UK socialist election results – where next for Respect?
A message written by Steve Wallis, completed and distributed on the internet on the 20th of June 2004 (with very slight improvements made to this page on the 25th of June)
This message firstly assesses the election results achieved by socialists on the 10th of June, and then goes on to make some suggestions of where we should go next.
The best place politically for the left currently (and indeed in my opinion is where the world socialist revolution will start) is Scotland. It is the only area of Britain where (virtually) all socialists are united in a single party: the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). The SSP received about 5.2% of the vote, which was roughly 1.7% below the percentage received in the Scottish parliamentary elections last year. The highest vote was in Glasgow, at 10.56%, compared to just over 15% last year. These figures are fairly disappointing, but as Alan McCombes points out in the current Scottish Socialist Voice, there was a considerably higher turnout in middle class areas (because the European parliament seems irrelevant to many people in areas with high degrees of poverty), the negligible Scottish coverage of the election (marginalising the Scottish National Party as well as the SSP), the fact that there were four parties competing for the anti-war vote (the SSP, the Scottish National Party, the Greens who had a slightly smaller overall vote than the SSP last year but gained one more seat, plus the Liberal Democrats who, day in day out, urged people to vote for them to protest against the war despite the fact that they played no role whatsoever in Scotland campaigning against it).
I think people would also be influenced by a feeling that the SSP doesn’t stand any chance – since there are only seven seats across Scotland, and the Greens are competing for the left-wing vote – and that one extra vote for the SSP would make no difference. Whereas the SSP would have needed over 10% across the whole of Scotland for a European seat, whereas some Scottish parliamentary seats were gained with votes below 5% (and people knew that the SSP could win seats since Tommy Sheridan had four years before). I went up to help with the election campaign last year, and it’s a shame that I couldn’t stay for very long or visit on many more occasions since, but I did go to a weekend of discussion and debate in October called “Socialism 2003”. I have been incarcerated as a political prisoner since January 2003 (see my socialist home page), usually with some but not enough leave. However, I have now got one overnight leave per week, so I’m pretty confident that I will be out (and for good this time) soon so that I can move to Glasgow (coming back to Manchester fairly frequently).
I get the impression that the SSP has stagnated somewhat, still having about 3000 members and roughly the same number of branches. This is partly beyond the SSP’s control – the objective conditions have not been brilliant, with the triumphalism of Blair after deposing Saddam Hussein. However, I think that the SSP is not using its resources as well as it could. It now has six MSPs rather than one, which should mean (since they all live on a workers’ wage and donate the rest to the party) that there is roughly an extra 100,000 pounds a year to spend. The newspaper (Scottish Socialist Voice) is still 12 pages, despite the fact that it was reduced some time ago from 16 to 12 pages so that someone could concentrate on elections. The SSP seemed to be running the Euro election campaign on a shoestring (making a last ditch plea to readers of the paper for enough money for the campaign – I think it was £20,000). Hopefully there was no area of Scotland in which households didn’t receive a leaflet, since Royal Mail could deliver them and I’m sure the party could have found a few members to lend the party the required amount of money; it does not expect members to make the same sort of level of sacrifice as in the days of the Militant Tendency (which is good because hearing people pledge large sums can put people off – it did put me off until I became more convinced of the ideas). Economising too much on that election would have been a bad move – even if it wouldn’t have made a difference as far as seats are concerned, people sometimes compare previous SSP and Green election results when deciding who to vote for, so the SSP should spend a bit more if it would enable it to beat the other party. I spoke to a “researcher” at the social of Socialism 2003 who was working for the MSPs – mainly Frances Curran. When he said the sort of academic details he was researching, I thought that it was a complete waste of money. Frances wrote a dreadful article for the “Frontline” magazine after the SSP had gone from 1 to 6 MSPs talking about further refining our ideas about independence by talking to academics! Frances probably talked about increasing the number of SSP MSPs after another four years, but nothing about the SSP taking power! Furthermore, she didn’t talk about the SSP coming to power via some sort of peaceful uprising where the existing government is extremely unpopular (like in the former Yugoslavia and Georgia), rather than having to wait until four years after the previous election. [Frances failed to return my emails/answering machine messages so that I could become a “solidarity member” of the International Socialist Movement (ISM) platform of the SSP (which produces the Frontline magazine) and tried to stop me from making an important speech in the debate on the war at last year’s SSP conference, so the dreadful article didn’t come as any surprise. The ISM had stagnated a lot since it was called “Scottish Militant Labour”, but I will finally join it when I go up to Scotland and hopefully I can help turn it around.]
