) national executive member, but after consultation with several other members of the (former) national executive

So the issue here is that the national secretary of an organisation, responsible for disposing of the funds in accordance with the democratically expressed wishes of a formal conference refuses to answer to members of the national executive of that organisation about why he has failed to do so, and where the money has gone.

This is not a question of simply crying over spilt milk, because the issues of trust and accountability go to the heart of building socialist organisations.

Despite the Iraq war and ten years of neo-liberalism from Blair’s government, we have signally failed to build a credible alternative to the left of Labour. Indeed the left is weaker now than we were when the Iraq war broke out in 2003.

Now that Respect has also failed to become any sort of broad and inclusive alternative, it is a relevant time to reassess some of the reasons that the Socialist Alliance failed. As I wrote previously:

Although the Socialist Alliance made good early progress, its character changed over the last few years because it suffered the loss of many of the original ex-Labour people who got the local SAs going from the early/mid 90s onwards and who piloted the discussions with the SWP, locally and nationally which led to the SWP joining the SA, and the SA extending into London. However a very important question is why the thousands of activists who used to promote a left social democratic agenda within the Labour party, did not gravitate towards the SA. To a certain extent the issue of distrust towards not only the SWP but also historically the Militant probably played a part. Certainly the SA project suffered over the last two years from the defection of the Socialist Party and a rupture with some of the most significant Labour Lefts in the national (and in some cases, local) leadership.
The most prominent example was the resignation of Liz Davies, a former Grassroots member of Labour’s NEC as national Chair the SA in October 2002. Slightly later Mike Marqusee, former editor of Labour Briefing left the SA. For the socialist, activist community around the country, Liz and Mike were more significant recruits to the SA and represented more than an individual maverick like George Galloway MP, so their loss was deeply felt. A collapse of trust was cited by both Liz and Mike as their reason for disengagement. There is a need to consider this matter with some sensitivity as not just political differences but also personalities are involved, and many who were politically sympathetic to Liz Davies’s position felt that she used a dispute over an organisational issue as a pretext for resolving a political problem

In light of this current dispute over what as happened to the SA’s funds, and Rob’s refusal to be held accountable, it is worth recalling his role in the events surrounding resignation, which was fully described by Liz and Mike themselves. “It was a sustained course of deception and financial impropriety engaged in by experienced individuals occupying major positions of trust and responsibility. It was an offence not only against the SA officers, but the SA as a whole, all those who had paid dues to it and all those who had offered it support. It betrayed a shockingly cynical contempt for essential democratic procedures and rudimentary principles of accountability. ”

The failure of the officers of the socialist alliance to carry out the terms of its closing up motion can only be explained by understanding the events of the year leading up to that final conference.

One might have thought with that the launch of Respect the SWP would have wished to ensure that the maximum number of SA members transferred over to the Respect organisation, and to wind up the SA in the most efficient way possible. In fact after the March 2004 SA conference that voted to support respect in the June European elections, the SWP generally disengaged with the SA structures. At a local level there were examples of SA branches being shut down by in such a manner that the SA members were simply dispersed, this being done by the SWP packing SA meetings.

At the national level the SA national executive could have played a constructive role that year in handling the transition between the Socialist Alliance and Respect, ensuring the best possible continuity of SA members bringing their experience to Respect, and ensuring that fraternal relations were maintained with those who decided not to join Respect. The independent members of the SA exec not in the SWP wanted to ensure that there was an early conference for the SA members to decide on whether to wind up the organisation.

However, throughout this period Rob Hoverman disrupted the SA exec from operating, and as national secretary failed to carry out democratically decided decisions of the exec. Meetings were cancelled at short notice on spurious pretexts, and the chair of the SA, Nick wrack, did not tell any of us that he had joined the SWP. For the December 2004 meeting Rob failed to book a room and we ended up meeting in a crowded bar in ULU. That December meeting decided that the January 2005 meeting would be the conference arrangements committee for the closing conference, but the SWP majority at the January meeting overturned that decision. If you want understand the casual contempt they had for the other SA exec members a good example is that my train was delayed 20 minutes for the January, and I texted the comrades to ask they delay the start by quarter of an hour, instead they rushed through the meeting so that it as already over when I arrived.
Strangely although the SA had sufficient funds to pay for a crèche for the closing conference, and that was the expressed wish by e-mail of several national executive members, Rob (acting as a one man conference arrangements committee0 did not organise a crèche.


