SP statement on ULA October 8, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
United Left Alliance at a crossroads
A difficult few months for the United Left Alliance was made significantly more difficult by the recent withdrawal of Seamus Healy TD and the Workers & Unemployed Action Group in Tipperary from the alliance. The ULA is at a crossroads and its future uncertain.
With the uncovering of Mick Wallace’s tax evasion in June, things took a significant turn for the worse for the ULA. That Clare Daly politically supported Wallace was very damaging.
Everyone involved hopes that the undermining of the ULA will end. However, weeks after having left the Socialist Party, denying that Mick Wallace was the issue, it was widely reported in the media that Clare Daly spoke (three times) in support of Wallace at a Dail Technical Group meeting. Unfortunately, political support for him is still demonstrated each week in the Dail.
If such support continues, not only will it further damage the ULA, it will undermine the political position of the ULA overall as important issues of principle are at stake.
Events have demonstrated that fundamentally Mick Wallace is a construction boss who engaged in significant tax evasion – those are the salient facts.
The ULA, or its public reps, should have no political connection to a capitalist, doubly so one who is also guilty of tax evasion if it is serious about trying to build a principled left and socialist force among the working class.
The Socialist Party believes that the ULA should adopt a firm and clear position that none of its reps should have any political connection to Mick Wallace, including not sitting beside him in the Dail, which is a demonstration of political support and nothing else. If any TD wants to flout such a position, at least the ULA attitude should be clear publicly, so that the damage is to the TD and as little as possible to the ULA.
Clare Daly’s political support for Mick Wallace reflects a move away from the advocacy of a socialist alternative, towards a broader political position. That there is a controversy in the ULA whereby some minimise the significance of this issue, raises the question of whether there is an overall shift away from trying to build the ULA as a principled mass left / socialist force.
Some non-aligned members of the ULA seem to think that the ULA should be open not only to working with other TDs on specific issues, but in a broader political sense, including TDs like Luke Flanagan and even Mick Wallace.
At the ULA Council, members of the Socialist Workers Party argued precisely that the ULA should be politically broadened out and open to others, including other TDs. No mention was made of the political basis upon which this broadening out should be based. Presumably because for them, it would be minimal.
Firm opposition was also expressed at the ULA Council to the idea raised by the Socialist Party that the ULA should not offer its motions / bills to be co-signed by the rest of the Technical Group and in general should not co-sign the motions / bills of others in the group.
Rather than the ULA profile being mired and blurred in the Technical Group, the ULA would have a much better chance to promote its profile as a principled, independent left force.
Dermot Connolly (People Before Profit Alliance / ULA) raised objection to this idea and defended co-signing, basically saying that the ULA should be more flexible and should see itself as part of the overall “opposition” in the Dail, citing that sometimes the ULA should support Fianna Fail motions, like one calling for the resignation of Health Minister Reilly.
Socialist Party MEP Paul Murphy answered that sometimes it is correct to vote for this or that motion, but co-signing motions and having motions co-signed implies more and blurs the lines and in general it’s best to avoid it.
The ULA has been knocked back by being connected with Mick Wallace and by the withdrawal of the WUAG. On top of that, there is an outline of significant differences as to the political direction it should go.
The ULA needs to take a turn to the left and towards the advocacy of an explicitly socialist alternative as the only real response to the worsening capitalist crisis. That needs to be coupled with strong and direct involvement by the ULA and its members in the key issues facing working class people. That means fighting austerity and the key battle on austerity is the one against the household and property taxes.
A strong approach to struggle, an independent profile and socialist policies is the way the ULA can grow and really carve itself out as a real alternative to the government parties and to Sinn Fein. If that approach isn’t taken the potential of the ULA can unfortunately be decisively undermined.
Clearly a prelude to an SP withdrawal from the ULA, which would properly be considered an act of mercy rather than sabotage at this stage (though the statement is somewhat disingenuous in failing to acknowledge the deficiencies in the SP’s engagement with the ULA which were at least partially responsible for the vulnerable position it found itself in.)
If that is the path pursued, I wonder what will become of the ULA? A hollowed-out husk consisting entirely of the SWP, or will the SWP seek to establish a parliamentary successor to the Enough campaign?
The Socialist Party is not planning a withdrawal from the ULA.
The SWP has been prioritising People Before Profit for some time now. In terms of the ULA as a party project it has never really had the full backing of either the SWP or the SP.
That is the one thing the WUAG got right in their leaving statement.
Given that the Socialist Party has been saying all along that the ULA is an alliance and should remain one for the time being, it would be rather strange if it had also given “full backing” to the ULA as a “party project”.
The SWP’s attitude to that seems to shift from time to time. Their attempts to relaunch People Before Profit are a reaction to their inability to get their own way in the ULA, which is unfortunate.
Which is a large part of the reason we are where we are. Of course an immediate transformation to one-person one-vote would only make the sectarian warfare between the SP & SWP even worse but some time in the last year or so there needed to be a commitment to the process of forming a party with a concrete timetable for that.
You don’t even see the contradiction in that statement, do you?
That is because there isn’t one, or at least not an unresolvable one, in my opinion.
The announcement of a scheduled timetable ending in a conference to concretely discuss the formation of a new party, along with a process of political discussion and debate over programme and structures, would have been just the catalyst to appeal to the hundreds/thousands of activists involved in the CAHWT and looking for wider answers.
It was this subjective factor that was missing in the SP’s schema of waiting until enough people had joined the ULA before making the move to concretise the party project. It has been clear for a considerable time that while the ULA remained in the alliance framework that it was not going to attract the activists involved in the CAHWT (and other anti-austerity campaigns). We had to make the party project real instead of just being a vague aspiration for some unknown time in the future. The SP refused to do that and therefore bear some of the responsibility for the failure of the ULA.
Hopefully lessons will have been learned for the next attempt to build the party our class so desperately needs.
The announcement of a scheduled timetable ending in a conference to concretely discuss the formation of a new party, along with a process of political discussion and debate over programme and structures, would have been just the catalyst to appeal to the hundreds/thousands of activists involved in the CAHWT and looking for wider answers.
This is what’s known as magical thinking.
Or dialectics if you are a Marxist…
The SP perspective was a formalistic approach of waiting for the “objective conditions” to change so that masses of workers would magically suddenly join the ULA and then the process of creating a workers party could begin.
Completely reactive and mired in objectivist formal logic with no sense of the revolutionary subject being able to act to change reality.
Was there any Trade Union support for ULA as in the RMT for TUSC in the UK? TUSC here looking like a SP affair more and more. I hope this is not the SP withdrawing from ULA but if it is, what chances for Socialist Unity after this? The ULA was an extremely positive step, a pity if it folds.
This is not the Socialist Party leaving the ULA.
Mark P, not being smart about this but only the other day in response to D_D you suggested that your comments on this site are definitely not those of an SP representative. That’s fair enough, but that being the case then how can you be sure the SP isn’t leaving the ULA and that this communication is not meant to prepare the way before it actually acts? I’m not saying that it is, I’m really more curious as to you certainty on the matter.
Having been in two political parties – and sitting on committees in both – I don’t think I would have expressed such certainty over their potential future actions unless I felt I was on the inside track.
So I guess I’m wondering if what you actually mean is that in your assessment this statement is as relatively innocuous as it seems to be and that from being an SP member your sense of it is that there’s no danger of an exit.
The fact that I don’t speak on behalf of the Socialist Party doesn’t stop me from having access to a great deal more information about the Socialist Party’s views, stances and plans than most other people who comment here, other than JRG, neilcaff, etc.
I happen to know that this statement does not indicate a Socialist Party plan to leave the ULA.
Bit ex cathedra there, so you can see the problem. On the one hand you say you don’t represent the SP in your online interactions here. On the other you resort to essentially ex cathedra statements as exemplified by the above which cement the idea that you have a level of information which means that functionally you actually do represent the SP. That’s not even a criticism, more an observation.
Not really.
I know a lot about the Socialist Party’s views, for obvious reasons. So when asked specifically about the Socialist Party’s views on many issues I’m able to give a reasonably reliable answer about what those views are.
That’s quite distinct from my posts here being treated as official statements of the Socialist Party. There really isn’t a contradiction there at all. The Socialist Party don’t send me here to represent them, which doesn’t mean that I’m never in a position to give a reliable answer if someone asks something about the Socialist Party.
Again I think functionally the distinction isn’t as clear as you make it out to be.
Say you are a member of your local residents association, WbS. If the subject of your residents association comes up here, you are in a pretty good position to answer questions regarding what it is and what it intends to do. That doesn’t mean that you are posting here on behalf of your residents association.
