The following letter was sent on November 11 by Democratic Socialist Party national secretary John Percy on behalf of the political committee of the Democratic Socialist Party to the national executive of the International Socialist Organisation.

The following letter was sent on November 7 on behalf of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) to the national executive of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO).

In your letter of November 3 you stated that the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) National Executive (NE) felt it had no choice but to recommend to your December National Conference that it terminate your affiliation to the Socialist Alliance (SA) if the DSP’s 20th Congress were to vote to implement our National Committee proposal to convert the DSP into a tendency within the SA.

We were extremely disappointed to receive your November 3 letter threatening to “terminate” the ISO’s affiliation to the Socialist Alliance (SA) if the DSP goes ahead with our proposal to stop building ourselves publicly and just become a tendency in the SA.

The following letter was sent on October 22 by Democratic Socialist Party national secretary John Percy on behalf of the DSP political committee to the national executive of the International Socialist Organisation. It was in response to the ISO NE’s letter of September 29 to the DSP NE, reprinted in GLW #513.

Thank you for your letter outlining some of your worries and the issues you think should be flagged following the DSP National Executive’s (NE) letter announcing the proposals we were presenting to our membership regarding the Socialist Alliance (SA), namely that next year the DSP cease to build itself publicly and instead put all its efforts into publicly building and strengthening the Socialist Alliance.

On September 2, the Democratic Socialist Party’s national executive agreed to propose to the party’s membership that the DSP cease to operate as a public organisation from January 2003 so as to devote much more resources to building the Socialist Alliance.

In this period of a stepped up ideological offensive by the ruling class, with the neoliberal attack on all past working class gains, the glorification of the market economy, the boasting about the end of communism, many on the left have retreated.

This is a report that tries to take a long-term look at building the party, as well as addressing our current party-building tasks and perspectives. It’s in the context of a significant change in the world situation, where although imperialism’s offensive against the people of the world is just as fierce, just as irrational.

On May 1, the Socialist Workers Party in Scotland joined the Scottish Socialist Party, an historic development creating a united socialist party in Scotland for the first time in generations.