It is Thursday the 5th of May, voting day for the UK
general election.

New Labour has been, in desperation, spreading the
scare story that a mere 10% of their voters voting for
the Liberal Democrats would let the Tories in. In
reality, this would only result in a Tory government
if those votes took place in marginals where the
Tories are close behind Labour.

The Independent on Saturday (30 April) showed New
Labour’s claim to be a lie. A Professor of Psephology
(voting) analysed the likely effects of swings between
0 and 21% from Labour to the Lib Dems based on the
Tories’ then support of 33% in opinion polls. Up to
18% made Labour the largest party, and at 21% the Lib
Dems became the largest – it was only on 19 and 20%
that the Tories would be the largest. Of course,
neither Labour nor the Lib Dems would contemplate a
coalition government with the Tories so a Tory
government would certainly not be on the cards!

Even with a 3% rise in Tory fortunes (i.e. up to 36%),
it would still be very unlikely for the Tories to
become the largest party, and they would not get an
overall majority. He concluded that there it was
virtually impossible for an overall Tory majority to
result from the general election.

Since then, the Tories have fallen 4% in opinion poll
support, to 29%. It is clearer than ever that the
Tories will not win the general election! There is
therefore a great possibility for socialists and other
candidates left of Labour (including Greens and Lib
Dems) to get good votes – and I think many socialists
will actually win seats despite an electoral system
that is stacked against us. See the Campaign for
Democracy in the UK
(http://www.democracycampaign.org.uk;
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/campaign-for-democracy-in-the-uk)
for my views on proportional representation and other
issues of democracy, and enter the debate if you want.

In every constituency in Scotland, and many more in
England and Wales, there are socialist or independent
anti-war candidates standing against New Labour and
the other big business parties.

The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) is standing in
every constituency north of the border, except where
Rose Gentle (whose son Gordon was killed at the age of
19 in Iraq after only six months training and without
being given protection that could have saved his life)
is standing against armed forces Minister Adam Ingram.
The Tories only stand a chance in one or two seats in
Scotland, due to the ongoing hatred of that party
after bringing in the unfair, unjust and uncollectable
poll tax a year before England and Wales, and the
ensuing radicalisation of Scottish society.

It was the revolutionary socialist organisation then
called the Militant Tendency which led the 18
million-strong mass non-payment campaign that defeated
that flat rate tax for local services; it later became
Scottish Militant Labour and initiated the Scottish
Socialist Alliance later transforming it into the SSP
and becoming the International Socialist Movement
platform of the SSP. My initiative for a Revolutionary
Platform of the SSP
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp)
has sparked a debate within the ISM, in which some of
its members are putting forward the idea of a “Marxist
platform” of the SSP – the main subject of the current
issue of its “Frontline” magazine (which you can read
on-line at http://www.redflag.org.uk). ISM member Nick
McKerrill points out that it does not have a leading
theoretician in the same way that other Marxist
organisations do with his (they all seem to be male)
ideas being spread throughout the organisation, but
there is of course one person with a higher political
level than anybody else and who tends to give a lead.
That person is now Alan McCombes, who unfortunately
lost the vote for Convenor at this year’s SSP
conference in Perth to Colin Fox MSP (also in the ISM
but too much of a politician for my liking); in my
opinion, if the vote had been held immediately after
the debate, Alan would have walked it, but Colin’s
greater sense of humour probably swung enough of the
delegates before the vote on the following day so that
he became Convenor. [I’ve attached my report of SSP
history, the conference report and my Revolutionary
Platform plans to the end of this message.]

The person formerly closest to the leading
theoretician of the ISM was Murray Smith, who was
previously on the International Secretariat (leading
body) of Militant’s international organisation (the
CWI – http://www.socialistworld.net) and leader of the
equivalent organisation in France. He became one of
the SSP’s two leaders with responsibility for
international relations, after the SSP was formed in
defiance of the CWI, and later went back to France to
become one of the leaders of the most significant
French revolutionary socialist organisation, the LCR,
which usually gets about 5% support in elections and
opinion polls. He was nevertheless the best
contributor to Frontline until fairly recently; he has
not written in that magazine for a few issues, but has
contributed to the latest issue of the Democratic
Socialist Perspective (until recently “Democratic
Socialist Party”) of Australia’s international journal
“Links”, whose most recent issue is on building a
revolutionary party (see http://www.dsp.org.au/links).
That issue is advertised in the most recent issue of
Frontline.

My view on those within the ISM platform of the SSP
(including Nick McKerrill) who propose a Marxist
platform is that there should be a Revolutionary
Platform as well as Marxist forums (meetings to
discuss Marxist theories open to all SSP members).
Marxist organisations uniting together within a single
platform would be a step forward on the current
position, and maybe such a platform could act as a
sub-platform of the Revolutionary Platform, but we
need to move outwards beyond those who consider
themselves Marxists to all revolutionary socialists,
including those from a (non-violent)
anarchist/autonomous background who are much more in
favour of direct action than participation in
elections. By providing such a platform, the SSP
itself will become a much more inviting party for such
people to join or conduct joint activities with.