Obviously, my membership of the Socialist Party is more politically relevant than membership of a residents association, but it would still be silly to take every opinion I express here as an indication of some kind of “official Socialist Party view”, particularly given that the Socialist Party doesn’t even have an “official” view on most of the things that come up in conversation here.
When I say above that “this statement isn’t the Socialist Party leaving the ULA”, that’s my opinion rather than the an official statement on behalf of the SP. But it’s an opinion on a subject that I’m in a position to be sure about.
Your interactions have almost entirely, IIRC, seemed to be predicated on your being in some sense a representative of the SP, in that you have tended to ex cathedra statements about party policy etc etc. I’m certainly not alone in that perception.
Moreover the very combative approach you’ve adopted at times hasn’t it would appear been sanctioned against in any fashion by your party, despite it causing some concern amongst those who are allied through various formations to the SP. Even factoring in how peripheral the CLR and other social media actually are that is strongly suggestive of you having at least some license in respect of what you comment and how you comment.
Factoring in how other parties organise their engagement with social media the SP would be quite mad – which it isn’t by a long chalk – not to keep at least a bit of an eye on the area and to be honest many of us have long assumed that you and a few others have an informal but clear enough function in relation to that.
When I comment here, I do not do so as a representative of the Socialist Party. The SP does not depute people to go argue the toss in the comments sections of blogs.
As for “licence”, the Socialist Party doesn’t try to regulate what its members say online. Such a task would be impossible in any case. If someone goes around being an egregious dick about politics where other Socialist Party members notice it, that other member might well send them an email suggesting they wind their neck in, but in general the SP takes quite a laissez faire attitude to most things of that nature.
Certainly a much more relaxed attitude than some others on the left seem to assume (there are plenty of people who seem to quite earnestly believe that the SP kicks people out for disagreeing with the party line in public)..
It does, of course, have its own facebook pages, twitter feeds etc, which do actually represent the party and were set up to do so.
Mark, has there ever been an instance in your online commenting here across six or so years where you’ve even just the once gone against SP policy or approaches that you can think of? Where you’ve had a critical word about any fundamental, or actually pretty minor aspect of their activities?
And it’s not just that. Your absolute defence of them has extended retrospectively into the past where you’ve been a staunch defender of Militant (granted you said there were some things you disagreed with their stance on but clearly nothing of any great importance in terms of strategy or tactics).
I’m not saying this to attack ether you or them, but simply to say that you effectively mirror almost precisely albeit with a very unique tone the SP line at all and every time. To say you comment under your own steam and not as a representative of them is near enough meaningless. What could you possibly say that wouldn’t be entirely of them? I’m at a loss to think of anything. And as I’ve noted before you speak with absolute certainty as to their line at all times. Again, no expression of doubt whatsoever.
I’ve said quite a few things critical of my own organisation here, WbS.
Tonight’s Vincent Browne show lends credence to the SP position.
What is Clare Daly at at all?
What did she do on Vincent Browne’s programme?
Missed the start but she defended Mick Wallace’s refusal to cooperate with the official Oireachtas inquiry and came across as a bit of an apologist for his behaviour.
I haven’t seen it, but if she really defended that it’s very foolish of her. Even if she doesn’t want to put the boot into him, she could simply respond by saying that Mick Wallace is an independent TD and before that was a private citizen and what he does is for him to answer for.
What is it the official Oireachtas inquiry is investigating and what else has it investigated? And is it composed completely of other TDs?
Also said that she would refuse to cooperate if in the same position.
Clare Daly could perhaps have done better, but I have to say, felt that Browne was out of order with his line of questioning and with his tone. If Wallace was a woman and Daly was a man, there is no way in hell he would have been left get away with that.
Mark P: “Given that the Socialist Party has been saying all along that the ULA is an alliance and should remain one for the time being, it would be rather strange if it had also given “full backing” to the ULA as a “party project”.
The Socialist Party statement on 11th November 2010, announcing the formation of the ULA, said:
“In pushing for the establishment of a slate/alliance, the Socialist Party argued that it was very important to try to get a fraction of genuinely left TDs elected at the next opportunity. Given that this crisis will continue to wreck devastation for the foreseeable future and the likelihood that Labour will be in power putting the boot into working class people while ICTU sit idly by, three or four left TDs could become a very important focal point for organising struggle against austerity and for the launching of a new party of the working class to fill the political vacuum”.
(And, actually, five ULA TDs were elected).
Yes, D_D, I’m familiar with that statement. It just doesn’t say what you seem to think it does.
Read the last sentence you put up again. It says that a group of left TDs “could become a very important focal point for organising struggle against austerity and for the launching a new party of the working class”. It doesn’t talk about building the ULA as if it were that party. And it doesn’t do that because the Socialist Party was never in favour of doing that.
Any thoughts on Clare’s comments tonight by the way? We should just put it all behind us, right?
This is disingenuous at best. The vast bulk, if not every, individual who joined the ULA following the last election did so with the expectation that the process of building a new party was integral to the nature of the ULA and we could expect that new party in the medium term.
As it turned out we were sold a pup.
It is indeed completely true that “the Socialist Party was never in favour of doing that” and the SWP are seem unable to commit to any project for more than a few months at a time.
It’s not even slightly disingenuous. It’s true that there are some long term independent left activists who seem to have assumed, no matter how many times they were told otherwise, that the ULA was going to turn itself into a party in the short term. See for instance D_D’s misreading of an old Socialist Party statement above, where he sees what he wants to see.
As for the magic effects of a party structure over an alliance one in bringing new people in, well, somebody should go over to Greece and tell SYRIZA that nobody will get involved in an alliance.
The important question is not one of terminology (party vs. alliance) but whether ULA members who were not also members of the SP or SWP would have any role in the party / alliance / friendly gathering of lefties with some vague common purpose, other than leafleting and putting up posters.
Now I know from my experience, in the ULA branch where I was involved in the first nine months of 2011 (before leaving Ireland for work) that several good people drifted away because there was no clarity about what it actually meant to be a member of the ULA. And I’ve heard people from other branches in other parts of the country say the same. I also know several people who would have been good left activists, mostly involved in single-issue campaigns, who were keeping their distance from the ULA although their politics would have been a natural fit for it, because they were waiting to see for the ULA to decide what it was and how it was going to be organised; again, I’ve heard others report the same experience.
So it’s not a question of ‘the magic effects of a party structure over an alliance one in bringing new people in’ – it’s more a question the magic effects of a structure, any structure, in bringing people in, as long as it gives them some kind of stake in the organisation they’re meant to be joining. I don’t think anyone was expecting any miracles or a sudden leap forward, but even having a fairly coherent group of 600-700 activists organised in a fairly broad spread of the country would be a big advance over the space of 2-3 years, and hardly pie-in-the-sky stuff – that would roughly mean doubling the membership of already-existing socialist groups, at a time when the anti-household charge campaign has brought a lot of people into contact with left activists. But it’s not going to happen if people are just expected to play the role of footsoldiers with all the important decisions being made over their heads.
Ed,
Up until very recently, you had to join an affiliated organisation to participate in SYRIZA at all, which doesn’t seem to have held them back particularly.
The ULA took time to develop structures which allowed the non-aligned to have their say in the organisation. But it did do so. The problem there isn’t the structure, it’s that there aren’t very many of them.
Once again I must correct Mark P who says: “The problem there isn’t the structure, it’s that there aren’t very many of them.”
The ULA office provided membership figures in June 2012. The 388 ULA members consisted of 156 “non-aligned” members (that is, all outside the three founding groups); 107 Socialist Party members; 117 in the People Before Profit Alliance, mostly Socialist Workers Party members; and eight (8) Workers and Unemployed Group members.
BTW I agree with Ed that, “The important question is not one of terminology (party v. alliance)”.
What precisely do you believe that you are correcting, D_D? After reading your creative interpretation of that Socialist Party statement you quoted from, I can never quite be sure how far your imagination is ranging.
156 is indeed “not very many”, and even that is a paper figure. The number who are involved in any way in activity is markedly lower. How many voted in the non-aligned elections again?
Let me guess, though, those numbers are somehow our fault? If only we’d go ahead with your preferred structure and approach, geared towards building a miniature little broad left party, with a comfortably vague left politics, everything would be better?
Ask any of the individual non-aligned members if they believed that they were joining a project that would be moving in the medium term towards the creation of a new party. I think the answer will be the same – a definite YES! Did they think that 18 months after the election that it would still be the case that that process of transformation would be no closer (as per SP articles on the question) – the answer would be a definite NO!
It seems we were all wrong – and this includes many who came in as SP/SWP-PbP supporters from the election campaign – do really think that holds up as a coherent narrative?
