JM: The official founding conference will be in January 2009. For the moment there are 400 committees for a ‘new anti-capitalist party’ all over France. The Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) was the force which proposed and coordinated the foundation, and it will dissolve itself in a couple of months time. I attended the November national delegate meeting as one of the delegates for my town.

The meeting was very encouraging. The new party initiative is obviously attracting many people, some of them young, others experienced union activists, mostly (apart from the LCR members), people who have not been in a party as such before. Obviously, for the moment, there’s quite a concentration on the preparation of a programme to be voted on at the founding conference. Nevertheless many committees have been active in campaigning on the issue of the financial crisis, defending schools and universities against budget cuts, defending illegal immigrants against expulsions and so on.

JJ: 400 committees seems like an impressive number of groups for an organisation that hasn’t yet launched. How do these committees operate? How large are they, for instance would you have more than one in a town? Essentially are they the new party in waiting or are they the campaign for the new party?

JM: It is impressive. In Montpellier, a day long regional meeting got two thousand people to it, a similar regional meeting in Marseilles got 1500, other towns had huge meetings. National commission meetings on ecology, on politics in working class neighbourhoods and so on have produced wide debates and proposals. Essentially, the committees are already the new party-in-embryo – every week there is a national political leaflet given out in almost all the towns. But the committees also have much autonomy. In one town there will be a public meeting on the financial crisis, in another a symbolic invasion on the local hypermarket to protest against the government’s refusal to raise the minimum wage. The LCR is already very much a federal sort of organisation (for better and worse), and this will no doubt continue.

But the party-in-embryo does not yet have a regular publication, an essential element for a campaigning party. Nor does it yet have a proper financial structure, though plans have been made for subs based on income. There is a website and a weekly paper should be set up two months after the founding conference.

JJ: So what’s the thinking behind the new organisation? After all, even more than in the UK, France has no shortage of left groupings.

JM: The massive strike waves and political movements of the last few years have shown that there are many, many people in France who would like to build a political alternative on the radical left. Olivier Besancenot, the spokesperson of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, has recently had significantly higher popularity ratings than Sarkozy or his prime minister Fillon. But this widespread sympathy for radical left ideas has not led to people joining far-left parties to anything like the extent one might think. And the socialist and communist parties are generally identified as ‘the parties who don’t change much when they’re in government’. The new anti-capitalist party was called for by the LCR, the idea was for a party that is based on struggle, where elections are secondary, but which doesn’t ask members to all identify with a specific revolutionary or Trotskyist position.

JJ: Who’s currently involved in this initiative?

The only big organisation involved is the (soon to be ex) LCR. And a few thousand individuals, quite a few of them are well-known local or even national leaders of the non-party radical left, which has been quite big here for a number of years. Inside the NPA, some activists want to draw the lines of the party fairly narrow, to be absolutely sure not to include people who are too quick to ally in local or regional government with the Socialist party and their acceptance of neoliberalism. Others would like to make the party considerably broader, because they are worried that people who put mass movements and strikes at the centre of their politics, and are firmly opposed to the dictatorship of profit, will be kept out of the party if the lines are drawn too narrowly. Discussions continue on this. But in the present name of the party, ‘anti-capitalist’ represents the compromise position at present. We want people who are opposed to capitalism, who generally believe that capitalism cannot be given a human face.

This means that inside the party, you have people close to anarchism, close to radical green politics, close to Guevara’s ideas etc.

JJ: Do you think the current crisis in the Socialist party is something that might bring dividends to the new project? The Left party in Germany certainly benefited from having a leading SPD member behind the project from the start. What are the prospects for attracting the best parts of the communists, socialists, Lutte Ouvrière and, I guess, the Greens?

JM: Recent economic and political events will certainly boost the new party. It is not hard to get people to listen to anti-capitalism these days – waves of sackings are making sure of that. And the relative paralysis of the Socialist party and the Communist party will make it easier for the NPA to build support.

The situation is, however, complex, and the NPA is not the only organisation trying to crystallise the radical left. To go through the parties briefly:

The Trotskyist organisation of a few thousand activists, Lutte Ouvrière is opposed to the new anti-capitalist party to such an extent that it broke with a very long tradition by allying itself with the Socialist party in the municipal elections last April, rather than risking an alliance with the LCR and the non-party radical left.

