This is not our defeat

reblogged with thanks to red and black leeds The results are in, and once again, the British electorate have voted in the party the rich and their friends in the media told them to. Despite pre-election predictions of hung parliaments, "progressive" coalitions, or minority governments, the Conservatives walk away from this election with a slender majority, having increased their share of seats in parliament to 330. Another five years of Tory government now seems assured. There are those on the left who are greeting this news with despair. Despite it’s history of betrayal and failure, every election season the British left lines up behind the Labour Party time and time again. This campaign was no exception. The trade unions, of course, backed Labour to the hilt. Even the left-wing nationalist SNP and the anti-austerity Green Party were touting themselves as eligible partners to a Labour government. Many on the radical left were trying to talk themselves into believing a Labour victory would bring meaningful social change just a fraction closer. Even for those of us who put no stock in parliamentary politics it’s easy to slip into the habit of rooting for the parliamentary opposition. Just the mere fact of them nominally opposing the repulsive Tory crooks who’ve been in power for the last five years made Miliband and his outfit instantly seem sympathetic. But the truth is these people have nothing to offer us and we know it. We’ve been down this road before, for 13 long years of Labour administered misery. This is the party that brought you tuition fees and the Iraq War. They are not friends to the working class. They never have been. As anarchists, we’re critical of voting and elections in general as a strategy for change. For a summary of the anarchist arguments against electoralism, it’s worth reading the recent series by Phil Dickens for libcom.org - amongst other things, the idea that we can get what we need by just voting for a different set of politicians to run everything fosters illusions in the very system we’re trying to oppose. As Phil puts it: parties can’t pull the state leftward, but mass social movements can force concessions from it. The former is a massive drain of time, energy and effort from the latter. Worse, it creates the illusion that the latter isn’t necessary since we can just vote ‘radically’ instead of all that inconvenient hard work of organising and fighting. No government, Labour or Tory, will offer us anything unless we fight for it. Left-wing electoralism, when it succeeds in capturing state power, encourages us to trust the state and in state officials, bureaucrats and politicians – instead of trusting each other, and our own collective ability to take action and change things. But the other side of this problem is that when left-wing parties fail, as the Labour party did catastrophically this time round, those who’ve invested so much, both emotionally and physically, in electoral success are faced with despair. We see friends and comrades who believed a Labour government would bring at least some relief from the horrors of Tory austerity now downhearted, defeated, at the point of giving up hope altogether. This is just another pitfall of the tried and tested and failed strategy of trying to vote things better. So to all of you out there who were disappointed with the result of Thursday’s ballot: you have our sympathies, but remember, Miliband’s loss is not ours. The Labour Party has failed you, but they would have failed you anyway. Your best chance to make things better isn’t some Oxford-educated millionaire with a red rosette – it’s ordinary people getting together to fight back. It’s your workmates, your neighbours. We’re still here. We’re not going away. Our struggle will go on, under this government, and the next one, and the one after that, until they have no governments left to throw at us. Until we win. jolasmo | 05/09/2015 at 12:49 | Categories: Blog | URL: http://wp.me/p59VzD-4b

Greece, Syriza win but where next??

So many leftists on twitter and around the globe seem ecstatic that the anti austerity alliance party Syriza have seemingly won the Greek elections. Many hopes and expectations lay ahead. I sense a very bumpy road and a lot of conflict to come. This is just the start not the end. Syriza, a party born from a coalition of Eurocommunists, social movements and anti-globalisation activists, is riding high and looks set to take a large share of the votes once all is said and done in Greece in the snap elections called recently. Whether enough for an outright majority its in no doubt this is a big moment in the Euro crisis which started way back in 2008. The general sentiment among Syriza officials and activists is that they will win the election and form the next government. The party won the European election in May 2014 and achieved some significant wins at the regional elections. It has been leading nationwide polls for months, scoring 29 per cent in late December 2014. The majority-friendly electoral law allows for an absolute majority at 35 to 40 per cent of the vote, depending on the number of parties passing the threshold. If Syriza succeeds in forming a government then it will face a huge number of challenges on the domestic and European level. At home, it will encounter fierce opposition from big business, the austerity parties and the Greek media. Greek economic elites might use the EU’s legal framework to work against Syriza. For example, bank owners could file lawsuits at the European Court of Justice against the restructuring of the banking sector. For Syriza itself, being in government may strain the relationship between the party leadership and its supporters and change the dynamic within the party. Syriza will have to find a balance between its two roles – first, representing a credible alternative to the establishment, and second, bringing forward a project for government. Care will have to be taken not to damage the party’s links to the social movements, and it will need to extend its presence within society to build bedrock of support to withstand the attacks. A party m very new and made up of a lot of various trends of Marxists, trotskyists indeed my former party the CWI have a section within Syriza don’t expect them to have much say though they will make a lot of noise but very little will come of it. They have also taken on a lot of ex Pasoc members and party officials who putting in a British context have seen a lot of defectors from the Labour party who have seen their party discredited in many peoples eyes as they were one of the first party’s to force through austerity doing the ECB’s European Central Banks and the Troikas job for them. Syriza will come to power with the pledge to re negotiate the bank bailout and try they might. But Syriza will certainly try. One of the first actions of a Syriza government will be to demand a reduction of public debt in Greece and Europe through an international debt conference. European governments and institutions will probably enter negotiations without making any concessions. Karitzis says, 'They are convinced that we will eventually compromise, that time is against us, and so they won’t be too hostile in the beginning.' Giorgos Chondros, director of Syriza’s department for environmental policy, expects negotiations to drag on for a while. 'We will not only have to fight the Greek elites, but also the European ones. This makes our situation much more difficult. We’ll need the support of movements in the whole of Europe.' John Milios anticipates 'psychological warfare' from EU elites and creditors. Greece will most likely violate some of the provisions of the EU’s deficit rules. 'There is no doubt that the numbers we see about Greek government accounts, the banks’ asset books, are all forged,' Yanis Varoufakis, professor of economics and Syriza advisor, says. The true state of public finances will probably come to the surface soon after a Syriza government is instated. Party figures argue that for economic reasons the Euro zone cannot afford to kick Greece out. European elites could, however, exert pressure in other ways. They could trigger a bank run inside Greece. They could tarnish the image of Greece as a tourist destination. The European Central Bank (ECB) could stop returning profits from interest on Greek government bonds. Less structural funds for infrastructure projects like roads might be awarded to Greece – according to Varoufakis, the rules concerning these funds have been loosened in the past to support the current Greek government, meaning they could simply be applied more strictly to harm a Syriza government. Investors in Greek government bonds have been reassured by 'winks' from Berlin and the ECB, suggesting that should Greece not pay, the debt would be covered. Varoufakis warns that 'they might as well do the opposite to increase financial pressure on a left government.' All of these measures would damage Syriza’s ability to deliver important promises to re-establish free access to healthcare, increase the lowest pensions and introduce rent subsidies. Possibly the most serious strategy would be for the ECB to threaten to stop providing liquidity to Greek banks. Varoufakis describes this as a 'nuclear weapon' which could bring the Greek banking sector down almost immediately. It would be extreme, but not unthinkable: In December 2014, the ECB threatened to effectively cut off Greek banks unless the government complied with Troika wishes. Varoufakis is convinced that a Syriza government must be prepared for this form of blackmail if it is to last long enough to negotiate a new deal for Greece. Despite all these challenges, there is still optimism among Syriza members. Although many consider it possible that their government could last only for a few weeks, they say their chances are better today than they would have been in 2012. They see fractures within the neoliberal bloc that they can try to exploit, like the ECB’s fear of deflation, the position of Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and the recent conflicts within the French government. By getting into government and implementing first measures, Syriza hopes to accelerate existing debates, especially within European social democracy and the trade unions. I am no longer in favour of taking a electoral route to change I think its a dead end strategy but if Syriza do win power I do think we should support them to a point. If there looks to be a backlash in the streets where the likes of the Golden Dawn are set against Syriza supporters us as Militant anti fascists we must stand with them and with the Greek working class. This is getting serious now. If Syriza do not carry through their programmed and leave millions let down and hopeless I dread to think of the backlash from the far right and how this will play out. Whilst I am no support of electoral projects I do think there’s support needed for Syriza even if in a critical sense to build confidence of workers to rejoin the class struggle in Greece to rejoin the struggle against austerity and give hope to other nation such as Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy and so on that we can fight back and win. We need to get to the point where workers feel confident enough to feel they can run society for themselves. Whilst we may be some way from that factory and workplace occupations and strikes can all add to workers confidence that things do not have to be this way The possibility of a new society is there if we are not sucked in by various sub plots and diversion tactics which no doubt will be coming. It is no surprise tonight to hear our prime minister in the UK David Cameron who is now saying Europe face’s further times of uncertainty following these Greek elections. If a small nation like Greece voting in a supposed anti austerity party despite all its faults and it does have many then just wait until the Spanish, Italian and French working class begin to re start the fight after a lull. The euro crisis never went away as much as many bourgeois commentators hoped its back with a bang now and Greece is where we will be watching closely for things we can learn from. Solidarity with the Greek working class tonight. Remember change is in the streets, the factory’s the workplaces and communities not in the ballot box.

2014 and what will the new year have in store for us?