I am in individual independent within the Left Alliance (L.A.), but if the S.P. (who i still have great time for) do not want to form a United Left Party, then just go, the same should apply to the S.W.P., Healy’s group have gone, but if Daly continues to back Wallace, then should just leave the LA too & be an independent TD, many of lowered-paid people are sick of the bitter bickering & want to build the L.A. or just forget it, most people i know will either vote or campaign for Sinn Fein or emigrate, apart from the CAHWT those are the present options for any potential young activists & i say potential
With respect, this debate reeks of mockney bourgeois morality, and public navel gazing which is sadly typical of the small groups which make up the so called ‘far left.’ its as if as soon as we get a foot in the door we are searching out the exit signs.
Believe it or not Wallance fiddling his tax is not a major issue for most working class people, besides in the scheme of things he is a small fish. Tell me what would go down best amongst the ULA voters, Ms Daly dumping all over her partner and denying him thrice or doing her best to stand by him.
As Forster wrote, If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. If you change country for cause then you get an idea of the dilemma Clare faced. Myself I would cut her some slack and let this thing blow out.
As to Wallance, I know little of the man beyond he is a contractor, in my experience contractors world wide and the Irish are certainly not an exception;) are genetically inbuilt to fiddle tax and much else come to that. It is a bit rich to express shock and horror when they get found out, where the fuck did comrades think the money was coming from? Clare’s piggy bank which she had built up after years of hard work as a leftist political activists?
You all know more about this issue than I, but a word of advice, do not become focused on individuals as you will be diverted into a street marked dead end.
Please, please, please, do not follow the SSP and Respect down the plug hole, ask your self two question before you point the finger and press the destruct button, who gains and who is pulling whose chain.
Comradely regards
Mick
WBS, will reply soon
This is the same argument we always get. “Sure wouldn’t we all fiddle th tax if we could”. Inside all capitalists like Wallace is the dream of being a big one. The SP and ULA gave Daly too much slack and thus come close to destroying th ULA.It was not about betraying a country but something else.
Whatt are we going to have Two wanna be revolutionary parties and 3 faux Gregorys.The workers will see only SF as a serious alternative.
What a lack of real ambition.
Serious question: Did ULAers voice a problem with Mick Wallace being a “capitalist” AND a prominent figure in the ULA before his creative accounting practices were made public?
Mick Wallace was not, is not and will not be a prominent figure in the ULA – he is a property developer who have some elft-leaning tendencies which have vanished in smoke as his personal position was threatened. No one in the Socialist Party (with the possible exception of Clare Daly) ever had any illusions about Wallace – I can’t speak for the rest of the ULA.
OR, I know you’re sincere and that this is far from your intention but the argument that, ‘there are more important things to be worrying about,’ has been the standard defence of Irish political corruption, employed by the supporters of Ahern, Lowry, Burke, Doherty and all the sorry breed all the way up to James Reilly. There was probably a lad at Newgrange explaining that it didn’t matter that he’d stolen the animal hides and berries, the important thing was to raise the next stone.
It’s hardly ‘bourgeois’ to think that left wing politicians shouldn’t be appearing on the same platform as a millionaire who awarded himself a large pay rise at the same time as failing to pay people who worked for him. Or maybe it is. Maybe Sean Quinn, Seanie Fitzpatrick, Michael Lynn, David Drumm and the rest of them should all be applauded for their boldness in flouting conventional morality too.
+1
It may have been the case in the past that most people wouldn’t have cared much about a builder fiddling his tax. In the context of a country which has been bankrupted by the actions of an alliance of corrupt bankers and property speculators (or whom Wallace differs only in scale) it’s very much an issue of concern.
Not only that, but while it might be nice to think that if only the left in Ireland could stop obsessing over the ‘bourgeois morality’ of this issue, the fact is that as long as Wallace is linked, in whatever way, to the ULA and the CAHWT, he’ll be used as a weapon against them. No one on the left owes Wallace any loyalty, particularly given how his actions and comments over recent months amply demonstrate how much loyalty he feels towards the left.
Wallace has though a more nuanced relationship with a certain section of the left, and I’m talking here about the CPI. They got a fairly good deal on the refurb of Connolly Books and a better deal on the rent of the premises in the ‘Italian Quarter’ when the builders were in. Maybe the whole thing is a Tankie plot to fuck the Trots over?
Ingenious! Who can we call to get to the bottom of this insidious Stalinist conspiracy?
What’s Matt Treacy up to these days?
In fairness, how was the ULA ever going to become a party when the two main parties neither like, respect or trust each other? The SP and SWP are two distinct entities with different viewppoints of a number of issues, different ways of doing things and different histories and traditions. Calling for them to completely coalesce reminds me of when people used to say that FF and FG should become one party, ‘because they’re basically the same.’ The problem was that FF and FG didn’t think that was true at all and I suspect the same is true of the SWP and the SP.
I’ve felt much the same about this for a long time now. At best a marriage of convenience between the two and perhaps for a prolonged period, but the idea the two would sink their very distinctive differences into a single formation has always seemed highly unlikely. That said both have been vague enough to offer the impression that they’ve been pushing towards something along those lines (and in fairness have perhpas gone further than might have once been expected), and also in fairness it’s not difficult to see a quasi party like structure or platform evolving where each retained its individuality/identity/coherence but worked more closely together than they would otherwise.
That’s precisely it, Eamonn.
The ULA is not about merging the Socialist Party with the SWP and a small number of long term left activists into a new broad left party. It has never been about that. It will never be about that. And that’s been made perfectly clear over and over again. The ULA is an alliance which allows socialists of various stripes to work together in elections and in other areas where there are shared views.
The only way that we will see the existing left parties actually within one larger party is in the context of a very significant upsurge in left wing activism, and a new party in which we’d be drastically outnumbered by others. Unfortunately, there are a few people in the ULA who absolutely insist on thinking that we are joking about this or that we can be cajoled into changing our mind and adopting their small broad party project. No matter how many times they are told otherwise. Indeed each time they are told otherwise they react as if it’s a shock.
The probelm with this narrative is that it leaves out all the non-aligned who joined on the basis of the ULA project being for the creation of a new party. Joe Higgins said this immediately after the election “not tomorrow but…” and the implication was clear and on that basis the individual non-alinged members joined but it seems we were mislead.
As regards the upsurge in working class political activity you refer to – just what do you think the CAHWT is?
“Calling for them to completely coalesce reminds me of when people used to say that FF and FG should become one party, ‘because they’re basically the same.’ The problem was that FF and FG didn’t think that was true at all and I suspect the same is true of the SWP and the SP.”
Yet I have absolutely no doubt that if the class they represent needed them to do so (e.g if a SYRIZA-type party looked like it might head a government; bit of a stretch I know but for the sake of argument …), FF and FG would set aside their differences and join together before you had time to say ‘civil war’. So I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to expect socialist groups to at least develop a good working relationship with each other when the class they would like to represent badly needs them to do so (that is, unless you think Labour or SF can be trusted to do the job of representing workers’ interests).
Besides which, I think 90% of the reason why FF and FG wouldn’t join together has nothing to do with ideology or even historical bitterness: to a large extent both parties are vehicles for peopel who want to make a career in politics; from top to bottom, ambitious FF and FG members have carved out positions for themselves in a certain hierarchy, from the wannabe leaders or ministers near the summit to the guys whose highest aspiration is to be mayor of their local town one day. Merging FF and FG would disrupt all of that, so there’s no reason why they’d do it without a pressing reason. Whereas the socialist left doesn’t have so many vested interests standing in the way of unity.
Ed – despite the fact that the interests of the bourgeoisie in Greece is that SYRIZA should be defeated in the election and for a long time it looked like SYRIZA would actually win – yet this did not result in ND and PASOK putting aside their differences to prevent SYRIZA winning. They rolled the dice and tried to preserve their own political base. Even know in coalition there is constant disputes between both parties. So to use it as an analogy suggesting the SP and SWP should put aside their differences and merge is utterly false.
Mark has outlined the Socialist Party position since the begining of the ULA – it has been utterly consistent. Furthermore the Socialist Party repeatedly pointed out that the process of building a new left party was not an easy process and that it could go througn many different moves forward and backward, it could result in the emergence of a party/alliance the disintegration of this group and the emergence of another one. It might succeed the first time – or it could take a whole series of failures. The key to this process is and always has been – are sections of the working class drawing the necessary political conclusions about the need to build a left party to fight for the interests of working class people. That has not happened yet and until it does then a left party will not be built. It is not possible to preempt the process it is only possible to accelerate it and that acceleration can only be done if left groups and individuals adopt the correct strategy – something that is currently the subject of debate within the ULA and the subject of the above statement.
It wasn’t necessary for ND and PASOK to merge, in fact it would probably have been counter-productive; if it had been necessary, I have no doubt that they would have done so, as would FG and FF. I never mentioned the word ‘merge’ in connection with the SP and SWP; I spoke of ‘at least develop[ing] a good working relationship’, which clearly doesn’t exist at present.
