|
|
Blair’s election defeat
May’s local elections exposed the deep discontent
in British society. The remorseless attacks by Blair’s government on
living standards and public services are fuelling widespread anger. As a
result, New Labour lost over 300 council seats. The main beneficiary was
the Tories. Parties and independents on the left also gained. But a
stark warning was also issued by the gains made by the far-right BNP.
PETER TAAFFE writes on the post-election situation.
THE 2006 LOCAL elections in England were a graphic
illustration of the present political mood as well as an important
pointer to future political developments in Britain as a whole. These
elections were held in 176 local authorities. All seats were contested
on the 32 London borough councils. One third of seats were contested in
36 metropolitan boroughs, 20 unitary authorities and 82 shire district
councils. Half the council was elected in a further six shire districts.
The Tories made net gains of eleven councils and 317
seats. Labour had net losses of 17 councils and 320 seats. The Liberal
Democrats gained one council in net terms, and were almost unchanged in
terms of seats. The far-right British National Party (BNP) won 32 seats,
an increase of 27 on its pre-election position. The Greens won 30, an
increase of 21. The Socialist Party won increased council positions and
now has seven councillors. In Huddersfield, Jackie Grunsell, a Socialist
Party member standing under the banner of Save Huddersfield National
Health Service, scored a spectacular victory with a majority of 807 in a
big turnout for a local government election of just under 50%. Respect,
the party founded by ex-Labour MP, George Galloway, together with the
Socialist Workers’ Party, won 16 seats, an increase of 13.
The Conservatives won 39% of the national equivalent
of the vote, Labour scored 26%, its second-worst result in these kinds
of elections since the end of the second world war. The Liberal
Democrats received 25%. The turnout was approximately 37%, down by about
2% on the last time that these elections were held.
Although only partial – elections were not held in
Wales or Scotland, for instance – they nevertheless are a devastating
verdict on the rule of New Labour and its main figure, prime minister
Tony Blair. In fact, many workers who went to the polls on 4 May viewed
it as a referendum on his rule since 1997. The ebbing away of support
for New Labour has been compared to the coastal erosion of Britain, with
cliffs and villages falling remorselessly into the sea. This was
indicated already in the general election last year, which showed that
Labour had lost four million votes since 1997. This decay and decline
has been confirmed in these elections, with New Labour now six to eight
points behind the Tories in the polls. Blair is now the second-most
unpopular prime minister, on 26% personal rating, behind Harold Wilson
after he devalued the pound in 1967.
Yet those who skulk in the Blairite Number Ten
Downing Street ‘bunker’ are afflicted with the same air of unreality as
Margaret Thatcher and her acolytes in her last days in office. The
conclusion that the Blairites have drawn is: "They basically said people
were angry with Tony because they love him so much and are angry because
they think he might go". (The Observer, 7 May)
As significant as the rout of New Labour is the
re-emergence of the Tories, particularly in the south and London. They
achieved 40% of the vote – their best result since 1992 – with David
Cameron’s British version of ‘compassionate conservatism’ fully on view.
His slogan of ‘Vote Blue, Get Green’ was calculated to hoover up the
environmental vote, although his eco-friendly posturing was somewhat
undermined when it was discovered that while he rode his bike to work,
his clothes to change into were ferried in his car!
The election showed a north-south split, with the
Tories failing to make any significant headway: in Liverpool, for
instance, they still do not have a single councillor. Despite the
attempts of Cameron to renovate his party, to dispel the ghost of
Thatcherism, he still has the mark of Cain inherited from her disastrous
rule. This accounts for the fact that a layer of former, older Labour
workers, and others – as well as some sections of the middle class who
have gained from Labour’s public sector ‘reforms’ – resorted to a ‘nose
peg’ and reluctantly voted Labour to keep out the Tories.
The far-right protest vote
OTHERS COMPLAINED THAT their nose-peg had been
broken from overuse and protested by voting for minority parties! Some
went to the left of Labour in votes for the Socialist Party, the Greens,
and Respect. Others shifted towards the far-right BNP, which has now a
significant foothold in areas such as Barking and Dagenham, in parts of
the West Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire.