In England and Wales, the left is unfortunately more
divided than ever, but my proposals for Democratic
Socialist Alliances with a Revolutionary Platform (see
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-democratic-socialist\
-alliance)
will overcome this problem in the near future. As well
as supporting Socialist Party and Respect candidates
in the North West of England and West Midlands (on
some leaflets, thousands of copies of which I have
mainly handed out in Glasgow and Manchester), I
particularly encourage readers of this message to vote
for “Democratic Socialist Alliance – People Before
Profit” candidates in Liverpool Wavertree and Crawley
in London. I know the Liverpool candidate Paul Filby
from when we were in the Militant Tendency together,
and he was adopted by a meeting of the United
Socialist Party, that also involved former Liverpool
Dockers who were sacked for refusing to cross a picket
line (their dispute was eventually lost after betrayal
by the TGWU trade union leadership). Although Militant
is fairly weak in that city after the failure of
Liverpool’s Militant-led Liverpool City Council in the
second year (see below), Labour MP Terry Fields (an
infiltrator from the Militant Tendency) went to jail
for not paying his poll tax and subsequently got
nearly 6,000 votes in the 1992 general election as an
independent socialist candidate, so there is a history
of strong left votes in Liverpool. The United
Socialist Party subsequently decided not to stand any
candidates, but their Liverpool and Crawley candidates
are standing anyway, supported by the Socialist
Alliance Democracy Platform
(http://www.democracyplatform.org.uk) that had
registered that “party name” for the local elections
last year.

There have been a lot of splits on the left in England
and Wales in recent years, but there have been also
some moves for unity, for example with the Socialist
Green Unity Coalition (SGUC), which provides some
limited unity on a federal basis for the general
election, between various organisations including the
Socialist Party, Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform
and Alliance for Green Socialism. However, that
structure provides a veto for parties or
organisations, even if they have a small number of
members, and a “one member one vote” alliance (as I
propose with the Democratic Socialist Alliance) is
obviously essential for democracy. The Socialist Party
walked out of the original Socialist Alliance (SA),
wanting a veto, supposedly on the basis that the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) would dominate it
forever, despite the fact that if they had been
serious about building the SA, new SA members would
quickly have overwhelmed big business infiltrators in
the SWP. After their walkout, the SWP stranglehold
over the SA got much greater – the policies became
more wishy-washy, it wasn’t given speakers at anti-war
events, the SA wasn’t even allowed to stand at the
local elections last year (if a local SA decided to
stand a candidate, the Respect leadership could veto
them, and if approved they had to stand under the
Respect banner), and the SA was finally dissolved in
February this year.

Some socialists in the Manchester area (currently
Manchester area Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform
and Stockport Socialist Alliance meeting concurrently)
are preparing for a conference/meeting soon after the
general election (probably late May or early June)
held in Manchester which will hopefully launch a
Democratic Socialist Alliance (DSA) as a national
organisation. [Our next meeting to discuss this will
be on Tuesday evening.] In my opinion, this should be
a big open event, to start the launch of what could
very quickly become a sizeable DSA on the scale of the
SSP. Rather than thinking small, as some have a
tendency to do after the setbacks of recent years, and
having discussions with just the small number of
activists already involved, we should produce large
numbers of attractive leaflets, and have a proper
conference with attractive speakers. In particular, I
want us to invite Paul Filby as DSA candidate and
hopefully MP for Liverpool Wavertree and either Tommy
Sheridan or Rosie Kane as a Scottish Socialist Party
Member of the Scottish Parliament (both from Glasgow,
which is where the organised forces of socialism are
strongest). Part of this thinking small is saying that
the DSA should be “a step towards an organisation like
the SSP” but the time is ripe for launching a serious
organisation on the same basis now (indeed calling it
an “alliance” is more attractive to many people who
think of “parties” as led from above); those who argue
against “dissolving existing organisations” are
talking complete poppycock because they can continue
as platforms of the DSA and maintain any international
links they already have. It is vital that we are as
open as possible, with all meetings open to members of
the public without a requirement to join first, and
with unmoderated discussion forums on the internet
with publicly accessible archives (such as the one I
have set up for Greater Manchester DSA at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gmdsa).

I was planning to stand in the election in Manchester
Withington, and have handed out a huge number of
copies of leaflets containing the first page of my
manifesto, as well as quite a lot of copies of my full
manifesto. Therefore, there are already a lot of
people in the Manchester area, as well as elsewhere in
England and Wales interested in a DSA.

In Northern Ireland, I’d urge people to vote for the
Socialist Environmental Alliance to try to break the
sectarian stranglehold over politics in that part of
the UK. Having separate Catholic and Protestant
parties is part of the divide-and-rule strategy of big
business to remain in control of society and stop a
socialist revolution.



Below is the contents of version 2 of a document I
wrote on “Scottish Socialist Party history, 2005
conference report and Revolutionary Platform plans” on
the 28th of March (included at
http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/ssp2.htm) - with some
additions made today included in square brackets with
“Note:” in front of them:


This year's Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) conference
included elections for Convenor. To understand them,
it is necessary to go back to the origins of the SSP
in the Militant Tendency.

The Militant Tendency was a revolutionary socialist
organisation that infiltrated the Labour Party to try
to convert it into a genuine socialist party (although
it was believed within the organisation that that
would never be possible and that it would be necessary
to lead a split-off from Labour at some point in the
future). Infiltration (or "entrism" as it was known)
was also used as a means of recruitment – from about
25 to several thousand at its height during the
miners’ strike and when Militant led Liverpool’s
Labour council in its dispute with the Tory government
(which won a lot of extra money in the first year
inflicting the first major defeat on Margaret
Thatcher, but which collapsed in the second year to
‘trendy left’ councils like Blunkett’s Sheffield
caving in – it ended in the farce of the council
sending out redundancy notices to the entire
workforce, supposedly as a delaying tactic but widely
misunderstood (and Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s
infamous speech at the Labour conference was a
disaster for Militant). I put this decision, made
jointly by the leaderships in Merseyside and at the
National Centre in London (as all key decisions were
during this dispute) as being due to infiltration by
conspiratorial organisations on the side of big
business.