I sometimes feel the SSP could come to power very quickly – within the current term and maybe even a year – but I now expect it to take much longer, or that enough MSPs would sell out and need to be expelled from the SSP, hence my idea of forming a band hopefully with at least one famous artist (Martine McCutcheon). Furthermore, the band would be very useful spreading the revolution beyond Scotland.
Incidentally, having to wait a fixed time period (or until the government decides to call an election or it loses a “vote of no confidence”) is one of the main problems of democracy under capitalism (known by Marxists as "bourgeois democracy"), the other is not having a fair form of proportional representation (see my fair PR mailing list). Socialists who call themselves “Leninists” or “Trotskyists” still tend to hold on to the idea that “workers’ democracy” where you have committees elected by particular workplaces, and delegates from those committees on higher committees, and so on up to the government, is the highest form of democracy despite the fact that it would seem less democratic and more open to abuse than the current system. Constituencies are far from perfect, but after the revolution in October 1917, the Bolsheviks (who later became the Communist Party) abolished the Constituent Assembly months after campaigning for it – because the February revolution which brought the capitalist Provisional Government to power wouldn’t grant democracy – at Vladimir Lenin’s and Leon Trotsky’s instigation. A peasant party, the Social Revolutionaries, got a majority in the Assembly since Russia was mainly feudal, but rather than letting them expose themselves in practice, they overthrew the Assembly by force. Lenin’s and Trotsky’s argument was that if they didn’t do that, there would be massive repression against the Bolsheviks, but since the “socialists” or “communists” have often been regarded as undemocratic and there have been about 87 years of world capitalism. This was no mistake on Lenin’s or Trotsky’s part. They were both infiltrators on the side of big business – for more about the complex web of conspiratorial organisations below the surface of society, how they model the world to predict the future and decide what they need to do to achieve their desired objective (world socialism or capitalism forever), and how they infiltrate other organisations to change them from within (as well as spy on them), visit the latest version (5) of my “Socialism and Conspiracies” document. The proposal for committees (called “soviets” in the USSR) appears in the “Where we stand” column of “Socialist Worker”, in the sentence “The working class needs an entirely different kind of state – a workers’ state based upon councils of workers’' delegates and a workers’ militia”. The other thing that is dreadful about that sentence is that it suggests vigilantes going around carrying guns. Since guns are hated by the vast majority of people in Britain, many people reading that would think “if that’s what you mean by socialism then I’ll put up with capitalism thank you very much!”
The largest socialist party in England is (and has been for many years) the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Unfortunately, its leadership is dominated by agents of big business, but there are of course some genuine (or mainly genuine) leaders too, such as Paul Foot who helped me influence SWP members in a big way by replying to a message of mine and probably distributing my reply (and perhaps other messages of mine) within the SWP. Whereas Scottish Militant Labour (SML) was very dedicated to making the Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA) a successful project, by doing most of its activities in the name of the SSA rather than SML, the SWP used the Socialist Alliance (SA) in England and Wales as a reformist electoral front for its own party. In practice, this meant that many more placards, posters and leaflets were produced in the name of the SWP than the SA. They even vetoed requests from the organisers of at least one massive anti-capitalism/globalisation event held overseas to have an SA speaker. They also rejected demands for the SA to have its own newspaper. The reformist politics were the other reason for the SA’s downfall. Pretending that you can solve Britain’s problems by taxing the rich, rather than making it clear that we need to overthrow big business, will not make many people take you seriously. The first SA in England to adopt a set of policies was Greater Manchester’s and copies of ours were handed out at a national conference to influence other SAs and the SA nationally. We adopted a set of reformist demands, but CRUCIALLY included a final paragraph that included the word “overthrow” (which essentially means we need a revolution but doesn’t worry people unnecessarily by implying violence). The omission of the vital final paragraph in subsequent election material was clearly orchestrated by the SWP – I managed to get a leaflet changed at a Greater Manchester SA meeting after a leading local SWP member drafted a leaflet including all the demands but omitting that paragraph. However, when it came to the important local elections last year, I wasn’t on the committee that drew up the material, so I wasn’t able to prevent reformist material being distributed. Unsurprisingly, the SA got dreadful results.