Ed – the ruling elite in Greece would have gone ballistic if SYRIZA came out as the top party with a 50 seat bonus. The only real way of ensuring it wouldn’t happen was some kind of coming together between the ND and PASOK – I would be absolutely gobsmacked if there wasn’t behind the door discussions about it – which didn’t happen because of inter party and inter-personal rivalries and almost allowed SYRIZA in the parliamentary door.
Joe Higgins immediately after the election said the ULA was about creating a new party, not tomorrow but… and the implication was clear and all the individual non-aligned members joined on that basis.
Bolshie – just wondering – when did you start speaking for all the individual non-aligned members in the ULA?
I don’t claim to do so. I am merely recounting the result of my experience in Cork, where the bulk of the non-aligned have left citing exactly the lack of movement towards the new party as the reason. Also my participation in the organised non-aligned grouping where we all share that understanding, with varying degrees of opinion on the exact pace of development, but all frustrated at the SP’s continual refusal to move forward. I then speculate as that this will also have been the case with non-aligned who joined in other places and haven’t got involved in the organised non-aligned grouping.
I can’t absolutely prove this but I am confident that it reflects reality. What alternative narrative do you have for why individual non-aligned people joined the ULA if it wasn’t with the expectation that it was to be part of a project for a new workers party?
see the point about co signing motions implying something. wouldn’t worry to much about the minutia of dail procedures. bar a few anoraks no one gives a toss.
don’t let your self be led by news paper editorials having myopic digs. i seen a lot of that with the shinners where they made a few decisions that frankly there was no shiver of a demand from on the ground with supporters or possible supporters.
I see the Sp conference in northern Ireland is entitled ‘time for a new party’ is that a joke or a slogan?
Is that a serious question?
Just as a new party of the working class is needed in the 26 counties, a new party of the working class is needed in the 6 counties.
Slogan so?
If you have a point to make you should make it.
“Uniting the catholic and protestant working class.
Time for a new party”
And if (like me, and maybe one or two others on this site) you’re not a catholic or a protestant?
suppose you could set up another new party.
SP to call for a ULA-esque set-up in Northern Ireland with the call “Time for a New Party”?
I had until very recently seen the SP as a principled and serious organization even if I often disagreed with them, but they should be honest with the working class and say what they mean – “Time for a New Alliance” or “Time for a New Campaign”.
That’s not to say I don’t think a ULA-esque format in Northern Ireland wouldn’t be a big step forward because it would be. I think most people would agree with me on that, just as the ULA still represents a big step forward in the ROI.
Julian, the call for a new party does not equate to a call for a ULA-esque set up in Northern Ireland. In the north, it relates more to the call for a new party from various trade unions than to other groups on the left.
The Socialist Party (11th November 2010, announcing the formation of the ULA) :
“In pushing for the establishment of a slate/alliance, the Socialist Party argued that it was very important to try to get a fraction of genuinely left TDs elected at the next opportunity. Given that this crisis will continue to wreck devastation for the foreseeable future and the likelihood that Labour will be in power putting the boot into working class people while ICTU sit idly by, three or four left TDs could become a very important focal point for organising struggle against austerity and for the launching of a new party of the working class to fill the political vacuum”.
Mark P (9th October 2012): “It’s true that there are some long term independent left activists who seem to have assumed, no matter how many times they were told otherwise, that the ULA was going to turn itself into a party in the short term. See for instance D_D’s misreading of an old Socialist Party statement above, where he sees what he wants to see.”
JRG: (9th October 2012) “Mark has outlined the Socialist Party position since the beginning of the ULA – it has been utterly consistent. Furthermore the Socialist Party repeatedly pointed out that the process of building a new left party was not an easy process and that it could go through many different moves forward and backward, it could result in the emergence of a party/alliance, the disintegration of this group and the emergence of another one. It might succeed the first time – or it could take a whole series of failures. The key to this process is and always has been – are sections of the working class drawing the necessary political conclusions about the need to build a left party to fight for the interests of working class people. That has not happened yet and until it does then a left party will not be built.
Socialist Party (27th October): ‘Socialism 2012′, Belfast, ‘TIme For a New Party!’
http://www.socialistpartyni.net/
TIME For A New Party.
You’re ‘avin a larf, right?
I think it is shorthand for “Time for a New Party – when we decide it is the time…”
Believe it or not, D_D, the Socialist Party in the North isn’t about to launch a new party in the immediate future just because it’s having a meeting explaining the case for a new party.
The subjective conditions aren’t correct yet
But it’s time for one! As was put to me this is all a bit jesuitical…
My teenage son is going through a phase where he simply refuses to accept that he’s wrong. It is amazingly infuriating. I’m hoping he’ll grow out of it and that my patience will see me through the process due to the bonds of family. I see similarities in behaviour here. Most people don’t have the patience for it. Good luck to them.
It is “TIme For a New Party!” not “TIme For a New Party?”
I think you will find that this small grammatical difference indicates something about the immediacy of the word “Time” for how most ordinary people.
Even “The Case for a New Party” would not imply anything like the same immediacy as “TIme For a New Party!”
Just as with the ULA this is about setting up a project based on playing with people’s expectations in what, given the controversy over exactly the question in the ULA, can only been seen as pretty dishonest.
“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’”
-Lewis Carroll, from a resolution submitted on behalf of the Wonderland branch of the ULA
More proof that the ULA isn’t Dublin-centric anyway.
Thats why my friends said they would never join the dis-united Left ‘Alliance’. The differences are beginning to resemble the struggle between two rival islands , Party stubborness before people on lowered-income with four tougher budgets to go http://youtu.be/B34ydLx706s shame, Sinn Fein will reap any rewards of future struggles
It’s not about setting up anything necessarily, it’s about having a discussion on what we consider to be an extremely important issue.
D_D there is no contradiction between those quotes and the Socialist Party’s view that a new working class party is needed in the north and the south.
The truth of the matter is, I fear left groups like the Socialist Party and SWP are never going to be prepared to bet the house on a possible new party. They are conservatives to the core and will defend their real estate rather than take a punt on the future.
In truth they believe their organisation ‘is’ the vanguard party already, and all else is little more than a recruiting sergent. This was reasonable behaviour in the past and it is still understandable, but wrong. Today working class people are facing an onslaught from the neo liberals and their cronies who are using the economic crises to totally dismantle the gains made by the working classes in the post WW2 period. We need direct representation in the bourgeois parliaments and chancellories and for this to be successful and ongoing we need a radical united left Party.
If the SP, SWP, etc refuse to help facilitate this or stand in the way of this emerging, what have those decades of hard work and struggle been for?
These days I often think instead of studying the fine detail of the early 20th century, (Russia, etc) comrades would spend there leisure time more productively by checking out how the English ruling class used parliament to crush working class people in the 18th and 19 centuries.
I would have to say that I agree with ‘Organised Rage’. While the aspiration was there to develop a new formation of the left after the last election. The profound determination, generosity and willingness to compromise was lacking. A pity. But it’s probably time to abandon the ULA project for now and return to in time.
Just a few thoughts:
It seems the non-aligned ULA members/supporters here were hoping for something that the SP, at least, wasn’t expecting to happen, or happen for some time – the formation of a new left party. I am not convinced the SP set out to mislead. I think it more likely that the independent ULA members were hoping for much more. I can understand that as someone who has “been around” but finds it hard to commit to one of the small left groups that exist at present and being hungry for a political formation I would be happy to commit too. The same sort of thing has happned in the UK I suppose (Respect?).
Sadly, in a way, I think Mark P’s views, and it appears the SP position, is more realistsic at present. The ULA would be a huge step forward if it could bring together various groups and individuals in an alliance that could campaign, work well with single issue groups and bring some coherence to a left view. If it can succeed on that level then that would surely improve the chances of forming a genuinely mass party in the future. Forcing the SP and SWP together now would seem to be a recipe for disaster.
How would making the ULA a part now really help anyway? It is still small, wouldn’t it be yet another small far left party? I think the Alliance should be made to work first.
On Mark P’s “role” on this board, it seems clear enough to me as he describes it. He is not an official SP representative, his views are not SP “statements”, but they do pretty much represent the SP position on issues on which the SP has a position – as you might expect from a party member. Not a problem for me. He does express himself rather sharply at times though!
I’m not an SP member or have any connection with them apart from being broadly sympathetic to their politics.
FergusD I think you are more or less spoton. But just to say that it was never ruled out that the ULA could have played a role in setting up a new party within 6 months or a year of it being established. If the struggles among working class people had continued to intensify, which was possible, instead of lull that developed primarily as a result of the trade union leadership, the project of building a new party could also been progressed. This didn’t happen and understandably some people are now frustrated, but I dispute any attempt to portray the Socialist Party as being dishonest or anything but consistent in what we’ve said about the ULA.