This could signify that ‘Europe’ has now come to
Britain in the form of the BNP. In a number of countries in Europe –
France, with Jean-Marie le Pen’s Front National, Vlaams Belang (formerly
Vlaams Blok) in Belgium, Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)
in Germany, Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party) in Austria,
etc – there are now significant far-right organisations, some with a
semi-fascist wing. Whether a stable far-right organisation could now
develop in Britain is an open question. One thing is clear, however: a
large part of the BNP vote came from workers in revolt against the
betrayals of New Labour who were determined to punish Blair at the
polls.
Whether this protest vote will cohere behind the BNP
and enable it to become a substantial and stable far-right will partly
depend on the resistance of the organised labour movement and the left.
This will not be achieved by a rehash of the methods which to some
extent worked in the 1970s. Propaganda and pop concerts – which have
their place in the broad anti-fascist movement – are inadequate by
themselves in defeating the BNP today. The BNP leadership has attuned
its propaganda to appeal precisely to workers who in previous periods
would have gravitated behind the banner of the labour movement and even
to the left.
This far-right, fundamentally anti-working class
organisation has sought to fit itself out in some ‘Old Labour’ clothes
discarded by Blair and the Blairites. For instance, it says
demagogically: "The BNP will take the railways back into public
ownership as a single company". And, in relation to Iraq: "It’s time to
take our soldiers home from America’s Iraq war". It even claims to stand
for "strong trade unions… to protect the workers from exploitation".
The far-right, fascistic or neo-fascist
organisations, beginning with Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, have
always mouthed ‘socialistic’ phraseology, calculated to appeal to the
working class and sections of the disillusioned middle class. This did
not alter their character as largely a middle-class phenomenon playing
the role of the watchdogs and hounds of capitalism used to smash and
atomise the working class and its organisations.
The BNP is presently far from this perspective. It
can and will be defeated. The immediate repercussions of its success
will be a heightened anti-fascist consciousness and determination to
confront it, by workers and particularly young people. We will expose
the character of the BNP and explain how to fight it and, perhaps as
importantly, how not to confront it in the charged situation that will
open up in Britain. The Blair government, if it continues for any length
of time, will play into the hands of the BNP and, more importantly, of a
renovated Tory Party.
Cameron has also had a disastrous effect on the
fortunes of the Liberal Democrats. They flat-lined in the elections.
This is a consequence of the shift back by those former Tory voters and
even a layer of workers who left their ‘traditional’ moorings in protest
against Thatcher and her successors. Cameron has sought to win them by
his noises on the environment, as well as slapping the wrists of big
business for "selling over-sized chocolate bars" (WH Smiths), and "sexy
underwear" to ten-year-old girls (BHS). The adoption of a neo-liberal
programme by the Liberal Democrats – enshrined in its Orange Book – has
also alienated its more radical members.
An orderly transition?
IN ANTICIPATION OF an electoral disaster, Blair had
flagged up, in advance, a reshuffle of his cabinet the day after the
elections. This was meant to distract attention from the results but had
precisely the opposite effect. Charles Clarke, the hapless home
secretary, was thrown to the wolves because of his complicity in the
release of ‘up to 1,000’ prisoners who ‘should have been deported’. In a
frantic effort to recover lost ground, he announced before the election
that all foreign prisoners would now face automatic deportation. If this
was carried out in an indiscriminate fashion – with people jailed for
minor crimes facing deportation, thus punishing their families – it
would be a gross infringement of civil liberties.
Contrary to what the rabid right-wing press, such as
the Daily Mail, argues, socialists and Marxists are not ‘soft’ on crime
or criminals. Working people in many areas of Britain are plagued by
petty criminals, vandalism, etc. But these are a product of the social
breakdown of society which, in turn, have been shaped by the calamity of
Thatcherism – "there is no such thing as society" – compounded by the
policies of New Labour. Demagogically, Blair, before coming into office,
promised to be "tough on the causes of crime as well as crime itself".