Allot more of the same I should imagine. With a general election being many political thinking peoples main source of interest for me it is completely not. A period of sustained bullshit being pumped out from all sides and angles. Where party leaders are analysis in all different ways does their hair look good? Are their prime ministerial whatever that means and so on? I can’t wait as you can clearly tell. For me I am asked who do I want to win the election and would either side winning make any difference. Whilst I think it might change the land we fight on if it’s a Tory or labour headed up government it would be different we can’t ignore that. But the programmes both are signed up to are not different at all. "In the UK, I don’t think there have been many big, definitive moments that sum up the year as a whole: just like in 2013, life for most people has mostly continued gradually getting worse, and my real pay, just like yours, is probably worth less now than it was 12 months ago. Still, there have been moments of really inspiring resistance: in particular, the emerging movement against police brutality and white supremacy in the US has been amazing to see, and the amount of organising that seems to be happening around housing in London at the moment is also very encouraging. 2014 in feminism, gender and misogyny (content warning for discussion related to sexual violence):" "Just like in previous years, when thinking about themes that run through a lot of the year’s big stories, sexism and patriarchy have come up again and again. On the left, there’s not been anything to rival the SWP’s rape coverup and subsequent messy split, although Russell Brand’s continued interest in radical politics has, once again, raised the question of prominent lefty men with dodgy attitudes, most recently with the discovery that he endorsed pick-up artist Neil Strauss’s book. To his credit, Brand himself seems able to accept that his behaviour has been sexist and he needs to work on changing it; as I don’t know the man personally, I can’t judge his sincerity very well, but I do think that, when Brand is discussed, his sexist record needs to be part of the conversation. While I can’t say how much I do or don’t trust Brand as a person, what I do know is that, after all we’ve learnt about Great Men and their defenders, after Healy and Galloway and Assange and Sheridan and Smith and Hedley, anyone who’s still so desperate for an idol to look up to that they try to shut Brand’s problematic gender politics out of the conversation is definitely not to be trusted." "More generally, I feel like, compared to a lot of other movements for progressive change, feminism seems to be doing quite well; it’s hard to measure, but feminist voices certainly seem quite prominent in pop culture, and it feels like an encouraging number of people are growing up with feminist ideas as part of their “common sense” worldview. It’s always tricky trying to draw direct comparisons between one struggle and another, but I do think it is at least worth asking what other movements could learn from the progress that feminists have made in the culture wars. But while some progress has been made, there’s a long way still to go. This year hasn’t seen much in the way of big, high-profile national disputes. For my money, probably the most significant workplace action of the year was the 90 days of strike action taken by care workers in Doncaster, but the Care UK strike never really managed to break out of its isolation – Unison, let alone other unions representing care workers like the GMB, never wanted to treat the dispute as worth national attention, the left groups who got involved just pushed a strategy of calling on Unison to deliver solidarity, and other, more rank-and-file tendencies who might have been able to suggest a more practical strategy for relating directly to other care workers never really got involved. Now that it’s ended with the strikers accepting a deal that’s a tiny bit less bad than Care UK’s original offer, but far less than the wage they’d been on previously – roughly speaking, a cut of 30% rather than 35% – a worrying precedent has been set for care workers across the country: if the Doncaster strikers could display such exceptional determination, but still end up being ground down and picked off in isolation, what hope is there for any less militant groups of care workers?" "On the fringes of the workers’ movement, some progress has been made with organising in non-unionised workplaces: the cinema workers who’ve been organising at places like the Ritzy, Curzon Cinema and Everyman Cinemas, the hospitality workers who’ve been organising in Brighton and Norwich and Sheffield, and the ongoing organising effort among warehouse workers in West London. These efforts are mainly very small-scale, but they’re still a welcome step in the right direction." It is hard to not feel depressed at all is going on in the world and the lack of any meaningful fightback but there is always stuff going on which doesn’t get the attention they deserve. The highpoint of class struggle in the UK this year has probably been the steady growth of a self-organised movement over housing. Two particular highlights from the start and end of the year were the effective scrapping of the Bedroom Tax in Scotland in February and the victory won by New Era tenants who forced Westbrook Partners to pull out of their estate – a temporary victory, but a victory nonetheless - but there’s been a lot of other important action around housing throughout the year: the Carpenters’ Estate occupation, tenants in Bristol pushing landlords into making repairs and reducing rents, Glasgow tenants winning refunds from rip-off letting agents, the Poor Doors campaign pushing Redrow into pulling out of 1 Commercial Street, and, perhaps most impressively, direct action preventing evictions in a lot of different places – Nottingham, Newcastle, Liverpool, Southwark & Lambeth, Newham, Salford, Queens Park and beyond. Eviction resistance has to be one of the most powerful forms of (relatively) small-scale direct action. In a better society, of course, it wouldn’t be needed at all, but while evictions continue to happen, it’s good to see so many people willing to turn out to block them. In particular, it’s worth comparing the results of ground-level eviction resistance to the attempt to ban revenge evictions, which was sabotaged by two Tory MPs, both landlords, just talking the bill out. This shows the difference between top-down and grassroots solutions: trying to change the law ultimately depends on relying on the property-owning class, and even actual landlords, to act in our interests. Tenant-led action like eviction resistance allows us to act for ourselves, without relying on anyone else. The New Era and Focus E15 campaigns have been hugely inspirational, but what’s most important is that they aren’t just isolated outliers, but just the most visible tip of a movement that includes many other, less well-publicised groups, like Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth. While a lot of the most impressive anti-austerity action this year has been about housing, worthwhile action has taken place on a lot of other fronts as well. Near the start of the year, there was the wave of claimant protest that led to Atos pulling out of the Work Capacity Assessment contract, while the direct action campaign led by pensioners and disabled people in South Yorkshire has won full reinstatement of disabled travel passes, partial reinstatement of elderly travel passes, and beaten attempts to break the campaign by using the law against key activists. They now intend to continue until the cuts to travel passes are completely reversed. Recent months have also seen a partial revival of the student movement, with a large and unruly demonstration not sanctioned by the NUS as well as a number of occupations, and more marches for free education planned at the end of January. The long-running campaign against workfare has also continued to make steady, small-scale progress, with a number of workfare users pulling out after being targeted. Meanwhile, over in Ireland this year has seen an impressive campaign of resistance to water charges, with huge demos just being the most visible point of a campaign that’s also included widespread direct action to stop water meters from being installed. Elsewhere, there have been other important struggles against repression: in just the last few months, there’s been huge protests in Mexico after the police-linked kidnapping of 43 students, along with the shooting of several others, and Greek anarchist prisoner Nikos Romanos has won the right to education after a hunger strike backed by a massive solidarity movement across the country. Meanwhile, the Operation Pandora crackdown on anarchists in Spain has triggered an angry response, and Operation Pandora is just part of a larger repressive trend that’s also seen a new “gagging law” with the introduction fines of 100-600 euros for offences such as filming police, lack of respect for the police, and unauthorised gatherings in public places, as well as heftier fines of 601-30,000 euros for preventing an eviction, resisting authority, or refusing to dissolve a protest, and incredibly high fines of 30,000-600,000 euros for “organisation of events or recreational activities despite prohibition by the authorities”. In the UK, we’ve seen survivors of a number of historical cases of repression continuing long-running fights for justice: from blacklisted construction workers like Dave Smith, and the surviving members of the Shrewsbury 24 still continuing their fight against the state that fitted them up, to the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign and the women tricked into long-term relationships with undercover cops. In all these cases, their persistence and determination has been admirable, and I wish them all the best for the New Year. Looking to the future: The next few months will be very difficult for anyone committed to independent working-class politics. As much as I dislike the various political parties, it’s still the case that a lot of good, committed activists are drawn to one party or another, and it’s often possible to work productively with individual party members on a local level. If you’re involved in an organising project alongside party-affiliated activists, then get ready to take on a disproportionate amount of responsibility or else put the whole thing on hold for the next few months, as the odds are that they’ll suddenly find their union or community commitments are completely eclipsed by the need to go out door-knocking to spread the good word about their favored candidate. Conventional political wisdom has it that elections are an important opportunity for activists to “get their issues on the agenda”, but, to take an example that’s so obvious it’s practically a cliche, students did a pretty good job of getting tuition fees on the Lib Dem electoral agenda last time around, and it didn’t do them a whole lot of good. We might be able to get politicians to talk about the issues that matter to us in the weeks leading up to the election, but once it’s over that still doesn’t leave us with the power to actually make them do anything. The challenge is not to try and influence politicians – a strategy that inevitably ends up with our schedules and priorities being set by the politicians we want to try and appeal to, rather than worked out collectively from below – but to work out our own agenda, and stick to it – not to push a particular electoral candidate, or even to push an anti-electoral message as such, but to push the same issues and problems that mattered to us six months ago, and will still matter to us in a year’s time. To take housing as an example – if we can “put housing on the agenda” for politicians this election season, we’ll get some fine-sounding rhetoric out of it, and a few more politicians posing for photo-ops with New Era tenants and Focus E15 Mums, but that in itself doesn’t mean anything in terms of policy changes. In contrast, if we organise together with our neighbours, then we can apply our energies right now to preventing evictions, or pressuring crappy landlords into making overdue repairs, or getting unfair fees back from rip-off letting agents. And the best bit is, because our power to do this is something we create together, not dependent on any outside source, we’ll still have the same collective power to do these things long after the electoral circus has packed up and gone home. Whatever your main priority is, that lesson is worth bearing in mind through the weeks and months of electoral distractions that are coming up ahead. with extracts and quotes from the excellent blog over at Cautiously pessimistic http://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/12-months-that-mostly-didnt-really-shake-the-world-that-much-2014-in-review/