Militant’s growth due to entrism was largely a result
of leading the Labour Party Young Socialists for
several years – until it was closed down by the Labour
leadership.

Margaret Thatcher’s second major defeat – and the one
that brought her down as Prime Minister – was also due
to Militant. It was the Militant-led and initiated
mass non-payment campaign that defeated the poll tax,
involving over 18 million people at its height who
hadn’t paid or were in arrears (out of about 40
million adults eligible to pay). The poll tax was a
flat rate tax, albeit with a 20% rate for unemployed
people and students, for local services to replace the
“rates”.

The poll tax was brought in in Scotland one year
before England and Wales (it was never introduced in
Northern Ireland). That was ideal for Militant,
because the organisation was particularly strong north
of the border, especially in Glasgow. The left was
stronger generally due to the greater poverty and the
national question.

[In my opinion, this decision as well as the decision
to introduce the poll tax at all was far from a
mistake by Margaret Thatcher, but a masterstroke. It
produced the conditions under which a fairly small
revolutionary socialist organisation could reach the
big time by leading a campaign of millions. In the
past, different layers of workers had been taken on
and defeated one by one, and this time we were all
being taken on at once. In my opinion, Margaret
Thatcher was a revolutionary socialist in disguise!]

Militant’s success at leading such a huge campaign was
tempered by the fact that it actually lost members
during it due to burn-out and the failure to recruit
sufficiently! This was mainly due to the betrayal by
All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation Secretary Steve
Nally after the riot at Trafalgar Square in London
after the 200,000-strong national demo on the 31st of
March 1990, to mark the introduction of the tax in
England and Wales, when he said under questioning from
a journalist that the Federation would hold an
investigation into the cause of the riot (rightly) and
would “name names”. Naming names to the police, or
other people who would pass them onto the police, is a
complete no-no within left-wing movements, and its
refusal to expel Nally and put in motion a new
election for Federation Secretary put Militant on the
defensive at the very time that they could have been
recruiting thousands or even tens of thousands of new
members. Militant said that Nally was not properly
prepared for the interview (it was hard to believe
that response to violence had not been discussed
bearing in mind that previous violence had taken place
at some town hall demos) and that he had meant that he
would name names to the movement and not the police –
but the police would have enough spies within the
movement to make the two equivalent. Nally’s remark
also ensured that the Federation did not hold an
investigation into the causes of the violence; a
subsequent TV documentary showed the police started
it. [At the time, a tiny anarchist organisation called
Class War claimed responsibility. They weren’t
actually a violent organisation at all – they were
known for amusing headlines, but they seized the
opportunity to grab the limelight. They all but
completely vanished from the UK political scene soon
afterwards. The term “anarchist” is widely interpreted
to imply “violent”, but at an “Earth First! Gathering”
I attended last summer, mainly attended by anarchists,
I went to a meeting on violence and only one person
said he advocated it!] It is obvious to me that Nally
was a big business infiltrator into Militant.

Militant was much more insulated from Nally’s
“mistake” north of the border since there was an
entirely peaceful 50,000-strong demonstration in
Glasgow on the same day.

[I joined Militant later in the campaign, as it proved
it was serious (on the 6th of June 1990). More of my
views on the poll tax are contained within my
autobiography “Transition” on the internet at
http://www.stevewallis.me.uk/transition.htm.]

Since Militant was conducting most of its activities
outside the Labour Party, Labour was going a long way
to the right and expelling left-wingers to the point
where it would be a long time before it went to the
left again (if it did at all and I didn’t think it
ever would), and conditions in Scotland were in
advance of England or Wales, Militant made the
decision to launch Scottish Militant Labour (SML) in
advance of the 1992 general election.

The Chair of the Scottish (and All Britain) Anti-Poll
Tax Federation was Militant member Tommy Sheridan.
Tommy was banned from demonstrating in a certain area
of Glasgow, due to being arrested at a previous
anti-poll tax demo, when the first attempt at a
“warrant sale” took place anywhere in Scotland – which
happened to be within that area of Glasgow. Warrant
sales were particular to Scotland (which has some
different laws to the rest of Britain), and were sales
of people’s goods in the streets that had been seized
by sheriffs’ officers (bailiffs). A large number of
people surrounded the warrant sale preventing it from
going ahead. Tommy ripped up the court order
(interdict) in front of the TV cameras, making a fiery
speech, and got jailed for six months.

Tommy stood for SML in Glasgow Pollok constituency
from his prison cell, in the 1992 general election and
got over 6,000 votes, coming second to Labour. He
stood again, also from his prison cell, in the local
election to Glasgow Pollok ward (part of the
constituency) a month later, and got elected to
Glasgow City Council.

Tommy’s success was the springboard for further SML
election successes, and they subsequently united with
other socialists in the Scottish Socialist Alliance
(SSA). The SSA’s main activity was in Glasgow Pollok
(again) in a campaign of non-violent direct action
against the extension of a motorway. The SSA project
was successful because SML took it seriously,
conducting most of their activity under the banner of
the SSA. Although Militant Labour was subsequently set
up in England and Wales, and socialist alliances were
set up south of the border too, Militant didn’t take
the alliances particularly successfully down here and
the later name change from Militant Labour to the
Socialist Party signified the beginning of the end of
the abandonment of the socialist alliance project by
the organisation in England and Wales. [The Socialist
Workers Party (SWP) later joined the socialist
alliances, and wound up the national network (with a
few allies) at a conference on the 5th of February
this year. I am proposing the formation of “democratic
socialist alliances” – to distance the new
organisations from the Stalinist states that collapsed
in the USSR and Eastern Europe and from the
bureaucratic way that the SWP ran the socialist
alliances (where you had committee meetings a week
before full socialist alliance meetings and required
resolutions to be submitted to those meetings, with
seconders as well as proposers).]