Well leaving aside the issue of whether the SP helped give the impression that the ULA was more of a party project than they really thought it should be, I think the wreckage that is the ULA pretty much undermines any argument about how useful it could be as an alliance.
The reality is that even in alliance terms – if that is to mean anything other than being an electoral badge of convenience – the ULA has also failed.
The SP & SWP have never given it the priority which would allow it to do what Fergus outlines. The ULA badge has sometimes been used in campaigning situations but anyone on the Irish left who has attended demonstrations over the past two years will struggle to think of many, if any, occasions when the ULA, as the ULA, has manifest itself as a major force.
Certainly it has not helped to achieve any coherence of the left.
But if the SP & SWP had really given the ULA more of a priority then the party question would have inevitably come back on to the table. It would have been seen more as a separate organisation and people being attracted to it would have done so with the expectation that it would be some kind of real organisation which had a democratic internal life.
That is exactly what happened after the election and why there was the spurt of growth with the individual members joining – because of exactly that expectation.
The schema that it would be possible to hold together an alliance structure that would contain the SP & SWP (& WUAG) while hundreds and perhaps thousands of individual members joined (who knows what the SP considered to be enough social weight to begin the process of transformation into a party) but while those individual members had no democratic right to decide policy because of the veto was absurd and could never work.
The two choices facing the ULA were always to enter into the path of transformation into a party or to fall back into being, at most, a badge of electoral convenience.
Yes there were many risks with beginning the process of transformation into a party but there was also the possibility of success. As compared to the certainty of the disaster, that we are now seeing play out before our eyes, if the alliance schema was maintained.
In what sense is it an electoral badge of convenience? Which of the TDs needed the existence of the ULA to be elected? I don’t think Seamus Healy had that opinion.
The spurt of growth you mention was not significant and in fact the 40 or so launch meetings around the country were for the most part damp squibs unfortunately.
Your hypothetical is entirely abstract. In my opinion it is highly anyway, unlikely that the alliance structures that existed would have remained as they were if hundreds of people were joining a ULA that had momentum, but again this unfortunately didn’t happen. Furthermore it is unlikely that this will happen anytime soon given the recent setbacks.
A ULA party would not be the panacea that you think it would be. A new party set up on a weak political basis and without the involvement of fresh layers of working class people would be a certain disaster. Especially from the point of view of those of us whose goal is not just to build a left party, but to change society.
Well the ULA primarily exists as a badge tacked on to the announcements of TDs – perhaps “electoral badge of convenience” is the wrong phrase but the political content I am referring to is real enough.
But it doesn’t really matter what I or anyone else says does it – it is much easier for you guys to believe your own narrative there was nothing else that could have been done and the SP made all the right calls at all the right times.
And now you go north of the border saying “Time for a New Party!” but not really meaning what everyone else thinks that phrase means.
Yes, fundamentally I believe the Socialist Party made the right calls, but that doesn’t matter because you also want to believe your own narrative.
Just to clarify that we say it’s ‘time for a new party’ in the south too, as the working class still lacks an organisation that can represent them politically, facilitate discussion and activity and offer an alternative. As it stands the ULA is not that, and it’s not going to become that simply by declaring it a party.
The difference being that your vision was carried out and we are where we are as a result.
Why do you keep on repeating the “simply declaring the ULA to be a party” would have been a disaster. I certainly never proposed that. As far as I know the only ones who actually proposed that were the SWP for a couple of months in the middle of the year and that was just them preparing the self-justification for their almost certainly pre-planned switch back to the PbP horse.
but pat whats going to be the new party?
The Socialist Party got some stick here for calling for a party but not turning the ULA into a party. Those criticising in that instance maybe cant see the woods for the trees. Calling for a left wing mass movement/party is what the further left parties do. Always have and because they havent figured out how to deliver it, always will. To then carp that the ULA wasnt that party for the Socialists seems like picking on them especially when likely those making the criticisms have the same idea.
At this stage every time I see a comment proposing the building of a new mass party I get discouraged.
When you sound like a parody of a left wing movement something is going very wrong. Thats why the ULA excited people. It was fresh and new approach. Setting aside petty points to build something.
Instead its being replaced by the same old approach – lets build a new party.
Although there are some seemingly contradictory aspects to this I think it’s worth remembering that in fairness the SP did go into the ULA and have stayed there. I don’t share their logic as regards a ‘new workers party’ ( or rather I think it’s a good idea but one would think that any such formation would be more likely to grow out of the ULA than spontaneously form ) but I think it’s fairly sincerely meant. It’s also reasonable to note that they’ve been through a significant convulsion this last few month and it will take time for things to settle.
que, I think your point re the ULA and its nature and attractiveness is very interesting indeed.
In response to FergusD
As you rightly say as a member of a party one would expect him to take the party line, and in terms of policy that’s a given. But when it comes to the twists and turns of actions and responses to events it’s a little bit less obvious. For example, if someone says that they believe policy a b or c and that is the stated policy of a party that’s grand and predictable. It’s even possible to broadly apply that to events and contexts. Every member of every party will reiterate that to some degree or another. But to say that a party will act in x y or z way to various events is slightly different. That’s not entirely predictable from a policy line and yet is not simply interpretation depending as it does upon the nature of the events, the nature of the response. The former any member can offer up, the latter requires a degree of certainty that would suggest some level of being on an inside track.
That’s no problem at all, it’s more a case of being able as people interacting with someone to determine which is ex cathedra and which is not – something that’s not always clear from context. I’m certainly not worried about Mark P’s role, it’s entirely his right to decide what that is and how he chooses to interact (sharpness excepted
) but it’s handy to know.
WbS: The Socialist Party is a small activist organisation. Everyone is “on the inside track”.
I think that perhaps you are relying on your own experiences in the WP to slightly misleading effect here. Not only did the WP have the complications of secret branches, a secret army, etc, it was also much, much, larger. To know what the party was planning beyond interpreting the words in formal statements, a member might well have to have some particular access to an “inside track”. That just isn’t the case in the Socialist Party, both because there’s a culture of detailed discussion about what the party is planning and doing, and because we’re simply a lot smaller.
WbS,
“It’s also reasonable to note that they’ve been through a significant convulsion this last few month and it will take time for things to settle.”
If fairness it depends on how one classifies convulsion. The SP hasn’t had its leading cadre interned, it hasn’t lost members to right-wing death squads, you know, the sort of thing that a self-proclaimed revolutionary party might expect to have to confront at some stage. No, it has had a defection of one of its parliamentary spokespeople and a couple of mild articles in the papers about its expenses. It is difficult in those circumstances to offer convulsions as an excuse for the self-serving pedantry that is being spouted.
What self-serving pedantry would that be, LATC?
I agree by the way, that the Socialist Party hasn’t been going through “convulsions” and I wouldn’t put that forward as an excuse for anything. Losing Clare Daly, a singularly able activist and public rep, was a blow and dealing with her attitude to Wallace and the fallout of that was certainly unpleasant, but there has been no internal ruckus over it.
Fair point LATC, but aren’t these things relative to some degree? I think that the contextual environment is important too. It’s not Belfast 1975 thank God.
As Mark P says above it’s a small group of people who are reasonably well known to each other. Losing a TD is a convulsion (or if you prefer Mark P’s term blow) for them (that said and sort of echoing your point a little I did disagree wtih pat’s point about the media being out to get the SP pointing out that the WP and SF and others used to get mountains more media attacks and on a continual basis not just across a month but years).
.
I think that perhaps you are relying on your own experiences in the WP to slightly misleading effect here. Not only did the WP have the complications of secret branches, a secret army, etc, it was also much, much, larger. To know what the party was planning beyond interpreting the words in formal statements, a member might well have to have some particular access to an “inside track”. That just isn’t the case in the Socialist Party, both because there’s a culture of detailed discussion about what the party is planning and doing, and because we’re simply a lot smaller.
I’m not sure I am Mark P. I think it’s more that hitherto there was a certain ambiguity in your position – albeit unknown to many of us – which is now a fair bit clearer.
Que, I guess from your comment that you weren’t a member of the ULA so perhaps that explains why you don’t realise that it was the very fact that people thought the ULA was about building a new workers party that made it attractive to the people that actually joined it as individual members. You may well have found it attractive for some other reason about it supposedly not being for building a new party but that didn’t have anything much to do with the reality of the actual human material that have been involved in the project.
Can anyone name a modern mass Left formation, in any country, which has so-called ‘Trotskyite’ groups at its centre. This is a genuine question, as it is my belief that these groups are more about personal affirmation than political change – worthwhile in their own way but not something around which ‘ordinary’ people will mobilise.