After the failure of the SA, the SWP’s new initiative was to link up primarily with George Galloway, an anti-war MP who had been expelled from the Labour Party. Pictures of him shaking Saddam Hussein’s hand and saying what a great guy he was had been shown on British TV a few years ago, he has faced allegations of corruption and he vetoed the position that MEPs should live on a worker’s wage (as all SSP Members of the Scottish Parliament do, and as Militant’s three MPs did when they were still infiltrating the Labour Party). The new organisation, called “Respect – the Unity Coalition” also managed to bring in a significant number of Muslims – some of whom would have agreed entirely with Respect’s positions on socialism and equality, others who were Islamic fundamentalist infiltrators and probably most of whom were somewhere in between (but it would be wrong to insist on them agreeing with every dot and comma considering that most could be won to the ideas of socialism and equality after interacting with genuine socialists).
The SWP leaders made some bad mistakes with the launch of Respect (which could have been foreseen – I put it down to infiltration). Most importantly, they delayed it too long. If Respect had been launched shortly after the conquest of Iraq last year and the SA’s subsequent failure to make any impact (apart from winning a seat in Preston which had already been won by “Independent Labour”) in the local elections, then a very large number of anti-war activists could have joined immediately or during the year. Instead, most anti-war activists had become demoralised. After so many mass (or not so massive) demonstrations, either locally or nationally, the Stop the War Coalition had run out of ideas. Therefore, when Respect tried to mobilise anti-war activists for the elections on the 10th of June, a much smaller number of activists wanted to participate. I suspect that in most places where there wasn’t an SWP branch, no Respect activity took place, whereas the anti-war movement was so massive that it did not rely on the SWP to set up every local group.
Secondly, the SWP leaders and George Galloway set targets which were impossible because of the delay. I received a national leaflet asking for money towards a target of a million pounds! They talked about getting a million votes (the actual result turned out to be about a quarter of that) and sometimes about winning a few seats rather than just one. I also received a regional appeal sheet asking for £60,000 to produce leaflets for every household in the North West (four in Manchester, one in Preston and one in Bolton, none in Liverpool), and then another £90,000 to create a real impact. I have since checked two consecutive issues of Socialist Worker (just in case I missed any branches due to them only being fortnightly) and the SWP only has six branches in the North West, so even raising £60,000 was highly optimistic. I noticed Nick Wrack (who used to be on the Executive Committee of Militant and is now a leader of both the SA and Respect) asking for another £200,000 in an edition of Socialist Worker after £200,000 had already been raised – so that there would be enough money for deposits throughout England and Wales, leaflets for every household and the European and London party election broadcasts (and probably the money for extra material regarding the mayoral and assembly elections in London). I presume that the leaflets are delivered free by Royal Mail (but you have to pay a deposit) like in general elections. Earlier editions of Socialist Worker had only asked for £10 to join Respect – if you have a reasonably paid job then you could afford to pay much more and it would have been much easier to raise a reasonable target of £400,000. [According to the Independent Working Class Association website, about £250,000 was spent by Respect, about the same as the Green Party.]