Despite introducing 43 pieces of legislation on
crime, the problems have not been solved. Anti-social behaviour orders
and curfews against young people, which have mushroomed, will not solve
crime or the sense of isolation, deprivation and alienation which go a
long way to contributing to it. Though not in a simple and
straightforward fashion, the provision of jobs, rising living standards,
a sense of social solidarity, and giving a stake to everybody in society
is a more effective way of eliminating crime and criminals than the
sweeping ‘law and order’ measures of New Labour and all the ‘official’
parties. Only on the basis of a social change, which poses the issue of
socialism, can crime and criminality begin to be tackled. This does not
preclude specific, concrete measures today to protect working-class
communities from the social blight which is a consequence, ultimately,
of poverty and the breakdown of society as well as the philosophy of
capitalism’s dog-eat-dog society.
Clarke’s dismissal was followed by the demotion of
Jack Straw from foreign secretary to leader of the House of Commons. The
press speculated that this was because of his description of a possible
US-led military attack on Iran as "nuts". This did not fit in with Bush
and Blair’s agenda. But it subsequently emerged that his real
misdemeanour was to suggest, on his visit to Baghdad with Condoleezza
Rice, that Iraq’s then prime minister, Ibrahim Al-Jafaari, was not the
only one who was "reluctant to leave office". This was taken and
probably meant as a hint that Blair should vacate Number Ten! This is
just one expression of the poisonous atmosphere of intrigue and jostling
for personal position which inflicts New Labour – centred on the
continuing saga of the Brown-Blair imbroglio. This took a new turn in
the aftermath of the May electoral debacle.
Gordon Brown warned Blair to remember that "when Mrs
Thatcher left… it was unstable, it was disorderly and it was
undignified". This was interpreted by Blair and the Blairites as a
thinly veiled threat of a ‘coup’ unless there was an ‘orderly
transition’, that is, Blair should get out as soon as possible and make
way for Brown as the new prime minister.
Significantly, the broad mass of New Labour MPs, who
up to now have clung to the coattails of Blair as a ‘vote winner’, seem
to be undergoing a change of mind. They could be compared to the ‘plain’
– the broad mass of ‘neutral’ assembly men during the French revolution
who supported the dominant force in power at any one time so long as
their interests were defended and enhanced. However, once their position
was in danger they turfed out the incumbent!
Blair once brazenly boasted: "I have taken from my
party everything they thought they believed in. I have stripped them of
their core beliefs. What keeps it together is power". (Hansard, 30
November 2005) But this election shows this may no longer be the case as
electoral nemesis looms for big swaths of New Labour MPs. If things go
on as they are at present, Blair’s continued leasehold on the prime
minister’s office threatens their parliamentary positions and everything
that goes with them.
Public services revolt
BROWN’S STRUGGLE FOR the throne is not primarily
ideological. He is "New Labour to his fingertips", as Blair admitted.
Moreover, he is more responsible for many of New Labour’s policies than
others in the cabinet: the catastrophe of privatisation and,
particularly, of the private finance initiative (PFI) which has added to
the crisis in the health sector. This was illustrated by a recent House
of Commons committee of enquiry which showed that PFI sharks in Norwich
had pocketed over £80 million in ‘overpayments’ from PFI contracts. The
committee characterised this as "the unacceptable face of capitalism",
but absolutely no punishment was suggested for the parasites who had
profited from this. Compare this to the fining of half-a-million pounds
and banning from office of the Liverpool city councillors for an
alleged, ‘notional’ loss in interest payments because they set a rate
late.
This has added to the opposition – now of volcanic
proportions – which has erupted over the crisis in the National Health
Service (NHS). Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, got a whiff of
this when she addressed the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) conference.
She boasted that the past year had been the "best ever" for the NHS,
which resulted in such a tirade of booing and hissing that she was
unable to finish her speech. Health spending has been pushed up in the
past couple of years – it had been relentlessly held down by Brown with
public expenditure as a whole in the previous period – but most of the
benefit has been cornered by higher-paid managers and doctors with only
limited benefits to patients and health workers. The outcry at the RCN
conference ranks alongside the treatment meted out to Blair at the
Women’s Institute conference a few years ago, when he was also forced to
leave the stage to catcalls. When Hewitt addressed the health conference
of the public-sector union, Unison, jeers and laughter greeted her
claims of "vast improvements".
