Ireland: Socialist Party leaves the United Left Alliance
[Click HERE to read more on the development of the United Left Alliance.]
By Henry Silke
January 30, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- On January 26, the Socialist Party (affiliated to the Committee for a Workers International, CWI) posted an article on its website announcing the end its membership of the United Left Alliance. This was one of the least surprising political developments on the Irish left as the Socialist Party (SP) had been steadily moving away from the alliance for more than a year.
The SP has given two reasons for leaving the alliance.
First, its unhappiness with ex-Socialist Party TD (member of Dáil, the lower house of the Irish parliament) Clare Daly’s continued political relationship with Mick Wallace, a left-leaning populist who became embroiled in a tax evasion scandal. Daly had been closely allied to Wallace in the promotion of an abortion rights bill and most recently in the exposure of a practice where privileged members of society were being cleared of driving charges, something brought to the TDs by whistleblowing members of the Irish police force.
Clare Daly herself had resigned from the Socialist Party (and re-designated herself as a ULA TD) some months ago citing the Socialist Party’s lack of enthusiasm towards building the ULA.
While both sides on Daly’s resignation were technically correct, the respective positions fall short of offering a clear picture as to her dramatic move away from the SP leadership, something neither side has elaborated on.
The highly personalised split was something the already weakened ULA was not ready for.
The SP cited a weakness on the part of the independents in the ULA and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in tackling Clare Daly on the issue of her alliance with Mick Wallace, quickly forgetting that it was the Socialist Party (while Clare Daly was still a party member) who prevented the ULA taking a clear position when the scandal first broke the previous April. Socialist Party representatives on the steering committee vetoed the motion for the ULA to call for Wallace’s resignation, which had been proposed by the independents and supported by all other the other factions.
Rightly or wrongly, independents in the ULA found the SP’s sudden obsession towards Daly and Wallace’s relationship many months after the initial scandal to be more about politically attacking the ex-SP TD than anything else.
A particularly ham-fisted “us or her” attempt by the SP to ambush Daly at a delegate council meeting before Christmas failed to win any support, and probably finished the SP’s participation. The fact that Clare Daly’s profile rose immeasurably over her (and Wallace’s) earlier stance on abortion, catapulting her into the headlines after the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar (a woman living in Galway who was refused a termination and later died), didn’t help matters, leaving no time for things to settle between the parties.
The second reason given by the SP leadership for the failure of the ULA was the objective political and social conditions. Although Ireland is in the throes of a devastating recession political consciousness and struggle remains at relatively low ebb. Due to these factors, according to the SP, the ULA didn’t attract sufficient numbers to be a viable project.
There may be some basis to this claim, though there is an underlying assumption that uniting already existing left forces would not be a positive factor in itself.
For the independents in the ULA the objective conditions are not the only factor in this narrative, the subjective factor -- that is the leadership shown by the component parts -- is also of importance. While being applauded for the initial initiative the two major factions in the alliance, the SWP and SP, have come under some criticism. It is felt by many that the SP was conservative when it came to developing the alliance. The SP rank and file membership never really engaged with the ULA as individuals, nor took part in its activities; the SP was represented in the steering committee by leadership members with little or no involvement in political discussion by the rank and file SP membership. From early on only full-time party workers and party officers attended ULA-related activities or meetings. Even this low level was reduced well over a year ago (and long before the SP-Daly split) when the SP pulled back from any ULA activity outside of parliamentary work.
Around that time (January 2012) the SP’s general secretary Kevin McLoughlin wrote an article proclaiming that the ULA is not a workers’ party, “nor is it likely to just become the new party at some future date” (“What next for the United Left Alliance”, January 17, 2012), dealing a severe political blow to the project and indeed begging the question then, why would anyone join at all?
On the streets and in protests the ULA never had any profile as the two main components, the SWP and SP, continued to exclusively organise and recruit separately, on one occasion the two groups even managed to organise a meeting on education cuts (following a teachers’ protest) in the same hotel and at the same time where a single ULA meeting would have made sense.
