There were at most 35 people in attendance at any one time, though because of a meeting on immigration and asylum seeking held at the same time, many people stayed for a while and hurried on, or arrived late. It wasn't to be helped, since the SYN conference was overdue slightly, the original founding conference having been held in January of 2007. The usual faces turned up: Socialist Appeal, Permanent Revolution, AWL, CPGB etc.

Despite that, I don't think this meeting was preaching to the choir, nor do I necessarily think the room justified metaphors about echo chambers and such like. For those who don't know, SYN was set up by Owen Jones and Marsha-Jane Thompson, among others, to bring together a youth wing of the Labour Representation Committee. The parliamentary LRC group is about the closest one gets to elected socialists in the UK.

At any rate, the purpose of the conference was broadly two-fold. A discussion needed to be held on the events of the past year, including the failure of the John4Leader campaign, and on where the SYN was to go next. Some discussion needed to focus on the other campaigns SYN had been involved with, such as COFUP, anti-deportation fights, immigrant worker rights and some protests, at the Saudi Arabian embassy for example.

The morning session got off to an uncontroversial start, since Bob Crow was meant to speak but couldn't show up as a result of negotiations over RMT and TSSA industrial action. Several motions were passed unanimously, including support for the RMT dispute, anti-privatisation, anti-ID cards / anti-victimisation of young people and an anti-academies proposal. Only the Academies proposals had more than one person take the floor on the issue.

The afternoon session was much more interesting, opening with John McDonnell addressing conference. Far from being a set-piece speech on a specific topic, John sat down and talked to the room like they were adults, something that I've seen many Labour cabinet ministers fail to do when talking to young people. He was very candid about the reasons behind the failure of the John4Leader campaign and asked us to weigh in.

One expects issues such as media bias to come up, for example, the deletion of various Comment Is Free articles which supported the campaign. Much more unexpected was the discussion about just how weak many Broad Lefts are within Trade Unions. It became evident that neither the campaign nor the Broad Lefts themselves realised how weak they were until they were out-manouevred by union leaderships regarding support for John.

Also aired was the deal which John and the campaign had struck with Jon Trickett of Compass to support a Compass member for deputy leader, if Trickett would organise his allies and friends to nominate John for the leadership. In the event, Neal Lawson and John Cruddas countered this deal and perhaps prevented John from getting on the ballot paper. The general consensus was that the PLP was afraid of a). the debate and b). what Gordon would do to anyone who nominated John, should John get on the ballot paper.

What really became most apparent almost all the way through every discussion - especially one held later on a Venezuelan named Chirino - is that the one weapon the left needs, we don't have. This weapon is information. When one group can take the Alan Woods' view of Venezuela and another can take the AWL's view, clearly the left is not well enough informed about what's going on in Venezuela. Similarly on most issues that we seem to end up disagreeing on.

On the question of TUC and union bureaucracy interference in the political activism displayed by many young people, the new generation of workers and socialists. the wider movement needs to know about what's going on. Every time a branch is suspended, people need to know. Every time a Labour council sells its soul to developers, we need to know. On every fight, we need information from the people on the ground, for orientation.

Most pressingly for the left is the question of what to make of the Labour Party. Ben Lewis of CPGB made a point which John also picked up that if we leave the Labour Party, where do we go? Militant exercised a lot of influence within the CLPs and union branches across the Labour Party - but they were trapped. They could neither conquer the Labour Party nor leave it, as the Open Turn subsequently demonstrated by splitting the organisation and weakening it.

This begs the deeper question of where, exactly, socialists draw their power from. The textbook answer is "directly from the masses" and so, technically, whether or not we're in or out of the Labour Party should be a tactical question at best. In or out of Labour, socialists should be working within the organisations of the working class to build a united political front that will unite all socialist groups behind it. Does it really work this way?

The honest answer is, I don't know. The information required to answer such a question is not readily available. It's easy to sit on the side lines and read the different sectarian publications deriding Respect, CNWP or the various other groups, or, indeed, the self-serving propaganda each group puts out. That won't get us closer to answering a vital question. As John McDonnell repeated several times; we need to be absolutely honest with ourselves, "it's time to stop f**king about."

A word that was mentioned several times was praxis, the concept of combining theory and activism, where each one informs the other. This is the ideal socialist practice, something which virtually all Marxist theorists agree upon. Currently I don't believe that any of the revolutionary sects honestly have a real grasp of praxis. As far as I can see, there is not enough honest information being disseminated about praxis in order to inform theory.

