Fight for our Futures, Not their Wars

The November 20 Europe-wide International Youth Strike has been called at a time when, for many people – young and old – there is growing anger at governments that are cutting our services while they boost funding on war – and who will willingly send thousands off to their deaths in wars to be fought for their interests – not for ours.

November 20^th was also agreed as the date for the walkouts by the 20 different youth organisations involved – at the suggestion of Socialist Students – because it coincides with the last day of the next round of COP talks – where the global politicians will get together to let off yet more hot air, instead of agreeing on the decisive action needed to stop a climate crisis whose dire effects are now becoming starkly obvious, even in countries that thought it was just somebody else’s problem.

As socialists, we understand that all those issues – war, cuts and climate crisis – are an inevitable result of a capitalist system in terminal decline where, in order to protect their profits, the super-rich want to steal away everything that the working class organised to win from them in the past – like council homes, free education, the NHS and, now latest in their crosshairs, disability benefits.

The capitalist classes of the world act in the interest of their own individual nation states, so they won’t enact the global plan needed to tackle climate change. Instead, they just look to short-term profit, competing with other nations to get a bigger share of the pie. That doesn’t stop at just tariffs and trade wars, now it will increasingly mean actual wars – if not yet nuclear world war - as even they realise that will be the end even for them - but certainly the kind of regional conflicts we already see, and there will be more to come.

Starmer’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review spelt out how, in the view of the military tops, the UK could no longer plan for only having to fight distant overseas conflicts against ‘non-state’ forces – like the Taliban in Afghanistan - but that direct “state-on-state war” was back on the agenda. The war between Russia and Ukraine was, not without justification,  identified as a turning-point pointing the way for the wars to come. The so-called post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ when, after the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe, military spending fell, is well and truly over.

That’s the background to why the recent NATO summit agreed to commit its members to boosting military-related spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035 – 3.5% on ‘hard defence’ and another 1.5% on top on military-related infrastructure and ‘civil preparedness’. And Burnham’s government is fully behind that target. In fact, his new Chancellor, John Healey, was one of those that put the final knives into Starmer, resigning as his Defence Secretary, complaining that Starmer’s defence investment plan didn’t go far enough. Now Healey will be preparing for an October Budget that will increase military spending, while making cuts elsewhere.

Even to meet Starmer’s original defence investment plan means finding £6.8 billion from unidentified cuts to other departments’ previously agreed capital budgets and another entirely unfunded £4.7 billion on top. To raise military spending to the full 3.5% of GDP would mean an extra £25 billion a year. Reaching the 5% target would produce a ‘security budget’ of £151 billion in today’s values, bigger for example than the combined government budgets for housing and education from pre-school to university.

How do we stop this drive towards war? Well, working-class struggle can limit what the capitalists are able to get away with. The memories of Vietnam still weigh on even a President like Trump in pulling back from sending ‘boots on the ground’ into Iran. In 2025, Italian dockers took strike action against the Gaza genocide. The Youth Strike is an initial step towards building mass opposition here.

But, in building that movement, whatever the horrors of war, we don’t make just a pacifist appeal for ‘peace’. We understand that war is an inevitable consequence of capitalism and that only a movement that aims at a complete change of system, to win a democratic world socialist planned economy that takes control of society out of the capitalists’ hands across the globe, can really end the threat of war.

But we also recognise that there will be many workers – including even some of the youth we come across at the schools and colleges – who will be swayed by the growing pro-war propaganda that Britain needs to defend itself, with Putin’s Russia being held up as the main threat. Of course, it’s worth pointing out that Putin hasn’t even been able to defeat Ukraine, let alone go further, say into the Baltic States. The war, and the failure of his initial supposedly speedy invasion plans – when the first Russian divisions had dress uniforms packed in their bags ready for their victory parades in Kyiv – has exposed Russia’s weakness, not its strength.

However, that war continues ever on, adding to workers’ fears, ones that are certainly being played on in countries nearer Russia, like Germany, where the government is looking to reintroduce military conscription. That is not yet on the cards here – at least not for the army, perhaps only as unpaid labour for the likes of Sainsburys! Those rising fears also explain the turnaround in public opinion in Finland from opposing NATO membership to overwhelmingly supporting it.

But the UK defence plans require building personnel numbers back up again – there’s now only 74,000 in the British army. Hence, the army recruitment videos and the moves to boost cadets in schools – as well as the “Defence Universities Alliance” being developed to strengthen links between universities and the arms companies.

There will be a mixed consciousness amongst workers we meet, one where we will have to be sensitive to people’s fears. Genuine socialists have always had to do so, especially of course at the start of an actual war, when the general mood will understandably be to fight against an invader. That was the mood of the Ukrainian workers that Putin underestimated when he first sent in his tanks.

Lenin’s position in World War One has often been caricatured as being just one of ‘defeatism’ – using his 1915 quote that “during a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government” – and that military defeats eventually lead to revolutionary upheavals (which did indeed prove to be the case). But this was Lenin bending the stick in speaking to his own Party members, to cut across the tide of wartime patriotism that had already seen Europe’s various socialist parties line up with their own imperialist governments.

In speaking to the wider working class, Lenin took a different approach, one that stressed that, in order to really fight for their freedom, workers needed to fight the capitalists too. And those capitalists couldn’t be trusted to fight the war, they were too busy making profits while sending soldiers to die in the trenches. But if the banks, industry and arms companies were nationalised under workers’ control, then not only would workers be in a better position to defend Russia, they would also be defending a Russia that they owned and controlled - a workers’ state not a bosses’ one – from which they could appeal to the workers of other countries to do the same, and agree a genuine peace.

In Britain in World War Two, the supporters of Trotsky’s Left Opposition in the Workers International League – who played an important role not publicised in our school history books (!) – like campaigning for London Underground stations to be opened as bomb shelters – argued in the same way, that you couldn’t trust a reactionary Tory like Churchill to defeat Hitler and that what was needed was:

·      the arming and organising of the workers under their own control;

·      the election of officers by the workers;

·      control of production by the workers to end the chaos in the war industries;

·      the immediate nationalisation of the armament industry, mines, banks, railways, and big industry;

·      the granting of freedom and self-determination to India and the colonies and a Socialist appeal to the workers of Germany and Europe.

When we were in the leadership of the LPYS in the 1980s, we made similar demands, pointing out that the Tories had been supplying the Argentine dictatorship with arms only 10 days before the Falklands conflict, and calling for trade union rights for servicemen and women; the abolition of Courts Martial; the right to refuse to be used to break strikes; and to leave on contractual notice when you want to – like any other worker.