This revolt is just one manifestation of the mass
opposition to the growing social and economic decline which Britain
faces. Ultimately, this also explains the civil war in the top echelons
of the Labour Party. Its much-vaunted education ‘reforms’ are widely
discredited. The rich applicants to set up academies, it has now been
revealed, donate only peanuts - £2 million for a school – while
receiving the backing of billions of pounds from the state. The fact
that few, even in the ranks of New Labour, support its education bill is
the very reason why the government will push on. They are attempting to
lock Brown into Blair’s ‘reforms’ of the public sector which, in
reality, are massive counter-reforms. Half-a-million children are in
schools without head teachers because of the stress of working under the
‘performance-related’ and ‘testing’ regime.
Priding themselves as ‘managers’ of the system, the
mania of New Labour for targets and performance-related pay bears a
striking resemblance to the crude techniques practiced under the
Stalinist bureaucracies of Russia, Eastern Europe, etc. Because power
was vested in a remote, bureaucratic elite, production was judged by its
‘extensive’ character – crude output of tractors, for instance – and not
by ‘intensive’ features of quality, design, etc. In a mirror image of
Stalinism – albeit based on a different social system, capitalism – New
Labour’s education policies will turn out androids, perhaps in the image
of Hazel Blears, rather than rounded-out individuals! This fits in
perfectly with capitalism’s current needs for unthinking industrial
automatons geared to maximising profit.
Fleecing the workers
IN THE ECONOMIC sphere, the wheels are coming off
Brown’s economic bandwagon. The current balance of trade is disastrous,
with industrial exports now no more than 40% of the total. Exports as a
whole do not cover the stream of imports flooding into Britain. Under
successive Tory and New Labour governments, Britain has been converted
from the former ‘workshop of the world’, or at least a factory, into a
bank!
Capitalist economists take comfort from the fact
that Britain’s exports of services and tributes from investment abroad
currently plug the gap in the balance of trade and, therefore, the
British ship of state will continue to travel smoothly on calm economic
waters. However, there is a deadly combination of circumstances looming
which may, even if it does not sink this ship, severely puncture it
below the water line.
British capitalism has benefited from a regular
supply of cheap labour. This has limited the income of the working class
resulting in a colossal wealth polarisation. Labour MP, Michael Meacher,
has revealed that, according to the government’s own figures, 11.4
million, a fifth of the population, still live in poverty while, last
year, the average FTSE 100 chief executive earned £32,633 a week – 408
times the state pension and 185 times the minimum wage! (The Guardian,
11 May) Commenting on this massive disparity, the former deputy chairman
of Lloyd’s said: "God would not have made them sheep if he did not
intend them to be fleeced".
The pockets of the bosses have also bulged further
as a result of a new supply of cheap labour from immigration. This race
to the bottom has reached such a stage that Polish workers who have been
in Britain for three or four years complain that they are being undercut
by their fellow countrymen and women who have come here in the recent
period and are prepared to work on less wages.
The recent rise in unemployment, together with the
dire housing crisis and the supply of cheap labour from abroad, has
undoubtedly assisted the BNP in some areas. This is only possible
because the labour movement has not effectively countered the
anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant policies of the BNP by counterposing the
need to draw these workers into the unions and fight for a living wage
for all, linked to a programme to build affordable homes, provide jobs
on a living wage, etc.
Despite this supply of cheap labour, Britain now is
not unique in having low unit-wage costs, which have meant higher
profits for the employers. The neo-liberal measures which created these
conditions in Britain have spread to Europe, particularly Germany, where
real wages are relentlessly being driven down because of ineffective
resistance from the right-wing trade union leaders. This tends to
undermine British capitalism’s previous advantage. International
developments are also conspiring against a continuation of Brown’s
‘economic miracle’.