This is true as much of past fights, such as Liverpool, as of the present ones such as the already mentioned debate over Venezuela. I don't live in Liverpool and I don't live in Venezuela so I have to rely on others in order to get an understanding of events in those areas. It's as much true of fights within various Trade Union caucuses. If I'm not there, I have to rely on others in order to accurately assess what is going on and to draw the necessary theoretical conclusions.

Defining and critiquing modern capitalism is the most important task facing socialists - but it is still only one task. Should we cease entirely all activism until such times as we have a definitive model of capitalism, comparable to the model which Marx drew of Victorian-era capitalism, or which Lenin drew of the interrelation between finance capitalism and imperialism? Models exist, such as Hardt and Negri's terrible book Empire. Should we stop the activism until everyone understands the why and wherefores thereof?

Of course not - and no one is suggesting that we do. I am one of the people looking to renew the powerful theoretical tools of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and the many other writers of the Marxist left. For all the importance of that attempt, however, it doesn't answer the immediate practical questions. What do we do about union bureaucracy? How can we connect to the working class in the modern era? How can we translate such a connection into political (as distinct from parliamentary) power?

These are questions which require urgent answers and which require as much information to build as full a picture as possible. From that picture we might draw answers. Knowing what each party is actually doing with its union activists might be a start - knowing what motions they're submitting, what fights they are fighting might allow us to organise a better fight back.

The SYN conference demonstrated that a certain level of openness between the sects was possible, that it was possible to work together. SYN could prove to be the hub for gathering and sharing out this information which we so desperately need, in order to inform our decisions on tactics. It certainly has the potential to unite the sects. Worrying cracks exist in that organisation, however, that prevent it moving from information gathering to far-reaching strategic decisions.

There was a motion yesterday from the AWL bunch, moved by David Broder and Sofie Buckland, requiring that the SYN support moves in certain LRC-affiliated unions to back non-Labour working class candidates. As a Labour member, I voted against the motion and it was easily defeated by a combination of other Labour activists and other groups not ready for a rupture with Labour. The motion demonstrated an important division.

Several unions have disaffiliated from Labour including the FBU and the RMT. The RMT particularly seems to be a centre of gravity for the workers' movement. Certain other unions, such as that of the oil workers, have taken the decision to amalgamate with it. There is currently little pressure among such unions to field independent candidates but there is also growing disillusion with Labour over the stitch ups in choosing candidates etc.

Eventually, should the Campaign for a New Workers Party actually begin to make some sort of impact, or should another big union disaffiliate from the Labour Party, there will be pressure to take sides. Either one can be a member of the Labour Party and support Labour Party candidates, or one can leave Labour and support other candidates. It's not an immediate choice, given that CNWP can't even get PCS to affiliate despite having half the executive and the President as signatories to the CNWP founding declaration.

It's pretty likely that the standing of trade union candidates or the backing of independent candidates (a la George Galloway) will cause a massive split amongst the members of the LRC, the SYN and between the different small parties. On the surface, it seems like a silly problem; back a Blairite versus back a trade unionist socialist. It's hardly a difficult decision, yet we'd risk the LRC parliamentary platform not to mention risk disconnection from the many trade union activists who still believe Labour can be recaptured.

Nor is it clear that backing an independent candidate, despite being excellent on principle, would actually achieve anything. I'm not expressing timidity at a new venture - I'm measuring loss versus gain on the issue. As soon as Labour begin the final dismantling of the NHS or we openly involve ourselves in a much broader war, I'll break my membership card in two and go out stumping for independents because there's nothing to lose. At the moment, however, there is something to lose, there is still a reason to be Labour.

Any reader who has hung in there this long will see clearly the difficulty in articulating a correct theory and relating it to a correct practice - i.e. in praxis. We don't need one more party trying to claim ground on which there are already a dozen groups, but, unless something changes, we can't remain in Labour forever. It would be intellectually dishonest to stay in a party that doesn't represent one's interests when there is absolutely no chance in reclaiming that party, renewing its internal democracy and redrawing its platform.

A reader might also be fairly clear on the absence of all necessary information on this issue. Though debates might rage on as to what RESPECT is doing, what CNWP is doing and so on, we don't have the entirety of the details. This is why the sects can denounce each other, safe in the knowledge that only a very few people actually have the information necessary to ameliorate or reject their point of view, rather than simply taking it on trust. I'm not attacking their basic honesty, this is just pragmatism.

This is the web which SYN now finds itself caught in. A certain degree of inertia is the result, a reduction to campaigning for individual issues. I look forward to taking a part in that campaigning and I hope that we'll follow up Ben Lewis' motion to get involved in a frank open discussion on where we go from here.