The Trade unions the left and strikes and no strikes this week

In this post I wil examine the left and its attitude towards strikes and how they are failing workers as leaders in certain unions and are well off track in others. In this weeks Weekly Worker a online and I think paper of the CPGB who I don’t agree with on a lot of things often stumble across something which is spot on and this weeks article on Unison and the left is spot on in regards to this weeks strikes and non strikes as some turned out to be. “Well, it did not take much for the union tops to postpone local government strike action on October 14. Indeed it was not even a firm offer - merely a “proposal” that Unison had previously rejected, but has now been dressed up as an improvement. In the face of this there have been some rather stupid comments by sections of the left, to the effect that the union leaders sold out, while the mass of the membership was chomping at the bit. For example, a member of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, identified only as “a Unison local government member”, asserts that there had been “a determined two-week campaign by the bureaucracy to extinguish a fighting mood over pay”.1 As for the Socialist Workers Party, it stated: “It was wrong to call the strike off …. We should demand the strikes are reinstated and coordinated with other public-sector unions where possible.”2 Unfortunately, however, the reality is that it has been very difficult to build up any enthusiasm for strike action despite the wishful thinking of large parts of the left. There is now to be a double consultation on the revised proposal. Unison, Unite and the GMB will put it to their members next week, while the Local Government Association will consult its affiliates. The prospect for a bad deal is high, but there are reasons other than pay to reject this proposal despite our weak position. There are rumours that the bureaucracy has conceded in principle various proposals that will not feature in the consultation with union members. Proposals that fit in entirely with the employers’ workforce strategy, but grant the unions something they desperately want: their feet under the negotiating table. There have been accusations of deliberate misinformation on the part of Unison’s Heather Wakefield in the run-up to the proposed strike. She had claimed that Unite had pulled out of the October 14 action, while the GMB was wavering, and it was thought that delegates at Unison regional briefings would be presented with a motion to suspend the strike. However, at the October 9 London briefing the Wakefield statement was withdrawn and delegates were informed that Unite and GMB were definitely on board and so all three unions would be out. A majority of London delegates wanted the strike to go ahead and thought they could deliver some kind of successful action in the capital, even if some thought it would be weaker than the July 10 strike. It seems that, even whilst the London meeting was taking place, a postponement of the strike was being discussed with the employers. Later that same day it was announced that the strike was off.3 Despite our own weak position and only the remote prospect of achieving any movement on pay, I felt that the Tuesday actionshould have gone ahead. It was part of a coordinated campaign across large sections of the public service that culminates with the TUC demonstration on October 18. It would also have acted as a morale boost for NHS strikers, including members of unions calling industrial action for the first time, who had taken part in a four-hour action on the Monday. As things stand, the employers have completely outmanoeuvred the unions and are clearly confident of achieving everything they want - for no more than they originally offered and probably less than they budgeted for. They look to be on target for a win, win, win. However, as usual, the left seems incapable of acknowledging the strength of the employers and their strategic and tactical superiority. Neither do they acknowledge the parlous state of our organisations and the widespread belief that we are not in a position to defend past gains. Instead the left just seems to hope that workers’ lack of confidence will be overcome if only we got a fighting lead from the union tops. Eschewing a proper analysis that might reveal the employers’ strengths and our own weaknesses, it blames it all on the bureaucracy. The offensive against the working class has progressed over the last 25 years without let-up. Objectively the conditions for a fightback ought to be good, but the strike-happy left routinely and repetitively commits the same errors and is consequently ignored by the vast majority of workers. They just do not buy the aimless, ultra-enthusiastic posturing that proffers a fantasy rather than a sober assessment of what is and is not possible, given both the subjective and objective conditions. Workers want and need the truth, not patronising nonsense. The left, as epitomised by the two largest organisations, the SWP and SPEW, have an excuse for a strategy. It is this: enthuse and embolden the workers with good-news stories about action - any action, but preferably a strike - because they will then learn in struggle and come to accept the leadership of the ‘revolutionaries’. This elitist approach leads these organisations to vastly exaggerate and put a gloss on everything, effectively to trick the workers into taking action and, hopefully, recruiting some of them. The bullshit has been thoroughly internalised so that many rank-and-file members of the SWP and SPEW actually believe the crap that they come out with. I remember a disastrous local strike action a few years back, when 90% of workers crossed the picket line. An unmitigated disaster, yet it was described by one leftwing blogger as “well supported”, “fantastic” and “a great success”. She even posted a photo of about 12 forlorn demonstrators standing outside the town hall as proof positive that we had all done very well indeed. In a subsequent ‘assessment’ of that strike SWP and SPEW members were unable to keep up the pretence when confronted with undeniable facts, but they quickly resorted to that other excuse: “We recruited 50 members to the union,” they proudly said - only to be told that we also lost an equal number as a direct consequence of the foolish action. Did they learn anything? Unfortunately no. We still get the same over-enthusiastic, unrealistic, puerile nonsense. Facts may be uncomfortable, but you need them to plan anything useful. There is a disconnect between the unions and their members. You can see it in ballots, inquorate and poorly attended meetings, insufficient stewards and health and safety reps, and in a host of other areas. Representative democracy barely exists and the left is entrenched within a hollowed-out shell of an organisation. They take the easy road, accommodating to that weakness and lack of democracy which substitutes for workers’ self-organisation, whilst exhorting the union tops to do better and blaming them when they don’t. It is important to understand the nature of the current situation. We are under relentless attack from all angles, in every area of life. All the forces of the state and most of the employers are determined to weaken, sideline and neuter the unions. On our side the unions have resorted to the provision of largely useless ‘services’ and quick fixes through amalgamations, while a declining, ever fragmenting left seems incapable of learning anything. There will be a turn-around, but only if we make it happen. We are not yet sufficiently organised and equipped to mount a counteroffensive. Notwithstanding the odd, isolated victory here and there, the current strategy has to be defensive: maintaining, organising and cohering forces, so that we are able to mount a counteroffensive when we are ready. We have to overcome the disconnect and that means being honest and forthright.” Extracts in quotation marks from this article over at the Weekly Worker publication of the CPGB. http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1030/unison-left-carry-on-regardless/ Notes 1. www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/19481. 2. Socialist Worker October 14. 3. The proposal is available at www.unison.org.uk/njc-14-51.

Why UKIP is gaining ground and why the left is no where to be seen

Last nights win and close second win for UKIP should be a wake up call for us all. While UKIP has come far in 20 + years the left if anything has gone backwards and here I will explain why. UKIP are not just a protest vote and cannot be under estimated as much of the current left are doing. We must be awake and alert to their advance. I confidently predict if Labour form the next government which seems most likely although this could be wrong just going by current polling figures. Labour will form a government like no other labour go they will embark on a quest of austerity and carrying on where the Tories and lib dems will leave off. This is not to rule out the Tories and lib Dems who will have a say in who forms the next gov still. This will benefit UKIP who are posing as the anti establishment and the protest vote of the day so far and are doing well with that if we’re all honest. Much of the left appear blinded by UKIP and cannot see how they will grow in this coming period. Nigel Forage who is the main man of UKIP so far has positioned himself cleverly and is able to pick up disillusioned mainly Tory but also labour voters of the north which should send shockwaves down all sides of the left that how he is able to get away with this. Well let me spell it out for those who cannot see such things. UKIP is not going away anytime soon anyone who thinks they are just a flash in the pan and will go away once the general election comes into focus will be sadly mistaken I feel. I am no supporter of UKIP and it’s hard to pin them down what they are and what they stand for. Some on the left think they are fully fascist and racist and should be no platformed others are a bit more wary and see them more than just far right nutters and actually can see them becoming the main party on the right in UK politics in the coming period given the secular decline of the Conservatives. Too many UKIP are anti European and anti immigration. But delving closer into their policies which I advise all to do if they can would appear not so anti establishment as they may like to make out. In fact I’d go as far as to say they are Tories on steroids who want to take back the right as their own and start afresh as an independent Great Britain isolated from the rest of Europe. As far as I can see the left in the United Kingdom are failing at opposing them and in some case’s going along with what they say. Take the left nationalist no to EU yes to democracy the CPB and the socialist party backed by RMT stood for in this years and also 2009’s European elections agrees with the right in that too many workers are heading to these shores and something must be done about it. This is classic left nationalism which appeals to very few on the left as it stands and is rightly rejected by the working class who vote for this. No to EU is a disaster and a car crash and I’m glad it is being tossed about like a boat in a storm and will eventually be ship wrecked with any luck. I am neither for the EU or against it to be honest I don’t know enough about the inn’s and out’s of such things but I am sure I will learn about such things given time. At present no left force in Britain gets how UKIP are doing so well. Some say they are just racist and should be ignored. Others engage with them and find themselves floundering as UKIP are able to put forward a good anti austerity argument as to why we should leave the EU. This will be put out very clearly in 2017 if we do go for an in/out referendum which the Tories are fully signed up to. A lot of people have under estimated UKIP and their influence back in the main 3 parties and are rightly or wrongly hoovering up votes for those desperate for something different however it looks and sounds. The left in Britain in or out of the labour party have no answers to the UKIP march on power the country appears to be heading more and more to the right and this worries me deeply with no electoral left to talk of with TUSC only being trotted out in local elections and no to EU in the recent European elections just gone. Who can be under any illusion that the left get UKIP and know how to take it on. Quite frankly the left are floundering and have no answers to the current crisis of capitalism apart from the old tired out dogma’s of nationalisation which to me is supporting the idea of state capitalism. For me having been in a trotskyist group and seeing for myself its failings and lack of democracy it is no wonder that now no party on the left be it left or far left can put forward any sort of alternative to the current mire we found ourselves in. Simply put the left have vacated the battle ground in favour of minor concessions just to take their place in securing capitalisms long term future which will stabilise if nothing will rock yet again. Capitalism is never far from the next crisis yet the left in the UK are blinded by their own contradictions and cannot see beyond the end of their noses. We need an alternative that will put the working class first and not rely on any so called leaders of our movement. As workers we have the power to change society if we so wished. Let’s start here in understanding where we are and beyond. UKIP can be pushed back if the left actually get to gripes with what they are. For the left seeing voters leave to join UKIP is beyond them but instead of blaming them and writing those off maybe try to chat to them ask how things could be better and how. There is a world to win out there all the best