For Lutte Ouvrière, all these people in the NPA are not revolutionaries and therefore not interesting. Over the last few years, Lutte Ouvrière has been completely cut off from any of the big unity political campaigns (against the European constitution, against Le Pen etc). They stick strictly to ‘workplace issues’ and are in decline because of this. They have just expelled the minority current from their ranks because this current wanted to work with the NPA.

The leadership of the Communist party won a good majority at its conference for a ‘business as usual’ motion putting alliances with the Socialist party at the centre of its strategy. All minority motions did very well though. Whole sections of communists are leaving the party (many favourable to a federation of the radical left). But their paper and good analysis of the economic crisis mean they still have an audience.

The Socialist party has seen two historic events in the last six months. First, a significant split to the left by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has now established a new party ‘Le parti de gauche’ on the model, he says (but much smaller) than the German Die Linke see [Flunking the written]. It will be founded very soon, and will attempt to fill the gap between the Socialist party ‘let’s manage capitalism more humanly’ line and the ‘almost revolutionary’ line of the NPA. It could become an important force, it’s hard to say.

The second key event is that Ségolène Royal, the Tony Blair of the Socialist party, was defeated by an alliance much to the left of her (though not that left), on a very close poll. This is excellent news, and means that left arguments will be more audible. The radical left should be able to point up the difference between the left speeches of Martine Aubry, the new leader, and the lack of support for key struggles from this absolutely electoralist party.

Finally, some of these fragments, as well as teams from the non-party left have just set up a federation of left forces and activists, to try to overcome the bittiness of the radical left. The idea is that different forces and individuals can run joint campaigns, but don’t need to leave their own organisations – dual membership is encouraged. This federation is backed by a number of important figures.

The upshot of all this is that the NPA has important decisions to make about who to work with and on what. For example, for the European elections in 2009 – is it better to have united slates of candidates across the radical left (I think so) or to have an independent NPA slate, to be able to put forward a clearer platform?

The tendency within the NPA is to rock forwards and backwards between sectarianism and unity politics. I am not talking about mad small-group sectarianism (because the new party will start with many thousands of people). But that sectarianism emphasises our differences with other groups, and finds a host of reasons why we cannot work with them, even for limited aims. There is a real tendency inside the NPA to think ‘we are the only real left’ or ‘of course, we want unity: people from other organisations should leave them and join us instead, then we’ll be united.’ The tendency towards sectarianism is the biggest danger for the NPA. The numbers, relative youth, enthusiasm, energy and real pedagogy for explaining key issues are the most important positive points.

JJ: In this country there has been an ongoing difficulty with left unity projects where revolutionaries have been determined to hang on to their autonomy within the broader alliance. To the extent, that it can create, I think, unnecessary conflicts and distrust of separate agendas. What’s the position of the LCR, as the most significant organised current in the NPA, on this tricky balancing act between retaining distinct organisation within the NPA and submerging their efforts in to it?

JM: An old and tricky problem, and you and me won’t necessarily see it in the same way. In my opinion the problem comes when differences are not discussed but separate agendas are pushed forward in rather hidden ways.

I personally would like to see the NPA declare ‘The NPA is a party which has some people who are revolutionaries and others are not. Debate will continue within the party on these issues, while together we build all the struggles which are needed to oppose the dictatorship of profit.’ This is not really happening. There is a tendency to hide differences. So for example, on the question of whether the NPA is a revolutionary party or not the posters will say ‘A party to revolutionise society’ and a whole number of other formulations that avoid the question.

This ‘formulation politics’ was already one of the banes of the LCR. On a difficult question, find a formulation, which upsets no one, instead of deciding the question. Some of the formulations had no meaning …

So, it is an ongoing question. To emphasise, the aim of the LCR is not to control the NPA, the LCR is officially dissolving itself and there is no plan to maintain an LCR current inside the NPA. I think its likely that the different currents that were in the LCR will end up setting up three or four currents in the NPA, which seems fine to me. As Socialisme International, our tiny group of comrades, along with a couple of dozen others, will certainly set up openly a current based on IS ideas (close to SWP theories).