These are demands that might again be important ones to raise when a layer of young workers are conscripted to the army – not militarily but through having no other job prospects – particularly when, as in the past, they will be called upon to put down the strikes and unrest which will break out in working class communities. And, of course, there will also be workers in the arms industry themselves where the demand to protect jobs through a transition to other skilled work – not least in climate jobs – has to be linked to a demand for workers’ control and nationalisation.

That’s the background to the tumultuous period we are entering – and the November 20 ‘Fight For Our Futures, Not Their Wars’ walkout can be a step in building the forces needed to help fight for such a programme.

See also: 

Resisting the new militarism plans from the latest 'Socialism Today' magazine

and the Socialist Students website.

'Net zero’ is a trade union issue

In Britain and beyond, the summer of 2026 has been marked by record temperatures, deadly wildfires and drought, the inevitable consequences of climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

The UK Met Office reported that “daytime maximum temperatures across England and Wales are now roughly 3-4°C hotter than they would have been without human-induced climate change”, adding that “more than 2,700 people are thought to have died from heat-related causes during the May and June heatwaves in England and Wales”.Those figures will have been added to further by the ongoing high temperatures in July and August.

Not surprisingly, the latest IPSOS survey taken in the UK at the start of August found that three quarters of those polled expressed concern about climate change “with the majority of the population reporting personal daily disruption and anticipating recurring extreme weather events”.

Economists are warning of the effect on crop yields across Europe, adding further impetus to rising global food prices. More widely, continual global warming is a growing factor in the forced migration of millions of the world’s poor away from regions where their lives have become unsustainable.

Against this background, alongside the dwindling of North Sea oil and gas reserves, it has dawned on wide sections of the British capitalist class that a change of energy and climate policy is needed. In 2019, the then Conservative prime minister Theresa May first committed the UK to achieving a ‘net zero’ contribution to climate change by 2050. However, five prime ministers later, only limited steps have been taken to achieve this aim, despite even this target being insufficiently urgent given the scale of the global climate crisis.

In this context, the comments made by the leaders of two of Britain’s biggest trade unions, the GMB and Unite, back in June, could seem at odds with growing public concerns about climate change. They both spoke out against the possible appointment of Ed Miliband as chancellor in the new Andy Burnham government, suggesting he was too entrenched in his support for ‘net-zero’.

Gary Smith, GMB general secretary, took particular aim at how Miliband, as Energy Secretary in the Starmer government, had imposed at least a temporary ban on new drilling licences for gas and oil under the North Sea. Smith blamed Labour’s energy policy as being one of the reasons why some of his members were voting for Reform, claiming that “sacking thousands of workers who currently work in the North Sea is economic madness. It’s more akin to Thatcher and what she did to Middlesbrough in the 1980s”.

Sharon Graham, newly re-elected general secretary of Unite, told the Observer newspaper that Miliband “would be a noose around the neck of what we need to do on jobs”, adding that “if you’ve got somebody in there close to the decision-making where they’re not pro-worker in their gut, then that’s a problem for a party that’s supposed to be the party of workers. A lot of the left has now become a middle-class project. It now needs to work for the working class”.

In making those comments, both union leaders risk aligning themselves with the pro-fossil fuel sections of big business, including Tony Blair, who have been lobbying for the Burnham government to lift the North Sea drilling moratorium. Their argument, that a drilling ban just means relying on more expensive gas and oil imports instead, is being heavily promoted in sections of the media.

But, as well as just further delaying the urgent action needed on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, in a world market where prices are set globally, allowing the fossil fuel giants to keep drilling under the North Sea will do nothing to bring down workers’ energy bills (see Socialism Today No.299, July-August 2026).

It would temporarily retain some limited employment in the North Sea industries, but these jobs will inevitably continue to decline since the main gas and oil reserves have long since been exhausted. However, millions of well-paid, secure and vitally necessary jobs could be created by mass investment in green energy, transport, insulation and associated manufacturing sectors. That is the investment that trade union leaders should be calling for, and mobilising their members to demand.

It is also wrong to give any credence to the idea that taking action on global warming is somehow being ‘middle-class’ or ‘anti-worker’. It is the working class and poor who will continue to suffer worst from the dire effects of climate crisis. The costs of food inflation will soon be hitting the pockets of union members, to follow the months of summer heat.

It is true that too many environmental campaigners look to individual consumption as being the cause of the crisis. Such an approach puts the blame on working-class consumers who are simply struggling to get themselves to work in their polluting second-hand cars or to heat their poorly insulated homes, despite rising fuel bills.

Instead, the key to action on climate change is winning a change in who owns and controls production. It requires an end to private capitalist ownership governed by short-term profit and the limits of individual nation states, and its replacement by public ownership under democratic workers’ control that would allow a socialist planned global economy where investment could be directed to the millions of ‘climate jobs’ that are so urgently needed.

Trade unionists and socialists shouldn’t be seen to be supporting any of the competing wings of the capitalist class, neither the pro-‘Big Oil’ right populists playing on workers’ fears – like Trump and Farage – nor the supposedly ‘green’ capitalists represented by politicians such as Miliband.

After all, Miliband may have overseen an increase in contracts being issued for renewable energy projects, but only after the Starmer government had halved its initial ‘green investment’ plans. This included slashing plans for a major home insulation scheme which could have directly benefited many working-class families, and the workers implementing the scheme.

Ailing British capitalism, and crisis-ridden world capitalism as a whole, will never be able to provide the planned investment required to repair the catastrophic climate damage that its anarchic production has produced.

In that sense, Sharon Graham was right to criticise Miliband for wanting “to let go of one rope before we get hold of another… Ed only seems to be interested in one part of the equation, which is to reach the target, but doesn’t seem to be interested at all, in any way shape or form, in the jobs that will replace those that go”.

But it would be a mistake to raise any expectations that somehow Burnham will be different and that there is any prospect of a Burnham government being any more ‘pro-worker’ than Starmer’s was. As another pro-capitalist politician, Burnham will end up attacking jobs, pay and conditions at the behest of British big business.

The only way to promote both vital needs – protecting working-class living standards at the same time as protecting the environment – is for trade union leaders to break with all of the pro-capitalist politicians and help ensure that the working class has its own political voice, and can elect workers’ representatives who will demand the socialist plan of production that our future depends upon.

Martin Powell-Davies

Published in 'Socialism Today' Issue 300 September 2026

Also see the accompanying article: https://socialismtoday.org/global-warning-the-environmental-record-of-greens-in-power

The Collapse of Stalinism - Its Causes and Consequences

‘The Collapse of Stalinism – its Causes and Consequences’ is the latest book to be published by Mentmore Press. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why the dictatorial, bureaucratic Stalinist regimes of Russia, Central and Eastern Europe foundered, allowing capitalism to be restored. It also explains how that collapse fuelled a global ideological offensive against the ideas of socialism, one that still weighs heavily on working class consciousness and organisation today.