Learning the lessons from the last 4 years of austerity

We simply can’t go on doing the same thing and hoping the results will be different. There is a sort of year 0 approach going on on the left right now in regards to the upcoming public sector strikes on July 10th over pay. A black spot on the left is it it rarely looks back over its own history and analysis’s its own role in the situation and where it went wrong. So as we head into another big strike day in the UK the same bold statements are coming out from various left groups and sources. We must all get out for this day build for July 10th etc etc yet no lessons appear to have been considered since the public sector pensions dispute back in 2011 which saw up to 2 million people take strike action on November 30th. So we not remember the role played by the union tops in the selling out of this dispute the heads of agreement that was made behind member’s backs? Well I do and I did not even take part in the strike action myself. We must warn workers when taking strike action this time around to be aware of their leaders looking for a quick deal and to get away from escalating action as quickly as possible. The last thing a union wants is a dispute it cannot control. The last big dispute was organised top down in a much regimented fashion The way a strike is built is very key when it springs from the bottom up much like the sparks dispute back in 2011 the union finds it far harder to control and a lot more militant action can be built. I do think we are lacking a good rank and file movement to hold union leaders to account and to even go beyond them if need be. Workers should be in control and own their own battles and not leave it up to unelected full time officials of various unions. Failing to learn these lessons and following the same actions and ideas of various left’s is a recipe for further defeats and demoralisation I’m afraid. Lastly I’d like to offerm y full solidarity and support to those taking action on july 10th but this cant be a one off day out on strike furter action must follow and soon.

The lefts over optimism

Now I was a member of a left wing party the socialist party of England and Wales the CWI and I am now in no party at present. I left for many reasons too many for one blog post but I did feel one of the most frustrating parts of the left and the far left in particular is to over egg a situation and to talk up a strike or an election like it is the most important thing in the world for some time. Recent reality would suggest otherwise. Take the 2 million people out on strike in the public sector in late 2011 where did it get to? Completely smashed and an opportunity missed by all the trade unions including those who claim to be on the left. As for elections don’t get me started. This year TUSC, The Trades Union and Socialist Coalition which is mainly run and backed by the Socialist party of which I was once a proud member before I was somewhat drummed out of it sadly. TUSC was hoping for a breakthrough as it always does in elections this time it had fielded an impressive 560 candidates in local elections including a few mayoral elections oddly too. SO yes all well and good I can’t fault this at all even if most were paper candidates like me not so long ago. But the election results were poor we have to say; again the level of rhetoric did not match the results for the SP who did not manage to gain any councillors. The one bit of light was Keith Morral who retained his seat in Southampton despite being expelled from the labour party for fighting and voting against the cuts down there so fair play. Even if Keith did not stand on a TUSC label on the ballot paper which can’t be seen as a win for TUSC as a result it is welcome an anti cuts councillor is back in the council chamber all the same. The attempt by the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition to make a breakthrough in the May 22 local elections in England and Wales - in terms of both achieving a large vote and gaining wide publicity - was unfortunately unsuccessful. Tusc’s 560 candidates polled 68,031 votes - an average of 121 per candidate. But this average is rather skewed by, in particular, the victory of Keith Morrell in Southampton Coxford. Comrade Morrell was one of two Labour councillors suspended for their opposition to cuts who formed the Councillors against Cuts group. This time standing for Tusc, all be it as an independent the reason for which is still unclear to myself he picked up 1,633 votes. Another score that was well above the average was Dave Nellist’s 974 votes (29.7% for second place) in Coventry St Michael’s, where he had been a Socialist Party/Socialist Alternative councillor for 14 years from 1998 to 2012. A second former councillor, Chris Flood, also fell well short of winning back his seat, gaining 659 votes (16.18%) in Lewisham Telegraph Hill. He also stood as Tusc’s mayoral candidate in Lewisham, where he won 1,354 votes (1.88%). In both contests he was a fair way behind John Hamilton of Lewisham People before Profit, who won 6,014 votes (8.33%) for mayor and 1,258 votes in Telegraph Hill (second place). People before Profit stood in all 18 Lewisham wards, by the way, winning an average of 14%. The driving force behind Tusc is, of course, the Socialist Party in England and Wales. In fact SPEW comrades were so busy campaigning for Tusc that they decided they would not be able to publish The Socialist on Wednesday May 21 - the pre-election issue was printed on Wednesday May 14 and was dated May 15-28. So, after this all-out effort, SPEW must be very disappointed in the election results. However, its public reaction is mixed. On the one hand, it wants to play up Tusc’s impact: “In 21 councils Tusc has polled over 1,000 votes. In 10 of these, it has been over 2,000. A powerful anti-austerity message has been sent in all these areas.” The Tusc statement continues: “In 31 councils Tusc stood in over 30% of wards and in five of them (including Southampton) it averaged more than 5% where it stood.” On the other hand, it wants to blame the media for failing to give it the necessary publicity. Tusc’s total of 560 candidates was the fifth highest after the big four (including Ukip, obviously) and it contested 13% of all seats. It was “indisputably ahead of the rest of the pack” - the party with the sixth largest number of candidates being the British National Party, with 106 candidates. “Yet Tusc’s share of media coverage is no way commensurate with the number of candidates we are standing” and in fact the BBC website’s “guide to the English council results doesn’t even include Tusc in its handy list of abbreviations”.2 While the complaint against the media is reasonable on one level, both these arguments are incorrectly based. Tusc’s “powerful anti-austerity message” did not make any real impact. A couple of thousand votes across a whole town or borough represents a very small proportion and even in those areas most workers will still not have heard of Tusc, let alone take on board its political message. But why blame the media for this lack of impact? After all, a common complaint against politicians in general is that ‘You don’t see them between elections’ - and that applies to Tusc even more. For it does not actually function in any real sense at other times. SPEW is campaigning under its own name, while Tusc is hidden away out of sight. And what can be said about SPEW applies many times over to the Socialist Workers Party, which takes no part in Tusc other than nominating a handful of SWP candidates for each election. It will be most interesting to see if the RMT union continuesto back TUSC in the coming years after its dear leader Bob Crow sadly passed way he was a big part of TUSC and his failed no to EU left nationalist project both seem to be struggling badly will a union which has fingers in other pies continue to prop up a tired, worn out political project based on a labour mark 2 model? While Tusc was the left’s main standard-bearer in the local elections that ‘honour’ fell to the campaign known as ‘No to the EU, Yes to Workers’ Rights’ in the European Union parliamentary poll. Thankfully, however, 2014 will undoubtedly be the last we hear of No2EU and its abhorrent anti-European Union left nationalism. First let us state the bare results. No2EU picked up 31,757 votes, which represents 0.2% overall - 0.3% when you take into account the fact that it only contested seven of the 11 EU British regions. Compare that to 2009, when it recorded 153,236 votes - just about 1%. But, worse, this time around there was virtually no campaign. Take a look at the No2EU website. It has hardly been touched for months. If you click on ‘About us’, you will find a page entitled ‘No2EU meetings’ and learn about two gatherings that took place over a week ago. Following on directly from these two adverts is the statement: “No2EU will be standing 46 candidates in seven regions in the May 22 Euro election, including London, North West, Eastern, Wales, Scotland, York’s and Humber and West Midlands.” All the candidates are then listed. And that is it. Apart from this minimal information buried away as part of an advert for a couple of meetings, No2EU has been unable to give any biographical details about the individual candidates, keep us up to date with the ‘campaign’ or inform us of the results. No wonder SPEW gave up on No2EU, even though two of its comrades - Dave Nellist in the West Midlands and Roger Bannister in the North West - headed its regional lists. As in most of the recent copies of The Socialist, there was not a mention of No2EU in the pre-election issue, let alone a call to vote for it (apart from in the weekly cut-and-paste column from SPEW treasurer Ken Douglas, which states: “The Socialist Party is appealing for £15,000 to help finance our election campaigns for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition … and No2EU in the European elections”). This despite an editorial on the UK Independence Party predicting that Ukip would see “a new swathe of councillors elected on May 22, and do well in the European elections”. Even though the editorial told us, “It is vital to counter Ukip”, it did not even advise its readers to vote for its own comrades standing for No2EU. It concluded by stating: “… central to undermining Ukip will be revealing them to be just one more party for the 1% and, more importantly, beginning to build an electoral voice that really does stand for the millions, not the millionaires.” Obviously No2EU is not that “electoral voice” then. The over talk of we’re going to do this we’re going to do that wound me up no end it was lovely it spoke to a lot of people but rarely translated into much beyond the rhetoric sadly. One can only conclude yet again that the left, divided as it is into competing sect lets, is in an abysmal state. And SPEW’s ‘strategy’ for the building of a “new mass workers’ party” has once again shown itself to be a sorry joke unfortunately. We need to start being realistic on the left we are not going to get anywhere otherwise we cant pretend we are where we want to be we are in a hole and we need to accept that to move on. With thanks to the CPGB and the weekly worker for extracts at http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1012/may-22-results-once-again-a-sorry-joke/

Labours drop in the poles; will they still win next year?

