In late May this year, the Socialist Federation was created at a Conference of the ‘Members Charter”. The Charter was formed Your Party (YP) when the Corbyn clique reversed the original YP conference decisions and confiscated the members’ data. In this article, I will want to make an assessment of that Conference, and contribute ideas which I mean to be useful to the evolution of our Socialist Federation. I note that it had been the stated aim of the Members’ Charter “to provide a home to any group which aligns with a set of socialist points of unity to be established collectively”.
This June Conference decided not to form as a ready-made political party with a programme, but to provide a democratic structure “for vigorous and principled debate”. This is a good basis for the Socialist Federation, considering how badly the dispersed forces of the original YP need to be drawn back together again.
The resolution by Consistent Democrats “regarding the Socialist Federation” offered concrete ideas on “how to repair the damage done by the anti-party saboteurs”. To illustrate the point, it said that “we should create a national team of volunteers to work out a plan of how to do this, and to implement it”. During the Conference, the proper consideration of this matter was hampered by the unexplained administrative decision of the organisers to stop the resolution’s mover Ian Donovan (ID) participating in the Conference. The result was tension in the room, along with curt instructions and curtailing of Paul Collins who moved the resolution instead. And no interactive debate about the ideas in the resolution.
For the same reason, the afternoon “Motion on Party Democracy” was also moved by Paul Collins. This resolution stated the importance, apparently recognised by most comrades, “to safeguard freedom of discussion and debate”. I do not think that this right should need to be claimed amongst us anymore! To the organisers of the Conference, I say that they must present to all the members, and during a meeting open to all, the reasons for their decision to stop Ian Donovan attending meetings.
War and the long arm of Zionism
High finance imperialism is taking control of capitalism. This brings a qualitative change in the way capitalism has become ready to do away with all restrictions on its crimes, on its genocides and on its wars. In its Strategic Defence Review, the Starmer government has formally included China and North Korea alongside Russia and Iran in its assessment of “severe, persistent state threats”. The British army is being geared “to rapidly integrate artificial intelligence, automated software, long-range missiles and land drone swarms to massively increase battlefield lethality”.
Our Socialist Federation does not have to search high and low for what to do next. Had it created a national team of volunteers “to create a national centre” as suggested in Ian’s morning resolution, the team would have gone to localities and branches where they would have found all the anti-war and anti-austerity organisations up in arms, so to say, and ready with a proper anti-war program. It is sectarian on our part to seek refuge in small groups.
I note with alarm how, on 4 June, the Starmer government officially accepted the recommendations of the Lord Mann Review. As was meted out against us in the Labour Party under Iain McNichol, false allegations of antisemitism are already flying like arrows throughout the UK Health Service; presumably to extirpate from there the opponents of Palantir. When Ian Donovan says that “political debate and disagreement should be seen as a strength, not a weakness”, he is not just defending himself, but our ability to face this level of adversity.
Many fine ideas were raised during the Conference
In the Conference, there was an exaggerated concern about the Greens and the LibDems. There is an objective need for Green and Ecology ideas, and it is no wonder that they attract votes. This will be so until we adopt policies that attract people to us around these issues. There have been great fluctuations in the voting patterns in the last few years. Where a particular group attracts votes, the best thing to do is to look for electoral pacts, tactical united fronts, whilst discussing the ideas and seeking unity. It is not objective to be so much concerned with the Greens and so little concerned with the war we are in!
The comrade Ian Spencer of the Democratic Socialist Party said that we need Marxism and “a Communist Party”. I believe he was right to speak like this. It shows a belief in the future and confidence in the ability of humanity to look into the future. The Trotskyist and revolutionary leader J Posadas wrote texts based on the notion that the progress of Britain would have to pass “from Labourism over to Communism”.
The tandem US-Israel forms part of the Nazification of the world
In the Conference, many comrades spoke against Zionism and the need for our Socialist Federation to adopt an anti-Zionist stance. I do not think many comrades are opposed to that. Only, it is not enough to advocate the boycott of Israel for instance. One must deal with the war of the US and Israel on the populations; their war on medical knowledge; their war on children, their war on reporting on them. Meanwhile, a few billionaires takes everything over, turning every human need, and every human, into a value to be siphoned off.
Global finance imperialism is taking control of bourgeois society, with fewer and fewer people in overall charge. In the world, Trump – and him alone – possesses the sole authority to order a nuclear launch; and no one can legally stop him. The tandem US-Israel forms part of this subordination and Nazification of the world. It forms part of the Nazification of all the bourgeois parties, all the centres of social, cultural and political organisation; the religious organizations, the municipalities, the organs of the States.
It is not antisemitic to say this.
Those who find fault with the notion that the US and Israel operate in tandem against life, could propose a better description. This matter requires heads together, concertation and debate. I call on the organisers of our Socialist Federation to allow Ian back in the meetings. It is a fact that there are fewer and fewer of his previous detractors who continue to call him anti-Semite.
It would be alarming to me if our leading comrades did not return openly to this question. In our Conference, they let the participants believe that Ian had been excluded. But excluded by whom? At what meeting? Were are the minutes of that meeting? Was there a vote, or was it just a few individuals who decided? Who had organised that meeting?
As I said, this is not a defence of Ian Donovan that I am making. It is a defence of our ability to continue breaking away from social democracy, getting closer to socialism. This is the only way forward. Should we fail to be thorough on the question of Zionism, there will always be individuals in leading positions amongst us to bring the seeds of doubt, incomprehension and social democratic vacillation. Particularly in the times when unity in action will be required.
I look forward to the pre-conference in June. Some comrades said that “we are not ready for a Conference later in the year”, and I agree. There is plenty that needs doing right away however, like uniting against the war that we are in – a war that did not attract the attention of our Conference as much as the Greens and the Lib Dems did.
Whatever organisation we create, it will have to support the RMT, the teachers, the scientists, the doctors, the nurses. Whether we are a Party or a Federation, it is our task to demand that the funds for the war on Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are not taken from the young, the unemployed, the sick or the old; but from the tiny handful of billionaires whose power must be overthrown, for they hold individual fortunes bigger than the budget of entire countries.