At the time, capitalist journalists, politicians and academics gleefully proclaimed that socialism had been beaten once and for all. The American writer, Frances Fukuyama, declared that it marked “the end of history … the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”.

However, in today’s unstable world, that capitalist triumphalism has been replaced by pessimism for the future of their system. The task for the world’s working-class is to rebuild the mass parties needed to organise a united struggle for a socialist world. It also requires learning from the horrors of Stalinism, to ensure that capitalism is replaced by genuinely democratic planned economies, this time freed from top-down bureaucratic control.

Stalinism, the negation of Bolshevism

This book is written to help workers learn those lessons. Like last year’s well-received publication ‘Great Revolutionaries’, it brings together a collection of articles by Peter Taaffe, the former general secretary of the Socialist Party. They are presented in three sections, tracing the rise and fall of the Stalinist regimes, before analysing the ‘post-Stalinist’ world of today.

The book’s first section, ‘Stalinism, the negation of Bolshevism’, exposes the brutal character of these dictatorial, bureaucratic regimes. They had nothing in common with the workers’ democracy being built after the victory of the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Sadly, in the absence of successful socialist revolutions taking place in more economically developed countries, the Russian workers’ state was left isolated. It was left to try and develop a socialist plan with an already weak economy, one then further weakened by civil war, as imperialism sought to strangle the revolution at birth.

The book outlines how civil war stretched the economy and the Red Army to its limits. It also severely undermined the fledgling Soviet democracy too. With many of its worker delegates killed on the front lines, the soviets – or workers’ councils - were no longer able to keep the officials and bureaucrats in charge of state administration sufficiently in check.

Growing in confidence, the bureaucracy then manoeuvred to ensure the Communist Party met their needs, not those of the workers and poor peasants. In Stalin, they found a leader that would deliver for them.

The book includes reviews of the memoirs of Leopold Trepper and Petro Grigorenko, who both became opponents of the regime. They chillingly spell out how the bureaucracy were so fearful of the working class moving to overthrow them, that anyone suspected of providing even the mildest opposition was brutally suppressed.

Trepper’s memoirs confirm that the remaining genuine revolutionaries, the supporters of Leon Trotsky in the ‘Left Opposition’, “fought Stalinism to the death, and they were the only ones who did”. But, Trepper adds, “they had the enormous advantage over us of having a coherent political system capable of replacing Stalinism.”

The Revolution Betrayed

The book summarises Trotsky’s analysis of the rise of the bureaucracy, stressing that Stalinism was only able to consolidate its power by purging all traces of genuine Bolshevism. 

In 1936, in ‘Revolution Betrayed’, Trotsky described how “two opposite tendencies are growing up out of the depth of the Soviet regime. To the extent that, in contrast to a decaying capitalism, it develops the productive forces, it is preparing the economic basis of socialism. To the extent that, for the benefit of an upper stratum, it carries to more and more extreme expression bourgeois norms of distribution, it is preparing a capitalist restoration”.

The hopes of socialists basing themselves on Trotsky’s analysis was always that it would be the progressive tendency, towards socialism, that would prove dominant. Indeed, while the productive forces within the Stalinist states still appeared to be growing, it was not just with hope, but with a degree of expectation, that Marxists predicted that the working-class would push aside the parasitic bureaucrats and carry out a political revolution.

Indeed, as the book describes, the workers’ revolt that shook the foundations of the Stalinist regimes in 1989 started by raising demands for democratic reform, not capitalist restoration. That had also been the case in earlier struggles, such as the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and those raised at the height of the ‘Solidarity’ movement in Poland in 1980.

However, not least because of Stalin’s mass purges, the forces that could have provided these movements with the necessary revolutionary leadership had been wiped out. As Peter puts it, “the collective memory of the masses and their ability to gather themselves together to challenge the Stalinist regime in a conscious way was eliminated”.

By the 1980s, bureaucratic misrule had brought economic growth in the Stalinist states to a complete standstill. In comparison, the capitalist economies ‘over the wall’, then going through a temporary economic upswing, appeared to a growing layer of workers to offer a better chance of prosperity and freedom of expression. In these circumstances, the opposite tendency identified by Trotsky, towards capitalist restoration, grew ever stronger.

Why did Stalinism collapse?

The articles in the second section, ‘Why did Stalinism collapse?’, describe the growing crisis within the Stalinist regimes and how Mikhail Gorbachev stumbled around to try and find a way of preventing an uprising from below. 

Right up until the 1960s, despite the overheads of bureaucratic mismanagement, the advantages of a planned economy meant that the Soviet Union experienced economic growth that easily outstripped world capitalism.

The main ‘Achilles heel’ of the Stalinist economies was quality. Without workers and consumers being able to influence production through workers’ democracy, substandard goods were churned out. Thanks to the bungling, corruption and bad planning inherent in the undemocratic top-down system of economic management, there was also huge wastage and massive uncontrolled environmental degradation.

Such ‘commandism’ could achieve some success when the main task was to develop an initial industrial infrastructure, but it was impossible to plan and set the prices of thousands of commodities from on high in a more developed economy.

Genuine socialist planning requires genuine workers’ democracy. As Peter explains, “That would mean workers’ control in the factories and workers’ management at national, regional and local levels. This would harness all the talents, ideas and views for the future development of society by the producers, consumers, and by society as a whole.” He adds a telling warning that a top-down approach, borrowed from Stalinism, risked undermining workers’ support for the Chávez government in Venezuela.

The articles also show how, as events developed, Peter, alongside the majority of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), recognised that, rather than events leading to a political revolution to restore a democratically planned socialist economy, there was an increasing danger of capitalist restoration.

For many workers, comparing their lives with what could be glimpsed through the shop windows of the West after the fall of the ‘Berlin Wall’, the attractions of capitalism appeared to be overwhelming. It led to a social counter-revolution with the liquidation of what remained of the planned economies of Russia and Eastern Europe.

The consequences of Stalinism’s collapse

The third section of the book, ‘The consequences of Stalinism’s collapse’, discusses the consequences of this return to capitalism.

For the working class of Russia, what followed was not the improvements that they had hoped for, but an unprecedented economic collapse. Peter’s book explains the ‘gangster capitalism’ that emerged as Putin and other members of the former regime fought with each other for control of the nation’s wealth and natural resources.

The working class internationally also paid a heavy price. The collapse of the planned economies dealt a heavy blow to the idea that society could ever be organised in a different way to capitalism.

Some former ‘lefts’, such as Paul Mason, concluded that Stalinism’s collapse meant the end of any prospect of socialism. One of the articles in the book answers Mason, noting that, yes, the immediate effect had been to strengthen world capitalism, providing new markets and a source of cheap skilled labour. But, as Peter writes, “reality always has two sides. The other side of this development was the enormously increased potential power of the working class, which has already been glimpsed but will be shown dramatically in the mass upheavals to come”.

