Socialist Resistance Forum: The General Election & the Left

Socialist Resistance Forum: The General Election & the Left

Speaker: Alan Thornett – Respect National Council and Socialist Resistance

Tuesday 17th November, 7.30pm, Bennetts Bar, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham City Centre

Despite the collapse of the thirty year neo-liberal project, the three main parties are promising more of the same. No matter how much the right wing crusade has fallen into discredit, they have on offer; war, destruction, unemployment, public service cuts, wage cuts, privatisation, racism, repression and surveillance and a lack of affordable housing for working people. The differences between these parties are of degree, not of substance. Labour are putting in (inadequate) fiscal stimuli, whereas the Tories would let the market rip. But all three are united on the cuts and making the working class pay for the crisis . . . .

Don’t worry, here comes the New Labour Titanic to save us from Global Warming! If they are allowed to get away with it, the damage and chaos they create will cause even greater misery and provide more opportunities for the far right. But this is by no means inevitable. The capitalist onslaught can, and must be, stopped by mass opposition. Strikes, rallies, demonstrations and occupations need to become the order of the day. It is not a question of going back to the seventies, it is a question of going forward towards a new society; one based on public need and not on private profit. We will not get there because of the actions of great leaders, we will get there by the kind of mobilisations that almost brought Blair down in 2003, that broke the Poll Tax in 1990, that won the recent college dispute in London and that challenged the right of factory owners to do as they please at Visteon and Vestas.

Organisation

When in struggle, working people normally have numbers and militancy on their side, but what is often lacking is organisation, solidarity and leadership. This forum will concentrate on one aspect of all this, the need for a new political party of the oppressed.

The General Election

It is important that there is a viable left challenge at the General Election. While there are a small number of left Labour candidates worth backing, a vote for them is also a vote for the Brown (or whoever replaces him) leadership. If you have a right wing Labour candidate, you get the worst of both worlds. And while no one wants to see the Tories win, it is totally insufficient to have a strategy of just voting

Labour

It is now very late for the whole of the left to construct a united team of candidates, but even now any moves towards unity will be welcome. One such opportunity will be at the conference to be hosted by the RMT in London on November 7th. The backing of one of the country’s strongest unions would be a real spur towards unity against New Labour. On November 14th, there will be the Respect conference in Birmingham. It has the biggest electoral footprint on the left, and has the possibility of doing very well, or even winning, in three Westminster seats.

(Socialist Resistance will be backing these challenges). Then there is Dave Nellist in Coventry, Caroline Lucas in Brighton, and a few other areas where the left could do well.

The forum will discuss the outcome of the two conferences mentioned above and other developments towards left unity before the election, and how we can most aid the success of the candidates already in the field.

Latin America has swung left over recent years. Can we do likewise over here?

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Socialist Resistence Forum – A New Anti-Capitalist Party in France – the NPA

Speaker – Fred Leplat

Tuesday 19th May 7.30pm at Bennetts Bar, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham City Centre.

In early February, the 3,000 strong LCR (Revolutionary Communist League) dissolved itself and launched the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party) with 10,000 members and 450 branches across France. One of its best known members is Olivier Besancenot, a 32 year old postal worker and twice candidate in the Presidential elections.

The creation of the NPA is linked to the global economical crisis: capitalism is sinking into a very deep and historical crisis which is not just a  financial crisis or a simple failure of the neoliberal regulation. Ordinary people are threatened to be the victims of a crisis caused by the banks and the corporations. Mass redundancies, high cost of living, and the destruction of public services are the first steps of this attack. A fight-back has started with a one-day general strike in France on the 29 January with 2million in the street, followed by an even bigger turn-out on the 19 March.

Despite the threat of redundancies, there is a growing mood to resist. Company bosses threatening closures and job losses risk being locked up in their offices by workers such as at 3M/Post-it. This is not unpopular as only 7% condemn this action while 40% believe it to be entirely justified!! And the broadly victorious six-week general strike against the high cost of living the French Caribbean island of Martinique has provided ideas about how to win.

The NPA will be on the frontline of mobilisations, strikes and demonstrations and for the regrouping of the Left. The NPA proposes an emergency program to stop workers from being made to pay for the crisis which includes the nationalisation of companies creating redundancies , a 300 Euro increase in all wages and pensions, a minimum wage of 1500 Euro a month, the abolition of the VAT and a rent freeze.

In order to encourage the resistance and promote such this anti-capitalist program, the NPA makes it clear that there needs to be a political perspective that is not linked to the Socialist Party, which is a similar party to New Labour. The NPA has proposed a common front to the Communist Party and the Party de Gauche (Left Party – a recent split from the SP) to fight together the forthcoming European and French regional elections, as well as to promote the resistance to the neo-liberal attacks.

The creation of the New Anti-capitalist Party is a significant stage in a long process that began with an appeal in August 2007 by the former LCR for the regrouping of all anti-capitalist activists whatever their past political traditions. For French revolutionary and anti-capitalist activists, building the NPA as a broad party is a genuine challenge. Of course, the NPA is in no sense a model for other countries, but it is an experience which is of great interest to socialists in Britain and which deserves our support.

Part 1

Part 1