@intro2 = Peter Boyle is a member of the national executives of both the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the Socialist Alliance.
What has the Socialist Alliance achieved in its four years of existence?
The Socialist Alliance is probably the only left regroupment project in a wealthy country to take off without an electoral break. All around the world there are people who admire us for just this. The rise of the Greens as the major parliamentary party to the left of the ALP has placed a major electoral break out of our reach — for the moment. But the Greens don't fill all that political space and the alliance has made real gains.
The Socialist Alliance has 1200 paid-up members and 32 branches — more than any socialist group in this country has had for decades. It has begun organising in areas where the organised left never reached or had long abandoned, and our trade union activists are working closely with militant trade unionists to build a campaign of mass community and industrial action against the Howard government's impending new wave of attacks on unions.
On June 11, trade union leaders and rank-and-file activists from around the country will be gathering at the National Union Fightback Conference (see < http://www.socialist-A HREF="mailto:alliance.org/page.php?page=415"><alliance.org/page.php?page=415>) in Melbourne, another successful SA initiative.
SA is widely seen as the party most responsible for the anti-war movement. And by initiating Seeing Red, the magazine of social, political and cultural dissent (see <http://www.seeing-red.org>), it has begun to draw left-wing writers, thinkers and artists in a common project.
If SA can persist and develop in strength and political effectiveness, its real activist leadership in Australia will find an electoral expression.
After two-and-a-half years of moving in a 'partyish' direction the Socialist Alliance seems to have reached a watershed in its development. Do you agree that that is the case?
The 2003 and 2004 Socialist Alliance national conferences voted by large majorities to begin transforming the Socialist Alliance into a multi-tendency socialist party (MTSP).
DSP members threw their weight into trying to build the Socialist Alliance as the new united party of the left. We hoped these measures would help build the alliance into a party that could intervene more effectively in the trade union and other social movements, as well as participate in elections.
However, all the smaller founding socialist affiliate groups have remained implacably opposed to the MTSP perspective. And while they are a small minority in SA as a whole, this opposition presents a bigger image of disunity in the left activist milieus in the bigger cities.
Many SA members (not just those of us in the DSP) have drawn great inspiration from the Scottish Socialist Party. It is a great example of left regroupment. However, we have not seen it as some sort of model that can be replicated in Australia. We don't have the strong socialist tradition that exists in Scotland. We don't face the same national question and we didn't have the poll tax campaign and Tommy Sheridan. We don't have the same electoral openings.
But we did have the 1998 Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) struggle and there was the rise of a new militant minority in the trade union movement after that, mainly in the industrial heartlands of Victoria. Some of this militant minority's best-known leaders, including former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Victorian secretary Craig Johnston (who has been jailed for leading industrial action), are proud members of SA.
Other SA union activists have won key leadership positions. Chris Cain was elected WA secretary of the MUA and Tim Gooden was recently elected secretary of the Geelong Trades and Labour Council.
Like many other comrades, I felt very proud to be a Socialist Alliance member when I read the headline "Freed militant unionist wants PM ousted", in the Sydney Morning Herald, announcing the release from prison of our comrade Craig Johnston on May 26. There was also "Freed unionist relishes prospect of a new battle", in the Age and "Militant unionist out of jail and off to 'war'" in the Australian.
The next day it was the turn of another Socialist Alliance leader in the trade union movement, Tim Gooden, who led 400 Geelong workers and members of the local community in a protest that scared off PM John Howard, who had just announced his vicious new anti-working class laws. All these stories are available at <http://www.socialist-alliance.org>.
In Western Australia, SA national executive member and state MUA secretary Chris Cain was also in the local news as the resident militant union leader. Each of these articles noted the National Trade Union Fightback conference, which is going to be big.
Our big challenge is to face up to the real openings for left regroupment in this country and to break from the unhealthy inter-factional suspicion that has for too long dogged the left. We may be facing an important new opening for the alliance in this decisive struggle against Howard's new attacks on the working class. Perhaps our greatest challenge is to find a way to open up the alliance to the real openings for regroupment with the thousands of militant trade unionists and other progressive activists who will come into that struggle. Perhaps we should consider a new, more popular name like "Solidarity First" or "Unite!" or even, as others may suggest, "Respect"!
I hope we can begin a constructive discussion around these openings at the national conference.
From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.
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