To sum up, the NPA is a very exciting initiative and everyone should build it. The new economic crisis means workers have even more of a need for a party based on class struggle, and there is a new generation of young activists being built very quickly. I hope the NPA will quickly work with wider federations, and in this way help to win partial victories on important points, while continuing the debate on how to definitively eliminate capitalism.

John Mullen is an anti-capitalist activist in the south-west of France and editor of the review [Socialisme International->http://pagesperso-orange.fr/revuesocialisme/]

Jim Jepp blogs at The Daily (Maybe), the adventures of a socialist in the Green Party

Although both meetings had negative aspects, neither were characterised by them. There were some personal remarks made about Sheridan at the SSP meeting and there were some aggressive and silly remarks made at the Solidarity event – but on the whole both camps put forward an outward looking agenda.

Political differences

Some people have claimed there are no political differences between the two camps. This is entirely wrong. There are differences – all within the wide spectrum of left ideas. For the SSP, Scottish independence is clearly a very important policy and it was given a high profile by speakers at its rally. At the Solidarity event there was no talk of it at all, although it is mentioned in its founding document.

Both meetings talked about the war and advertised the lobby of the Labour conference. But for Socialist Workers Party (SWP) speakers at the Solidarity event the anti-war movement is clearly the ‘mother ship’ and every political point was related to it in some way. For the SSP, the war is an important issue but not the single defining feature of the political landscape.

Leadership models

Solidarity is intent on reproducing the old structures of the left but ‘bigger’ and with ‘better’ leaders. In contrast, a large part of the SSP rally involved a discussion of new organising techniques, participatory democracy and accountability. There was some talk of abolishing the convenor’s post, formerly held by Tommy Sheridan, altogether and introducing a more collective, consensusbased model.

One instructive example was that of Bolivia, which was raised at both meetings. The SSP discussed lessons to be learned from the movements, how they organise, how radicals relate to the community, how they keep their leaders accountable. Tommy Sheridan was very impressed by the size of the vote Morales got.

The SSP is immersed in a wide ranging and open debate, including in its paper and not excluding a critical examination of the ‘cultural baggage’ inherited from the far left. Sadly, some Solidarity supporters seem to be of the opinion that they are right about everything. One speaker, Jim Walls, even went so far as to say (of SSP members who would not join Solidarity) that, ‘You are either part of the problem or part of the solution…there are no shades of grey. ‘

Fortunately, many speakers at the Solidarity rally were far more open minded and called for a less sectarian approach. Mike Gonzalez made a measured, intelligent speech; and Gary Fraser argued that ‘our fight is not with the United Left [the main grouping of those who stayed with the SSP] but with the warmongers’, warning that infighting on the left would serve no one’s purpose.

Attendees

Many of those attending Tommy Sheridan’s meeting had never been members of the SSP. The Solidarity rally also had a wider geographical spread, while most SSP attendees were from the Glasgow area. On the other hand, there were few young people at the Solidarity meeting, whereas the SSP had lots of youngsters, including as key speakers.

SWP members at the Solidarity event spoke time and again about there being no entry requirements for the party except a willingness to take on the powers that be. Sheridan wanted to appeal to both the 3 per cent that ‘vote socialist’ and the 53 per cent required to see a Solidarity government elected. In other words, Solidarity must be open to those who do not self-identify as socialist, perhaps on a similar model to Respect.

Style and feel

When Tommy Sheridan spoke it was a raging, shouted torrent. Sheridan’s successor as SSP convenor, Colin Fox, spoke well and reflectively without bombast or hyperbole. While the SSP meeting had a tone of ‘Let’s use this as an opportunity to think creatively’, Solidarity was about demonstrations, filling in your standing order form (five or six times we were badgered about this), giving donations and lots of speakers using the word ‘enthusiasm’.

The Solidarity rally was also a touch goonish. The chair began by telling us that anyone who heckled would be thrown out. When someone called out ‘But we can have a debate, can’t we?’ a steward descended on him and stood over him for the next three hours. Where is Walter Wolfgang when you need him?