It was not only predictable but predicted – by many, on all manner of social media - which this government would start to rebuild its base and Labour's fragile poll lead would collapse, in the year before the general election. This is now happening. Labour's support has fallen six percentage points, and the Tories have a lead for the first time in ages. Why? Hasn't the Labour Party issued a number of popular statements, from fuel freezes to rent controls? Isn't this government implementing profoundly unpopular policies such as the de facto privatisation of the NHS? Isn't austerity - or at least this government's version of it - unpopular with most voters? And if Ed Miliband is uninspiring, wasn't he just as uninspiring when he had a seemingly commanding poll lead? The fact that labour is sleep walking into a defeat in the next general election in 2015 is interesting on many levels. Of course they can still win and nothing has been decided yet of course it would mean the Tories would need to go into next years election with a 7 point lead to achieve a majority. Labours opposition to the government has been woeful more often than not agreeing to the same policies but all is it doing it slightly differently such as the benefit cap which will cause many to suffer in the coming years. I think a lot of Labours drop in the polls and failure to really get a big lead over the Tories is down to several things but not least the fact many just don’t connect with Ed Miliband. Many I speak to find him weird and a little geeky and this doesn’t reflect well with people even if what he is saying some agree with such as price freezes to energy bills. The unions resistance has been pitiful not merely because of bad leadership, and not merely because they have been narrow and sectional in approach, more interested in limiting the immediate damage and preserving the bargaining mechanisms that limited their militancy in exchange for some influence than in leading a broad offensive against austerity. As important has been the politics of the union base, the grassroots. It's not just that there is no 'rank and file' to speak of, no movement 'from below' capable of driving the unions into confrontation with the government. It's not just that unions are more bureaucratised, more dependent on their leaderships than ever for initiative in such matters as industrial action and political campaigns. It is that the space for organised radical politics has declined in the union movement in proportion as it has elsewhere. The extra-Labour left has been nowhere, in total disarray, unsure of its strategy, unable to cohere its diverse strands much less pull together the scattered elements of resistance, unable to consistently mobilise opponents in numbers, and unable to actually disrupt very much (indeed, there are some on the Left for whom disruption is entirely beside the point). In the long, long diminuendo of organised left politics in the UK, the biggest organised left was the tiny far left which, even if it weren't for - you know - everything, was totally unequal to the historical responsibility placed upon it. The five years or so of crisis and austerity have transformed a sectarian left, with each grouplet placing its organisational interests before all else, into a fractal left, characterised by splits within splits, loudly achieving nothing. You know perfectly well why. The break up of the SWP obviously creates a space in which healthy elements can converge and rebuild. The flourishing of individual activists, of critical thinking, of strategic thinking, is real. However, it also liberates - without pointing any fingers - a horde of tinpot generals, smarmy amoral 'operators', cranks, blank-eyed dogmatists who may as well be in the Church of Scientology, vicious self-pitying moralists, bullies and sycophants, and parasites that feast on the decomposing flesh of larger organisms. We have not discussed UKIP here but I do think their influence on next years election where they may be coming off the back of a European elections win and with Nigel Farrage as popular in the media as ever their pull on votes between labour and Tory could play out very interestingly as no doubt UKIP take votes from the Tories but there is also evidence to suggest they are now picking up support from even traditional labour supporters quite worryingly I’d suggest. Labour as it stands does not inspire much hope let alone any change in direction. Its timid policies of interfering in the markets o bring about a more responsible capitalism if such a thing truely exists just do not seem to be capturing many peoples imagination and least not me. With less than a year till the next election in 2015 we will see a very interesting year in politics and I imagine the closer the election next year is looking likely to be the dirtier the tactics from both sides will become. So if you’re asking me who will win next year? I still would say the most likely outcome at this stage is another hung parliament with a possible coalition of either labour and lib dems or Tories and lib dems as we were before and after all the attacks that we have seen on our living standards the thought that the Tories could end up back in power is a disgrace to anyone calling themselves a opposition.

Is the Green party a left wing party and should the left support them?

Is the Green party a left wing party and should the left support them? I like the Green party know a fair few of their members and all seem genuine to me. A fair few are what I’d even describe as socialist and left wing. But are the greens a party that the left could rally behind and more to the point are they even left wing at all? All very interesting questions. I would say personally from my experience they’re on the left without a doubt where you place them after that becomes a big debate. I’d almost compare their politics today as almost old labour style politics of public ownership and higher tax’s on the rich as a basis to go forward. I see the greens as an interesting party with lots of variety and some very forward thinking individuals including their on single MP in Caroline Lucas who I like a lot and have heard speak on a number of occasions. I think she is independent and speaks out on things she believes in and is not tied to a party line like many MP’s are. Whether you are in favour of parliamentary politics or not you cannot fail to notice the green party of late having taken control all be it in a minority fashion in Bright and Hove. Yes the ruling group fronted by the greens have passed on cuts and no amount of hand ringing can get away from this fact for me. Having been a socialist party member and previously stood for TUSC this did not go down well in the anti cuts movement when the green lead council in Brighton passed on the cuts and look to again this year too. But do we therefore right off the greens as a party and a wider movement all because of Brighton city council? Maybe if you are a dogmatic sort I suppose. I tend to look at things a bit more rationally these days in a sense. Those of us outside the party often point to the record of the Greens in Germany, where the party joined a neo-liberal coalition and voted for the Afghanistan war, and in Ireland, where they joined a right wing government and cut healthcare and benefits while saying it was OK because they were creating new cycling schemes. Against this we are told that the Green Party of England and Wales is different – the most left wing Green Party in Europe, even. Does this all stand up ? Well the Brighton council thing does not want to go away it seems and the greens will be judged on this their claims to the contrary. Of course that is not the whole story of the Green council in Brighton. As you might expect, it has been pursuing many sustainability initiatives. More significantly, it has just declared that no Brighton council tenants will be evicted if they cannot afford their rent because of the bedroom tax. And councilors have been active in supporting all sorts of other local campaigns. But when it comes to the key issue of fighting austerity, there is scarcely even a cigarette paper between the Greens’ “fairer” cuts and Labour’s. The bogeyman of Eric Pickles’ administrators coming in and making the cuts is used to justify… making the cuts. Spotting the pattern After the first Brighton budget, the Greens held a vote at their conference on whether it was the right to make the cuts. It wasn’t even close – two thirds backed the Brighton councilors. It was at this point that Joseph Healy, one of the founders of internal left wing grouping Green Left, quit the party on principle. As he noted “A few days later at the party’s national conference, despite vigorous objections from Green Left, the party voted to support the Brighton decision. Pragmatism had defeated principle, realpolitik triumphed over radicalism. While the Green Party has many good socialist members, and some radical policies, it is not a party of the left – deliberately so. It has always included different wings of the green movement. Quite a large element of the membership are devoted to an agenda of ‘cycling and recycling’, with a narrow focus simply on environmental issues. While there are many who see themselves as part of the left, they are happy to work alongside those who use the phrase “neither left nor right” with a straight face. Open expressions of leftism are widely seen as a turn-off to voters, and class is generally not thought relevant. The party just voted to put a commitment to “social justice” in its constitution, but that’s as far as it is willing to go. The consequences of this are that Green politicians’ positions can be all over the map. I l have a lot of time for the greens but are they ultimately the answer. I am not sure. I do think they have much to offer and have some very good genuine members but I’m just not sure managing the left side of capitalism is a goal worth fighting for. . Of course we’ll all work with Greens in the battles we face against austerity – and with the many people in Labour, too, who want to oppose the Tories’ destruction of everything we’ve worked for. There is too much at stake not to. But the Green Party offers no solution to the problem of working class representation, or a left alternative to the mainstream consensus. After all, if the Greens are the answer, then why are so many crying out for something new?

CWI: A bureaucratic farce, solidarity with Bruce Wallace

and the group of 11 My former party the CWI the Socialist Party of England and Wales is under going a crisis it would seem. With the news that long standing member Bruce Wallace has been suspended has not surprised me in the slightest. This all feels very familiar to my time in the party where my blog was used to attack me and my critical thinking was frowned upon too. You would think, perhaps naively, that advocates of two different theories of crisis could co-exist in the same organisation and fight things out at length. Apparently not. After a protracted drama, Wallace has been suspended, in substance for making his criticisms openly - his blog, apparently, is “a platform for a continual stream of invective and attacks on the party”. He has already declared his intention to appeal. While I am no longer a member I have full solidarity with Bruce and the others under attack I know how it feels to feel isolated and cast out as a trouble maker. Indeed this very blog came under intense scrutiny for my own critical views of the way the Socialist party was heading in terms of its methods and ideas. There is much with Bruce and the group of 11 which I agree with most of what they say are spot on to call out the Socialist party’s reformism and dedication to a under consumptionist position economically when it comes to understanding capitalist crisis. Bruce and others including Professor Andrew Kliman who is not a member of the CWI I’d like to point out rightly point towards the Tendency of the rate of profit to fall to find the under lying cause of crisis under capitalism. Why a party cannot co exist with members holding differing views on things I’ll never know. Where is the democracy I wonder? Whilst I don’t agree with everything I can identify with their outlook when it comes to theory. They argue for vigorous theoretical debate in SPEW, based on the actual practice of the Bolsheviks in the pre-revolutionary period. They write, entirely correctly: “democratic centralism prescribes unity on the basis of action, such as programmatic action and activity, and not unity on theory. What is clearer to me though is the fact the revolutionary left and the Marxist and trotskyist left is in crisis and it doesn’t look like a solution is anywhere to be seen as many of them are stuck in their old dogmatic ways and methods. We are going through a period where, it is fair to say, the long-standing organisations of the Trotskyist left are fraying at the edges. We have seen two splits in the space of a year in the SWP. As I write, the Renewal Platform of the International Socialist Organization - the SWP’s erstwhile US group - has been expelled. Workers Power, an orthodox Trotskyist group, has shed a large proportion of its small membership over the last few years. In Ireland, the CWI organisation has itself lost a clutch of experienced members. All these splits have taken place on an extraordinarily thin political basis. We are beginning to recognise the pattern. Comrades, whether through a short, sharp shock (the SWP’s rape debacle) or through a longer disillusionment, come to realise that the grand breakthrough is not, after all, just around the corner. They advance criticisms of the toy town Bolshevism of their organisations, the delusions of grandeur, and set out on their own - whether they jump or are pushed - to really build the movement. What they do not do is sit down and think, and come up with a rounded political alternative. Thus, they drift into liquidationism.