In 1998, a big discussion took place in SML, the
Socialist Party and similar organisations around the
world linked by the Committee for a Workers’
International (CWI). The discussion was around a
proposal by the SML leadership to transform the SSA
into the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), with SML
becoming the International Socialist Movement (ISM)
platform of the SSP. The transformation involved
moving from fortnightly SML meetings and monthly SSA
meetings to fortnightly SSP meetings and irregular ISM
meetings (as and when they are required). The
newspaper (Scottish Socialist Voice) and property (not
much since the office was rented) was transferred from
SML to the SSP. The SML leadership’s proposal was very
strongly supported in Scotland, but the British and
international leaderships opposed the move on the
ridiculous grounds that if the ISM did not meet at
least once a month (I think) and there was not a
frequent newspaper/journal, it would be dissolving the
organisation! Look now, folks, the ISM still exists,
it has three of the SSP’s six members of the Scottish
Parliament (MSPs), had both candidates for Convenor at
this year’s conference, has an irregular journal
“Frontline” that is published as and when issues
justify it (rather than just produced for the sake of
it or to out-sell another platform) and had a fringe
meeting at the conference. So much for a “dissolved”
organisation!

Despite these ridiculous arguments, the SML proposal
only had the support of the overwhelming (if not
unanimous) majority of the French organisation (led by
Murray Smith, who later became a leader of the SSP
with responsibility for international links, and is
now a leader of the French LCR; he was the only member
of the international leadership to actually visit
Scotland!) and the Manchester/Lancashire (my region)
and Merseyside regions of the Socialist Party.

The main opportunity for rank-and-file members of the
CWI to take part in the discussion was at the “1998
European School of the CWI” – a conference where
anyone in one of the CWI’s sections was welcome but no
decisions were made. At that event, I was the only
member from England or Wales to speak from the
platform in favour of setting up the SSP. It was
through noticing that some people were swept along by
the mood as the balance of forces shifted from one
side to the other during the event, whereas others
retained a poker face throughout, that I recognised
that there was a large amount of infiltration going on
(that I initially put down as state infiltration but I
now realise is more usually by more secretive
conspiratorial organisations on the side of big
business – and by those on the side of the working
class to oppose them). When the CWI and Socialist
Party ultimately took the decision to oppose the
setting up of the SSP (but reluctantly allow it to go
ahead to avoid splitting the international) that I
resigned from the Socialist Party. I remained a
Socialist Alliance member, and continued to take part
in activities on a range of issues, most significantly
against sanctions and war on Iraq. However, in that
time I have spent large periods of time as a political
prisoner on psychiatric wards, as a result of becoming
a significant player in the world situation at that
European School.

The SSP was created in time for the first elections to
the Scottish parliament (in 1999). Because they were
conducted by proportional representation, Tommy
Sheridan was able to get elected as an MSP for
Glasgow. He was by default the main spokesperson –
i.e. Convenor. Until the next Scottish parliamentary
elections four years later (on May Day 2003), when the
number of MSPs went up from one to six, the SSP was
regarded by many as a one-man band, despite the fact
that there were thousands of activists. Nobody had
challenged Tommy for Convenorship ever since he first
took up that post.

Despite the brilliant role that Tommy has played in
the past, as I outlined above, I have been aware for
some time that he had become a liability as party
Convenor. That is because he always wears a suit (even
on demonstrations) and has a fake tan. Some people
question how genuine the party is when it is run by
someone who repels a large number of working class
people for these reasons. I have no doubt that he has
a lot of credibility from activists who hear his great
fiery and very political speeches at demonstrations
and meetings – but with the soundbite politics and
deliberate biases of the mass media, how genuine Tommy
really is does not get across to many others.

I don’t want to comment on the allegations in the News
of the World that Tommy had an affair with a woman in
Aberdeen. Tommy is suing that Murdoch rag and I wish
his cause well. Whatever happens with that, the fact
that Tommy and his wife Gail are expecting a baby soon
added to the urgency of getting a better Convenor
(from the point of view of the party’s fortunes)
before the general election.

The highlight of the broadcast of the May Day 2003
Scottish parliamentary election coverage was seeing
Colin Fox celebrate getting elected as an MSP for
Edinburgh by hurdling a barrier. It was certainly
something to celebrate getting an MSP in such a middle
class city. However, my delight was tempered by seeing
that he was wearing a suit. I recently visited
Edinburgh and watched the Scottish parliament in
operation, and he was wearing a jacket. That is a
significant improvement on Tommy’s choice to always
wear a suit, but I would have liked to have seen him
in a T-shirt with a political slogan on it. We don’t
want to appear yet another ‘respectable’ political
party – we want to appeal to those who are put off by
the traditional politicians. I am hoping to stand as
Greater Manchester Democratic Socialist Alliance
candidate for Withington in the forthcoming general
election and I think I stand a very good chance of
becoming an MP. I’ll never wear a suit or jacket in
parliament! [I know Colin will have read this message;
I sent it to his email address at the Scottish
parliament and even if it was deleted by the person
who saw it first (as Rosie Kane’s often are), he would
have doubtless been sent it by somebody else. I hope
he has taken this comment in good heart, and if he
only sometimes decides to be a bit more rebellious
then I’ll feel that my comments here on this point
have been worthwhile.]