In the Dail the TD’s never gelled and acted more as a number of independent politicians, sometimes collaborating but more often not. The lack of strategy by the TDs was apparent from early on, especially between the SP and SWP TDs.
Of course the SP was not the only component that has come under criticism. The SWP launched a front organisation, “Enough!”, within weeks of the 2011 election (in which the ULA had won five parliamentary seats). Early into 2012 the SWP then went on the re-launch the People Before Profit Alliance (PBPA) as a direct rival to the ULA .
Many cynics at the beginning of the process maintained that the SP and SWP would not be able to work together after decades of intense rivalry. Unfortunately, as the SP rank and file didn’t engage with the ULA, sectarian barriers were not broken down. A more nuanced view might be that the SWP viewed the alliance as a “popular front” to recruit from, while the SP viewed it as solely an electoral alliance, neither wanting the ULA as such to develop into a party as such.
Another view is that while the components were serious about the initiative, they were so at different times, while another is that the Irish left was not ready for the alliance, and that the ULA had won TD positions too early into the alliance and had no strategy of what to do with them. On social media there are arguments between SP members who said they never wanted the ULA to develop into a party, and independents who feel that the SP at best was ambiguous in the early recruitment drive and around elections. Certainly, Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins gave many speeches in the early days of the ULA which suggested very clearly the development towards a party.
The SP position may well be correct that the objective conditions were not available. On the other hand there is the prospect of a self-fulfilling prophecy of a leadership who was not quite ready to share political power.
On a more positive note, the SP leadership believes that the current campaign against the home and water tax (CAWHT) has the potential to become a mass radical campaign and could form the basis for a new working-class party. Critics have pointed to the obvious inconsistency in that while that the SP believes the objective conditions are impossible for the ULA, the same objective conditions are favourable to a new formation on a much lower political level. The SP thus far has not dealt with this critique.
There is also no guarantee that the kind of problems that beset the ULA will not reappear and that the SP and SWP will be able to overcome their decades of competition. Nor any guarantee that single-issue election candidates or indeed membership will favour the building of a mass left workers’ party. The campaign is further complicated by new laws which allow the Irish revenue to collect the tax payment directly from wages (replacing the voluntary tax, which was successfully boycotted by the campaign). However, at the moment, it is the only serious national resistance to austerity policies.
The future of the ULA is uncertain at best – the basic notion of even non-aggression has already collapsed as the SWP, in a highly sectarian manner, is targeting ULA TD Joan Collins’ seat, and the SP is also said to be planning to run a candidate against Clare Daly. While the SP challenge will probably have little effect on Daly, and it has made no formal decision, the SWP is running a serious candidate who could easily split the vote and lose the seat.
The remaining independent (ie non-SP/SWP) ULA members are due to meet with TDs Clare Daly and Joan Collins to discuss a way forward on February 2, but it is unlikely that Collins and the SWP could remain in any form of alliance with the SWP threat hanging over her. Whether ULA independents are ready to continue in the husk of the ULA is an open question.
One of the positives of the ULA experiment has been the coming together of a wide layer of left independents and every effort must be made to keep this network together in some form or other. If it is the case that the SP and SWP lack either the drive or the innate ability to build a new workers’ party it may be time that attempts are made in that direction by the independents.
[Henry Silke is an independent member of the United Left Alliance. He is the conveyor of the ULA Dublin Central branch and was a member of the SP from 1998-2012.]
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Statement of the remaining United Left Alliance TDs
United Left Alliance
Press statement
January 27, 2013
The United Left Alliance regrets the decision taken by Joe Higgins TD and the Socialist Party to leave the Alliance. We believe that they have made a serious mistake. The need for a new, broad and inclusive left, which will not on principle enter right wing governments with either Fine Gael or Fianna Fail is today more urgent than ever.