The left and its complacency with the far right

Just last week the widely written off BNP gained a fair few votes in a by election in Wythenshawe and Sale East Michael Kane won with 13,261 votes, beating UKIP's John Bickley, with 4,301, in second. Rev Daniel Critchlow, for the Tories, came third on 3,479 votes, and Lib Dem Mary Di Mauro, came fourth on 1,176. Labour leader Ed Miliband said he was "delighted" by the result while David Cameron said he would listen to voters. The full results were: • Mike Kane (Labour): 13,261 • John Bickley (UKIP): 4,301 • Reverend Daniel Critchlow (Conservatives): 3,479 • Mary Di Mauro (Lib Dem): 1,176 • Nigel Woodcock (Green Party): 748 • Eddy O'Sullivan (BNP): 708 • Captain Chaplington-Smythe (Monster Raving Loony): 288 • Turnout: 28% With a low turnout smaller parties can get more of a look in on a smaller turnout as they don’t need such a big vote to get a decent vote. This is clear with the BNP in this case who many on the left have all but written off claiming they are in disarray and are no longer the party to be aware of instead focusing their attacks and exposures of the likes of UKIP now. But a 708 vote for the BNP shows even in big labour strongholds the fascist vote is still there bubbling under the surface. This is also the North West where Nick Griffin of the BNP holds his MEP seat for this year anyway. For me it shows that the right and especially far right is not gone away and does need confronting at all times. This 708 could tip over a thousand next times and who knows if the BNP were to ever get properly organised and with a good financial backer like UKIP now have then they would quite easily become a force again. So why does the left not seem to be taking the BNP seriously anymore. Well I think it stems from the fact the BNP lost a lot of their seats and votes in last years local elections and this was seen widely to be the final nail in its coffin. But if I’ve learnt anything about fascists is that they will always com back if an alternative is not posed for people. After the walking out of Tommy Robinson from the EDL the far right is without a figure head to rally around. But do they even need one in an area where labour takes for granted will always win and win well is a grave concern for me as the far right will see this as a chance to put down roots in such areas of greater Manchester and so on. Whilst I do not think UKIP are ea out and out racist or fascist party it is clear in their rank-and-file there is many nutters with some very archaic views on society and particular on immigrants to this country. I do think we should be aware a new found modern idea of fascism could come in the form of a euro sceptic disguise. Not all forms of fascism are the same and to think fascists only come in one form and one form only is a dangerous mistake to make. I do think the left needs to be aware of the right at all times and look to provide alternatives and not alienate people. The truth is many people are concerned about immigration in this country but are not always found to be racist at all but are buying into the media’s myths whipped up by polititians to blame immigrants for a lack of jobs, homes and low wages. In reality we need to unite together and fight for all to have the rate of the job and good levels of benefits if not. The right is on the rise across Europe I sense with Greece’s Golden Dawn the national front in France and various neo Nazi’s in Hungary and beyond. It is a worrying time but it is also something we can’t take our eye off the ball about in my opinion.

