frontline volume 2, issue 6. March 2008

Mersey Paradise?

There have been many developments on the left in England in the last year, many of them backwards steps such as the split in Respect and the failed leadership bid of Labour left-winger John McDonnell. What is really happening on the ground can be hard to see from a distance. In this article Danny McGowan, a Scottish socialist who moved to Liverpool in 2001, gives his personal perspective on the left in England.

Driving into Liverpool after you leave the M62, the main route from the east, and you pass by a mile of boarded up terraced houses. This being the ‘Liverpool 08 capital of culture’ year though, the boards have been painted with psychedelic colour schemes, just in case you forgot for a second that the whole thing was anything more than window dressing.

Like Glasgow was in 1990 – and remains today - Liverpool is a city of high deprivation. That isn’t going to change this year, even if local people generally like to celebrate the place and welcome comparisons with ‘working class’ cities like Glasgow. I moved here from Scotland in autumn 2001 and this is simply my own experiences of political adjustment, but I hope it may be of interest to people interested in the English left and those who also find themselves in similar situations.

Come together…

In the 2006 local council elections 6 separate organisations to the left of Labour stood in various wards across Merseyside: Respect; The United Socialist Party (TUSP); ‘Socialist Alternative’ (The electoral name of The Socialist Party/CWI); The Democratic Socialist Alliance (DSA); The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and The Communist Party of Britain (CPB). It was as embarrassing as it was confusing. Fortunately they managed, in the main to avoid standing against each other but none came close to winning a council seat and all appear even less likely now.

As an SSP member the obvious thing to do when I first moved down here was to gravitate to the local Socialist Alliance (SA, the equivalent left unity project. At the time the main groups involved where The Merseyside Socialists, who had broken from their former Militant comrades now called The Socialist Party (CWI), who themselves soon walked out after the SWP joined. The Merseyside Socialists where experienced activists in the city influenced by the politics of the SSP, and sought to move beyond factionalism and establish the politics of doing things by consensus. Unfortunately there was not a consensus for consensus from the SWP, and the meetings I attended tended to polarise around their differences

The SA was still a step forward and did have potential but when the mass anti-war protests broke out the SWP was instructed to drop it and build the ‘revolutionary party’ instead. And then they claimed the SA had failed to relate to the anti-war movement as justification for ditching it and setting up Respect! What’s left calling itself the SA is now miniscule. Organisations supportive of the SSP in England, like Socialist Resistance, are generally really tiny and have no local members. Respect Renewal has yet to organise anything here either.

Respect itself was initially given a huge boost with the election victory of George Galloway in Bethnal Green. Like many left wing celebrities he got a huge audience at his first public meeting in Liverpool afterwards. Even more impressive was the attendance at the following week’s activist meeting, which suggested it really was pulling wider layers back into active politics.

Standing in Toxteth, however, in the 2006 council election’s still remains the only time Respect has contested an election on Merseyside. Racism is significant in Liverpool and its black community has historically being ghettoised into this area. Respect came third with a decent vote. However with a good local candidate and a high level of resources put into the campaign they appeared to be disappointed with this result. After the elections their candidate was attacked leaving a club, apparently by local thugs. Without following up on the electoral work it appeared difficult to find anyone else to stand in the area and the chance to build a real presence was lost.

As in most places without an independent base of radicalised Muslims, only the most easygoing activists outside the SWP were able to tolerate being in an organisation dominated by them. Many of the independent socialists in Respect had previously been active in the SLP, which nowadays has just enough members left to carry its banner on demonstrations. The SWP itself has never been sizable in Merseyside and only really involve themselves as peace activists in anti-war work now.

Liverpool’s socialist politics are most widely associated with the period in the 1980’s when the Militant influenced Labour Party ran the city council and briefly stood up to Thatcher’s government. A group of 47 Councillors who were later expelled and surcharged for their stance still exist to defend their legacy, which is routinely depicted in the local media as a source of embarrassment http://www.liverpool47.org/.

