Steve McGiffen has been associated in various capacities with the Socialist Party of the Netherlands since 1999, and though he now lives in France, continues to work as a translator for the party. He is a former official of the United European Left Group in the European Parliament, and edits Spectrezine. On the eve of the Dutch elections, he spoke to NLP’s Edward Lewis.

You have for a long time been involved with the Dutch Socialist Party. You seem to regard them as unique in Western Europe for being a genuinely socialist party that has attained significant political representation. First of all, can you explain the key policies of the SPNL?

The SPNL is far from being a perfect model, and would not claim to be. And I would say that the most important thing about it is not its policies, which might look much like those of any European parliamentary party of the genuine left, but its form of organisation. The SP is close to being a mass party, with almost 50,000 members out of a population of around 16 million. It is active on many fronts, and has built itself up from local level into a national party over some four decades, but in particular in the last fifteen or so years. It is, unfortunately, almost certainly about to suffer its first major electoral setback. Having gone from nine to twenty-five seats in the 2006 election – which took place in the wake of the referendum on the European Constitution, where the party led the successful ‘no’ campaign – it could well go back down to nine in one fell swoop on June 9th. This is less significant than it might seem, however, though it’s hard to make this point without sounding like a bullshitting politician! Parliamentary politics is only one strand to the SP’s bow. It’s active on the streets and in the neighbourhoods, and for example played a major supportive role in the recent inspiring victory of a lengthy national strike of cleaners. You can read all about the party, in English, and keep up with its views and activities, at http://international.sp.nl/

Can you explain how a genuinely anti-neoliberal party has managed to achieve significant parliamentary inroads in the Netherlands, in sharp contrast to the situation that prevails in most Western European countries? What lessons can be learned from them by leftists in other countries, especially the UK?

It’s hard to apply lessons learned in one country to experience in another. The SPNL had various advantages: an electoral system which is ultra-proportional. There are 150 seats in the national parliament and if you get 1 vote in 150 on the basis of a national list you get one of those seats. Secondly, democracy means rather more in general in Dutch society than in Britain, where hardly anybody seems to know or care what it means. So while I wouldn’t want to exaggerate this, the left gets a rather fairer hearing than you would in Britain. People might disagree with socialist views, but they tend to have some idea what they are, whereas the political ignorance of the average Briton makes trying to present arguments for socialism sometimes futile, generally frustrating and often quite surreal. The only way to tackle that is from the base up. The SP began life in 1972 by knocking on people’s doors in the small industrial town of Oss and asking them, basically, what they were fed up about. If you did that, or some equivalent, in modern Britain you might have to listen to a lot of racist crap, but you need to engage with that. And you might identify areas where an organised force of honest men and women who want to move the country closer to socialism could intervene. You are not going to get very far by concentrating on international issues or matters of identity, important though those things are, because most people don’t see them as important and you have to start from where people are.

What achievements do the Dutch Socialist Party have to their name? And what threats do you think they face in the foreseeable future?

Their greatest achievement is to have become a serious force in Dutch politics at a difficult time for the left in Europe. Their leadership of the referendum which defeated the European Constitution was astonishing. I was actually present at an early planning meeting for this campaign and everyone was talking about how great it would be if we could get a good vote, that a 40% no in such a core country would be one in the eye for ‘Brussels’ and its attempts to undermine our democratic and social achievements. Then, after listening to this for a while, one man banged on the table and said, ‘Nee, hoor! Wij gaan winnen!’ - “No, listen here, we’re going to win!”. And it galvanized the meeting and made me think the ruling elite had a bit more on their hands than they had bargained for, which certainly turned out to be the case Another achievement might be seen as a bit of a mixed blessing, but is surely a good thing overall. Politicians on all sides in the Netherlands began, as a result of the SP’s success, to see that television appearances weren’t enough. They revitalised their youth movements and the social side of their activities. The SP is a social organisation as well as a political party, and other parties have learnt from this. They use the full range of technologies and to good effect. Their website has been voted the best political website in the country more than once and their campaign videos have won awards from the advertising industry! You can also, and I have to say this reflects the relatively democratic nature of the Dutch political system, point to numerous small achievements in terms of laws they been able to influence for the good, privatisations programmes slowed or diluted, deportations halted, and so on. The Labour Party has to look over its left shoulder all the time. As for dangers, well, if the poor poll showing - the reasons for which are many and complicated but really do not reflect any incompetence or poor decision-making by the party itself – are followed by a similar result in the election they will have to deal with defeat, something of which they have almost no experience. The danger will be demoralisation within the party and the loss of the mystique of constant success to those outside of it. The longer-term threat is the danger that confronts all left parties which try to engage in parliamentary politics, which in my view you absolutely have to do – and that is the danger that you will become a social democratic party. For me that’s less about policies, which are fleeting things which must respond to events, than about organisation. As soon as you begin to prioritise parliamentary work, as soon as you start to wonder if militancy is costing you votes and to care that it might well do so, you are on the rocky road to social democracy.

Let me add one remark. As I said, the SPNL is not a perfect party. But it is a radical left party, and a successful one. All I read about from the British left is the success of faraway socialist movements. Well, President Chavez is also far from perfect, but the importance of solidarity with his movement is widely recognised. Yet hardly anyone knows about the SP. It’s a few hours away by train, it doesn’t have colourful Latin music or a past fighting in the mountains, their weather is just as lousy as the weather in England, but what it is doing is just as important and much closer to home. It would do the Dutch socialists good to have more grass roots contact with socialists in Britain and elsewhere, and they have resources which could help make that possible. But the initiative will have to come from you.  Talk of a Fifth International makes me cringe when I know that socialists in Manchester or Hull don’t even know that there is a vibrant, militant and colourful party just over the water, full of friendly folk who can converse in English.