I’m very dubious in ascribing some sort of original sin to Trotskyism or Trotskyists that hobbles their potential on the left in terms of organisation. And take the SP as an example. Quite obviously ordinary people have mobilised around SP candidates and as left parties go in this state it has to be one of the most successful and arguably only second in terms of size and representation to the WP in its day.
“Lost Soul” might also be interested in looking up the history of the Portuguese Left Bloc, to use the first example that comes into my head.
The Socialist Party isn’t the second most successful left party in Ireland in terms of size and representation – both the Republican Congress (while not having Dail representation) and Larkin’s IWL were both significantly bigger and more influential in their day. The IWL had the support of the WUI and had Larkin elected to the Dail and the Republican Congress was estimated to have a membership in the 3-4,000 range and the affiliation of some trade union branches.
I should have qualified that with ‘in our lifetimes’, but that was my intention, to look at the contemporary and near contemporary period.
Since the 1970s I would agree yes – despite this the Socialist Party is still very limited in size and influence – although it does punch significantly above its weight.
And what other further left party has got an MEP and a TD? It hasn’t happened. Anyway it entirely disproves the point that somehow parties with a Trotskyist heritage are unable to connect with workers.
Well, the history of the LSSP in sri Lanka is rather complicated but at one time (50-60s, even 70s?) it was a mass “Trotskyist” party – or at least so itself ideologically that way, it certainly had a mass following, and participated in Left Fronts of various kinds. Somewaht shrunken now I think, and I’m not sure of its politics.
There was also the Revolutionary Workers Party in Bolivia which was a mass force from the early 40′s to the late 60′s.
but in a system where the patron-client relationship defines the political interaction between constituent and TD can they be said to have mobilised around the Trotskyism/the SP rather than just around the candidate. Flip side is that there have been a number of polls i’ve seen regarding political suport, both in our saorstat and wider afield, where its clear that voters also pick parties because they are , to use a poor term, on-message.
Are the trots an original sin. Not in the sense that they have a badness to them but if with all the good will in the world they dont actually advance their project, and your comparison to them ranking 2nd to the WP is telling, then something is going bad wrong and it maybe not original sin but poor tactics causing the problem.
I think WBS you, or maybe another, had mentioned before how the WP despite it being one of the most successful far left parties in the 26 counties still spent most of their time as a party with 4 seats, and had a high period of just about 10 years. Yet despite that the Socialists today, heading into year 5 of a destructive crisis are still a poor second to them.
Its hard to fathom that no Socialist Party member isnt losing the rag about why the hell building th eproject is glacial
That’s straightforward enough, que. It’s because socialist ideas and the workers movement alike have been massively thrown back through both the collapse of Stalinism and the neo-liberal offensive of the last few decades. The Socialist Party is well aware that we are coming from a tougher starting point than socialists were in the 70s.
The Danish Red-Green Alliance.
The Portuguese Left Bloc.
Both had significant Trotskyist parties involved from their foundation (not SP or SWP sister parties – members of the Fourth International).
And they have also had other significant political groups involved from the get-go (communists, left socialists, etc.)
Another “mass party” founded as a mainly/exclusively Trotskyist party was the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) in France, which is going nowhere fast – the communist and left-socialist based Left Front seem to be the real left formation.
Is the ULA is too narrow a formation? Is the ULA not seen as being diverse enough? Would bringing in the WP or CPI or others help?
Were the WP and CPI not invited, initially, and both declined, along with some other left groups?
The discussions took place after the ULA had been formed.
Thats why my friends said they would never join the dis-united Left ‘Alliance’. The differences are beginning to resemble the struggle between two rival islands , Party stubborness before people on lowered-income with four tougher budgets to go http://youtu.be/B34ydLx706s shame, Sinn Fein will reap any rewards of future struggles
The logical implication of much that has been said by SP members on this thread is that there was no point setting up the ULA in the first place. If, as has been suggested, the number of non-aligned people who have been drawn into the ULA is pitifully small, and this was always bound to have been the case, what purpose did the ULA serve at all?
According to Mark, ‘the ULA is an alliance which allows socialists of various stripes to work together in elections and in other areas where there are shared views’, and no more. Why do we need such a thing? Socialists of various stripes already work together in broad campaigns such as the CAHWT. They don’t need the ULA for this. So far as elections are concerned, it has been argued (convincingly in my view) that none of the 5 TDs elected under the ULA banner needed it to get them over the line; people who ran as ULA candidates without a strong local base didn’t get any notable boost. If the ULA is little more than a flag of convenience for the constituent groups, and not expected to attract any significant new forces, what value does it have?
It all hinges on what you define as ‘significant new forces’. When D_D pointed out that of the signed-up, paid-up members of the ULA, the largest single group were the non-aligned, Mark waved that impatiently away, suggesting that they were all paper members: ’156 is indeed “not very many”, and even that is a paper figure. The number who are involved in any way in activity is markedly lower.’ Nonetheless, that is the only solid measure that we have, and it is of more than trivial significance that over 150 people who were not members of the SP, SWP, PBPA or WUAG signed up formally as members of the ULA, at a time when there was quite literally no place or function for them in the organisation other than as people who give out leaflets and put up posters (the ULA non-aligned reps on the steering ctte were added after that).
I have not been at any of the meetings of non-aligned ULA activists, based in London as I am, but I have been told by those who have that the attendance has been in the region of 30-40, which would mean that roughly one in four of those who signed up as ULA members were willing and able to travel to Dublin for the meetings; others, doubtless, have not been able to do so, but have been involved in leafleting, canvassing, postering etc. (insofar as there have been ULA activities at all: it is hard to blame people for not being ‘involved in any way in activity’ when most activity since February 2011 has been carried out in the name of the SP, or the SWP, or the PBPA, or Enough! …). Now these are the people who have decided to get involved, despite the frustrations of being a non-aligned member which have been described very clearly on this thread and elsewhere; I have already summarised my own knowledge of people who came to meetings in the first half of 2011 then drifted away, or who didn’t come to meetings at all because of they were waiting for the ULA to decide what it was and what it meant to be a member (who can blame them now for their caution?); I know others could give a similar account.
So when Pat claims that ‘the 40 or so launch meetings around the country were for the most part damp squibs’, I don’t see that as a vindication for the line of the SP or the other main groups in the ULA. First of all, I know that the launch meeting in my local area was far from being a damp squib in terms of attendance (nor were the other 3 launch meetings in different parts of the constituency; nor were several other launch meetings in other parts of the country about which I heard first-hand reports from people I would trust not to exaggerate).
Secondly, if those meetings were ‘damp squibs’ in terms of long-term impact, that might have something to do with the fact that the ULA was trying to recruit people into a formation whose character had not been defined: at the risk of boring people with repetition (because this point is absolutely crucial), people were not told what it meant to be a ULA member. Someone I know who came to the local launch meeting with me—whose politics would be very much in line with the ULA and is a branch rep for her trade union—asked bluntly what structures the ULA would have and what say members would have in decision-making; the platform speakers from the SP and SWP had nothing to offer in reply other than vague, meaningless platitudes. She didn’t come back. And a launch meeting is not going to bring in new members by itself unless it’s followed by regular activity; as has been pointed out many times, for every ULA banner, protest, public meeting etc. since February 2011, there have been ten under the names of the SP or SWP.
It may be comforting to insist that the ULA wouldn’t have recruited a single extra person it things had been done differently, but I don’t believe that for a moment; it’s convenient to set the bar impossibly high and talk of the need to bring vast numbers of people into a future mass party (something which clearly isn’t going to happen when social struggle is at a low ebb), but it would have been more than sufficient for now if the ULA could have doubled the existing membership of socialist groups over the space of 2-3 years, bringing those new people into regular activity around a fairly coherent programme. I don’t believe that this was in any way unrealistic.
I don’t think any of the non-aligned members were expecting miracles, and they certainly weren’t expecting the SP and SWP to dissolve their organisations altogether. But it was perfectly reasonable for them to expect that by now, almost two years after the ULA was formed, it would be more cohesive than it was at the moment of its foundation; instead, it is plainly less cohesive than it was at the end of 2010. Whoever is to blame for this, it’s not the non-aligned ULA supporters: all of the main problems for the ULA over the last year or so—the SWP launching the Enough! campaign in direct competition with the ULA, and now doing the same with People Before Profit; the internal ructions in the SP over Mick Wallace; WUAG’s decision to pull out—have arisen without them having any say or input. So the tetchiness being directed towards them by some seems absurdly misplaced.
The “tetchiness” is not directed at all non-aligned members of the ULA, Ed. It is however difficult not to be exasperated by a constant chorus of moaning from a few people about the Socialist Party not adopting a political project – the formation of a small “broad left” party based essentially on the ULA’s little current forces – that the Socialist Party has said over and over again it has no interest in.
