The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition co-hosted a modest but productive conference in Birmingham on February 3 at which the Socialist Party, Transform, the Workers Party, and other organisations, took part in discussions on electoral cooperation.
The call for a Convention to Organise a Working Class Challenge at the General Election was initiated by TUSC in October 2023 and its occurrence is the culmination of months of discussion and consultation between left groups.
Since 2010, TUSC has been maintained by the Socialist Party – and independent socialists – who are committed to a new mass workers’ party. The RMT union was affiliated at the start but left in 2022 to embark on a short-lived non-electoral campaign called “Enough Is Enough” with Labour Left MPs, although they will back Jeremy Corbyn if he stands as an independent candidate. The Socialist Workers Party left in 2017, but some SWP members remain involved..
The determination of TUSC to prepare for a new mass workers’ party is admirable, but the political conditions in Britain meant its formation has not yet become a possibility. The comrades have not given up!
In the 2017 and 2019 general elections, TUSC did not stand to avoid splitting the vote for a Left-led Labour government. Since resuming its activities after 2020, in the wake of the Left losing control of Labour, TUSC has coordinated with other external challengers to the new Labour Right leadership to minimise clashes between candidates in local elections and by-elections.
Militant tradition
A leading figure in TUSC is the former Labour MP Dave Nellist. He was purged from Labour for supporting the Militant tendency in 1991 and has been involved with left-of-Labour electoral efforts ever since.
The Socialist Party comrades organised as the Militant tendency in Labour in an open faction. By coalescing support around a newspaper – acting as a current/league/tendency but supposedly not as a separate party – they became the most influential Trotskyist group in Labour.
Unlike most other Trotskyist groups, the Militant tendency was in the party for decades, not months or years. This was entryism sui generis, as there was no intention of winning members to Marxism and then taking an open turn, “raiding” Labour and splitting it.
The presence of Militant supporters within Labour at a local level, from its branch and district organisations to its constituency structures which select parliamentary candidates, meant that resolutions could be taken from a branch meeting in a working-class neighbourhood, up to the annual conference and into Labour’s programme and general election manifesto. It also meant that Militant supporters could be selected as candidates for local councils and parliament.
Mike Macnair has observed of the Militant tendency’s history:
“At some point between 1965 and the early 1970s (its own histories are unhelpful on when) it developed its distinctive strategic/programmatic conception of a legal revolution, in which ‘Labour’s Marxist Tendency’ would first win control of the Labour Party, then win a general election, then pass an ‘Enabling Act’ through parliament to implement a programme of nationalisation of the top 200 monopolies and so on. The result was a strategic conception much closer to the British road and the ideas of the Labour left than the ideas of any other Trotskyist group were.”
This application of entryism as a long-term strategy necessarily changed Trotskyists in Labour, as evidenced by the Enabling Act concept borrowed from the left wing of pre-WW2 labourism.
But this does not necessarily represent a political degeneration into reformism as the point of adopting this position was to advance the class struggle by challenging the ideas of the Labour Right – and the timidity of the Labour Left.
It’s clear that, despite its use of demands modelled after the transitional programme, the Socialist Party is close in approach to the programme of the Communist Party, Britain’s Road to Socialism. Indeed, the two parties worked together as part of No2EU –Yes to Democracy in the 2009 European elections.
Conventions of the time
When in October 2023, Dave Nellist and TUSC’s national election agent Clive Heemskirk invited organisations to co-host the convention on behalf of TUSC’s steering committee, an agenda with six items was suggested: 1) the attitude to the Labour Left MPs and candidates; 2) the ‘fair media coverage’ threshold of 98 candidates; 3) a common name; 4) a minimum core policy platform for candidates; 5) the right to campaign independently; 6) decision-making by consensus.
In November, TUSC’s steering committee announced that, so far, five organisations had agreed co-host the event and that a conference arrangements committee had been formed.
In December, the steering committee circulated a pre-convention questionnaire, based on the six items on the agenda which had previously been suggested, seeking “replies, including amendments or alternative proposals” from organisations which had agreed to co-host or participate and from elected socialist councillors, trade union executive members, and workplace representatives.
Ahead of the convention, the arrangements committee released the final agenda and urged both the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party of Britain to attend. But neither party chose to send delegates.
“Don’t say that you love me”
A real coup for TUSC was that ahead of the convention, the Workers Party agreed to send delegates.
The Workers Party of Britain was launched after the general election in 2019 by former Respect MP (and one-time Labour MP) George Galloway in alliance with the CPGB-ML.
Two years ago, dialogue between the component parts of Transform and TUSC was affected by issues of social conservatism within the Workers Party. The decision of TUSC to deal with the Workers Party was a source of concern because the CPGB-ML had adopted a reactionary line in opposition to what it – like the Right – calls “LGBT ideology”.
The CPGB-ML is no longer involved with the Workers Party, but Galloway has a willingness to follow the lead of conservative forces. For example, he participated in an anti-SNP list of candidates for the Scottish Parliament elections with former conservatives – this purely negative stance apparently led to him voting Tory for the first time.
And more recently, the Workers Party took up the demand of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party for a “referendum on Net Zero”. It follows on from the issue of Brexit, another difference which created tensions between left groups – Galloway was a Leave supporter and the Workers Party has a “Lexit” position on the European Union.
“Just tell me that you want me”
These past issues were apparently not a barrier to productive discussions at the convention, although it is likely the Workers Party will continue to cooperate with TUSC rather than become a formal member of the coalition.
For others, including the Social Justice Party, and the Spartacist League, there seems to be enthusiasm for the coalition approach.
This convention marks a significant step forward for the left outside Labour. Further steps could be taken at planned events in the coming period by the new independent groups of councillors who have recently split from Labour over the leadership’s opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza.
People getting in a room and going through their ideas in a structured fashion is a difficult but essential part of organising. The difficulty is that if it is an open process, it threatens to expose differences which could become overwhelming.
But it is essential that we get into the habit of both openly disagreeing and agreeing to disagree.
In this regard, the convention has made progress.