As is increasingly obvious today, the collapse of Stalinism in no way resolved the crisis facing global capitalism. Nor did workers suffer the kind of crushing defeat inflicted by fascism in the 1930s. Nevertheless, the ideological effects of the collapse of Stalinism still need to be overcome.

The book explains how it led to the wholesale political collapse of the leaders of the workers’ organisations. They abandoned socialism - even as a historic aim - and fully embraced capitalist ideas. Internationally, former workers’ parties imploded into openly pro-capitalist formations. In Britain, that took the form of Blair’s ‘New Labour’.

In the trade unions too, most leaderships sought to accommodate themselves to the system, adopting ‘social partnership’ with the employers, to the detriment of their members. This timidity from the union leaders, together with the abandonment of the historic aim of socialism by the leaders of the workers’ organisations, enormously bolstered the confidence and the power of the capitalists. It allowed them to restrict the share of the world’s wealth going to the working class back to levels not seen since before the first world war.

Peter points out that “It is true, as Lenin argued, that the Labour Party through its pro-capitalist leadership has always been a ‘bourgeois’ party … However, Lenin also emphasised that … through its trade union base in particular, it was also a working-class party. … In office it was subject to the pressure of the unions and therefore could potentially endanger the interests of capitalism”.  He gives the examples of the unions refusing to allow Ramsay MacDonald to impose ‘austerity’ under the 1931 Labour Government and, similarly, preventing Harold Wilson’s 1969 government from introducing the ‘In Place of Strife’ anti-trade union legislation.

Mass workers’ parties bring workers together to build struggles and reach conclusions together. Their absence has made it harder for working-class consciousness to catch up with the severity of today’s capitalist crisis, let alone to understand the need to overthrow it. The kind of mass socialist and communist parties that existed in the 1930s, at least formally standing in opposition to capitalism, do not exist at the present time.

That’s why in the articles in this book, and in the pages of ‘the Socialist’, we have consistently stressed the importance of rebuilding mass workers’ parties, and for them to include a firm Marxist current too. Such a core is vital to provide the theoretical clarity needed to stand up to right-wing leaderships and to oppose the damaging influence that supporters of capitalism will seek to introduce into them.

Peter concludes the introductory article to the book by saying: “As the most optimistic but also the most realistic trend within the labour movement, we recognised what had occurred was a significant setback for the workers’ movement. But we were not thrown off balance. The collapse of Stalinism did not eliminate the inherent contradictions of capitalism … But the very weakness of the labour movement encouraged the confidence, indeed the overweening arrogance of the ruling class, which overreached itself in the bubble economies of the last two decades. …

“1989 did not bury socialism or Marxism. It temporarily blurred the vision of the working class, which is now being cleared through the present crisis and the incapacity of this system to solve even the basic requirements of the mass of the peoples of the planet”.

This book can hopefully play a role in helping to clear that fog.

Great Revolutionaries - socialist ideas for a new generation

Great Revolutionaries by Peter Taaffe

Published by Mentmore Press, 2025, £9.99

Here's my review from this month's edition of Socialism Today:

A search through the back issues of Socialism Today will quickly reveal a huge range of articles written by Peter Taaffe, the former general secretary of the Socialist Party.  

Peter’s writing, over many decades, helped provide theoretical clarity at a time when others were disorientated by the long post-war upswing of capitalism, and again after the collapse of Stalinism. Peter was also adept at explaining revolutionary theory in a way that young workers, new to the ideas of Marxism, could understand.

However, as someone who really understood the ideas of Marx, he also knew that it is never enough for philosophers simply to ‘interpret’ the world, the point is to change it. That’s why Peter always sought to explain how the ideas of Marxism can be applied to today’s world – in order to change it for the better.
Peter sadly died, after a long illness, in April this year. However, his articles and books leave behind an invaluable legacy. That is why Mentmore Press is working on a series of books which will bring together selections of Peter’s writings, beginning with a first collection entitled ‘Great Revolutionaries’, to be released this autumn.

This first book, a compilation of twelve different articles, provides an introduction to the ideas of six great revolutionaries, and explains how they sought to apply them in action. They are: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of ‘scientific socialism’; Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution; and Gracchus Babeuf and Rosa Luxemburg, revolutionaries, like Trotsky, killed for their socialist beliefs.

Marx and Engels developed their ideas by studying the ideas and struggles of previous generations. That included the ideas of the first ‘utopian’ socialists, such as the heroic French revolutionary Gracchus Babeuf, the ‘father of communism’, featured in the first chapter of this book.

The following chapters, on Marx and Engels, explain how they developed the ideas of ‘scientific socialism’, founded on the materialist philosophy that it is ‘conditions that determine consciousness’, and not the other way around.

Their recognition that history has been driven by class struggle, and their exposition of the driving forces and inner contradictions of a capitalist economy, led them to conclude that the organised working class would be capitalism’s ‘gravediggers’. That’s why they also wrote at length on workers’ strikes and on the role of trade unions, an aspect of their writings usually ignored by supposedly ‘Marxist’ academics but summarised in a chapter of this book.

Knowing that any permanent gains could only be won by the working class through socialist change, they also fought for workers to build their own independent mass parties. Marx was instrumental in the construction of the International Workingmen’s Association, the ‘First International’. Again, this revolutionary activity is explained in Peter’s articles.

The chapters on Lenin, Trotsky and the 1917 Russian revolution provide an answer to the many lies and distortions that bourgeois writers and historians have written – and continue to write – to try and conceal the genuine ideas of Marxism from a new generation of socialists, ideas that can arm the working class to clear away their rotting system of capitalism.

Peter sets out Lenin’s ideas on the necessity of building firmly organised but highly democratic revolutionary parties, as well as Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolution’, still vital in a world where millions of lives remain blighted by landlordism and national oppression. The articles also set out the reasons why Stalinism arose from the isolation of the Russian revolution and the devastation of its already weak economy following the civil war that had threatened to strangle the revolution at birth.

The book also sets out the revolutionary legacy of the heroic Rosa Luxemburg, brutally murdered after the defeat of the January 1919 uprising in Berlin. In this, and other chapters, Peter outlines not just the mass struggles that took place in Germany at that time but also other twentieth century revolutionary events that provide important lessons for today, such as those in Spain, China and Cuba.
A book of this nature can inevitably only be an introduction to the lives and legacy of these great revolutionaries, and to the ideas of Marxism. To help those who want to find out more, detailed endnotes have been added to further explain some of the events and terms referred to by Peter, and also to provide references to the sources of many of the quotations, so that readers can further explore these original works if they so wish.