Thirdly, Respect does not yet have a particularly democratic structure. An SWP member in the Cheetham Hill ward of Manchester was elected by the SA to stand in the local elections. The SA then had discussions with the local Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), and the SWP member said (at the Respect meeting I attended) that she was pleased that the Muslims were happy with her to represent them. Finally, the national leadership of Respect have the right to veto any candidate. MAB has not affiliated to Respect due to some of the positions which Respect has adopted. I don’t know to what degree MAB is dominated by Islamic fundamentalists – I suspect its leadership is, but that most of its members are more moderate. Fundamentalists (of any religion not just Islam) are very opposed to equality – because they are strictly adhering to a religion that originated in much more male-dominated societies in the past. It was also interesting that when a MAB leader wrote an article in the Guardian before the election saying you should vote Respect, Green or Liberal Democrat depending on where you live – i.e. don’t vote for the strongest socialist force in the world (the SSP)!
Respect got an overall vote of about 1.7%. It did best in cities where the SWP has a good ratio between the number of branches and the population size. London has about a third of all SWP branches, so it is unsurprising that Respect did best there – with a vote of about 4.8% in the European elections and slightly less for the London Assembly. Respect would have won a seat on the Assembly if it wasn’t for the arbitrary 5% threshold (since there are 25 seats, a vote of 4% or above should guarantee you one) which was set up by the major parties who devised the electoral system to be biased against small parties. We should look on the bright side however – the fascist British National Party (BNP) would have won a seat as well if it wasn’t for the threshold. In two council wards, Newham and Tower Hamlets, Respect got over 20% of the Assembly vote. The SWP is also relatively strong in Manchester (four branches doesn’t sound much but Manchester only has a population of about 400,000 – most people regard Trafford and Salford as part of Manchester but they are officially not) and Respect got a vote of about 4%. The SWP only has two branches in Wales (Cardiff and Neath) which is one reason why they got a miserly vote of about 5,000. I’d be very surprised if Respect leaflets were distributed in Wales (apart from by the odd activist mobilised by the SWP) bearing in mind that some people would have been convinced by the election broadcast – maybe Respect ran out of money and concentrated its resources in more fertile soil; it may be that they were not received by Royal Mail in time or that Royal Mail quietly failed to post them relying on nobody making a fuss about it (bearing in mind the weakness of Respect/the SWP in Wales).
It might seem from the above that it is just clutching at straws to suggest that socialist policies can get people elected. After all, neither Respect nor the SSP won a single seat. However, if it wasn’t for the sectarianism between left groups, Respect (or the SA) would have won at least four seats on local councils on election day! The election results issue of Socialist Worker correctly pointed out five great results obtained by Respect candidates in Preston – they all received about 30% of the vote. However, Terry Cartright, who was originally elected as an Independent Labour candidate, then joined the SA, was re-elected to the Deepdale ward as an Independent again. The Socialist Party (SP), formerly the Militant Tendency, also has a member on the council who was originally elected as Independent Labour. In Coventry, all seats were up for grabs due to boundary changes and the SP narrowly lost one of the three seats they were defending – Dave Nellist who used to be a Labour MP got the highest number of votes. The SP got some good votes elsewhere in Coventry (with 17% in one ward) and that is clearly their stronghold, and 16% in a Lincoln ward. It was good to see them get 23% in a Merseyside ward, since this was the area in which Militant was historically strongest – taking control of Liverpool City Council in the mid-80s but disastrously deciding to send out redundancy notices to the entire workforce supposedly as a delaying tactic (I put this decision down to infiltration of Militant). The fact that there is no longer an SWP branch in Merseyside was probably significant – new people looking for a party to join often choose the biggest.
There were three other left successes (apart from numerous council seats won by the Greens) – the Independent Working Class Association won three seats in Oxford. However, they don’t describe themselves as socialist.