Faced with a massive attack on jobs, pay, pensions, working conditions, welfare payments and entitlements, health and education and other essential social services, working people need an independent and radical political movement which will seek to represent them, help organise them, and above all, fight on their behalf.
The ULA was formed with the intention to bring together existing left groups along with individual members to help lay the basis over time to enable a new party of the left to come into existence. It was inevitable that there would be difficulties in bringing together groups who have had a long period of independent activity and indeed rivalry.
We believe it is necessary to work to overcome such problems and to create the conditions in which the ULA can achieve its undoubted potential.
It is unfortunate that the Socialist Party feels it necessary to create or exaggerate political differences to justify their action in leaving the Alliance. In reality their decision reflects an inability to put the urgent task of building a broader movement to more effectively represent working people before the narrow interests of their own small grouping.
Richard Boyd Barrett TD. Clare Daly TD. Joan Collins TD.
On the one hand on the other hand on the one hand
Posted on behalf of Mark P
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On the one hand on the other hand on the one hand on the other hand on the one hand on the other hand… this is one view, this is another view, this is another… some say this, but it could be said that…
Sorry, Henry, but you have to make some actual political judgments at some point.
Is the Socialist Party correct that, while various mistakes were no doubt made by all involved, the reality of an absence of significant ongoing struggle outside of one solitary campaign meant that the ULA was limited in its potential growth chiefly by objective circumstances rather than by some subjective lack of commitment or effort?
The answer to that question is yes. I suspect that when you are pushed on this issue you will agree. But what you won’t do is take this as your starting point and work out your political conclusions from it. You would prefer to spend most of your time dealing with this or that relative triviality, repeating all the usual old cant you get from anti-sectarian sectarians.
On the other points you raise:
1) There is no mystery why Clare Daly left the Socialist Party, no reasonable confusion. Clare left because she valued her political connection with Mick Wallace over her involvement in the Socialist Party. Since she left, others in the ULA have been unable to prevail upon her to change her attitude on that score either, as you are no doubt aware. Clare is a gifted debater, a tireless activist and a born fighter and I have no desire to disparage her, but she is completely unreasonable on this one issue.
2) There may be “arguments” between the Socialist Party and some people who insist on hearing only what they want to hear “on social media”, but this again does not mean that these arguments are reasonable. The Socialist Party explained over and over and over again that it saw the ULA as potentialy a new step towards a new party of the working class and were not interested in any way, shape or form in turning the ULA into an “integrated” little party of the existing left. That some people did have this as their project (or at least as an interim project) and absolutely refused to hear that this was never going to be on the agenda is regrettable but not the Socialist Party’s fault.
3) It is simply false to say that only “leadership members and party officials” from the Socialist Party were involved in ULA structures. In fact, that’s a straightforward insult to the various members of the SP who built most of the launch meetings around the country and who kept many (nearly empty) branches going for months on end before giving up. It is certainly true that later on there was very little enthusiasm amongst rank and file SP members for the ULA, but that was a direct result by and large of pouring large amounts of resources into it earlier with no response at all.
It is also entirely misleading of you to mention some minor SP and SWP meeting clashing with each other as if that’s remotely meaningful, or represented some significant factor at all. It’s just a way for you to get back to the usual moaning about the affiliates and, as usual, the stark facts about where the ULA’s resources came from aren’t mentioned. Let’s be clear about this. Since the ULA was founded, the SP has organised more ULA public meetings than SP public meetings. It provided the ULA with an office, and a full time worker. It organised most of the launch meetings and sustained many branches for a period (to no purpose it must be said). It used its public positions to heighten the ULA’s profile. It proposed the creation of the ULA. It then proposed that an individual membership be created. It then proposed a way to give those members representation on the leadership body. I have my criticisms of the SWP, but they also put substantial resources in at various points.