Peter’s articles show how Marxism, correctly applied, not by rote but as a method of analysis, helps to provide a political compass. For example, in the article on The Communist Manifesto, written in 1998 when it seemed that ‘globalisation’ of the world economy was able to transcend national boundaries, he pointed out, tellingly, that “a serious recession or slump would inevitably result in the introduction of protectionist measures by the different national capitalists, probably on a regional basis through the different blocs”.

Nowhere in the book does Peter present a picture of these great revolutionaries as being infallible leaders ‘deified’ in the sorry traditions of Stalinism. Instead, he explains that “all parties and leaders make mistakes, but the essence of the matter is to learn from them”. Throughout the book, mistakes that may have been made – over timescales, over theory, over organisation – are pointed out, to be evaluated and learned from today.

Some of those mistakes are ones that have direct relevance today. For example, Peter discusses why some of the new left parties that rose in the wake of the 2007-08 ‘Great Recession’, such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, also quickly lost support as well. In the chapter on Trotsky’s Life and Legacy, Peter warns about how Podemos was undermined by the top-down methods of its leadership who “deny the right for different trends of opinion to openly and democratically get together, formulate alternative ideas, aspects of the programme, and if necessary, to fight for these ideas within the structures of common organisations”.

Of course, there’s a risk in publishing a book on ‘great revolutionaries’ of giving the false impression that revolutions are made, not by the action of the masses, but through the individual ‘genius’ of charismatic leaders. Not at all. As Trotsky wrote in the preface to his History of the Russian Revolution: “The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny”.

Nevertheless, as discussed in the chapter on Leon Trotsky’s relevance today, revolutionary parties, and their leading cadres, are a vital – and necessary – component in a successful revolutionary struggle. As Trotsky puts it bluntly: “If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October revolution”.  However, Lenin and Trotsky weren’t just accidents of history, but a product of it, gaining their ideas and training through their living experience in the workers’ movement over decades.

As this book sets out, Lenin and Trotsky explained that four key conditions are needed for a revolution to succeed: a split in the ruling class; a determined working class, ready to take decisive action; the middle layers in revolt and looking towards the working class for a way out; and lastly, but in Trotsky’s words “the hardest thing of all” to have in place, a mass revolutionary party with a trained, farsighted leadership that can ensure the movement of the masses succeeds in changing society.

Just as these great revolutionaries studied the struggles of the past to help them try to build such a party in their lifetimes, today a new generation of socialists needs to do the same. The clearly explained ideas of Marxism, and the lessons of workers’ struggles, both successes and failures, that are included in this book can only assist in that process.

NEU Members for a New Party - a Report from the August 18 Meeting

Over 70 NEU members joined the Zoom call on August 18^th as part of the round of individual union meetings to bring together “Trade Unionists for a New Party”. Not only was this a great turnout at a time when education staff are on holiday, the thorough and wide-ranging discussion also reflected the enthusiasm and determination to campaign for the NEU to play its part in building a new workers’ party.

Here's a report that I agreed to draft to share a flavour of the issues discussed at the meeting and the action points agreed:

The meeting was introduced by Sheila Caffrey, one of several NEU National Executive members at the online meeting. Sheila explained that the meeting had been called as a follow-up to the July 21^st cross-union Zoom* initiated by former Labour MP Dave Nellist, attended by both Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, shortly before they made the ‘Your Party’ announcement that has then quickly gathered such massive support.

Sheila reminded everyone of the role played by education workers during the COVID pandemic, both in supporting children and our communities, but also using our collective trade union power too. She listed just some of the attacks that have been made by the Labour government, including worsening child poverty with the continuation of two child benefit cap and their attacks on both disabled people’s and trans people’s rights. Sheila added that they “have continued Tory education policy of underfunding, underpaying and undervaluing education and education workers” and that the long record of attacks, cuts and privatisation of education showed that the need for education workers to have a political voice and genuine representation was long overdue.

Sheila referred to the democratic structures that already exist in unions like the NEU to allow members to discuss and elect delegates to share views, experiences and policies, and argued that a new workers’ party should work like this too. “We need a new party that not only has education workers but workers from across all sectors and communities being able to discuss and create policies that will support our lives, our services and our workplaces” and that “the collective voices of unions are essential to this”.

One shared aim from the many individual contributions to the discussion was to encourage as many NEU members as possible to take the arguments for a new workers’ party into NEU structures, at school, district and national levels.

A model motion was agreed proposing some concrete steps that could be pushed for, including inviting Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and the Independent Alliance MPs ‘to an urgent meeting of the National Executive to discuss the role of the NEU in steps towards a new party’; for NEU NEC members to approach other union executives “to discuss trade union involvement in the founding of a new workers’ party” and for this to be done locally through trades councils as well; and for districts to “elect representatives to attend local meetings about a new workers’ party and share the needs of education workers”.

A number of contributors pointed out that the model motion may be opposed in some parts of the Union, on the basis that the NEU should keep its “independence from any political party”, as current NEU Rules say. However, Michaela Wilde, another NEU Executive member, pointed out from her experience in changing union policy over support staff recognition, that the debate can be won as long as the groundwork is put in at a local level to clearly explain our arguments. Amanda from Birmingham compared it to ‘walking the floor’ as a union rep, talking to people face-to-face, arguing for a new party in your workplaces, and in your communities too.

There were various reports of meetings being set up in local areas to help build support for the new party that NEU members were already engaged in, as well as some joint local discussions between NEU and UCU members on the kind of education policies a new party should have.

There was general agreement in the meeting that the policies had to address the “ongoing funding and privatisation crisis” referred to in the model motion. However, it was stressed that the motion hadn’t been drafted with detailed policy in mind at this stage but could be amended to raise points that colleagues wanted to add to it in their areas. Demands raised in discussion included the reversal of privatisation and bringing back education into democratically accountable public control as well as opposition to Labour’s authoritarian arrests of peace protestors and the digital divide that left working-class pupils without equal online access.

Rees, the youth officer for Knowsley NEU, spoke about the terrible working conditions that young educators faced and the support that could be won for a new workers’ party amongst young trade unionists. He added that the power of strike action was key to any union but that we also needed a political voice as well, otherwise we are fighting “with one hand behind our back”.

Another common theme was how a mass trade union base could help make sure the new party had both firm roots in working-class communities and a programme that offered new hope to the millions let down by the existing mainstream parties who might otherwise look to the populist right like Reform.

A video message from Jeremy Corbyn stressed that it was crucial for the new party “to attract trade unionists, trade union members and trade unions” and that “ we are in danger in this country of a duopoly of power, of the Tories and Labour saying exactly the same thing on economic policy” leaving “the far right, led by Nigel Farage, blaming every social ill on poor, desperate migrants and refugees. We're having none of that”.