The tendency for the SWP to be sectarian was reflected by their decision in Wales to stand a slate of candidates in the European election against another socialist organisation, Forward Wales, after the latter decided not to participate under the Respect banner. Forward Wales had a former Labour MP, Ron Brown, as its lead candidate whereas the SWP only has two branches in Wales. Cymru Gogh (Welsh Socialists) who united with the SP in the SA before the SWP got involved had already left the Welsh SA to join Forward Wales. Respect got less than a third of the number of votes achieved by Forward Wales (whose 1.9% wasn’t brilliant but was slightly higher than Respect’s overall percentage). Respect’s sectarian decision to stand in Wales was criticised by the SSP’s Allan Green, who pointed out that Forward Wales has strong links with the SSP. Visit a web page about the launch of Respect in Wales for more information (if you click on the “this meeting” link you will see just how ridiculous the SWP’s decision was). The local election results of Forward Wales on the same day underlined the fact that it has a very good base in some areas – it received an average of 23% and got one councillor elected.
In Northern Ireland (or “the North of Ireland” as Catholics tend to prefer it being called) there is an organisation called the “Socialist Environmental Alliance” which got about 1.6% – nearly twice the Green vote, probably influenced by the inclusion of “Environmental” in the name and Eamon O’Cann being a fairly well known and respected candidate.
I sent out a couple of messages (see the better one) before the election pointing out a form of electoral fraud that I suspected was widespread – sending out ballot papers before Respect’s election broadcast, and putting on the front of the envelopes in bold capital letters “OPEN AND RETURN IMMEDIATELY – DO NOT DELAY”. I have no way of knowing how widespread this problem was (since the ballot papers for different wards were distributed on different days), and seeing that Respect didn’t create much of an impact outside London (where the ballot wasn’t carried out entirely by post), I don’t think there’s much point in making an issue of it any more – but our parties’ leaderships should demand that our broadcasts are shown before the papers go out if postal voting is used in further elections. Incidentally, the fascist BNP had its broadcast the day after Respect’s, so it would have also been affected – but it got a lot of publicity due to a large item on that day's ITV1 news due to Channel 5’s demand for a minor alteration; this was a big prime time plug by the main channel of big business which probably significantly helped the BNP get an overall vote across Britain of about 5%.
I went on, in these messages to propose a mass campaign for fair proportional representation (PR) – where you can specify second and later preferences and thus vote for parties you agree most with rather than tactically vote for parties you think may get in – at the next general election. Unfortunately, parties to the right of the main parties – the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the BNP – did better in the European elections than parties to the left. It would therefore be very risky to take such a bold move during this New Labour government, but it is something to consider during future governments. If New Labour and the Tories continue to deny people any form of PR, then it may be vital so that a left-wing party can come to power in Britain as a whole.
The relative weakness of the left in England and Wales compared to the right (8% for the Greens and Respect versus 20% for the UKIP and BNP), which is largely due to the antics of infiltrators from conspiratorial organisations on the side of big business in the SWP as I explained above, means that it will be necessary for Scotland to take the lead. The SSP got over three times as many votes as the BNP and the Greens beat the UKIP; even with the current system of PR there is a reasonable chance for the SSP to win the next Scottish parliamentary election. An SSP election victory would give a massive boost to socialists in the rest of the UK and the world.
So what should happen in England? It would be a massive opportunity wasted if Respect’s modicum of success was not used to build an effective socialist party. It is obviously vital that it is quickly transformed into a fully fledged party with a democratic structure (and ditching the “Unity Coalition” bit), and the best way of doing that would be to set up Respect branches (roughly corresponding to SA branches, since I think most Respect activists are/were in SA branches). If there is more than one branch in a city, a city-wide committee needs to be set up. The committee meetings should be open to all Respect members in the city – but if there is a disagreement, only delegates from Respect branches (or other affiliated organisations like trade union branches) should be able to vote.