4) The notion that member of different organisations sharing branches together tends to notably erode “sectarian barriers” is all very nice, but it’s the same kind of magical thinking that thinks that “unity” in and of itself will lead to success. The problem in ongoing close collaboration on the existing left isn’t some irrational set of “sectarian barriers”, which would go away if only we all got to know each other better. The problem is different and incompatible political ideas and perspectives, which will exercise a centrifugal pressure on collaboration between leftist groups in an empty organisation. And indeed pushing people with very hardened political views on top of each other to argue the toss over and over again without any wider set of participants who can both adjudicate and offer their own alternative perspectives is likely to cause more ill will rather than ease it. It’s the tie cats in a sack version of building left wing cooperation, but some people just refuse to let it go..
I wish the small group of ULA “independents” luck. They are by and large a decent bunch, although I think that their desperation to have some kind of political home has led some of them to make certain serious mistakes. I’ve no doubt that most of them will end up in some kind of project aimed at moving towards working class political organisation and representation with us at some point in the future. Until then, the Socialist Party remains willing to cooperate with them and others on issues of shared concern.
In general I have no wish to point too many fingers at people who were involved in the ULA with us. I could go on about the unrealistic expectations of some independents, the SWP’s near constant attempts to set up rival bodies to the ULA or the behaviour of our other TDs at great length. And I think I’d be making fair points if I did so. But ultimately that would serve little purpose and would in its own way amount to the same kind of staring at a single tree to avoid seeing the woods that I believe you and soe of the other independents are engaged in. As I see it, the ULA was a reasonable attempt to test the water, to see if there were significant numbers of people willing to get involved in radical political activity. As it turned out, there were not. And that isn’t the SWP or Clare or the independents fault either.
Henry replies to Mark on ULA
Posted on behalf of Henry Silke
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Hi Mark
Thank you for your long and colourful reply, I should begin I think in explaining my method, this is not an article with a pre-conceived party line to defend or an article to attack the SP. It is an exploration of the issues around the latest split. The politics of the situation is not necessarily clear or as black and white as you suggest and it will take many more articles and discussion to come to definitive conclusions. I am also trying to express some of the ideas on the situation (from different actors) in a dialectical fashion, it is a methodology that I think in the long run is much more fruitful than jumping to immediate conclusions and engaging in a-priori arguments without considering any other ideas or evidence.
For my own political judgement I think the issue of democracy and structure is proving to be a key issue in both the Irish and British left and that question will be key to the future. For more thoughts on this issue I have an article here:
http://www.irishleftreview.org/author/henry-silke/
There are numerous articles originating in the UK discussing the slate system and the a-historical degeneration of democratic centralism as practiced by Irish and British Trotskyism which I am sure you are aware of. There are a number of links posted below the article, and there are more appearing daily on various websites.
on your points:
1: On point one I disagree, it is not at all certain that Clare Daly’s alliance with Mick Wallace preceded her split with the SP leadership. In fact it is far more likely the break with the leadership came first.
2: Again I disagree, at best the SP was ambiguous.
3. The level of engagement by the SP rank and file was minimum.
4: That may be the case, but not talking and not working together certainly doesn’t do anything to help. You are right in the sense that it would of course need comrades to work in branches and make decisions based on the meetings themselves, rather than solely voting on pre-arranged lines which take no consequence of arguments made there.
On your final point, well you did just make those political points, which is fine, the independents are a group of individuals with various political ideas rather than a single entity with a line. The independents did indeed make mistakes as a collective thought I think there was little we could have done vis a vis any of our allies.
I hope that clears up any misunderstanding. I should finish by adding while I have some fundamental disagreements with the party and its orientation I think it is and will be not too difficult for a more organised independent group and the SP to work together on most issues.
All the best Henry
ULA blow-up: Legacy of sectarianism
Thursday February 28 2013
Weekly Worker 951
As the ULA stares into the abyss, Anne Mc Shane looks back at two years of cynical betrayal
Joe Higgins: always pretending
Just as the working class faces yet another onslaught on its living standards, the left in Ireland drops all pretence of seeking left unity and a single working class party.