Another point raised in the meeting was the need for trade unionists to help shape the policy and structures of a new party at this still formative stage. Naomi Wimborne Idrissi emphasised the need to get “trade unionists and other community activists actively involved at grassroots level in open and accessible democratic decision-making structures of the new party”. That would help ensure it had the strong roots needed to be able to answer the attacks that it will face in a way that the previous “Corbyn Project” had been unable to when Jeremy had been leader of the Labour Party.

But there was also agreement that helping to shape the policy and structures of the new party needed more than just individual educators joining the new party, it should be done through the union at all levels getting involved as a collective organisation.

To cement that involvement, Dan Warrington, a newly elected NEU Executive member, explained why federal structures were needed that allow unions to affiliate. Dan pointed out how much money the Union had spent in the last two general elections lobbying the existing parties but “what do we have to show for it!”. Instead “imagine if the NEU had delegates on the decision-making bodies of the new party, taking the policies we pass at NEU Conference into the new party to shape its policies, and then getting MPs elected on that basis carrying those policies into Parliament and advocating for them”.

Another contributor, Anthony Ryland, made the point that this was how the Labour Party had first been built by the trade unions over a century ago, and how it was vital that the NEU was prominent in the new party “rather than shouting from the sidelines”.

Sean McCauley from Worcestershire NEU also added that a federal structure should also allow community organisations and existing parties, like the Socialist Party that he was a member of, to affiliate as well, to be able to argue against any drifting away from the principles on which a new party was founded as it started to come under pressure from its political opponents and in the media.

Louise Cuffaro, another NEU Executive member, stressed that “I think this meeting reflects that it's not about an individual leader, it’s about us being the active ‘movers and shakers’ of forming structures that will allow us to be an accountable party to the people, to the working class and to trade unionists.”

Questions were asked about whether the NEU Rulebook could be used to block efforts to build for a new workers’ party. Martin Powell-Davies, a former NEU Regional Secretary, stressed that there was nothing in the model motion that went beyond the objects of the union “to seek to influence the political agenda”. The NEU already attends LibDem, Labour and Tory Party Conferences. Now, instead of just pleading with parties firmly wedded to cuts and privatisation, we should be helping to set the direction of a new party that actually agrees with union policies!

Martin added, however, that for the union to change its policy about ‘political independence’, or for it to back candidates or affiliate to a new party would require changes in rules to be won.

The meeting was concluded by Sheila emphasising, in particular, that:

·        Everyone should take the model motion (see below) to their local District as soon as possible so that it could start a discussion within the NEU locally, and for motions that have been passed to be sent to their NEU Executive members and the National Union.

·        A further meeting would be called in the new term, particularly to look at a motion for NEU Conference 2026 that could allow the Union’s existing Political Fund to start being used to back candidates from a new workers’ party committed to fighting for the union’s policies.

***

Model Motion

Educators need new political representation: it’s time for the trade unions to take the lead in founding it.

This district/branch notes:

·        The ongoing funding and privatisation crisis across all education sectors; Labour’s delays in implementing its Employment Rights Bill, and ongoing attacks on public services and disability benefits, as well as attacks on trans rights, migrants and ongoing support for the onslaught in Gaza.

·        The statement by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana calling for a new political party “rooted in our communities, trade unions and social movements”, with 700,000 people signing up to be kept informed, which will include many NEU members and other trade unionists.

·        That other unions are involved in discussions: UNITE are reassessing their relationship with Labour; UCU have agreed to “look for an alternative political voice to Labour” and the bakers’ union have released a statement on the creation of a new political party.

·        That NEU policy agreed this year states in the motion: Defending and extending members’ rights at work

Conference further instructs the executive to appeal to all the MPs with whom the union is associated, the 7 Labour MPs who had the whip withdrawn after voting against keeping the 2-child benefit cap and the independent MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, elected for the first time in 2024 to table amendments to the Employment Rights Bill.

This branch/district believes:

·        The battles our members face over: workload, funding, pay, restructuring, academisation etc – will be greatly strengthened if we also have a political voice.

·        The number of people signing up to be part of the founding process for ‘your party’ is an indicator of the huge potential support there is for a working-class based alternative to Labour, with the potential to cut across the divisive rhetoric of Reform.

·        Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana have already vocally shared views on education policy, child poverty and Palestine that are compatible with our union policy.  This would be greatly amplified by having actual education workers as decision-makers in a new party,

·        A new party will be stronger and have more political authority if trade unions - collectively representing more than 6 million members - participate in the founding of a new party and are represented in the democratic decision-making process of a new party.

·        Our union, along with other trade unions, can and should play a leading role in the founding of a new party.

This branch/district resolves:

·        To request our National Executive members invite Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and the Independent Alliance MPs to an urgent meeting of the National Executive to discuss how to build a bloc of MPs in parliament that will fight for the policies of the NEU, and the role of the NEU in steps towards a new party

·        To request our National Executive members approach the Unite EC, UCU NEC and bakers’ union executive, and other relevant trade unions, to discuss trade union involvement in the founding of a new workers’ party

·        To write to our local trades union council to suggest working with other unions locally to discuss what is locally needed for political representation.

·        To elect representatives to attend local meetings about a new workers’ party and share the needs of education workers. 

+++

*If you missed the initial July 21st meeting hosted by Dave Nellist, the former Labour MP (1983-1992) and now the chair of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), you can watch the full video at Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana join over 1000 trade unionists at meeting to discuss a new party

How the Labour Party was lost - One Member One Vote and the Trade Union Block Vote

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's announcement that "a new kind of political party" is going to be launched has already resulted in over 500,000 sign-ups. This enthusiastic response has confirmed everything that the Socialist Party has been saying for years about the mood that exists to build a new mass workers’ party, a party so urgently needed to fill the political vacuum that has been left since the Labour Party became a fully-fledged party of capitalism. 

Although it's very early days, discussions have already started, for example on social media, about how such a party should best be structured. But this won't be the first time that these kind of discussions have taken place. In this post, I wanted to draw attention to some relevant labour movement history that may be unknown to a new generation of socialists and perhaps forgotten by older generations too.

A proposal for a federal structure drafted in Scotland in 1995

A) The Labour Party was formed on a federal basis

It's definitely worth remembering that the Labour Party was first built as a federation of different unions and socialist organisations and, throughout its initial years, retained "its character as an alliance of all the trade union organisations of the working class". (a 1920 description by the Communist Party who campaigned - although unsuccessfully - to seek affiliation to the Labour Party at that time)

As Dave Nellist's recent article in "the Socialist" explains, "on 27 February 1900, 129 delegates representing 570,000 members in 41 trade unions and seven trade councils came together in Memorial Hall, London, to form the Labour Representation Committee, which later became the Labour Party. The meeting also included representatives from three socialist organisations: the Independent Labour Party, representing 13,000 members; the Social Democratic Federation, 9000; and the Fabian Society, 861  ... The LRC became the Labour Party in 1906, though you couldn’t actually join it as an individual member until 1918".