However the SP/CWI, successors of the Militant, are like the SWP these days, literally reduced to a handful of activists. Their only good electoral result in recent times has been a few years back in Netherton, Bootle, with over 25% of the vote after local campaigning against an open cast dump. Their main initiative, the ‘Campaign for a New Workers Party’ was also able to organise a well attended public meeting with Ricky Tomlinson and er, Tommy Sheridan last year. But it hasn’t pulled in anyone other than smaller left wing groups, the most significant being The United Socialist Party (TUSP).

TUSP was created by sacked Liverpool Dockers, who are still a presence in the city having collectively invested in The CASA, a city centre pub where many left groups and union branches also meet. TUSP’s constitution was also modelled on the SSP’s (with the significant exception of banning platforms). It had the highest vote of all the left parties in 2006, in Halewood, Knowsley, though in a ward where there was no other opposition to the incumbent Labour councillor. But the group doesn’t have a profile in campaigns or general activism outside the CASA, its membership is not much more than the former dockers themselves and is therefore older and mostly male, and the model of setting up a party and waiting for members to flock to it has its limitations too.

That just leaves the CPB, which is about as similar in size and influence here as it is in Scotland. There are good activists in all the socialist groups, simply not enough of them to sustain all these increasingly irrelevant separate groupings in any meaningful way. I try to relate to their activists as individuals now, keeping things open for the future.

Back to Basics

Without a political grouping to attach myself too, I’ve had to go back to what first got me politicised. Workplace organisation is central to class politics but while union membership is neither in drastic or terminal decline, union activism is at a very low level. Most union members now regard their subs as being like an insurance policy, rather than membership of a campaigning body seeking more democracy in our working lives. Nonetheless representing your colleagues is the most effective way of demonstrating socialist politics to the people around you every day. The respect that you get for this can also increase their tolerance of your broader political interests, if you can relate them to each other. And it also puts you in a better position to advocate solidarity for industrial struggles when they do take place.

One of the most helpful networks for union militants working like me in the NHS is the Health Activists e-list, which can be accessed from healthactivists@unionlists.org.uk . This is one of the rare places you can find members of different unions and all the main Trotskyite groups, Labour Party members and even anarchists genuinely working together to advise and support each other with organising tips and both policy and political strategy.

Despite their limitations trade unions are still campaigning bodies with democratic structures that we can work within. A motion from my branch eventually resulted in Amicus becoming the last major union to affiliate to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, following a vote in every level of the union’s structure. Most unions have left wing platforms or ‘broad left’s’ though the Amicus Unity Gazette in my section of the merged union Unite is currently controlled by supporters of the joint general secretary Derek Simpson. Simpson is a member of the Gazette himself but does not typically support democratic and transparent processes and apparently advocates ‘two years industrial peace’ for Gordon Brown. The contortions and compromises to stay on side with this can make Gazette meetings frustrating places at times.

While these meetings are also the sort of place you would feel out of place if you aren’t a Morning Star reader, trade union structures are also probably the only place outside of council chambers that you are likely to meet Labour Party members these days. Some obvious New Labour Thatcherites exist, particularly at the higher levels, but many Labour members are still genuine activists who simply cannot see an alternative outside Labour, though they acknowledge there is little hope inside it now either. Unfortunately this is a fairly honest assessment of the left in England at the moment.

Upping the anti – Against war, privatisation, and fascism

I attended most of the major Liverpool and London anti-war demonstrations in recent years, including February 15th 2003 which was more like the peaceful occupation of central London than one actual march. My daughter was diagnosed with autism at this time and so I didn’t take much part in the many organising meetings of the local Stop the War coalition. These were generally well attended though, and also organised some very large city centre rallies too. StW activists are more of a hard core now of peace activists, including what’s left of the SWP and independent socialists around Respect. They continue to organise coaches for marches in London and local rallies as the occupation of Iraq and Palestine and threats on Iran. Local critics of repetitive London demonstrations have advocated more direct action instead, though this is still more of a critique of the coalition than an alternative movement. Anti-war campaigning, however organised, is likely to continue as long as the neo-liberal agenda prevails in Washington and London

Working in the NHS, and being a union activist, at a time when it is being stealthily privatised here in England is another call to arms. Driven by GATS, and pioneered by New Labour, this policy very much part of the global neo-liberal agenda that absolutely everything in the world is for sale.