The person with the best public profile of any of the
SSP MSPs is by far Rosie Kane. When I was in
Manchester, at about 7.30am on BBC1 one morning
shortly after May Day, the breakfast news had an item
on Rosie saying she had generated by far the most
coverage of any MSP since the election. It showed that
she had written “My oath is to the people” on her hand
when forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the
Queen and was wearing jeans to show her contempt for
“her Majesty”. She also showed she had a sense of
humour (essential in politics) by pledging her
allegiance to the Queen’s “hairs and successors”
rather than “heirs and successors”.

Rosie also showed how dedicated she is when she read
out with great gusto and feeling the “Declaration of
Calton Hill” that over 1,000 people signed at a
protest in Edinburgh (that I attended) when the Queen
opened the new Scottish parliamentary building –
calling for an independent Scottish republic based on
the principles of liberty, equality, diversity and
solidarity. It was recorded by the BBC for broadcast
the following day. There is a website on which you can
sign the declaration on-line – however, the website
owners were obviously worried about publicising the
popularity of the declaration, hence they have lied
about the number of people who have signed it (the
website showed over 3,000 at one time and now shows
about 500). I have set up a Declaration of Calton Hill
discussion group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/declaration-of-calton-hill.


I felt initially that if any of the MSPs was to become
the new Convenor, it should be Rosie because of her
public profile and because she is based in Glasgow.
However, I now realise that she doesn’t yet have a
sufficient political education for the role of
Convenor, since she has not been in a revolutionary
socialist organisation (in particular SML/the ISM).
Being able to put on a good show on occasion is not
sufficient; you need to be able to answer questions on
any issue. If Rosie had acquired such an education in
the SSP, she would have chosen to stand herself I’m
sure – this is not meant as a criticism of her.
Indeed, I have been in Rosie’s SSP branch (Glasgow
Shettleston) since I handed her a £20 note and join
form from the Voice on the first day of this year’s
conference (since there were no standing order forms
at the conference and branch organiser Nick McKerrill
refused to take any subs from me; I will move a
resolution that Nick is removed as branch organiser at
the first branch meeting I attend) – and I think that
Rosie’s natural brilliance combined with my influence
will enable her to gain the education to make her a
future SSP Convenor.

At about the same time as Tommy Sheridan stepped down
as Convenor, a 'financial crisis', a deficit of
£200,000 (albeit half of which is the mortgage on
their excellent new Glasgow premises), was revealed. I
initially thought that it was a hoax, used to persuade
the News of the World to print false allegations about
Tommy Sheridan so he could sue them – since a
financial crisis would imply gross mismanagement if
not corruption bearing in mind that the six Members of
the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) apparently all give
about half their wages totalling around £150,000 a
year to the party, and they can also claim up to about
£100,000 in legitimate expenses, which can be used
towards the Glasgow and Edinburgh offices.

Since it was obvious on arriving at the conference
that it was not a hoax, the Treasurer, Allison Kane,
was obviously corrupt or inept, and I thought it
important that she was removed at the elections at the
end of the conference. I shouted out about this in the
foyer, handing out copies of my leaflet with my views
on infiltration on the front, and my Campaign for
Democracy in the UK
(http://www.democracycampaign.org.uk) on the back. I
mentioned the same things, being quieter but also
handing out the leaflets, to try to ensure that
Allison Kane was removed as Treasurer – and hopefully
ensure that a system of accountability is set up to
that the same thing cannot happen again. I was not
present for the elections the next day, but I noticed
later in the Scottish Socialist Voice that she is
still Treasurer, presumably because nobody had put
their name forward before the conference in opposition
to her; hopefully she will be held to account in the
future so that similar problems do not happen again.

The key decision at the conference was electing the
new Convenor: Alan McCombes or Colin Fox. There was an
element of farce about the election contest that made
the result a less reliable measure of party opinion
than it should have done – neither candidate mentioned
the “M” word – Militant. I’m not necessarily saying
that Alan would have beaten Colin if it had not been
for this factor, but I think it would have been
considerably more likely. That said, it was Alan’s
fault for not bringing it up, so I’m not saying that
Alan was defrauded by the election process.

Both Alan and Colin were members of Militant. I know
very little about Colin’s political history before he
became an MSP – I don’t recall him being at the 1998
European School of the CWI, or indeed at any meeting
or conference before then. An article in the Scottish
Socialist Voice pointed out that he was a member of
Militant, so I am not just guessing at that by the
fact that he is now in the ISM. However, it is clear
by my lack of knowledge of Colin’s role (and I did
attend a lot of CWI events in my time in the
organisation), that Colin played much less of a role
than Alan in forming the SSP. Alan was the leader of
Scottish Militant Labour at the time of the 1998
European School, and I had a discussion with Alan at
that event before making my speech. That was very
useful, in finding out his views and influencing him.
It was my discussion with him at that event that was
the ultimate deciding factor in my mind in supporting
Alan in the election as soon as I knew he was standing
(I didn’t have a vote, but I could influence people
who did by talking to them).

Alan said in the debate that he had been urged to
promote himself, and overcome his natural modesty.
However, he did not do that enough, and talked vaguely
about working with a number of other people in the SSA
to set up the SSP. If he had said that both Colin and
himself were in Scottish Militant Labour (to overcome
any possible feeling that mentioning the “M” word
would put people off) but that he was the leader, and
led SML’s transformation of the SSA into the SSP (and
possibly led SML’s role in the creation of the SSA;
I’m not aware of his role that far back), then that
would have greatly benefited him.