The economy in Britain may still develop by 2% or
more in the next year, but world economic storm clouds are gathering
which could severely undercut the rosy perspectives of Brown on the
economic front. The recent sudden, temporary collapse in commodity
prices which, in turn, affected share prices on the London stock
exchange could be a heat lightning warning of what is to come. Andrew
Glyn, a left-wing economist, was correct when he warned in the Financial
Times about the consequences of the measures that world capitalism has
taken to extend the present economic cycle: "Stable economic conditions
themselves encourage greater risk taking. Financial innovation may have
thickened the financial elastic, but it is becoming more and more
tightly stretched. Who can be confident that it will not snap?" (26
April)
The much-lauded contribution of ‘services’ to the
coffers of British capitalism is modest when compared to the
contribution of exporting goods. Only £21 billion was earned by Britain
in 2005 overseas earnings from the provision of insurance, banking and
other financial services, which was just one-tenth of the earnings from
the export of goods.
At the same time, Brown has been fortunate to have
been chancellor during a growth phase of the world economy. That will
come to an end in the next period – not necessarily measured in weeks
and months. But such are the piled-up contradictions of world capitalism
that there could be a sudden collapse in which the weakness of British
capitalism will be starkly revealed. This will impact decisively on
already fragile living standards in Britain.
Official inflation figures are a fiction. Some food
prices may be stagnant or may even have dropped, and clothes, because of
the flood of Chinese imports, may likewise be low-priced. But so-called
‘non-essential’ items, videos, haircuts, sports facilities and holidays,
have all climbed in price. Moreover, so low are the wages in Britain –
the majority of the population are below £28,000 income per year – while
these prices and housing costs soar, industrial action on the issues of
wages, notwithstanding the tame trade union leadership, can break out in
the next period. Post Office and Usdaw shop workers are both balloting
for strike action. There is the ongoing struggle within the civil
service, with Department of Work and Pensions workers involved in a
series of strikes over job cuts.
Class conflict ahead
MORE CONFLICT LOOMS on pensions with strike threats
from local government and rail workers. For the first time since 1926,
the majority of rail unions are threatening to act together. The
redundancies proposed in the NHS, which one report in April says could
reach 100,000, will also ratchet up social and industrial collisions,
posing the possibility of a clash between the government and an
increasingly angry workforce joined by ‘health users’.
The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis of the
post-election situation is that even if there is not a world economic
crisis the ruthless pursuit of neo-liberal policies by the capitalists
is preparing the ground for a huge conflict between the classes in
Britain. There are some parallels today with the situation which
obtained before the first world war. The crucial difference between then
and now, however, is that mass political parties had been built or were
in the process of being built in the pre-1914 years.
That, unfortunately, is not yet the case now. This
has some deleterious consequences for the labour movement today. In the
recent election, there were unmistakable signs of an ethnic polarisation
in some areas reflected most markedly in support for the BNP by
communities of predominantly white workers. This was evident
particularly in areas which ‘interface’ with inner-city areas whose
inhabitants felt threatened by ‘incomers’ and fear worsening social
conditions. Such an area was Barking and Dagenham, where the BNP in the
five previous by-elections had built a base with an average support of
35% of the electorate.
This support can be undermined but only on the basis
of clear policies and the building of a new mass workers’ party to
replace the discredited New Labour model. This is shown by the
developments in Germany where the WASG has begun to cut across the
attractiveness of the far-right to a layer even of workers who have been
repelled by the shift towards the right by German social democracy. This
is what the NPD recently said about the WASG: "The secession of the WASG
Left, away from the Left Party-PDS could have repercussions for the NPD.
In the forthcoming regional state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg
Vorpommern, they [the NPD] will be confronted with an opponent who will
try to attract voters on the basis of fundamental political opposition".
(Deutsche Stimme)
This underlines the urgency of creating a new mass
formation of working-class people in Britain which can act as a pole of
attraction to those workers who otherwise could be pulled into the
poisonous orbit of the BNP. This party has not yet got a serious
implantation in the working class but developments in other countries in
Europe should serve as a warning. In Belgium for instance, in 1987, the
Vlaams Blok, the far-right, semi-fascist Flemish party got no more than
1.9% in national elections. In 1991, it shot up to 6.6%. There was
almost a direct correlation with the collapse of the Berlin wall and the
shift towards the right of the ex-workers’ mass political organisations
in Belgium and the rise of the far-right. A further degeneration in a
neo-liberal direction of these parties and the shift towards the right
of the trade union leaders meant that the Vlaams Blok capitalised on the
vacuum which has existed and won 11% in the national elections in 2003.
