http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=47,2017,0,0,1,0

Dear Comrades,

Workers Power welcomes the Socialist Workers Party’s "Open Letter to the Left, It’s Time to Create a Socialist Alternative."

In particular, we support your proposal “to convene a conference of all those committed to presenting candidates representing working class interests at the next election.”

We believe there is an urgent need for such a conference, which could draw in representatives from socialist groups, campaigners against fascism, antiwar activists, existing left wing electoral initiatives and above all trade unionists in struggle against the effects of the crisis and this rotten government.

There is every possibility that a conference of this type would draw support from members of unions which have broken with Labour, like the RMT, and from the PCS, whose leader Mark Serwotka has, as you note, expressed his support for electoral challenges to Labour. It could also attract support from the growing numbers in the big Labour-affiliated unions who are trying to break the link with Labour, including from the CWU which is right now debating its affiliation.

Above all, we believe that a conference of this type would be a chance to take a step which could transform the situation in the class struggle in Britain: to form a new political party of the working class.

The historic meltdown of the Labour Party’s vote was part of a general trend across Europe – a collapse in support for the established parties of Social Democracy. The reason should be clear to all socialists – in the context of a huge economic crisis threatening millions of jobs and deep cuts in services, the SPD in Germany, the SP in France, the Labour Party in Britain are all tarnished by years of carrying out pro-market, pro-capitalist policies.

Everywhere the main beneficiaries of this collapse in working class support for the traditional reformist parties were the centre right Conservative parties and even in some countries the far right and fascists.

In the UK, the rise in support for the fascist BNP and the far greater surge in support for hard right parties like UKIP were a product of this. But whereas in Germany and France a clear pole of attraction existed to the left of the Social Democracy, in Britain there did not. So in the European elections the Left Party in Germany won eight MEPs; in France the new Left Front scored over six percent and the New Anticapitalist Party won nearly five percent.

Despite the absence of a strong and well-prepared leftwing challenge, two of the leftwing lists in the UK won around 300,000 votes between them. But their message was diffuse, they were not widely recognised, they offered no unified pole of attraction. They won just under a third of the votes of the BNP, but a single nationwide campaign could surely have won many more.

The broad mass of the people do not understand non-party alliances, platforms, joint lists and blocs. In elections they vote for those organisations that have the self-assurance to constitute themselves as unified formations with a set of policies and which aim for power. That is what a political party is. The dangerous reality is that the fascists have formed a party while the socialists have not. All the socialist groups in Britain are propaganda societies, not parties: in a sense we are factions of a party that is yet to be built.

The time to build a new party is now. Labour’s collapse has hugely weakened the argument of those on the left who want to focus on reforming Labour. The shock of the BNP’s advance presses home to many thousands across the left the need to create a strong pole of our own. An initiative for a new party would – if it came from serious forces in the movement – doubtless meet with an enthusiastic response.

That is why Workers Power welcomes your call for a conference, commits itself to work hard to build the conference among workers and youth, and will attend such a conference with the aim of persuading the delegates that it is time to go beyond alliances and joint tickets. Instead we should agree to set up a new party and begin a democratic debate on its structure and above all on its political programme.

A new workers' party should by no means be just a vehicle for elections – we need a party that is so much more than this. It would give us the chance to commit many thousands across the country to campaigning on the estates and the streets against the lies of the racists and nationalists and for a working class answer to the crisis. It could prove to workers that migrants aren’t stealing jobs and that capitalism is to blame for job losses and cuts in services. It could capitalise on anger at the system and the rich elite and express it in socialist rather than nationalist terms. It would oppose the slogan ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ and fight for jobs for all. It would break the sickening situation in which the BNP is able to pose as the main anti-establishment party.

Creating a new party would also help unlock that other key element of the situation you identify in your letter: the need for ‘a united fightback to save jobs and services’. There is a jobs massacre in progress across manufacturing and the service sector, but the leaders of the biggest trade unions are blocking action and bending the knee to the employers and the government. These self same leaders are supporters of the Labour government and of Gordon Brown. A strong political challenge to Labour’s hold over our unions can only help to coordinate action against the will of these leaders where necessary, to bypass and unseat the sell-out right wing union leaders and replace them with fighters under the control of the rank and file. It could rally workers around the need for action in the here and now, for strikes and occupations against job cuts, around the slogan ‘we won’t pay for their crisis.’

In short, the need for a new party is posed not just by the elections, but by the state of the fightback against the recession and by the need for a political fight against the BNP. Your open letter deals with these three things separately. We think the formation of a new party would be a way to respond to them all and link them together.

The experience in France of the formation of the New Anticapitalist Party shows that it is possible to form a new workers’ party without waiting for the approval of the trade union leaders. By contrast, the process in which the Left Party in Germany was created gave a privileged role to former Social Democrat MPs, former East German party apparatchiks and union officials. It is no accident therefore that the NPA in France has emerged as an activist party which rejects the idea of governing in alliance with pro-market parties and which is developing a fighting policy, while the Left Party has entered a ruling coalition with the pro-market Social Democrats in Berlin, and has carried out anti-working class neoliberal policies.
In both cases, the approach socialists took to the way the party was formed had a powerful effect on the type of party they got.

Closer to home, as we know from a succession of our own experiences in Britain over recent years, giving privileged role to labour movement celebrities is not a short cut to success but a road to catastrophe.

We fully accept that it is essential for the new initiative you are proposing to draw in broader forces from the labour movement. One of the great weaknesses of the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party was that they began as little more than agreements between socialist groups. We think it is possible to combine a broad appeal to the most determined sections of the labour movement with an approach that does not grant existing MPs and union leaders a veto in advance over the form and policy that the new party will take.

How? Alongside your call for a conference, let’s link the campaign for a new party to the fightback right from the start. Local committees could not only spread the idea of a new party amongst wider layers, they can also lay the basis for a fighting party, by helping to co-ordinate resistance to the crisis. In the unions many of the activists who see the need for a new party also want greater coordination of the struggles too.

And while we’re at it, why not contact the other left parties in Europe facing the same economic crisis, in France, in Greece, in Portugal, invite them to share their experiences and opinions, and help create a real practical and political coordination of the socialists across national boundaries.

It is no secret that there have been several unsuccessful electoral initiatives of the left since 1997. There are many criticisms that can be raised but one point above all needs to be borne in mind. Not one of them aimed to establish a unified and democratic all-Britain political party of the working class. It would be a failure of imagination and of will if we bypass this opportunity once again.

We look forward to continuing this discussion, confirm our support for the conference proposal, and commit ourselves to working with you on this project.

Yours fraternally,
Workers Power