The fact that Alan and Colin are both in the ISM now
was treated as a secret, as something that either the
ISM or the SSP should be embarrassed about. The fact
that ISM members are in many key positions in the
party despite the ISM being numerically small is
testament to the political past of the Militant
Tendency and SML, the quality of discussions within
the organisation and the dedication of its members to
fight for the causes that it supports. I attended an
ISM meeting in Glasgow a while back that was
advertised in the Voice, and it was pointed out
(clearly for my benefit) that the ISM no longer are a
“democratic centralist organisation” (like the SWP);
i.e. they don’t discuss things amongst themselves and
then act or vote as a bloc. Instead, members can act
or vote according to their own views or consciences.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that the ISM doesn’t
discuss important issues – of course it does, but for
the purpose of educating its members rather than
binding their actions.

At the conference, it was only CWI platform members
(who are now playing a positive role despite their
hostile past of opposing the establishment of the SSP)
who announced their affiliation. In general, the
secrecy of SSP members about what platforms they are
members of (if any) is undemocratic – as newer members
or members are denied the knowledge which people ‘in
the know’ (either because they know the members
personally or because they can tell by the way they
argue the points) are aware of.

I would be in favour of platform members being
acknowledged as members of that platform, if they
choose to announce it, in articles they write for the
paper. Similarly, SSP leaflets should be able to have
speakers advertised as being members of particular
platforms.

Alan expressed the wish to get the SSP less
parliament-centred. This, I think, is crucial. The SSA
grabbed the public’s attention, and recruited Rosie
Kane, with its direct action against the motorway
extension in Glasgow that I mentioned above. I was
talking to an anarchist called Gwen Noel from Glasgow
at the Earth First! Gathering, and she was complaining
about the small amount of direct action that the SSP
now undertakes. The SSP does mobilise large numbers of
activists for the blockades of the Faslane nuclear
base that occur from time to time, but they don’t seem
to do anything else of that sort. I call myself “a
revolutionary socialist (Marxist heavily influenced by
anarchism)” nowadays, and am a great believer in unity
between people who regard themselves as socialists and
people who regard themselves as anarchists – although
anarchists have traditionally been opposed to anything
calling itself “a party”, there is no reason why large
numbers of them could not be won to the SSP if it took
direct action seriously. I watched an IndyMedia video
in the Autumn which showed anarchists locking their
arms together with metal bars and getting in front of
Sainsbury’s lorries, with police being physically
incapable of separating them – at the end, it was
announced that all depots in the country had been
similarly blockaded preventing fresh Sainsbury’s milk
from arriving anywhere. This was a protest against the
fact that that store’s own brand dairy products (along
with those of every other supermarket apart from the
Co-op and M&S) came from cows fed partially
genetically modified feed; as a result there is
Cravendale milk in Sainsbury’s and other supermarkets
which is advertised as natural, tastes nicer, lasts
seven days once opened, and is about the same price
for four pints. Gwen went across to Edinburgh for the
Declaration of Calton Hill protest organised by the
SSP, so she is clearly somebody who can be a close
ally of mine in Glasgow, acting as a bridge between
the SSP and anarchist organisations. A page on my
website (at
http://www.stevewallis.me.uk/direct-action.htm) is
devoted to discussion of direct action and unity with
anarchists. I also want Gwen to be in the
revolutionary socialist band Galaxia that I will set
up after the general election.

[Note: Since I wrote the above, I have failed to
contact Gwen on the internet or meet her in person,
and instead think another anarchist from Glasgow
called Amy will play that role, and since she can play
the flute as well as sing, she should be ideal for
Galaxia.]

Colin made an overture to the Socialist Worker
platform (or Socialist Workers “Party” because they
often act on their own initiatives in Scotland like in
England and Wales) by congratulating George Galloway
for successfully suing the Telegraph, that had printed
allegations that Galloway had profiteered from the
“oil for food programme” which was part of the
sanctions regime that killed over one million Iraqis.
[Of course, Galloway’s success does not prove that he
was innocent, just that the Telegraph could not prove
that he was guilty.] I shouted out that Galloway had
invited Tommy Sheridan to join Respect (the SWP’s new
vaguely socialist front organisation in England and
Wales) and stand against the SSP splitting the left at
the next Scottish parliamentary elections!

Colin’s overture to the SWP, as well as the fact that
he lives in Edinburgh which is where the SWP are
largely based, guaranteed the SWP’s support. The
voting figures indicated that, ignoring the SWP (which
could probably garner between a quarter and a third of
the delegates), the two candidates were just about
evenly split. In the end, Colin won by 252 votes to
154.

The Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) argued
against an Iraqi speaker, Burhan Fatah of the
Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, speaking for only
three minutes in the debate on Iraq since he had
travelled 5,000 miles and he was addressing a fringe
meeting (rather than allowing him to speak at both!)
At the fringe meeting, it was revealed that the SWP
argued against him speaking because his organisation
unites working class people of different nationalities
and religions opposed to the occupation in Iraq –
whereas the SWP are cheerleaders of "all the
resistance" including those responsible for
beheadings, suicide bombings, and the murder of trade
unionists and foreign journalists. As would be
expected, a good amendment to the SWP motion
supporting all the resistance was quite easily passed.


The ISM had, in their actions since the formation of
the SSP, been concentrating on building the SSP and
winning other SSP members over to their positions.
This unfortunately has meant that the platform has
shrunk in size and infiltrators on the side of big
business have got in a stronger position. At the
fringe meeting, the Chair refused to call me so I
waited until the end before answering the main mistake
made by a speaker:

The youth organiser Donnie Nicolson said that the SSP
would not get any MPs at the general election so we
should concentrate on G8 protests. I pointed out that
bookies predicted that Galloway would win when he said
he wanted to stand in the west of London. Surely we
can win some seats in Glasgow like Pollok or wherever
Rosie Kane MSP stands – if she puts herself forward,
which I encouraged her to do when I spoke to her later
in the conference.