Statement by some Irish Socialist party members who’ve resigned this year

I am no longer a socialist party member for better or worse and frankly I’m glad I’m out of it all. I am re-examining my own politics and the left as a result. Below I republish a fantastic statement from several ex members of the CWI Socialist party in Ireland who have come to some similar conclusions to myself and had to leave. I do not agree with all of their statement but I can relate too much of what they state. This is not meant as an attack on theCWI or the Socialist party and my former comrades but it is important to publish to let others know that things are not as hunky dory in the SP as the leadership and leading figures like to make out. The group of 11 who are fighting the leadership over economic issues have my support and the likes of Bruce Wallace and Steve Dobbs are genuine people and I feel deserve our support in trying to change a very rigid and dogmatic leadership who think they are always right on everything. This is the statement from 6 Irish SP members below I thank them all for this and lend my solidarity to them and whatever they go on to try next. “This statement has been drawn up by the following recently resigned members of the Socialist Party: Andrew Phelan, Megan in Ghabhlain, Richard O’Hara, Pamela Rochford, Stephanie O’Shea and Jimmy Dignam. Notes: Tragically, Rob Ryan passed away before this statement was completed but he played an important role in the debates that took place around the process of its writing. He repeatedly expressed agreement with the key issues contained within this statement and we feel it is vital that we acknowledge his contribution. We have included links to articles that elaborate further on some arguments made within this document as many of the topics described have been written on extensively before. After our recent resignations it became clear to us that whilst differing on some issues there were some core reasons behind all our resignations. We hope that this document can be a contribution to the debates currently taking place around what kind of mass Party is needed to rebuild the workers’ movement and play a crucial role in overthrowing Capitalism. While not claiming to have the answer to this question we feel it is important for us to offer our criticisms not just of the Socialist Party or the Committee for a Workers International but Trotskyism1 as an ideology. We are aware that the political movement that has been defined as Trotskyism has a wide and varied history, however for the purposes of this statement we will discuss mainly Trotskyism as practised by the dominant Trotskyist parties in contemporary polity and especially the version of Trotskyism dominant in the Irish and British left; that is the Committee for a Workers’ International, the Internatonal Socialists and the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. These parties and international groupings share tendencies discussed below that we believe point to serious issues with the ideology of contemporary British and Irish Trotskyism itself. The reality is that none of us can stand over calling ourselves Trotskyists. Furthermore we feel that Trotskyism by its nature can in many instances act as an obstacle to the development of a truly mass and democratic workers’ party. This is not to malign the contribution of many individual Socialists who are members of Trotskyist parties but to recognise the inherent sectarian nature of these parties and the damage they can do to the wider movement. In this statement we would like to raise tactical differences that emerged between ourselves and the SP but more importantly criticisms of Trotskyism that seem to permeate such organisations to varying degrees. Democratic Deficit and Dogmatic Approach It is an open question whether the anti-democratic nature of the SP and other Trotskyist organisations are a direct result of the dogmatic approach that they implement or if it is the other way around. Regardless, one cannot exist without the other and it is important that we clarify what we mean by both. What do we mean by dogmatic? It is the assertive and uncompromising belief that the methods and programme adopted by the Party are the “one and only true way”; that the party’s tried and tested methods and its doctrine are truly revolutionary and any deviation poses a risk to the Party by watering down its political programme. This will generally be reflected in an authoritarian and emphatic manner by the Party leadership. If any questions are raised around democracy they will be dismissed as being unrelated and irrelevant to the broader class struggle. This is not to diminish the importance of leadership within Socialist organisations, but merely highlight that when a leadership is not open to critique and that this closed leadership is accompanied by a political culture that discourages critical thought it is, in the long run, detrimental to the organisation as a whole. In our experience this culture allows little room for genuine debate in relation to important political questions. Our collective experience as members of the Socialist Party (CWI) points to many instances of this political culture and structure. In the Socialist Party, for example, if a member raises differences they will generally be invited to attend a meeting with a party full-timer where the party line will be vigorously and unyieldingly explained to them. As a result, agreement to the Party’s overall doctrine is an integral part of one’s membership and acceptance within the organization. This makes it very difficult to exist within the organization whilst holding differences of opinion on certain matters. This dogmatic and undialectical approach is used across many other organisational and political practices across the SP. This culture exists partly because the wider membership is not involved in important decision making in any critical matter. This is further contributed to by a certain ‘funnelling downwards of theory’ whereby important ideas are dissected by the leadership and members are given the ‘correct’ analysis. There is little emphasis put on members developing themselves theoretically and in a genuine critical manner2. Another important aspect to this inhibiting atmosphere is the time constraints placed on members by the frenetic activity expected of them. In many circumstances this activity can be ‘manufactured’ and can bear little relevance to the overall goal of Socialism. There is no reflection as to the purpose and usefulness of this constant and frenetic activity. This leads to the Party’s inability to be able to adapt to changes in mood. A division of labour also exists within the SP between the leadership and membership. The leadership makes the critical decisions on policy, theory and direction whilst the membership for the main part is expected to sell the paper door-to-door, pursue new contacts and look after day-to-day organisational tasks. For any organisation looking to be able to be an influencing factor in society but also to be capable of incremently growing in size, it cannot adhere to such dogmatic and intransigent approaches. The SP and other Trotskyist organisations maintain a very high turnover of membership. In many instances Comrades will drift away from the party, without formally resigning, and crucially will not be politically active again or for quite some time. This can perhaps be attributed to ‘burnout’ that many experience due to the aforementioned high levels of activity but also due to an atmosphere which is politcally inhibiting and discourages these Comrades from beginning to critically evaluate politics and the party around them. As a result their new found enthusiasm for Socialist ideas may be extinguished after a short period of time. Democratic structures are not irrelevant The SP styles itself as a Bolshevik Party and thus claims to model its democratic structures on those of that party. However, their structures are inherently undemocratic and bear no resemblance to the structure of the Bolshevik Party that they espouse. It is argued that the organisational method commonly known as ‘democratic centralism’ was used by the Bolshevik Party and therefore these practices must be strictly adhered to and replicated. However this argument is ahistorical as the Bolshevik Party rarely even used the term, nor did it often use anything resembling this method before the October Revolution3. Whilst it may seem somewhat abstract to catalogue what ‘democratic centralism’ within the SP looks like, we feel that this it is important to paint a broader picture of the structures that prop up the dogmatic culture of the Party. There are three main decision-making bodies of the Party; the National Conference, the National Committee (NC) and the National Executive Committee (NEC). The NEC is made up entirely of full-time party workers. The National Conference is the highest decision making body of the party and meets on an annual basis, while the NC assumes the authority of the Conference between conferences and the NEC assumes the authority of the NC between NC meetings. As the SP is divided into two regions across Ireland, these structures are replicated at regional level too. In practice, at the annual conference of the Party the outgoing NEC recommends a slate of members for election to the NC. These members are then voted in by a show of hands of conference delegates. These delegates will have been proposed at a branch meeting and in most instances the Branch Committee (BC) will have put forward a suggested slate of delegates that will have been influenced by the full-timer appointed to that branch. These delegates are not answerable to their branch. This is important as it means that in practice that the leadership often recommends and effectively chooses the delegates who in turn will elect the leadership; such a circular mode of electoral practice has obvious implications for democracy within the party. As there are no minutes or voting records kept of NC or NEC meetings, delegates have nothing to base their voting decision on. The leadership generally will counteract this argument by stating that as they are the only ones that have an overview of the Party, they therefore are best placed in selecting members to leadership positions. Notwithstanding the obvious difficulties in putting forward an alternative slate to that of the party’s leadership, there are clearly much broader systemic problems that an alternative slate simply cannot address. It must be noted too that the slate system was introduced when Lenin was looking to “temporarily minimise dissent” within the Bolshevik Party4 adopted this method and historically it has been a hallmark of Stalinist parties. Moreover essentially annual conference is the only time when the opinion or voice of a member who is not on any decision-making committee will be formally recognised. We say this as there is no capacity for members to have their voice heard throughout the year. For example, it is not possible for a member to put motions forward to the National Committee. In other words a member can only formally propose motions to the party once a year at regional or national conference and at no other time. Top-down decision making process Ultimately then, power in the Socialist Party lies with a handful of National Executive members and unelected full-timers, themselves appointed to their position by the same National Executive, (occasionally other full-timers will be co-opted on to the NEC after the initial election). This circular structure has the obvious danger of being open to abuse. Decisions on matters of importance will always find their origin in NEC meetings. When a decision is to be made on strategy or tactics it will be mooted first at a meeting of the NEC or REC (Regional Executive Committee). The internal full-timers who oversee the running of the branches will then filter the proposed position down the ranks often through individual discussions with NC members and ‘leading’ Branch Committee (BC) members. These members will then filter the prospective position down to branch level through individual discussions and branch meetings. The vast bulk of the National Committee membership, picked due to its adherence to the leadership’s politics, are now more likely to be onside for whatever decision or turn the leadership has decided upon, and will ratify it if necessary at the NC meeting. Meanwhile the rank and file branch members will be notified at their weekly meeting that the party is likely to take a decision on an issue before it happens and after the decision has been taken they will be notified of this. This will usually be the sum total of the involvement of the ordinary member, unless they seriously dissent on the issue, in which case they will be invited to an individual discussion with a full-timer or very occasionally invited to a NC meeting to air their grievance. The party will use these individual discussions or NC invites to give the impression of a vigorously democratic internal regime, where members with concerns about issues are met with and patiently listened to. However this gives a false image of a party where every meeting is stage-managed and where the communication is very much one-way – the dissenting individuals are there purely to be persuaded that they are wrong and not to be listened to. These are not academic points, they have a real impact on how a Party is built, how it can grow numerically and can most importantly develop a critically thinking membership. The structure of the Bolshevik Party in the lead-up to the October Revolution revolved around a dynamic internal atmosphere that prided itself on debate through the publications of the Party and at its meetings, at all times public. Differences on re-building the Workers’ Movement Whilst every Party makes mistakes the Socialist Party possesses limited ability for self-reflection and critique. Furthermore, the belief that the Party’s small organisation is potentially the nucleus of a revolutionary Party and that every strategy or tactic implemented is in the best interests of the workers movement as a whole is flawed, in particular if those decisions are taken without the participation of working class people outside the SP. Our resignations were premised on stark differences with the leadership on recently taken decisions. The following quote is taken from the ‘Battle Against The Bin Tax’ document mainly written by Kevin McLoughlin the de-facto leader of the Socialist Party: The Socialist Party’s view regarding the bin tax and the local elections was that the issue needed to be looked at concretely in the run in to the election period. Any serious electoral challenge could only be based on well built, fighting campaigns with a base in the areas. Weak or phantom campaigns standing candidates would be likely to get small votes. Kevin McLoughlin, Battle Against The Bin Tax Whilst noting that the current context is markedly different to that of 10 years ago, the underlying premise of Kevin’s quote still stands. Rather than engage in a process of evaluation as to why the workers’ movement has not developed since the beginning of the crisis and how the Left can gradually begin a process of building and influencing consciousness, the Party has chosen to dedicate itself to yet another election. Whilst being in favour of standing anti-austerity candidates, we feel that in some areas where CAPTA/AAA is standing, the number of candidates being run and the balance between SP and independent candidates raises serious question marks over the genuine nature of these campaigns. We also share concerns in relation to the level of input and influence non-SP members may have within the alliance. Furthermore we believe that ‘dealing a blow to the establishment’ by getting some anti-austerity candidates elected is problematic without genuine discussion around its purpose and where this initiative is leading ultimately. Lack of Trade Union work Another significant disagreement centres on the SP’s trade union work. Any radical organisation must strive to have a significant base or at least be influential within the trade union movement and work places generally. Given that the SP is supposed to be a party of workers there are a worryingly small percentage of members actively involved in trade unions. This is in no small part due to the fact that the SP has placed minimal emphasis on the importance of trade unions as an important area of struggle. In fact in more recent times union members were told explicitly that the trade union movement would not be a key arena for struggle and the SP leadership repeatedly urged its trade union members to severely curtail their activity within the trade union movement and instead focus their entire energy on the struggles against the property and household taxes. This is all in backdrop to the trade union movement being in the middle of historical battles around the Croke Park agreement and savage attacks on workers. Despite many of its trade union activists being strongly advised that the mood seemed to be favouring rejection of Croke Park 2, it came as a surprise to the SP leadership. Even though certain individuals within the party felt strongly about organising a genuine fightback within their unions we feel the SP leaderships’ emphasis was not on building resistance but more on recruitment. This approach was clearly evident when immediately after the rejection of Croke Park 2 the Party organised a meeting which cut across a teachers grassroots initiative which included individual socialist party trade unionists56 when genuine trade unionists need to concentrate on rebuilding their movement, we feel this can only be achieved by adopting a long-term and committed strategy towards this area of work. ROSA Sectarianism The setting-up of the ‘for Reproductive rights, against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity (ROSA) campaign is another stark example of the Party’s sectarianism. The formation of ROSA occurred with little or no consultation with branch members and those in whose name it was to be set-up. It seems the party leadership felt they needed to capitalise on the growing strength of feeling around abortion rights and wanted a banner to attract people politicised by the death of Savita Halappanavar towards the SP. True to form ROSA was presented to the branches as a fait accompli; the party line decided by the NEC and the party full timers without any discussion as to why the SP was essentially preparing to operate primarily outside the Choice movement. In practice what that meant was that members, especially the small number of active female Comrades, were to curtail their efforts within ARC and its affiliates and focus on ROSA activity. The development of choice campaigns into an integrated, broader and more politicised gender based campaigning group was, of course, far more desirable. If the SP wanted to further politicize ARC and other Choice campaigns it should have concentrated itself solely on this task even if the SP did not have as large a role or influence as is it had wished. Role of Publications Another area of disagreement we have is around the role and nature of party publications. The Socialist is a further example of the Party’s dogmatic attitude to activism and critical thinking. The paper does not currently have an editorial board and members possess virtually no say in the direction and content of the paper. Essentially the paper represents a ‘sum-up’ of the previous months main stories within the media. Furthermore it must be highlighted that the final paragraph of many of the paper’s articles, which states that the solution to the problems of the piece is ‘workers control and management’ falls far short of what is required to popularise Socialist ideas. The myth of Leninist papers “holding the revolutionary ideas” is a crude deviation from reality and of the original historical significance of this idea. Moreover the oft cited (by the SP leadership) Leninist tactic of using the paper as a ‘scaffold’ for the party is certainly not practiced in any way or form, nor is any other SP media7. There is a serious need for debate around the purpose of publications in re-invigorating and creating a platform of Socialist ideas. Publications should partly serve to stimulate discussion and debate on various issues and must move away from just showcasing the Party and being seen as a tool for recruitment. In Conclusion… At this current stage when the workers’ movement is at such a low ebb the Left should be discussing how we rebuild and generally popularise Marxist ideas. The SP’s dogmatic approach towards programmatic agreement and activity means that it will always be hampered in its ability to grow. When the SP says it is in favour of a ‘new mass workers’ Party’, it is imperative that we discuss how such a Party could develop. This document does not represent a political attack on any member of the SP and we reiterate that it should be seen as a contribution to the current and wider debate on structures and programme. We do not have any difficulties working alongside the SP within campaigns, trade unions and most crucially the building of a new mass workers party. Whilst the last 6 years of austerity have provided a so far limited fight-back against these policies, we firmly believe that this situation will and can move in a positive direction. We feel it is imperative that debate, discussion and analysis take place over the current state of the Left as a matter of urgency. 1. This is meant as organisations also commonly referred to as Leninist and that claim to trace their origins back to the Fourth International ▲ 2. Michael Flynn, A Call to Educate ▲ 3. Lars Lih, Democratic Centralism: Fortunes of a Formula ▲ 4. Pat Byrne, The Origin of the Slate System ▲ 5. https://www.facebook.com/events/287103281425873/ ▲ 6. http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/no2crokepark2-trade-union-rally-saturdaymay-25th-liberty-hall-2-00-pm/ ▲ 7. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/v.htm ▲ with thanks to http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/guest-author/2013/12/19/socialist-party-resignation-statement