The experience of SA exec meetings accords with the experience described by Mike Marqusee:“Many will have had the experience of attending a meeting ostensibly to discuss or organise an initiative or campaign only to find themselves faced with a block of SWP members who have arrived with a pre-determined line and set of priorities. The non-SWPers present may hold a variety of views or doubts, but these end up rotating around the axis established by the SWP. It's a lop-sided and ineffectual discussion because a key participant - the SWP - is playing by a different set of rules, and not engaging openly and fully with the debate as others see it”

If we understand how gruelling and awful the last year of the SA’s formal existence was, and in the absence of more than two or three branches still existing, then we can see why it was correct to close down the SA. (It is still not clear to me why the SWP attempted to block there being a formal closure of the SA through Rob’s war of attrition – their preferred resolution seems to have been that it simply withered away)

What is more the experience might explain why the treasurer, Heather Cox, failed to attend the final conference, and seemingly was never informed by the national secretary, Rob Hoverman, or the chair, Nick Wrack, what had been decided. The final conference decided to honour a debt of £3000 to Walsall Democratic Labour Party (DLP), yet this bill was not paid for months and months and months, and none of the officers would reply to correspondence from the DLP. It was only after non-aligned former members of the SA exec issued an open letter that this was paid.

Several members of the national executive expressed the view that the records of the SA should be bequeathed to a museum of labour movement history, and had found somewhere that would take them. Instead the records were destroyed – even though the destruction cost as much as the transport to the museum. Bear in mind that the SA had ben an organisation involving thousands of activist at one time or another, had stood nealry 100 candidates in the 2001 general election, and had for the first time brought nearly all the left of labour groups in England into a coopertive relationship - surely worth keeping a historical record?

Does any of this matter? Well, compared to the big events like the war in Iraq, or New Labour’s attacks on welfare, then obviously not much. But at another level, the failure of the left to build a viable alternative does matter, and the collapse of trust, and the abuse of position that caused the collapse of trust will make it harder to build such a project in the future, unless we root out these bad habits from the movement.

Socialist Alliance - where is the money?

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The motion passed by the final conference of the Socialist Alliance on 5th February 2005 decided that all the funds would be disposed of and the bank account closed before 31st March 2005, and decided that the funds would be split equally before 28th February between the following organisations: Alliance for Workers Liberty, Communist Party of Great Britain, International Socialist Group, Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform, Socialist Solidarity Network, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Unity Network.

It may come as a surprise therefore that the bank account was still open in January 2007 and had around £2500 in it. What is more, rather than dispose of these funds according to the democratic decision of the members there has been apparent agreement between former officers of the SA to thwart the decision of the members and pay these funds instead to the low profile organisation, the Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers.

This is a difficult issue to deal with, but I feel it is in the interests of the left for there to be a public discussion of how the Socialist Allaince was administered and closed, as it has a bearing on the political practices of some of the left organisations involved, and we need to understand this context for future left regroupment projects to prosper. I will return to this history in later posts on this blog.

E-mail correspondence started in January this year between comrades Rob Hoverman, (the national Secretary), Heather Cox (the treasurer), another comrade who was not an office holder at the time the closure motion was passed, and Jim Jepps, a member of the national executive.

All the comrades except Jim Jepps agreed to pay the money to CDAS, at the suggestion of the comrade who was not an office holder, and not on the national executive. Jim pointed out that this decision was contrary to the legally binding decision of conference, and absolutely properly forwarded the correspondence to other members of the national executive. Both Rob and the non-office holding comrade responded to Jim’s argument (that there was a legal and moral obligation to respect the decision of the members) with terse one line e-mails saying they still thought the money should be paid to CDAS.

I then wrote to all the comrades involved in this exchange, in the following terms (these are extracts from a longer mail):

Constitutionally there is only one LAWFUL outcome, which is to dispense the remaining monies as decided by the Emergency General meeting which closed down the SA. Which is to split it between the left groups named in the closing motion.

There is no lawful basis for even 20p going to CDAS - however worthy that cause might be. This was not agreed at the EGM, and therefore any subsequent decision by exec members was and is ultra vires. I have no recollection of any decision being made to pay anything to CDAS -( indeed I have never heard of the organisation)

It is not at alll clear whether an e-mail consultation involving even the full exec may be considered a meeting of the exec competent to take decision within the constitution.

An ad hoc exchange between only a few members certainly has no constitutional standing within the SA.