I cannot put this any more plainly. The Socialist Party has no interest in forming a small “broad left” party consisting of ourselves, the SWP and a few dozen independents. It never had any interest in doing so. It never expressed any interest in doing so. It never gave anyone any reasonable expectation that it was interested in doing so. And I can fairly confidently predict that it will never have any interest in doing so.
A few of the unaligned in the ULA essentially have a project of forming such a miniature broad left party, or turning the ULA into effectively such a thing even if they are willing to make the “concession” of not necessarily using the word party. This by no means includes all of the ULA unaligned, just to be clear. That same few then complain constantly that the Socialist Party (and the SWP, although what exactly the SWP want seems to vary from month to month) aren’t pushing forward with their project, a project that we do not support and have been clear from the start we do not support.
Advocates of a miniature “broad party” have every right to put forward their views and make a case for that approach. But it is frankly obnoxious for them to insist that the SP is betraying or rowing back on a project we have never advocated. At a certain point it becomes difficult to treat those sort of complaints as anything other than disingenuous.
On the merits or otherwise of forming a small party, or of turning the ULA into something which is functionally a small party, I think that it would be a disaster. All decisions would effectively be decided by whichever of the SP and SWP happened to mobilise more people on that day. This would have, even with the best will in the world, an inherently competitive and destructive dynamic. It’s the “angry ferrets in a sack” school of left unity mongering. A small party (or party like group) with an activist base consisting largely of members of two highly organised, highly disciplined groups simply would not be a productive use of anyone’s time. If there were wider forces involved, enough to give the united group a critical mass, enough to make decision making something other than a mobilising competition, and enough to make multiple views and strands of opinion a real part of the discussion, then that would be different.
There’s a further point to be made. The ULA does not have politics as radical as those of the Socialist Party. That its politics are as radical as they are is a result of hard negotiations between the SP, who want as left wing a ULA as we can get, and the other forces involved who were mostly rather indifferent to issues of programme or actively in favour of going “broader” and more right wing (in particular this means the SWP). The ULA’s politics, in other words while unobjectionable are also inadequate. I make no apologies for saying that I think it is necessary for a Marxist group involved in a broad left formation of less than adequate politics to put forward its own politics, its own programme, its own organisation in a public way, to seek to argue its case and recruit to its own banner. We are not going to simply start operating as the ULA.
Finally, 156 paper members really isn’t very many. There were very serious efforts made to bring large numbers of independents into the ULA (efforts organised as most ULA things are with resources provided by the affiliates). The result was that quite a lot of people turned up to public launch meetings. Not huge numbers, but decent ones. But its one thing to turn up to a public launch meeting and quite another thing to decide to become an activist. Rather few people came to a first branch meeting after the public meeting. It is simply nonsense to suggest that this is because they were disappointed by the ULA structure at that point: They weren’t around long enough to find out anything about the structure let alone develop an opinion on it. The real issue is that there’s quite a big difference between the curiousity it takes to go along to a public meeting (particularly in an area normally missing organised left groups) and the commitment it takes to want to become an activist in a new formation. The ULA made enough of a splash at the elections to get the former, but there simply is not the wider climate of struggle and activism to push large numbers towards the latter. The notion that there are large numbers out there whose readiness to get involved in a political formation is determined largely by structures they as yet know nothing about is simply self-delusion. It’s people trying to fix an objective political problem by fiddling with organisational structures.
Once again we get this completely formalistic approach. Count the numbers as they currently exist at the beginning of the process and then transpose that onto the end result.
But this completely misses the potential of a wholehearted commitment to the process of creating a new party. A dynamic of discussion and debate that included the individual members because they were a real part of it with equal rights in a process that would have been attractive to wider layers of the workers movement in a way that the ULA as it actually existed was not.
But the SP are safe in the knowledge that for them is was just an objective problem and this fundamentally different political approach is for them just “fiddling with organisational structures”.
This is beginning to remind me of a time when I was a teenager, arguing with some friends about something or other, and some wag demanded to know which came first, the chicken or the egg. Without missing a beat, I told him that it was the egg. ‘So what laid the egg then?’ ‘A pre-chicken.’ Several years later, he was still chuckling at the idea of a pre-chicken.
I’m not sure who is the chicken and who is the egg in this analogy, the ULA or the working class. But we definitely need a pre-chicken of some kind.
Could the ‘pre-chicken’ be the objective situation alluded to so dismissively by revolutionaryprogramme?
I can only recount the experience of the ULA in my area, and how we had a large-ish launch meeting with undoubtedly some new people, but where the first branch meeting consisted solely of those of the already existing left milieu and who had decades of activism behind them. One of the main constituent groups predominated in the area and every initiative the ULA took relied, almost entirely for material and manpower, on them. The unaligned in the branch would suggest activities but rarely take the time to take part themselves and left it to that main component group, and I know it was to the great frustration of that group’s local secretary.
From my perspective, building structures without the material would be a distraction from the important work in CAHWT and wider where many new local activists are being forged, and will be steeled in the coming confrontations with the establishment. A number of those activists – not many mind, but the most political ones – have either joined our ULA branch or are around it and attending meetings. They’re not knocking people out of the way to have ULA branded interventions or the like. They are already active in CAHWT but joined the ULA as they support the idea of political representation for working class people.
The ULA, in my own experience, didn’t develop a capacity greater than the main component parts but has raised the idea of a new working class party among a layer of activists coming around for the first time and I think it has a role to play in that respect into the future, in my area at least.
What is it with these constant references to the “objective situation”?
The “objective situation” we concretely face is being in the middle of the most significant economic crisis of international capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In Ireland that has seen the biggest mass movement in living memory in the form of the CAHWT, coming after the two mass demonstrations called by ICTU and the biggest ever public sector one-day strike in the State’s history. We also have the most number of self-describing socialist TDs in the Dáil for decades.
Just what exactly do the SP (and SWP) think would be required in terms of “objective conditions” before fully committing themselves to the process of creating a new workers party?
Did you not read the next 3 paragraphs I wrote?
Yes, we’re in the midst of an historic crisis and the working class is beginning to forge a fight back independent of the trade union bureaucracy. If you think it’s any more advanced than that at this stage then I’d have to disagree. The politicization of the new activists, as opposed to the occasionally-active members, in CAHWT is an ongoing and uneven process. ULA members can and should play a role in that, as well as working to encourage the wider membership of the campaign to become conscious that they need to become the activists in their own areas.
Winning people to the idea of a new ‘mass’ party of the working class isn’t automatic, and certainly doesn’t require me to support the establishment of party-like structures or that we declare ourselves to be new ‘small’ party of the working class in order to demonstrate that I am fully committed to winning people to that argument.
You charged Mark P with formalism, but it’s your approach that I find formalistic. The assumption appears to be that those ULA members and parties that don’t agree with you aren’t acting subjectively in the here and now to affect consciousness. I’d have to dispute that assertion comrade.
I understand your argument to boil down saying that lots of people didn’t join the ULA. That isn’t a description of the “objective conditions” that is just a statement of fact.
The objective conditions are the wider context within which that happened. Given historical precedent these kind of objective conditions could be expected to result in the growth of workers organisations.
Your argument that the failure of the ULA was all because of the supposed constraints of the “the objective conditions” and there is nothing different that could have been done politically in terms of the subjective factor of how the existing left intervened into the objective conditions is just an excuse not to critically evaluate your own schema of holding the ULA within the alliance framework and not taking the risk of committing fully to the process of creating a new party and calling on the working class to join us. Yes that may have failed but better than the certain failure of not even trying.
I love this comment here from Mark P- “There’s a further point to be made. The ULA does not have politics as radical as those of the Socialist Party.”
Yeah that would explain your decision on the original stance of the SP on Mick Wallace. Man what amazing radicalism was displayed there.
And what original stance would that be?
Second question – please outline how this original stance has changed?
The notion that whether or not you call for a TD to resign his seat is the decisive issue in determining the radicalism of your politics is frankly too stupid to respond to.
1 – The SP didn’t call for his resignation even though he was found guilty of tax evasion and the SP stance was widely criticised at the time.
2- I didn’t say the stance had changed, why are you saying it? The other groups in the ULA such as the PBPA and ula non-aligned called on him to resign. Although am laughing at the SP trying to demand that ULA TDs are not to sit beside Wallace in the Dail and other stupid measures that are too late to enforce on the Wallace affair. I think yer radical measures belongs in a classroom not in politics.
The SP didn’t call for Wallace’s resignation for specific reasons – the right-wing want to control the political agenda and who sets it. The SP has never called for TDs to resign their seats over financial scandals – not Lawlor, not Burke, not Lowry – it is the responsibility of the electorate to make that decision. The SP has consistently called for the electorate to have the right of recall both before Wallace and since.