In the wake of the Russian Revolution, the Labour Party adopted "Clause 4", the 'socialist clause' of its constitution that called for "the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange", in other words the nationalisation of the major corporations and financial institutions. Even if this largely remained just words on the Labour Party card, it was a constant reminder that the Party was founded on the idea that a different way of organising society was needed - a socialist society based on public ownership, instead of a capitalist one based on the pursuit of profit.

However, in the wake of the collapse of Stalinism in the 1990s, the Blairites stepped in to turn the Labour Party into just another party of big business. It's no surprise that part of their campaign was to ditch that old 'Clause 4', dropping any call for public ownership. In his autobiography, Blair spelt out that: “After the 1992 defeat ... I had formed a clear view that if ever I was leader, the constitution should be rewritten and the old commitments to nationalisation and state control should be dumped".

Peter Taaffe's history of "Blair's counter-revolution in the Labour Party", explains how, at the special national conference called in 1995 to scrap Clause 4, "the right-wing evolution ... was reflected most glaringly in the constituency delegates ... 90% of the constituency delegates voted for Blair’s abandonment of socialist principles, something that would have been absolutely unheard of in the 1950s and 1960s boom when the rank and file were consistently on the left. But the new breed of ‘delegates’ – smart suited careerists seeking a shortcut to power and influence – were far removed from worker delegates of the past. ... The unions were split with 38% in favour and almost 32% against".

B) The Trade Union Block vote

As you can see from the vote above on Clause 4, it would be a mistake to fall for the idea that trade union block voting was always just an undemocratic mechanism used by right-wing trade union leaders to undermine more left-wing rank-and-file party members. 

Of course, where the right-wing union bureaucracy had control of affiliated unions, it could certainly play that role. But even right-wing trade union leaders have to reflect the pressure of their members for action on pay, jobs and all the other issues affecting the working-class. The trade union block vote reflected the roots of the Labour Party in the workers' movement. That's why, as part of their project to turn Labour into just another party of big business, the Blairites knew they had to get rid of it.

As Hannah Sell explains, "the organised working class was able to pressurise the Labour leadership via the block vote. It is true, of course, that right-wing trade union leaders often wielded the block vote against their own members’ interests. This is why Militant, the predecessor of the Socialist Party, called for democratic trade union checks over the block vote as part of our programme for democratic, fighting trade unions. Nonetheless, the reduction of the block vote was an essential part of transforming Labour into a capitalist party".

In other words, to change the character of the Labour Party for good, the Blairites didn't just move to ditch Clause 4, they also needed to get rid of the trade union roots on which the Party had been built. A pamphlet written at the time by 'Militant Labour' - which became the Socialist Party - around "the debate on Clause IV", correctly predicted "this debate is about whether the Labour Party will be an organisation of working-class people and those of the middle-class who can see that capitalism threatens not only workers but their own security and well-being. Or whether it will be a tame second party of the bosses doing their bidding, throwing crumbs to the rest of us when the bosses agree they can be spared". 

The pamphlet also pointed out that "when many Militant supporters were expelled from the Labour Party in the 1980s, we warned that the expulsions were just the first steps towards loosening the links with the working class, especially organised labour in the trade unions". It  added that "the distancing of the Labour Party from its trade union base has meant a constant whittling away of the proportion of votes they cast at the Party Conference. Now it's proposed that when individual membership increases to 300,000, the trade union share of the vote will fall to 50% from 70% at present".

So it was the Blairites, supported by capitalist press attacks, that moved against the "block vote", in order to stop trade unions having a key say in Labour policy. If a new party is going to be one that represents the working-class, its structures should again make sure that democratic, fighting trade unions have an important say within it. Exactly how that would be constituted should, of course, be discussed through but, in these early discussions, it's important to think through how trade unions - both as local branches and as national bodies - should be represented within it. 

C) One Member One Vote - and Lessons from the Spanish State

Anyone who's had experience in properly functioning trade unions, will be used to the idea that decisions are best reached by bringing members together (usually in person, but with, where necessary, some attending online), allowing different points of view to be considered, and then for a vote to be taken and/or delegates elected to represent a particular point of view. That's always been the best traditions of workers' democracy - of making informed decisions following meeting and debate, whether it be in union branches, national conferences, or even in workers' soviets!

But, particularly to a new generation that hasn't had that experience, an alternative approach of making decisions through "One Member, One Vote" (OMOV) might seem attractive. After all, doesn't it give every member a say? But a Party has to be more than just a collection of atomised individual members making decisions without debate and discussion. And, again, the history of the Labour Party - and other parties of the Left - provides a warning. 

Just as with the undermining of the trade union block vote, the introduction of  OMOV was a move that came from the Right to strengthen its control of the Labour Party. Hannah's article explains how "the process of fundamentally undermining the democratic structures of the Labour Party was given impetus with John Smith's introduction of OMOV. This was a means of using the more passive members – those sitting at home and seeing debates within the party via the capitalist media – against the more active layers who participated in the democratic structures of the party."

There's also important lessons to learn from the organisational structures used in other attempts to build new parties on the Left - not least Podemos in Spain. Podemos grew massively when it was launched in 2014, as a new party promising a radical break with the capitalist policies of all the main parties - promising radical action on housing, to raise wages, lower the retirement age and nationalise key sectors of the economy. However, its membership and support has since massively declined. So what went wrong? - because we don't want the same to happen here!

An article in Socialism Today analyses the "rise and decline of Podemos" in more detail but points to the way the new party was organised through online discussions and voting, rather than having more traditional branch structures, as one of its failings. 

It explains how: "Podemos presented their innovative online methods as a way of giving ordinary people control of the organisation. This seemed like a real breath of fresh air in contrast to the bureaucratic obstacles experienced by members of PSOE (equivalent to the Spanish Labour Party) and PCE (the Spanish Communist Party), let alone the memory of rule under the dictatorship. At its height, the party’s ‘Plaza Podemos’ site attracted 20,000 individual participants. Its election manifestos and its election candidates were also selected online in primaries. ..." 

But the reality of Podemos’s structures, or rather lack of them, did not measure up to the rhetoric. Podemos policies were attractive to a broad range of working and middle-class people but its ‘open’ structure was especially popular with the middle classes who, because they were used to wielding some authority, better trained to communicate, and had more time to participate in it, soon dominated the leadership of the organisation. It was difficult for workers with limited time to participate meaningfully in unfocussed discussions that could continue indefinitely in Podemos ‘circles’ (branches) and there were no moves to give workers’ representatives and organisations like trade unions power in the party. As in all supposedly ‘horizontal’ organisations, in reality power was very centralised in Podemos, with few democratic controls that members could exercise over the leadership".