But that is no enough for Respect to survive! It would just be an SA Mark II. Respect needs its own newspaper, as many of us argued in the SA. The paper needs to be weekly (and should have at least 16 pages) – and the SWP should stop producing their weekly newspaper Socialist Worker (SW), but they can continue producing their monthly Socialist Review and quarterly International Socialism Journal. Furthermore, the SWP needs to be fully committed to the project, and to do that it should become a platform of Respect (like the SW platform of the SSP). Like SML when the Scottish Socialist Alliance became the SSP, the SWP needs to hand over most of its resources to Respect. There was not nearly as much to lose when SML became the International Socialist Movement platform of the SSP, because it rented its premises. For a socialist organisation, the SWP is very well off owning a large London building and printing press (which it uses for commercial printing as well as its own publications). Also, SWP members should be encouraged to pay most of their subs to Respect rather than the SWP. Unless the situation has changed recently, SW platform members in Scotland pay subs down to the SWP centre in London and it sends a fixed amount per member to the SSP centre in Glasgow. This fixed amount is very low and I suspect it has played a role in discouraging other SSP members from parting with greater levels of subs. I also think it has helped bring about the situation in which a very small proportion of SW platform members are genuine (rather than on the side of big business).
So why should we expect the SWP to commit such an act of self sacrifice? After all, Respect will be a broad socialist party like the SSP, rather than a revolutionary socialist organisation like the SWP (and SML before it became part of the SSP). Basically, it would be a big setback for the left in England if they don’t do it. The SWP was shrinking in membership before the election, and the disappointing results for Respect are in danger of demoralising another layer of SWP members. I saw a message on the internet recently saying that they only had 1,500 members (probably activists rather than paper membership) and were planning to sell their centre and printing press – supposedly because there isn’t a market for printing that is not full colour any more (highly dubious) but presumably to balance the books. This is precisely what the SP did due to its shrinkage and it ended up with a large amount of money in the bank. We had a fairly long debate within the SP and organisations linked to it overseas by the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). Towards the end of that debate I attended the 1998 European School of the CWI in Belgium, and I was the only person from England or Wales to speak from the platform in favour of setting up the SSP. The decision won overwhelming support in Scotland (and in France where Murray Smith, who later moved to Scotland to help lead the SSP, and then went back to France where I think he is still one of the leaders of the LCR – he still regularly contributes to Frontline magazine produced by the ISM and his articles are usually the best) but not in England or Wales or the rest of the world (partly because SML leaders were prevented from speaking in debates on the issue in those countries). This was no big disaster because SML went ahead anyway. SML later left the CWI due to a faction that opposed the setting up of the SSP making it difficult for them to intervene effectively in the SSP. When I went to the SSP annual conference last year, that faction, called CWI Scotland, was cooperating well with other genuine socialists in the SSP, whereas the SW platform members were generally playing a dreadful role – putting forward ridiculous positions such as refusing to condemn terrorists. Before that conference I thought that participating within the same party would influence them for the better, but it was clear that most of them were agents of big business. It was worrying that about a third of the people attending the conference were clapping their speeches – it underlined the fact that I needed to go up to Scotland more often to help act as a counterweight to them.
As a result of losing the debate about setting up the SSP in Britain as a whole (there was majority support in Merseyside and my region, Manchester/Lancashire – the two regions in which independent thought were particularly encouraged and where consequently there were more disagreements with the national leadership), the assets of the SP stayed with people opposed to the SSP and consequently with very limited commitment to the SA project which led to the SSP. The SP had already shrunk to a considerable degree – which allowed agents of big business to dominate the SP to the extent where such a good proposal was opposed. Afterwards, understandably, there was a further falling away of long-standing members. I left at about that point (in the Autumn of 1998) because I decided that infiltration by organisations like MI5 had reached the point where the SP was too small for it to be worthwhile conducting an internal debate and I therefore needed to expose it to the left as a whole. It took me about two years to make a reasonable start – by entering an internet discussion about the collaboration of two London SA members for a period of about a year with a fascist organisation that had on its website (but doesn’t any more) advice for its cadres on infiltrating organisations (including those of the left but also others in society generally). The draft resolution I produced can be