I have set up a Revolutionary Platform (RP) of the
SSP, initially as an internet discussion group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp.
The RP will be open to members of other platforms to
join as individual members, other platforms (hopefully
en masse in the case of the ISM platform, probably as
a split-off from the SWP) as sub-platforms, and of
course the many revolutionaries in the SSP who aren't
currently in any platform would be welcome to join.

How we proceed with the establishment of the RP will
of course be discussed on the list, but I will propose
a launch meeting in Glasgow in the week before the
election, with speakers including Rosie Kane MSP, Alan
McCombes of the ISM (if he is willing to speak but
hopefully he will be) and myself from the Campaign for
Democracy in the UK and hopefully Manchester
Withington candidate (for Greater Manchester
Democratic Socialist Alliance). A week before the
election should ensure that leaflets delivered by
postal workers for Rosie's constituency arrive in time
to advertise the meeting – giving voters a chance to
question Rosie about her policies at the meeting. The
meeting will also revitalise SSP members from across
Glasgow for the final vital weekend of campaigning.

[Note: I have abandoned the idea of a meeting, but
handed out large numbers of leaflets advertising a
website and discussion forum at
http:://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp
instead.]

Somebody at the ISM fringe meeting suggested producing
anti-G8 wristbands, which someone else sensibly said
should be red. I mentioned (talking over other people
as the only way to have my say) that red wristbands
were already used by Kerry supporters who refuse to
accept that he lost – see
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/us-electoral-fraud (the
fraud was necessary because Kerry pledged to tax the
rich and close all tax loopholes).

I would suggest that the SSP should hold meetings in
Edinburgh – and indeed Glasgow – around the time of
the G8, on the various issues involved. I said above
that if a speaker is from a particular platform, then
that can be put on leaflets rather than pretending
that we all think the same way, or relying on people
to “be in the know”. As far as the G8 is concerned,
Donnie said that we must get away from the idea that
it will mainly attract students who are the preserve
of the SWP and campaign wholeheartedly. I agree, but
he didn’t point out a strategy – having SSP leaflets
with good politics on and announcing a meeting with a
speaker advertised as being from the RP will attract
working class people, because they want to know about
revolution! Wishy-washy sloganeering won’t work. The
SWP achieves a certain base because they are willing
to talk about revolution, which the SSP and Voice tend
to veer away from.

[Note: An “alternative summit” is now planned on
Sunday the 3rd of July, where we will discuss
alternatives for the world and strategies for ending
capitalism (at which Tommy Sheridan is a speaker)
arranged, after the mass demo on the 2nd of July, both
in Edinburgh. See http://www.g8alternatives.org.uk for
those and other events. I am now proposing a worldwide
general strike and strike of school, college and
university students during that week, and for mass
demonstrations in cities and towns across Scotland and
the rest of the world. In some
cities/workplaces/schools, it will start on the Monday
or Tuesday, and may even prevent some world leaders
from reaching the summit which is to take place at
Gleneagles Golf Course between Wednesday the 8th to
Friday the 9th of July. In some parts of the world,
the strike may be so successful that it will lay the
basis for an indefinite general strike, with working
class people taking over factories and distributing
goods ourselves – this is a situation of “dual power”
(in Marxist terminology) which would hopefully lead to
a peaceful revolution via the government collapsing
and new much fairer elections taking place (using
proportional representation via single transferable
vote, with a reasonably large number of MPs elected
per constituency). I have set up a discussion forum at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/g8-summit-worldwide-general-strike
to put forward these ideas and start discussions going
on how to mobilise people around the world. I will
shortly set up similar groups for school, college and
university students, and also put groups with the same
names on lists.riseup.net (frequented by anarchist
types).]

I was staying in Glasgow for the conference in Perth
and on the Sunday, I intended to get the first train
to Perth from Queen Street, at 9.42am according to the
board. When I arrived by that time, the next train
anywhere was at 10.10am and I was told that there
wasn't another train to Perth for two hours! This gave
me an excellent opportunity to expose the reason why
the information at that station is unreliable – the
monarchy! That led to talking about how MSPs from all
the parties except for the SSP sucked up to the Queen
while the SSP organised the Declaration of Calton Hill
protest.

I decided to go to Edinburgh from Glasgow Central and
from Edinburgh to Perth. I talked to a lot of railway
workers, and the idea of renationalising the railways
with compensation only to any pension funds that
happen to be invested in them struck a chord – the
bosses have profited many times over from the original
sale prices, so there is no justification for any
compensation for them whatsoever.

When going from Edinburgh to Perth, I happened to
change trains in Dunblane. That gave me half an hour
in a pub, and I started off by exposing the SWP (in
the weekly column in Socialist Worker saying "What the
Socialist Workers Party stands for") for arguing for
"a workers' militia". Guns are hated in Britain
generally, but the one place they are hated more than
anywhere else is in Dunblane, due to a gunman going on
a rampage at a school. In the same paragraph, they
argue for "a workers' state based upon councils of
workers' delegates" – known as “soviets” in Russia.

In Russia in 1917, there were two revolutions. After
the February revolution, a capitalist Provisional
Government came to power that would not grant any form
of elections. As well as campaigning for “bread, peace
and land”, the Bolsheviks (who later became known as
the Communist Party) campaigned for a Constituent
Assembly. However, because Russia was largely a
peasant country, the Bolsheviks lost the elections
after they came to power in October to the right-wing
Social Revolutionaries (SRs) based on the large
landowners. Lenin and Trotsky, who had led the October
revolution, persuaded the Bolsheviks to abolish the
Constituent Assembly (by force). They argued that
there would have been massive repression of the
Bolsheviks if they let the right-wing SRs take power,
but surely the working class would have been able to
defend them in a country that had had two revolutions
in the same year! The result has been over 87 years in
which “socialists” and “communists” have often been
regarded as “undemocratic”.