The article also sets out the model of representative participatory workers' democracy that our co-thinkers in the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) proposed instead: "Podemos must orientate to the enormous potential power that workers hold. We said that an approach should be made to challenge the influence that other parties have in the trade unions, and that structures should be set up that enabled working-class people – including those who worked long or unpredictable hours – to participate in the party and determine its direction. A serious and determined campaign should have been mounted to build a ‘circle’ (branch) in every working class community. At its height, Podemos had 900 circles, but coverage was patchy and circles were never decision-making bodies. We said discussions should be focussed around resolutions about the way forward for the party, and argued that circles should be gathered into district, city and regional circles whose members were elected democratically, with the input of workers’ organisations. This would have meant that any member could make a proposal, win the support of their circle/branch, and take it through the structures of the organisations to the highest level to be adopted as policy. All responsible positions should have been subject to election".

As the article also points out, "without a solid base in the working class, Podemos’ leadership was not sensitive to the moods and ideas of the masses, so less able to correctly judge tactical questions such as the attitude it should take to other political forces, especially PSOE, and more susceptible to the pressure that capitalism puts on its political opponents."

So, having roots in the working-class, and in its trade union organisations, is vital for any new mass workers' party to succeed.

D) What did Militant Labour call for at the time that the SLP was launched?

Back in the mid-90s, there was another attempt to launch a new 'party of the Left' by another authoritative workers' leader - Arthur Scargill and his launch of the "Socialist Labour Party". Scargill made the proposal to launch the SLP in response to the ditching of Clause 4 - and this was immediately welcomed by Militant Labour. However, the SLP's subsequent demise was in good part owing to its 'top-down' organisational structure, one where no other party was allowed to maintain its own identity, an approach that sadly ending up alienating nearly everyone who had placed their hopes in it. Once again, this is a history that shouldn't be repeated! 

During 1995, when the potential structures for the new SLP were being discussed, 'Socialism Today' printed a number of articles explaining why Militant Labour were calling for a democratic federal structure. These were collected together in a 1996 pamphlet, which even included a rough draft outline of a possible federal structure which had been put forward by the Scottish Socialist Forum (pictured above).

The introduction to the pamphlet, although written in a different period, three decades ago, makes important historical points that are still worth considering. For example it notes that the details of any federated structure need to be thought through: "Federation has also been the experience historically in Britain. Of course a federation would have to be carefully organised and a reflection of the real significance and forces of each affiliate or component part. For example, in the second half of the 19th century, when the working class was searching for political independence from capitalist parties, especially from the Liberal Party, most organisations, such as the Independent Labour Party and the Social Democratic Federation, were federations. However, the SDF constitution, whilst federal, did not accurately reflect the makeup of the organisation. Due to industrial developments and the role played by individual socialists aligned to the SDF, its biggest organisation outside London was in Lancashire, at the time a melting pot of working class political activity. The ILP, SDF, Co-op movement, the suffrage societies and the trade unions all had large concentrations of support in the industrial centres. But the structure of the SDF denied equal access to areas outside London to decision taking and national leadership".

Other articles in the pamphlet take-up the argument that allowing different parties and trends to debate different viewpoints within the broader party would just be a distraction and that a "'stop quibbling, let's get on with it' approach may initially appear attractive to some activists". However, it then predicted, sadly correctly, that "synthetic unity, especially when imposed from above, is a recipe for splits, not unity in action". Instead, we argued that "a genuinely democratic structure would recognise the validity of different groups - the inevitable organisational expression of a plurality of ideas - and accept an open, federal structure. Participation within the party would be on the basis of agreed structures and support for a common, broad socialist programme, especially in relation to election campaigns". (This is, of course, the approach that TUSC has since taken).

I'll finish this post with the proposed draft structures put forward by the Scottish Socialist Forum in 1995 as an alternative approach to bringing together a new party  on federal grounds. 

In doing so, I'm not putting this forward as a recommendation that can necessarily be exactly replicated in the 'new party' being launched today, in different conditions to that of the mid-90s. [For example, it struck me that perhaps the character of the initiatives at that time were focused more on pulling together existing Left currents, rather than launching a mass workers' party - and perhaps the proposed draft didn't prioritise sufficiently the role of trade union affiliations at a national level?]

I also don't want to give any impression that this is an agreed position of the Socialist Party - after all, it's only "archive hoarders" like me that can probably still lay hands on a copy (!). Nor have I had a chance to talk to comrades in Scotland about any further discussions that took place. However, I am posting it with the same intentions of those who circulated this draft in 1995, as a "broad indication" of the kind of structures which could be considered:

Draft agreed by the Scottish Socialist Forum, 27 December 1995:

EARLY DRAFT ONLY (This draft is mainly for discussion purposes. To give a broad indication of the type of structures envisaged - further detail will need to be added after broader discussions).

1. Any individual or organisation (e.g. political group, trade union at any level, environmental group, tenants' organisation, community group, anti-nuclear group, civil rights organisation, animal rights group, anti-racist organisation, international solidarity campaign, etc.) who broadly agrees with the Aims and Objectives and agrees to abide by the constitution may join the [Party].

2. The [Party] is politically pluralistic and encourages all individuals, organisations and groups who share our socialist vision to fully participate.

3. All organisations and groups participating in [the Party] must be affiliates. Affiliation assumes a political commitment and all affiliates should also encourage individual membership from their respective organisations. All representatives from affiliated organisations must also be individual members.

4. An organisation of this type, broad and voluntary, must be open, inclusive and flexible.

5. Individual members are allowed to belong to other political organisations (whether affiliates or not) but dual membership should be declared on application/renewal of membership.

6. The [Party] will organise at a local branch level, area level (based on Euro constituencies) and national level.

7. a) Individual members will be entitled to participate in branches, based upon residency, place of work, or place of study.

7. b) Organisations (e.g. community groups, tenants' groups, hospital campaigns, etc.) can affiliate at this level.

8. a) Regular Aggregate Meetings will be held at an Area level - open to all members.

8. b) Organisations (e.g. trade union branches, anti-motorway campaigns, etc.) can also affiliate at this level.

9. Policy will be decided democratically by a National Conference, consisting of branch delegates and delegates from nationally affiliated organisations. Branches and affiliates are encouraged to seek a gender balance in their delegations.

10. There will be a monthly National Council consisting of office-bearers elected at the National Conference, branch delegates and delegates from affiliated organisations. Branches and affiliates are encouraged to seek a gender balance in their delegations.

11. The elected office-bearers will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the national organisation.

12. The [Party] allows individual members and affiliates to organise in sections (e.g. Youth Section, Women's Section, Black Section).