BY GREG HARRIS
GLASGOW — The third annual conference of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) held here February 10-11 adopted an ambitious program of activities for the coming months. Key among these were a decision to contest all of Scotland's 72 Westminster seats in the forthcoming British elections, and plans to greatly raise the profile of the party's paper, Scottish Socialist Voice.
The success of Tommy Sheridan in winning a seat in the Scottish parliamentary elections has forced the establishment to pay attention to the SSP. Imprisoned for his role in the fight against Margaret Thatcher's Poll Tax (a tax on individuals rather than property or income), Sheridan is a popular household name across Scotland. The challenge for the SSP has been to generalise the support for him and other activists into support for a socialist alternative.
Part of the response has been the writing of Imagine, a clear and popular explanation of the socialist project by Sheridan and another central party leader, Alan McCombes. The book has been immensely popular, selling thousands of copies in a few weeks. A London launch of the book on February 23 attracted an enthusiastic audience of 300.
Today the SSP has 2500 members across Scotland, including in the remote Orkneys and Western Isles. The party's key platform plank is for an independent, socialist Scotland, a message it hopes will win it up to 100,000 votes in the coming elections.
The SSP emerged from a regroupment of left parties around the Scottish Socialist Alliance in the late 1990s, initiated by Scottish Militant Labour. One of the many highlights of the SSP conference was the enthusiastic greetings presented by the Socialist Workers Party, whose members in Scotland are now involved in discussions to join the SSP.
The conference resolved to further develop discussions with the SWP to maximise the chances of success of this important development.
During discussion a number of speakers criticised the resolution, stating that the SWP should simply join the SSP as other groups had. Other speakers responded by saying that the SSP was no longer an alliance, and that discussion and planning were essential to establish a lasting outcome. Delegates strongly supported the proposed guidelines, described as follows in the Scottish Socialist Voice:
"The guidelines — which were proposed by the executive — reaffirm the right of platforms to organise within the party, but call upon the SWP and existing SSP platforms to sell the Voice rather than rival newspapers on public activities and to operate inside the party in a manner that will not stifle genuine debate."
Reflecting its origins as an alliance of left groups, the SSP still has fairly clearly defined platform groupings, which often publish internal papers or magazines. While not trying to remove the right of platform groups to organise within the SSP, there was strong support for the view that discussions and debates within the party should create their own allegiances rather than future political alignments simply following the path of the old factional groupings.
The most controversial issue of the conference was the decision to move to an elected delegated conference structure. While the 250 members attending came from many branches, some branches weren't present because of the distances involved for travel. Rather than limit the ability of active members to attend the conference, the majority agreed that a delegated conference would place more emphasis on ensuring that all aspects of the party were represented.
Lively debate also occurred around the party's support for the Scottish nation's independence from the United Kingdom. Within the English left there is a widespread belief that a socialist transformation of society wouldn't break up the multi-national UK state. (For some the vision even includes reintegrating Eire.) These views were reflected by some conference participants, although a large majority endorsed the demand for an independent, socialist Scotland. A related decision was that the SSP's election campaign should be coordinated with, but not simply be a component of, an all-British Socialist Alliance campaign.
In addition to the SWP, greetings were also received from the French Revolutionary Communist League, the Danish Red Green Alliance, the Australian Democratic Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance in England, the Committee for a Workers International, the Party of Communist Refoundation in Italy, the Red Electoral Alliance in Norway, The Left from Luxembourg, and the Socialist Alliance and Cymru Goch from Wales.