It was the Socialist Party which finally pulled the plug on the United Left Alliance on January 26, with the announcement that it “had ended its membership”.1 It claimed its decision was due to the fact that “some in the ULA, including TDs, have moved away from a principled left position and have ditched the collaborative spirit”. This refers to the fact that other ULA parliamentarians had refused to caucus with SP TD Joe Higgins and instead had moved a bill to legislate for limited abortion rights with Mick Wallace, an independent TD. The announcement went on to bemoan as equally bad the failure of other groups in the alliance to oppose the “approach of supposedly being committed to a left project, but in practice contradicting that by organising a political alliance with others in the Dáil technical group who couldn’t at all be characterised as on the left”.
The SP tries to create the impression that it was in the forefront of the fight for united action and democracy within the ULA. This is very far from the truth. From the very outset the SP made clear that, as far as it was concerned, the ULA was to be a very limited project. I reported from the first public meeting in Cork how even after the breakthrough election of five ULA TDs in February 2011, comrade Higgins had “downplayed the support the ULA had attracted in terms of new forces” and its potential to become a working class party. Although his organisation was willing to enter into discussion, “we are not going to rush” into forming a party and certainly “we are not going to disperse our body of ideas” within the ULA.2
A couple of months later, we had an announcement from the ULA interim steering committee - made up of the SP, the People Before Profit Alliance (a largely Socialist Workers Party front), and the Workers and Unemployed Action Group (WUAG) - that a convention was to be held in June 2011, where “a broad range of policy areas will be discussed, as well as the steps necessary to launch the United Left Alliance as a party”.3 That event went from being a ‘convention’ to a ‘forum’ - featuring a large number of top-table speakers, limited debate and workshops - which left the steering committee firmly in control. Although there were calls for proper democracy and accountability from a large number of non-aligned members, both the SP and the SWP at that point made clear that they were not interested. I argued afterwards that it was “criminal” in circumstances where the working class was crying out for leadership that “neither of the two left groups wants to take the project forward to its next logical step”: the formation of a party.4
At the end of the year there had still been no progress. I noted that pledges to “create transparency and accountability” had “never been implemented” and urged immediate action.5 A conference due in January 2012 was put off by the steering committee to April. In the run-up to that event, continued sectarian divisions between the alliance’s two main components continued to dog the project. It appeared that the conference would be another talking shop, and many non-aligned members were leaving in disgust at the lack of democracy and the inactivity of branches.
When it came, the conference did not bring any changes. I reported that it “was particularly frustrating to hear Socialist Party comrades still justifying their refusal to consider anything like a democratic structure on ever more spurious grounds”. The SP refused “to budge on the current organisational arrangements, which consist of a mainly unelected national steering committee, and a membership which has no say”.6 No resolutions were allowed from branches, no votes taken and many members went away even more deeply demoralised. In contrast to the SP, it appeared that the SWP had shifted on the issue of democracy and called for the ULA to transform itself into a “membership organisation”, with leader Kieran Allen pledging that “his group would accept being in a minority if it lost the vote on a given question”. It was hard to know if this was just a manoeuvre to put pressure on the SP.
The events of the next few days would show that both groups were ditching the ULA. SP MEP Paul Murphy had made a call at the conference for a strong, united ULA campaign against the fiscal treaty in the coming referendum. But his organisation then launched its own campaign three days later, which did not even mention the ULA. The SWP’s People Before Profit Alliance followed suit the day after, again with no mention of the ULA. Finally there was a ULA poster campaign launch on May 3 2012, but it was a lukewarm event, with priority evidently given to the SP’s and SWP’s separate activities. The ULA was being undermined by its two main components just over a year after its formation.
