Class politics, not pink-green bloc

Submitted by martin on 17 October, 2003 - 5:37

Socialist Alliance should not rally behind Monbiot-Yaqoob-Galloway
Class politics, not pink-green bloc!

AWL leaflet, 17 October 2003. Download pdf, or read the text here.
The Socialist Alliance should not join the electoral alliance announced by George Monbiot and Salma Yaqoob in the Guardian of 13 October 2003. Instead it should look towards a new, democratic, open and vigorous alliance of class-struggle socialists.
Hundreds of thousands of young people are coming to define themselves as anti-capitalist.
Hundreds of thousands were drawn into political activity for the first time by the protests against the Iraq war. Some of those - not all, of course - now want to understand the capitalist system that produces such wars and how to replace it.
Large sections of the trade union movement are beginning to assert themselves against the New Labour government and discuss the need for independent working-class political representation. They are moving very slowly, as yet, but they are moving.
A clear, sharp, united political intervention could begin to regroup a sizeable new positive working-class socialist force from out of the mood of anti-Blairism, anti-neo-liberalism, and anti-capitalism.
It will take time to convince workers that working-class socialist candidates and parties represent a solid, reliable force, and one which will be around for all the daily struggles as well as at election and demonstration times. It will take time to rebuild a confident, democratic and solidaristic political culture in the working class. But that is what we need to do.

Grass roots
To sink the socialists into a pink-green bloc is to go exactly the wrong way.
The bloc may well not succeed in its own terms. The Green Party already has an established profile. Why should voters want to back a second-string version?
But suppose the bloc does manage to get (vote-)rich quick. A bigger or smaller protest vote is not decisive. Building a grass-roots movement is.
For socialists to sink into this pink-green electoral bloc cuts against that in two ways. It tells young radicals that the socialists themselves consider socialism and working-class struggle as marginal extras, ideas that need not be included in the broad outline of a political alternative to the status quo. It tells them that instead of looking for a political alternative built by grass-roots activism, as an authentic voice of working-class representation, they should rally to this or that celebrity who will venture into a bit of leftism.
George Monbiot is a greenie journalist, the author of some valuable books. He expressed his slant on politics in an article in the Guardian of 19 February 2002, when he called on the unions to quit the Labour Party and wrote: "It doesn't really matter which of the small progressive parties - the Greens, the Socialist Alliance, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, even the Lib Dems - they choose to support instead".
Salma Yaqoob was active against the Iraq war. In an article in International Socialism journal (no.100) she defines her political stance as "Muslim", but one who thinks that Muslims should ally with socialists and other leftish groups. (That is very different from being a Muslim socialist, or a socialist who is also a Muslim: any coalition of socialists should go out of its way to make such socialists welcome).
Monbiot-Yaqoob's manifesto contains many points that socialists could support. It does not pretend to be any sort of working-class or socialist manifesto.
Socialists ally with such people in many campaigns. That is different from rallying to them as political figureheads.
Yaqoob has been a central ally of the SWP in the Birmingham Stop The War Coalition, and a central figure in the local "Peace and Justice" coalition engineered by the SWP. She has spoken alongside SWP leaders at public meetings recently to promote the general idea of a "new coalition". Monbiot has been an ally of the SWP in its "Globalise Resistance" campaign.
Socialist Worker (18 October) presents the Monbiot-Yaqoob initiative as a welcome surprise. Almost all Socialist Alliance activists heard about the initiative only by reading about it in the Guardian. In fact the SWP must have been heavily involved in the preparation of the initiative.

Figureheads
Part of the preparation will have been the rally in London on 29 October, plainly set up as the scene for George Galloway (definitively excluded by the Labour Party on 22 October, or so the organisers' calculation seems to go) to rally to the Monbiot-Yaqoob initiative.
This will add a further malign twist. We do not know whether the Daily Telegraph's charges against Galloway of taking money from Saddam Hussein's fascistic government are true. We do know that Galloway himself has stated that he took money for his political operations (many hundreds of thousands of pounds) from the Saudi and Emirates governments and a businessman with close links to the former Iraqi government. Galloway has admitted, indeed boasted of, having had close and friendly relations with the Iraqi dictator's deputy Tariq Aziz.
That Tony Blair has his own (bad) reasons for excluding Galloway does not wash away the stain of such links. For socialists, an electoral bloc figureheaded by Galloway would be morally as well as politically compromised. It would be not on the same level as the Green Party, but much worse.
We urge Socialist Alliance activists to continue the political struggle that the Alliance was set up to wage - for independent working-class politics.
Come to the "Platform for a democratic Socialist Alliance" meeting in Birmingham on 8 November to discuss how to go forward (11.30am to 3.30pm, United Services Club, Gough St, Birmingham). Check out http://www.independentsocialistalliance.net.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.