The various fronts of the left

Now we’ve all seen them and come across them the front organisation on the left is numerous. There is a long long list of them right down the years. I’ve come across many in my short space of time on the left some more well known ones include UAF- unite against fascism, Right to work, Youth fight for jobs, NSSN, Unite the resistance, Stop the war coalition, Coalition of resistance and the list goes on and on and on. Many have come and gone and others are only taken up at certain times. Left-wing front organisations, such as the Socialist Party's "Youth Fight for Jobs," are a way to monopolise movements and demobilising genuinely radical action in favour of recruitment and paper-selling sadly. Quite often a front is something for a left sect to grab hold of and gain control of a movement. The Left and its many fronts In the world of organised crime, mobsters have respectable businesses as fronts to disguise their illegal activities. In the world of political activism, parties and organisations form single-issue groups as fronts in order to lure people in on the basis of a single issue whilst hiding their broader ideology so that they can recruit people who may not agree with it. This is particularly prevalent on the Leninist / Trotskyist left. A prime example of this is the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) in Britain. Their front organisations include Right to Work, the Stop the War Coalition, Unite Against Fascism, Love Music Hate Racism, Campaign Against Climate Change, Globalise Resistance, and Defend Council Housing. Whilst they have the most fronts, however, they are not the only Trotskyist party to have them. The Socialist Party has the Youth Fight for Jobs Campaign, and has previously stood candidates in elections under the guise of “No2EU” and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has Education not for Sale, Feminist Fightback, Workers Climate Action and No Sweat. So it goes on. The sects get tinier and more mental, and their fronts more obscure, but the formula remains the same. Take an issue people are concerned about, form a front group for it, mask any other politics you may have, and monopolise the movement by declaring anybody who cares about the subject but doesn’t side with yourselves to be “sectarian.” The likely result is that the most radical action you can muster is a liberal and entirely passive protest, whilst those who want to do something effective will be demobilised and disenfranchised from above. But hey, you’ll sell a lot of papers. Admittedly, the extent to which this is true varies. AWL and SP fronts, for instance, are often less apolitical and more direct with their message than SWP ones; take Workers Climate Action declaring that “climate is a class issue,” say, compared to UAF’s unwillingness to address the class issues that surround antifascism. But the formula roughly holds true in all cases. Sadly a lot of those who do want to fight back rather than cherry pic for new recruits for their organisation are often marginalised and often isolated and feel like their ideas are not listened to. I’ve experienced this too and have seen many a good activist driven away from getting involved as they feel over whelmmed with the various left sect getting involved and looking to dominate. We should encourage militant workers to join these organisations but look to remain independent and to continue to think criticlly at all times. If they feel something is wrong or being handled poorly then they must be allowed the democratic right and freedom to speak out without being threatened or isolated out of activity. All in all a lot of the left groups do not practice the concept of the united front very well at all and end up running it for their own ends shrinking its influence the longer it goes on due to their authoritarian nature of controlling from above and not allowing views and movements from below todevelop . This is all something which will continue but we do need to combat any forms of buraucracy that looks to hold a movement back by its small C conservatism that seems rooted in many of these left wing front organisations.

TUSC and its future direction

I’ve felt for some time now even when I was still a member of the socialist party which in all honesty runs TUSC politically for the most party along with a few key trade unionists on the left anyway. I have felt TUSC has stagnated and failed to develop as I was told at the start that it would start to. Now I’m not inpatient or unrealistic to think we’d have a fully working mass new workers party in4 years of TUS being around but the general lack of debate, discussion on the project seems concerning for someone who would like to see the left get its act together sooner rather than later. For me when I was standing for TUSC it felt like a banner and not much else there is very little in the way of an organisation as such. The idea that TUSC can be the new workers party is very hard to believe at this stage. I constantly read in the socialist and tweets by various SP members that we need to build TUSC but I don’t see anyone even talking about building TUSC let alone actually trying to do so. For me it seems like a half way house in many ways a whole reformist platform which trade union figures and leaders can feel comfortable with. It is designed with the idea to try and entice trade union leaders like the Len McCklusky’s and Billy Hayes’s of the world over from backing the labour party. They have created a mirror of the early labour party and if various big 3 trade union leaders came over to TUSC one day they would be the ones in control not the workers and any ordinary member if there would be a membership by then. This is all hypothetical of course as TUSC and its steering group as its interestingly called as there is not much steering that goes on I must say has blocked attempts for TUSC to develop into anything bigger blocking off attempts for new groups to get involved such as Socialist resistance. Whilst I am no fan of their politics it seems foolish to not allow them in. Talking of membership it always is a thorny issue with TUSC being hugely opposed to any form of membership system at this stage they say. When the time is right I was always told while never given a time or a situation where membership may become necessary. Presumably no time soon I assumed. TUSC independent or the ISN as they call themselves have all but abandoned TUSC not for good but for now as they do not feel TUSC is growing, developing or even wanting to. They have tried their luck with Left Unity which at least has a membership system all be it a little odd and skewed at this point as its all before the30th November founding conference where we will start to see more about Left Unity develop. It is a crying shame that TUSC seems to be just an election front for the likes of the socialist party and the RMT it could be so much more if it opened up and reached out to groups like UK Uncut, boycott workfare and so on. There are enough people angry with the system today out there to start to form something on the ground. Talking of on the ground TUSC regularly complains about a lack of media coverage I’ve suggested a press officer in the past to contact various local and national media outlets to drum up support for TUSC yet I’m not sure if there is any movement on this proposal at all at this point. I was constantly told TUSC is a working progress and is not the finished article but for me the frustrating part was and still is to be honest the lack of any will to move it forward and try and build it. It felt like we were constantly waiting for the bigger unions like Unite and others to come join in then we could have our new workers party. Labour mark 2 if you like. As that is how it felt we were holding out an olive branch to the union bureaucracy constantly and not looking to go too far in front of them constantly. In reality TUSC consists of just the socialist party, a half-hearted Socialist Workers Party and a handful of others. The union leaders The Socialist party talks about are mainly Socialist party members, and Bob Crow is not exactly confident his union will agree to back it in future election as at a national TUSC meeting last year where it was told this wasn’t a voting conference the RMT representative Alex Gordon at the time said they may not stick with TUSC forever and a day waiting and waiting. This is reflected in TUSC’s basic and rather reformist programme to be honest. It’s vaguely social democratic with a few radical sounding ideas thrown in but it’s very sparse and basic and low on the details. Maybe for good reason I don’t know again to appease various union leaders I imagine to not scare them off but the socialist party claims to be Marxist and for a socialist society yet all it push’s for within TUSC is mild reforms to capitalism and a bit of nationalisation thrown in for good measure. All very uninspiring if we are honest. While it is true TUSC’s results in elections have been poor on the whole and dismal in others there has been a few decent results like Tony Mulhearn in Liverpool mayoral election got 5000 odd votes and Mary Jackson in Doncaster got about 2000 odd but most results are 1% to 9% and the odd one a bit higher clearly having no national profile or any way of getting through to people this is not going to change anytime soon I’m afraid. As for next years prospects I feel ill at the thought that TUSC or certain parts of TUSC are again putting their weight behind the No to EU banner once again playing into UKIP’s hands with a nationalist rhetoric that ill be hard to separate on the doorsteps where next year I would expect UKIP to do very well next year in the European elections if not win them out right actually. But what kind of workers’ party does the Socialist party want? Something pretty similar to what comrade Rob Griffiths of the old Morning Star CPB favours: i.e., a Labour Party marks two. The SWP is all for halfway houses too, but does not think the Socialist party trajectory is realistic. No meaningful layer of trade union bureaucrats is about to abandon Labour in order to set up another version of it this side of the 2015 general election. I would say TUSC has a long way to go and may not be the answer long term but please we do not need another labour party the one we got at the momentous bad enough making a safe space for various union bureaucrats is not my idea of a new workers party and I think workers need a party of their own still which they do not have.