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Let us be clear, that we are only in this mess becasue the national chair and secretary of the SA failed to carry out the express mandate of the closing EGM, which decided specifically that there would be an immediate meeting of the exec convened (which Nick [the chair] never organised), and that the closing balances would be dispersed and the account colsed within one month of the final EGM. (responsibility for which lay with the national secretary)

Had the bank account been closed within weeks as originally intended then no substantial sum of monies would have accrued. Having failed to close the account (for over two years!) in knowledge that substantial standing orders would continue to be paid into it, then if a decision is made to pay those monies to anyone other than the lawful owners as decided by the EGM, [this would be wrong]

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As such, I would recommend that of you want to pay the monies to CDAS, then you first seek independant professional legal opinion as to the standing of that decision, and share that opinion with alll the exec members, including those not on e-mail. As we would be collectively responsible.

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I may of course be wrong about the legality of a decision to pay the money to CDAS - which is why i recommend we take legal advice before embarking on that course of action.

Alternatively, why not split the monies as we are legally obliged to, and issue a recommendation that monies could be paid to CDAS.

Although I sent this e-mail to the correct e-mail addresses, that Rob and Heather had been using, neither of them have had the courtesy to reply, and we currently have no idea whether the funds have been disposed of improperly.

It is because the office holders apparently consider themselves unaccountable to the national executive, and apparently not willing to honour the decision of the membership, that I feel I have no alternative other than to make this issue public. I have the support of several other former members of the SA national executive in taking this course of action.

I trust that the office holders will now respond to me and other members of the former national executive accounting for what has happened to the monies and confirming that the decision of the membership will be honoured.

The exact words of the motion passed by conference were (extract only):

The Socialist Alliance's remaining funds should be used to pay off debts and the bank account closed. Any remaining funds should be distributed between supporting organisations of the Socialist Alliance. This is a reflection that there is no consensus over which "organisation or organisations [have] aims consistent with those of the Socialist Alliance." Distributing the funds between the supporting organisations of the Socialist Alliance will allow the assets to be disposed of broadly proportionate to the views of the Socialist Alliance membership.The supporting organisations of the Socialist Alliance are: Alliance for Workers Liberty, Communist Party of Great Britain, International Socialist Group, Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform, Socialist Solidarity Network, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Unity Network. Any remaining funds should be distributed equally between these seven organisations. This conference notes that the share of the funds for any organisation who supports Respect the Unity Coalition may at the discretion of that organisation be paid directly to Respect instead.The Socialist Alliance national executive elected at annual conference in 2003 will continue in office until the debts are paid off and remaining funds distributed, which must take place no later that 28th February 2005, at which point the Socialist Alliance ceases to exist. The national executive should meet immediately after this conference closes to elect a sub-committee to carry out the winding up of the Socialist Alliance.A final treasurer's report will be prepared, audited and published on the web-site www.socialistalliance.org. This will be posted no later than 31st March 2005. A printed version will be available to any member or former member who requests one before that date by sending an e-mail to socialistalliance2000@yahoo.co.uk.

Could it have been different?

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Cast your mind back to the huge anti-war demonstration of 15th February 2003. Estimates of numbers are debatable, but 2 million is a credible estimate of attendance.

In the lead up to the march there was a discussion between some leading members of the Socialist Alliance (SA) and the SWP, represented by John Rees, about the SA presenting a united face for the demo. As it was the SWP decided to concentrate on boosting the profile of its own organisation, and all the other left groups followed their lead: leaving the Socialist Alliance with a very small profile. According to some comrades who were at the meeting there was a moment when it looked like Rees was going to agree, and then backed off.

Even though it would have been for the overall benefit of the left, it would have required a challenge to those parts of the SWP (for example the National Secretary of the time, Chris Bambury) who opposed participation in the SA.

On the day, there was of course a problem in relating the revolutionary politics of the SWP direct to the consciousness of those protesting against the war, the transitional form of the Socialist Alliance might have bridged that gap. What would have happened if the overwhelming majority of the English left had promoted a single organisation, the Socialist Alliance, with a single voice on the demo, and then stood in the May elections under that same banner?

That is what happened in Scotland. Here is an observation from leading SWP member Mike Gonzalez about the demonstration in Scotland, where the Scottish Socialist Party were very clearly identified with the organising of the protest:

“It was a historic moment—and it was a victory, in our view, that arose directly out of the public perception of the [SSP]’s leading role in the anti-war movement: 100,000 marched through Glasgow on 15 February that year. It is no coincidence that that figure so closely reflected the numbers in the election.”

Interestingly there were two million on the march in London, and the Lib Dems managed to present themselves as THE anti-war party in England, and their vote in May 2003 went up 2 million.