read by clicking here but I don’t think any organisation passed it – when I tried to get it passed by Greater Manchester SA a former Militant/Labour Party councillor Margaret Manning stabbed me in the back (I wanted members of he SA to have a chance to discuss it in their own organisations before voting on it in the Greater Manchester SA, but Margaret proposed that if should not be discussed any more). I conducted the discussion on two mailing lists – one was run by the former leaders of Labor Militant, who had been expelled after a very dirty faction fight and set up Labor Militant’s Voice, and the other was the UK Left Network. The UK Left Network used to be the best place for reaching large numbers of socialists in Britain, but unfortunately the moderator, who was and probably still is a member/supporter of the small Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) called Phil Hamilton, chucked me off and has now changed the settings so that he now has to approve every new member or somebody he knows! I tried joining using a completely different name and he didn’t let me on so presumably you have to be recommended by an existing member of the list. Maybe the excuse was that there were too many messages, but you can always search the archives on the web rather than checking out each message or message header. As far as I know, there is now no mailing list for discussions amongst socialists across Britain which anybody can join – except for the unofficial SA list ‘sanewsandviews’, with a very small membership, to which I have been sending my important messages to for ages; you can join it and then read the archives by visiting its home page or subscribe by sending an email. I have specified both ways you can join that list because internet censorship means that one or both may not work. [If neither works, then you might like to browse the archives of my Manchester International Socialist Movement mailing list (which I set up in February 2003) by visiting its home page.] Yahoogroups is the best place for mailing lists on the internet, because it is by far the biggest and you can search for lists with titles or descriptions containing certain words, visit and search archives of particular lists and see the moderation settings (whether you can join without the moderator’s approval and whether the moderator needs to approve messages). Note, however, that artificial intelligence programs check messages that are sent to mailing lists and if they are particularly important, they may be delayed and occasionally they do not get through at all. [There is no reason to suppose that this doesn’t happen with other lists, since free of interference a revolution across the world would happen very quickly.] Some activists, particularly anarchists, prefer independent mailing list providers because Yahoo! have supposedly handed over lists of email addresses to the ‘security services’. Since there is such a massive amount of surveillance, we should not get too paranoid about it, but instead try to work out who is acting against us and who is helping us – there are many infiltrating organisations on the side of the working class too and we are slowly but surely gaining the upper hand.
The coming ‘schools’ of the SP and the SWP – Socialism 2004 next weekend and Marxism 2004 from the 9th to the 16th of July respectively – offer the best opportunity in the coming period to construct a united broad socialist party in England. I will be going along to both (hopefully all of the SP’s event, but I’ll probably only be able to go to the end of the SWP’s) and handing out leaflets as well as taking part in the debates. I’m sure that those of us who are committed to a democratic socialist world, free from wars, poverty, unemployment, discrimination, environmental destruction, etc., will be able to build something good and reasonably big – but it would be a real shame if there will be internal faction fights resulting in the considerable assets of the SP and particularly the SWP being retained by sectarian elements on the side of big business trying to prevent a revolution from taking place.
A further request: In many areas, leading members of the SWP have accumulated large lists of email addresses of people who contacted them during anti-war activities especially at around the time of the 2 million-strong London demo last year. Rather than set up mailing lists (or “groups” as Yahoo likes to call them) that anybody can send messages to, they have complete control of what gets sent out. I wanted to be able to put across my ideas in the run up to the war (that it was for oil, wouldn’t bring democracy and the only solution was for ordinary people to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein) – if we could debate things rather than just make do with the lowest common denominator politics of the SWP then maybe we could have stopped Blair supporting Bush, and maybe Bush wouldn’t have acted unilaterally and the world would now be a completely different place. I demanded that the Greater Manchester Coalition leader, Richard Searle, do this by email – he did not and when I tried to raise it at a meeting there was not time to discuss it. I am sending this message to him as well as many other people to appeal to him again – he probably won’t cooperate but hopefully SWP members in other areas will. There should also be more SSP and Respect forums. Incidentally, the SP has two forums which I’ve been able to send stuff to: the newsgroup free.uk.politics.parties.socialist-party and a Coventry SP discussion forum.
Ø Back to Steve Wallis’ socialist web page