Furthermore if Wallace was to be forced out it would set a precedent for, say, when a ULA TD is jailed for non-payment of a property tax or water charges and there would be a stampede by the right-wing demanding resignation with them bleating ‘you called on Wallace to resign when he didn’t pay his tax – now your should resign for not paying your tax’.
The most interesting thing about the other forces in the ULA are this –
1. The Socialist Party has been consistent
2. Clare Daly has been consistent (she has supported Wallace)
3. Healy has been consistent – he called for Wallace to resign
4. The SWP and Joan Collins have flip-flopped to suit the mood and the potential political advantage they might gain from the fallout.
Finally – the seating thing is minor – this is about Clare Daly’s political support for Wallace since the scandal broke. She talks not about Wallace dodging tax – but Wallace’s company – she doesn’t talk about Wallace repaying the tax – but Wallace’s company – she refused to sign any Socialist Party statements critical of Wallace – she has defended Wallace’s use of the CAHWT as a vehicle to bolster his electoral base in Wexford – When Wallace made his personal statement in the Dail she sat beside him (an action that is traditionally regarded as offering political support to the person making the statement – no one sat beside Lowry – the entire FG party sat beside Reilly). She has continued to do this making it a badge of honour at this stage to a ridiculous degree. It is a serious political error on Clare Daly’s behalf for her to continue to give political support to Wallace as he takes every opportunity to make an ass out of himself and to fire volleys at the left in this country. The sad (and very annoying) thing is that she, a very intelligent woman, doesn’t even see it.
Would it be fair to say that the SP has adjusted its attitude to the seriousness of Clare Daly’s mistake in supporting Wallace? At first, its members were pointing out that had she agreed to meet, then it could have been worked out for her to stay; it was said that they looked forward to working with her within the ULA; but later it seems to me that the criticisms have grown, and that her position within the ULA while continuing to be linked to Wallace seemed to come under more scrutiny.
No, the Socialist Party took her mistake extremely seriously from the start, but it thought that she could be talked around. Which wasn’t unreasonable given her long record as a hugely able and principled activist. What’s changed is that it’s become increasingly clear that her stance isn’t obviously amenable to change.
Spot on Mark, i’ve great time for the S.P. but in May/June, rather than call on Wallace to resign (not because right-wing media wanted it, but because ordinary people, both nationally & in Co.Wexford were disgusted with his antics) the SP waited & waited & then a defiant Daly walked out, Higgins then reacted the correct way to Daly’s silliness, but it was too late for this & other reasons, Seamus Healy’s group left, as the stubborn SP & SWP still distrust each other & they wonder why lowered-paid people won’t join the ULA in droves? the ULA is beingnow used as a recruiting pool for stubborn parties, well good luck , the chance is slowly but surely being lost, Sinn Fein & right-wing parties will gain ground, other than the CAHWT
I find this debate extremely useful, just a quick couple of observations from an indie outsider. It looks like the SP membership are circling they’re wagons around their own organisation. It is there choice but that would mean, rightly in my view, that many workers would come to see the ULA as yet another here today gone tomorrow set up and unworthy of future support.
Some comrades have expressed disappointment at the lack of a rising tide of militancy amongst the masses. Surely it is still far to early to conclude that?
The Euro crises stumbles on as the elites attempt to kick the can down the road in the hope of a ‘miraculous’ economic recovery. Default must eventually be on the cards and then we will have all to play for. This is not a one half game! Peaks and troughs comrades and ever upwards.
I do wonder when Left organization talk about the time not being right to form a new left party, if they are not caught in an early 20th century time warp and are relying far to much on the British LP road map to party building. ie it will come out of the trade unions. We need to look elsewhere for inspiration.
Perhaps we are asking the wrong question, surly the time being right or wrong is irrelevant, Do working class people like me and the best of the middle classes need a new left wing party to fight their corner in local councils and parliament, if the answer is yes then the time is surely right.
It seems to me some want a guarantee of success before they take the next step, if comrades feel as Mark P and his comrades in the SP do that they cannot move towards a left party as the time is not ripe, then surly the very least they must do is defend what has already been achieved, i e the ULA.
Just a quick point on the ability of Trotskyists to build a mass organisation, of course they are capable of this, some of the finest militants in Ireland and beyond of resent years have come out of this movement. The problem they have is like all small groups they have a tendency to factionalism and split, citing important issues which if you take an objective look are often based on mere personality clashes which should have been ironed out amicable . Mole hills become mountains and look insurmountable, I feel the SP’s caution on building a new party may well stem from trying to avoid such nastiness.
Comradely regards
Mick
I think there is an element of self fulfilling prophesy here; don’t make any effort to build it, in fact set up rival meetings, campaigns etc, oppose democratic membership structures and then complain that nobody is joining. I suspect the real issue is the neither the SP or SWP will seriously build an organization they cannot control. If it was just one or another I think they would probably have made more effort, but the two together can’t get over their own party positioning.
There is also an underlying issue with trotskyism and internal democracy, nobody has yet made a convincing argument of the difference between sp/swp structure and a classic top down Stalinist organization. I think the independents might have given the two leaderships a fright, they aren’t used to that sort of transparency, nor memberships making demands on development and policy. I think Mark P reflects this very well. The independents it seems should be seen and not heard, and whatever position the SP (allegedly) took two years ago the indies cannot question. I
Oh sweet jesus – banging your head off a brick wall would be less painful.
To be clear – the Socialist Party has seriously built organisations that it did not control – the anti-water charges campaign in the mid-1990s, the anti-bin tax campaign 10 years ago and the current CAHWT. None of these campaigns would have been established and resulted in encompassing mass support without the role of the Socialist Party and its committment to building them.
The Socialist Party assisted in establishing the ULA, is 100% committed to the ULA – but is realistic enough to understand that a new mass party of the left that draws in waide layers of the working class – does not pop out of thin air – does not work because certain structures exist. Such a party requires working class people engaging in struggle AND drawing political conclusions of the need to become active in a political movement.
As Mark P has stated – the Socialist Party is not interested in a mere ‘broad left’ incompassing the existing left groups and existing independent left activists. That is not a new mass party – it is merely the existing groups and individuals agreeing to work together – which they already do. The problem is such a party tends to become inward looking because it doesn’t grow and then people start blaming one another and the whole thing collapses in a mess
“The problem is such a party tends to become inward looking because it doesn’t grow and then people start blaming one another and the whole thing collapses in a mess”
Change the word ‘party’ to ‘alliance’ and explain how this problem is not what is happening to the ULA.
“None of these campaigns would have been established and resulted in encompassing mass support without the role of the Socialist Party and its committment to building them.”
While there is no doubt that the SP has played an important role in the CAHWT (I can’t speak about the earlier examples as I wasn’t in Ireland for them) it is more than a bit over the top to make this claim.
Of course without being able to step into an alternative universe where the role of the SP was different there is no way to disprove this comment but this kind of hubris is surprising and smacks of more than a small degree of self-delusion.
“The Socialist Party … is 100% committed to the ULA”
If the participation of the SP as part of ULA contingents on demonstrations over the last couple of years is an example of your 100% commitment than I shudder to think what things would have been like if you were less committed to the project.
spot on, i’ve great time for the S.P. but in May/June, rather than call on Wallace to resign (not because right-wing media wanted it, but because ordinary people, both nationally & in Co.Wexford were disgusted with his antics) the SP waited & waited & then a defiant Daly walked out, Higgins then reacted the correct way to Daly’s silliness, but it was too late for this & other reasons, Seamus Healy’s group left, as the stubborn SP & SWP still distrust each other & they wonder why lowered-paid people won’t join the ULA in droves? the ULA is beingnow used as a recruiting pool for stubborn parties, well good luck , the chance is slowly but surely being lost, Sinn Fein & right-wing parties will gain ground, other than the CAHWT.
By the way if Daly still has connections with Wallace, she should leave as a ULA TD & run as in independent next time. The Silliness & stubborness has to stop, we have another four
tougher budgets & Water Taxes to campaign, the ULA may not be successful nor victorious but at least there could have been some unity
[...] In response to SP comrades going on and on about the problem with the failure of the ULA being the “objective conditions” I posted the following in the cedarlounge thread discussing this issue (http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sp-statement-on-ula/): [...]
Demand now that the SWP and PBPA member Eamon McCann end his political support for the scandal-ridden bourgeois liberal Independent Senator David Norris.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1012/1224325187801.html
Brilliant DD! What we haven’t had yet in this thread is a barney about why the ULA is confined to the 26 counties. Demand now that NI resident McCann be allowed to join the ULA! (P.S. I’m joking, as I think DD was).