Tomás Ó Flatharta

The identification of the nonaligned, in the run up to the election of two nonaligned representatives to the Steering Committee of the United Left Alliance on 28th April, has led to some discussion at ULA Branch level.

The category of nonaligned is a little complicated. And may be even more complicated again if, for instance, somebody joined the Socialist Workers Party and then the ULA since the ULA was set up without ever joining the People Before Profit Alliance; indeed it would be difficult for someone recently joining the SWP in the Dublin Central area to join the PBPA before joining the ULA as the PBPA in Dublin Central has not been meeting or operating since the the establishment of the Dublin Central ULA.

The nonaligned category is a field trip for the political anorak already. Members of the PBPA who are not members of the SWP are not nonaligned because it is the PBPA, the Socialist Party and the South Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group that are represented on the Steering Committee and to which you would or would not be aligned. So there are members in the ULA of long established political groups such as Socialist Democracy and the Irish Socialist Network who are nonaligned. ISN members have been welcomed into forums of the nonaligned. A looser but veteran political grouping such as Declan Bree’s group in Sligo (the Sligo/Leitrim Independent Socialist Organisation?*) are not represented on the Steering Committee and therefore are numbered among the nonaligned (if they are ULA members), as are a single supporter (or associate) each of two organised tendencies not otherwise represented in the country. One of the latter is running for one of the nonaligned positions.

The ULA Steering Committee, as I understand it, recognises all these as nonaligned because they do not belong to any of the three founding groups who make up the ULA Steering Committee. There is a great deal of political agreement among the nonaligned but it is a technical category and includes some who differ sharply with the general vision for the ULA of most nonaligned people.

A case could be made, if someone had the nerve to make it, that SWP members who are not PBPA members are nonaligned. The case against that would be that as SWP members they are represented on the ULA Steering Committee by the PBPA delegates, the SWP being represented on the PBPA Steering Committee. The nonaligned are being offered representation now because they have not been represented so far.

And how it fits into all this I’m not sure, but I believe that, until recently anyway, the South Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group had no members in the ULA. There may have been a view that the whole of the STWUAG had joined the ULA en bloc and were represented on and participated through its membership of the ULA Steering Committee. And there is a certain logic to this as long as the ULA continues to be considered as an alliance or federation of three blocs. How new recruits directly to the ULA slot into this is being partly addressed through the nonaligned election of two reps to the Steering Committee.

To round off your enjoyment of this Friday pipeful I draw your attention to the obvious absence of some members of some, and maybe of all three, of the founding organisations from any meetings or activities of the ULA. It is reasonable to assume, and may be a good pluralist thing, that some members of some of the founding organisations are not, and do not see themselves as, members of the ULA.

But we’ll all be marching together tomorrow in Galway.

Won’t we?

Des Derwin

* Declan’s lively website (http://www.declanbree.com/news-currentissues/) mentions many affiliations but not the ULA.