Meanwhile there were growing tensions between the SP and Clare Daly TD, one of its long-time members, over her connections with Mick Wallace, an ex-property developer and maverick independent TD. There was intense media controversy over Wallace’s non-payment of taxes and pension contributions. This storm caused waves in the ULA, leading to the withdrawal of the WUAG and its TD, Seamus Healy, over the refusal of the SP to call for Wallace’s resignation (Healy was also upset over the sectarian membership drives of the SWP). Having refused to bend on this issue, the SP then turned the heat on Daly and demanded that she refuse to work with Wallace around abortion rights and the anti-household tax campaign. Further she was told not to sit next to him in the Dáil or be in any way associated with him. Daly refused and resigned from the SP in September. This signalled an even greater intensification of the SP’s campaign against her. It succeeded in having the ULA steering committee adopt a motion committing all TDs to disavow any political connection with Wallace. Again Daly rebelled and went on to share platforms with Wallace.
Things reached crisis point in December, when all TDs adopted a position at variance with that of the steering committee on abortion. In November the committee had adopted a pro-choice position, following a delegate council which had passed resolutions to that effect. After that meeting Daly, together with fellow TDs Joan Collins and Richard Boyd-Barrett, continued to push for legislation on the restricted grounds of danger to the life of the mother. Joe Higgins was prepared to demand abortion on grounds of health, but did not succeed in convincing the others and relations broke down. No-one seemed to consider that none of these policies was in line with the clearly expressed views of the membership.
The SP was outraged at Daly’s behaviour and argued that there “had been a wilful undermining of democracy in the ULA” which was “unacceptable”.7 The same December 14 statement announced that “we will be diminishing our participation in the ULA”. Just a few weeks later, on January 26 2013, the SP announced “with regret” its departure from the ULA - while, of course, assuring everyone of its absolute sincerity and “preparedness to work with others on the left in a respectful, democratic and principled fashion”.8 A list of grievances was trotted out, along with claims that the SP had been the only genuinely democratic force in the ULA, but now sadly had no choice except to leave because of the actions of others.
So instead of trying to join with others in forging a political alternative, the SP called for the Campaign Against the Household and Water Tax (CAHWT) to stand candidates in the forthcoming local elections. The SP has since been pushing this in the CAHWT, as it attempts to reinvigorate the campaign and cement its own leadership through various stunts, such as occupations of local council meetings. It also split the recent demonstration against austerity organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in Cork by holding a separate rally at the end and pulling CAHWT away from the main event. The SP has now set up a new campaign for abortion, strictly on its own (SP)agenda - with limited rights on the grounds of health, not choice. It is on a very sectarian trajectory.
As for the SWP, it has not commented - although its TD, comrade Boyd-Barrett, issued a joint statement with Collins and Daly berating the SP for walking out. The SWP has been pushing the PBPA as an alternative to the ULA, while comrades Collins and Daly are about to launch a rival ‘unity’ initiative, to be called the United Left. Farcically, the one remaining full-timer in the ULA office continues to send out official announcements and press releases, but there is no mention of what is really going on.
Claims have been made that the United Left will be much better than what has gone before. But early indications give no room for optimism. Firstly the group will be based on ‘broad’, as opposed to revolutionary, politics (no surprise there). Indeed it seems that Collins and Daly want the new group’s platform to be even ‘broader’ than the minimalistic reformism of the ULA. And the structures do not appear to be very democratic, with TDs enjoying all the rights and little accountability. Some non-aligned members of the ULA have agreed to join, while others are far more dubious of its potential.
In the meantime, the economic crisis continues to impact on the working class. Over 100,000 marched in protest against austerity on February 9. Public sector workers are facing major cuts in wages, the removal of shift allowances and a longer working week, as the government seeks to slash another €1 billion from the public purse. Union members are discussing strike action and there is almost certainly going to be resistance.