The Keep Our NHS Public Campaign (KONP) www.keepournhspublic.com highlights the connection between health services being cut and the unprecedented loss of health workers jobs with the vast sums of public money being handed over to private health care corporations. KONP is still very much an embryonic campaign nationally, though it is supported by Unite if not Unison. However our local Merseyside group is democratically organised with affiliations from local trade unions, trades councils and pensioners groups and has a broad range of activists beyond the traditional left.

Defence of the NHS is a key battleground. Socialists can connect here with the remnants of social-democracy in the trade union and labour movement, and with global justice and anti-capitalist campaigners too. Our KONP group now meets in the basement of the femininist/radical bookshop ‘News from Nowhere’ otherwise used by the mainly anarchist Liverpool Social Forum and has support from the cities sole Green councillor. These connections are tentative but valuable as re-building a politics of resistance to capital in the 21st century involves relating to those being radicalised today.

Otherwise, dismantling publicly accountable and valued institutions like the NHS has all sorts of implications for social cohesion. The BNP have established a presence in many of the nearby towns in the North West for several years now, but have yet to make a breakthrough on Merseyside. However they are here able to stand far more candidates here than the left combined and now regularly come 2nd in council elections in one of the most deprived areas of Liverpool, Norris Green. They leaflet working class areas out of the gaze and regular reach of city centre activists regularly at the crack of dawn on Saturdays.

Having the BNP on your doorstep really is another wake up call. The first time they arrived in my area I used my contacts to help our friends and neighbours respond. We then linked up with the local Unison branch and Trades council for a more systematic response and leafleted the entire ward. The BNP still got 10%, in their first election outing in the area, and have increased their candidates in the borough, with an accompanying rise in racist and fascist graffiti like the message left for me on my car one morning (see picture).

The real danger of this is that the BNP start to become part o f the ‘normal’ political landscape, while we have no electoral alternative to them. But we are also more organised and are still holding them back, being able to at least undercut them through taking up community campaigning as the trade’s council. Trades Councils are made up of delegates from local union branches and given the low level of union activism we are a small group, but aside from supporting every local strike and community campaign we are able to hold the only regular political meetings in our borough every month. As well as bringing the left together we can also use the resources of the TUC to reach a much broader audience.

Aside from the campaigns I’ve mentioned there are also a number of international solidarity campaigns in the city. The Liverpool Friends of Palestine is particularly active and well supported. Liverpool has a large Irish population and strong connections to Ireland too. Historically the city was probably even more divided than Glasgow on religion, but Irish identity is not ‘sectarianised’ and is generally seen positively now. The James Larkin Irish Republican Flute Band, reguarly play on anti-racist and trade union marches, and have even been invited to lead the Durham Miners Gala this year in recognition of this.

What is to be done?

There is still an audience for radical change here, in that left wing rallies on issues of the day with well known personalities still pull a crowd. While activists are in shorter supply they exist nonetheless. Activists can always find activity to keep themselves occupied in the many forms resistance takes. But the left as we once knew it appears to be finished as a serious force, while capitalism still exploits, oppresses and alienates.

My view is that we need to create networks to work with all those who are prepared to consistently resist injustice and inequality. I’m less bothered by the symbols and terminology activists are attached too- old or new – as being able to work collectively with each other seems to be the key test here.

The strength that those of us from the socialist left bring to this is in independent working class politics. Starting from where working class people are, both in the workplace and in the communities, we can connect immediate class struggles to an alternative worldview. The trade union movement still provides a base for this but we need to acknowledge that many new activists will not automatically associate it with radical activism. Making our traditions and struggles for workplace democracy more explicit at least offers an alternative model to boring, bureaucratic practices and shady deals with New Labour.

We also need to learn how organise non-hierarchical structures in a way that allows for interventions in electoral politics, where public recognition of individual activists matters. There is perhaps an inevitable tension in this which makes wider debates on power and accountability all the more important. In the here and now, with a low level of class mobilisation, a credible electoral intervention is important in maintaining socialism on the political agenda.

These ideas are hopefully not just my own and the issues raised have of course a wider resonance beyond Merseyside. Perhaps the forthcoming ‘Convention of the Left’ (http://conventionoftheleft.org.uk/) may take us forward in England too, we’ll see.

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