The end song of each rally was also informative. The SSP finished with the ‘Internationale’, everyone fist aloft, while Solidarity ended with Tommy’s mother saying she’d made a promise to his gran and singing ‘Dream the Impossible Dream’ really, really badly.

Should we mourn the split?

The circumstances that led to the split could have been avoided, no question – but there is no prospect of the two groups coming back into one organisation. The split had to happen.

I spoke to a number of SSP and Solidarity supporters who admitted that their union branch or campaign group contained supporters of both factions. These activists must work together. Working relations must be established as soon as possible – although this could well require a monumental effort from the ‘cooperators’ in both camps.

Speakers who advised against seeing the other camp as the enemy, such as Mike Gonzalez for Solidarity and the SSP’s John MacAllion, are to be commended. Those who seek to deepen the rift with point scoring and attempts to gatekeep who is and is not allowed to be an active socialist should be reasoned with – whether they are in Scotland or simply commentating from abroad.See www.socialistunity.org for a longer report by Jim Jepps and full links to every aspect of the SSP debate

Take London. Respect achieved some stunning successes through providing a voice to Muslim voters radicalised by the war. In the east of the capital, it topped the poll for the GLA elections in Tower Hamlets and came second in Newham, with 20.4 per cent and 21.4 per cent, respectively. Its vote in Lambeth and Greenwich, however, was less than what the Socialist Alliance achieved in the equivalent elections in 2000.

Other key results for Respect, especially considering the forthcoming by-elections in the two cities, included its relative success in Birmingham, where it won 7.4 per cent of the vote, and Leicester, where it polled 10 per cent. The coalition also did very well in Preston’s council elections, averaging 30 per cent of the vote.

London and Preston aside, in the Euro elections Respect was less successful – securing only 1.7 per cent of the vote. There were many sighs of relief, including from within Respect itself, that it did not cost the Greens its seats. In three regions Respect stood against other left organisations: in Yorkshire and Humber it polled twice the number of votes the Alliance for Green Socialism gained; in the southeast it won the same number of votes as the Peace Party; but in Wales it only achieved a third of the vote for Forward Wales – the new socialist grouping led by Welsh Assembly Member John Marek and former secretary of state for Wales Ron Davies.

Outside of London Respect’s share of the European vote was almost identical to the performance of the whole of the socialist left – the Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), et al – in 1999. In all but one of the 10 regions where Respect stood the vote was only marginally different. Even the best results outside London involved a rise of less than 1 per cent.

In the council elections several other socialist organisation stood candidates with some impressive results. The Socialist Party had two councillors elected in Coventry. Peter Smith in Walsall polled 32 per cent for the Democratic Socialist Alliance. Roy North, a Socialist Alliance supporter, polled 11.4 per cent in Swindon. The Independent Working Class Association got three councillors elected in Oxford. Mike Lane for the SLP won 9.2 per cent in his Liverpool ward. Garth Frankland for the Alliance for Green Socialism won more than 1,000 votes in Leeds, and Glyn Davies in Flintshire stood for the Communist Party and still managed to win 21.6 per cent. There were far too many good votes to mention them all, proving that, like the Greens, the socialist left can build a local base if it works at doing so between as well as during elections.

The Greens, like Respect, had pockets of excellent results. Norwich and Oxford provide two excellent examples of how they built on existing support: the party won three extra seats in the former and another four in the latter. The party’s biggest success, however, was in Brighton where it topped the poll and beat Labour with 20 per cent of the vote, thus creating the chance of the first Green MP at the next general election. Having said this, its Euro vote was slightly down on 1999.

Two conclusions can be drawn from these results. First, that the Green and Respect votes are not in direct competition: the two organisations have different constituencies, despite a great overlap of policies. There are few places where both organisations have strong, rooted candidates. Respect managed to tap into the “Muslim vote” in an unprecedented way and should be congratulated for that. The Greens simply do not have a foothold in this community, but they were able to draw on a far wider layer of support.

Greater cooperation across the left would obviously be ideal – if agreement could only be met. In some areas, the left and the Greens have already made informal deals and have good relations, but other areas will require much more work. Negotiations will need to proceed on the basis of cooperation rather than “stand down or else”.Jim Jepps is the webmaster for www.socialistunity.co.uk