But, thanks to the disgraceful sectarianism of the SP and SWP, there is no left to speak of. There is no organisation for our class to look to for leadership. Sinn Féin is making the most of the disarray by positioning itself on the soft left. This pro-Catholic party is portraying itself as a defender of women’s rights. Mary-Lou McDonald, one of its most prominent TDs, is using the Dáil as a platform to oppose government cuts, to demand justice for the Magdalene women and to call for limited abortion rights. Sinn Féin is the new ‘left’ opposition. This is a travesty. In the north of Ireland Sinn Féin has shown that it is committed to capitalism. In the south it has indicated willingness to enter into coalition with a revived Fianna Fáil, which is now riding high in the polls. A Fianna Fáil-Sinn Féin coalition government seems on the cards.
All of this is truly a ULA legacy to be proud of! Less than two years after the election of five working class TDs, and the promise that seemed to hold of a powerful and united workers’ party, even the limited cooperation between the sects has vanished into thin air. In reality, the SP never wanted the ULA to become a party and resisted all attempts to develop it in that direction. For its part, the SWP opportunistically tried to face both ways, sometimes pretending to want to see the alliance built, but in practice using it only as far as it could further the short-term aims of the SWP. Shame on these groups for wrecking an important opportunity to create something worthy of the working class.
Notes
1. www.socialistparty.net/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1123-the….
2. ‘Now the left has TDs’, March 24 2011.
3. ‘Aiming for a party’, April 7 2011.
4. ‘Voodoo and left posturing’, June 30 2011.
5. ‘ULA must take itself seriously’, December 1 2011.
6. ‘Sectarian stumbling block’, May 3 2012.
7. www.socialistparty.net/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1103-the….
8. www.socialistparty.net/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1123-the….
Socialist Party (Ireland) Resignation Statement
By dublinmarxist
December 19, 2013
http://dublinmarxist.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/socialist-party-resignation-statement/
This year a group of us who had recently resigned from the SP felt it necessary to write a political statement outlining the reasons behind our decisions. We had all resigned around the same time and we felt that we had much commonality with one another. There was not full agreement on everything but generally we all cited the following key points behind our reason for leaving; a stifling political atmosphere, a lack of internal democratic structures and disagreements with how the Party was choosing to engage in the process of re-building the Worker’s movement. Generally speaking we felt that it wasn’t possible to ‘reform’ the SP due to the dogmatic and rigid methods of organising which it employs.
We began a process of regularly meeting and exchanging articles in order to fully develop our critique of the SP, the CWI and Trotskyist organisations in general. We met with others on the Left, current and former SP members to gauge their opinions on some of the conclusions we had drawn. Generally though conversation centred around what projects we, as activists, could engage in to implement some of our ideas. Eventually not everyone chose to sign the statement but certainly everyone contributed to the debates that took place. We decided to not rush into its completion until those who wanted to sign it, felt it was completed. Much of our activism within the SP had been conducted without much consideration and at a frenetic pace so we did not put ourselves under much time pressure.
The initial 4 resignations, which were first publicised in an article written by Craig Murphy at his own behest, were not coordinated but were considered. On the back of those resignations the SP leadership invited us to attend an open-to-all National Committee meeting, despite being aware that 2 of the 4 Comrades were away (in actual fact 3 of the 4 were not in Dublin that day). Upon reflection we should have asked for the section of the meeting to deal with our resignations to be delayed. In the end we decided not to put 1 Comrade forward to deal with all our resignations, probably also a mistake. At the time we were quite taken aback that some of us were being invited to a meeting that the leadership knew some of us were unable to attend. Also if the Party was serious about genuinely conducting a debate around our resignations they should have asked us for dates that were convenient. In part this statement has been published as a response to that meeting.
Personally I have a huge amount of respect for the work that is carried out by many Comrades in the SP. There is no doubting the huge amount of time and effort they sacrifice in fighting for a Socialist world. I hope that they and anyone interested in the topics discussed within the statement, are willing to engage in a comradely debate. I see no contradiction between putting my name to this statement and working alongside comrades from the SP in future.
Links to the statement can be found here:
http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/guest-author/2013/12/19/socialist-party-resignation-statement
http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/resignation-statement-of-a-number-of-members-of-the-socialist-party/