[Note: Since writing the above, I have realised that
the correct approach of the Bolsheviks would have been
to approach the Social Revolutionaries before the
Constituent Assembly elections, to form a united
socialist party. That could have cut across the
right-wing SRs’ attempts to derail the revolution.]

I have sometimes argued that only one of Lenin or
Trotsky was an agent of big business (in a
conspiratorial organisation that had infiltrated the
Bolsheviks), but now realise that both of them were.
Lenin was allowed to travel through Germany to return
to Russia in 1917, to deliver the April Theses, in
which he called for “All power to the Soviets”. The
first programme in the Channel 5 series The Russian
Revolution in Colour revealed that Lenin only spoke to
workers and sailors from Kronstadt who had arrived at
the Bolsheviks’ headquarters in Petrograd for about a
minute during the July Days, making the point that he
was not keen on spontaneous uprisings. Even if Lenin
and Trotsky were correct in their analysis that it was
necessary to hold the workers back, on the basis that
the rest of Russia was not sufficiently prepared for a
revolution, Lenin should have taken the opportunity to
educate them, preparing them for a future revolution.
If they had led the working class to power in
Petrograd, the revolution could have quickly spread
across Russia. Instead, the Bolsheviks were decimated,
Lenin was accused of being a Russian spy, and a
military-police dictatorship under Kornilov was on the
verge of coming to power forcing the Bolsheviks to
lead the October revolution. The Channel 5 programme
was biased in ignoring Trotsky completely and calling
the Provisional Government “democrats” despite the
fact that they refused to hold elections, and the
programme did not offer any clues as to why the
Bolshevik-led Soviets held elections to a Constituent
Assembly after coming to power after highlighting
Lenin’s preference for the Soviets holding overall
power. Nevertheless, it was pro-working class and the
truth probably lies somewhere between it and Trotsky’s
“History of the Russian Revolution”. I had heard
through discussions in Militant that the Kronstadt
sailors played an important role in the revolution,
but Trotsky played their role down probably because of
his Red Army’s later suppression of them when they
correctly realised that the gains of the revolution
was slipping away.

Lenin was excused by Militant members, who said that
he thought that his dictatorial rule was only a
temporary measure, needed because of the invasion from
about 20 other countries, the civil war and the
failure of the revolution to spread. Lenin supposedly
realised the danger of Stalin coming to power too
late, when he was approaching death.

Since Stalin killed all his other main opponents in
the USSR, whereas he let Trotsky live in exile until
getting one of his agents to kill him using an ice
pick in 1940, it is rational to believe that Trotsky
was also an agent of big business. There is further
evidence of this, including excesses committed by
Trotsky as leader of the Red Army. Most significantly,
there was the disastrous position adopted by
Trotskyists at the time of the Second World War, which
led to the British Revolutionary Communist Party
collapsing from a very strong organisation to a
handful – describing it as a war between rival
imperialisms like the First World War. It was against
fascism, which is a mass movement of the middle class
and “lumpenproletariat” in Marxist terminology
(unemployed people and low waged non-union workers,
who are sometimes described as the “underclass” but
are really part of the working class).

Last year, I attended a “Justice for Gordon Gentle”
demo in Glasgow Pollok, in support of justice for a
19-year old soldier who had died in Iraq having just
been trained and his tank not having the equipment
that could have saved his life. Unlike all
SWP-organised demos at which every speaker puts
forward pacifist positions that convince no-one and
arguments about legality that people hear in the mass
media all the time, Tommy Sheridan made a good speech
– pointing out that the war in Iraq was completely
unlike that against Hitler (which was worth fighting).


I returned very late on the Sunday to the conference,
but in time to hand out a lot of copies of my Campaign
for Sanity in the NHS
(http://www.health-service-sanity.org) leaflets
(rather than the infiltration leaflets I had handed
out on the Saturday – both varieties of leaflet had
details of my Campaign for Democracy in the UK on the
back).

My other intervention at the conference on the Sunday
was changing the lyrics when I sung along to the
Internationale, which as usual ended the conference.
There are two parts of the official lyrics that I
disagree with. Firstly, “Away with all your
superstitions” – some superstitions are useful so
“Keep some of your superstitions” is better. Secondly,
and most importantly, you should not unite with the
whole of the human race as the song traditionally ends
– don’t unite with Tories or fascists and do unite
with good animals and birds. Since the last two lines:
“Then comrades come rally, and the last fight let us
face! The Internationale unites the human race!” are
repeated, I can shout out the controversial line once
in French and then in English (so people without
sufficient knowledge of French know the point I'm
making), as follows:

Then comrades come rally, and the last fight let us
face!
L'Internaçionale unite la classe travailleurs!
Then comrades come rally, and the last fight let us
face!
The Internationale unites the working class!



--
Steve Wallis (http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk).
My socialist election manifesto: http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/manifesto.
Proposer of Revolutionary Platform of the Democratic Socialist Alliance
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-democratic-socialist-al\
liance).
Member of Glasgow Shettleston branch of the Scottish Socialist Party
(http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org), supporter of the International
Socialist Movement platform of the SSP (http://www.redflag.org.uk) and initiator
of the Revolutionary Platform of the SSP
(http://www.revolutionaryplatformofthessp.org,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp).
Initiator of the Campaign for Democracy in the UK
(http://www.democracycampaign.org.uk;
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/campaign-for-democracy-in-the-uk) and Campaign for
Sanity in the NHS (http://www.health-service-sanity.org).