In the Flemish parliament, its success is even more pronounced. In 1999,
it got 15.8% of the vote, which climbed to 24% in 2004. In the electoral
district of the port of Antwerp in 2004, 30% voted for the Vlaams Blok.
Without question, if the labour movement and the
working class had created from the outset the beginnings of a mass
workers’ party in Belgium, the success of the Vlaams Blok could have
been severely undermined, if not nullified. The same applies to other
countries in Europe.
A Brown future?
THE THREAT OF a resurgent far-right party like the
BNP cannot be dismissed and needs to be fought. However, the main
political developments in Britain in the next period will partly centre
on the conflicts at the top of New Labour, particularly the continuing
clash between Blair and Brown. Although Blair promises to continue in
office for at least a year longer, a sudden collapse and his resignation
cannot be ruled out. This partly depends upon events, both in Britain
and internationally.
Huge battles loom on the NHS, pensions and
education. A by-election will take place in the seat of the late
independent Labour MP, Peter Law, in Blaenau Gwent, South Wales. His
widow, Trish Law, is standing on an independent ticket and could beat
the New Labour nominee. This may further unnerve the ‘plain’ in the
Parliamentary Labour Party, thus undermining Blair’s position.
Therefore, a Brown premiership could be on the cards sooner rather than
later.
Yet Brown is the twin pillar of the New Labour
project and is viewed in this fashion by the more politically developed
sections of the labour movement and the working class. This means there
is already suspicion of him by active workers even before he takes over
from Blair. However, it is likely that in the initial period there could
be widespread illusions amongst the working class as a whole that a
different route will be opened up to the labour movement should he
assume the reins of power. "We treasure the deceit that uplifts us
rather than the thousands of burdensome truths", as the Russian proverb
puts it. The outriders for Brown, if not Brown himself, have made
sufficient ‘Old Labour’ noises to foster the illusion that Brown will be
different.
The Blairistas want Blair to remain at the helm for
as long as he can as a means of locking in Blair’s ‘reforms’ which Brown
will therefore be forced to preside over. In fundamentals, Brown will be
no different to Blair, and this will be grasped by the British people
and the working class at a certain stage. Yet he could initially create
the impression that the ‘old order’ has been discarded by some changes
he will introduce. For instance, he could withdraw the troops from Iraq,
scale down some of the more blatant ‘marketisation’ policies, and water
down or kick into the long grass the education bill, assuming that it
has not been buried before then. This would not represent a return to
‘Old Labour’, ie reformist policies underpinned by the distant aim of
‘socialism’. But it may be sufficient to stabilise a Brown regime, even
complicating temporarily the formation of a large new mass workers’
party.
However, radical and leftward-moving workers in
general will not be reconciled to Brown. The parliamentary left is weak
organisationally, and even more so ideologically. Its only philosophy is
more of the same: further conferences in July organised by the Labour
Representation Committee with another siren call for people to join the
Labour Party and ‘change its course’. In the charged social and
political atmosphere which will develop in Britain, even if the bottom
does not drop out of the world economy, the prospects for genuine
socialism and Marxism have increased by the outcome of the recent
elections.
The prospects for the Campaign for a New Workers’
Party have been heightened by the results. Huddling together in the
‘muddled middle’, all three traditional parties offer no solution. A new
turbulent and radical period is opening up in Britain in which the ideas
of genuine socialism and Marxism will find a greater and greater echo.
Respect and the elections
THE SOCIALIST, the Socialist Party’s weekly
newspaper, carried an article in issue 439 by Judy Beishon on
Respect’s election results. Some, particularly the Socialist Workers’
Party (SWP), the backbone of Respect, objected to the following
statement in the article: "Respect declares that their twelve council
seats in Tower Hamlets are ‘one more than the BNP in Barking and
Dagenham’. This would be a cause for great celebration by the left as
a whole, if it had been achieved on a clear class-based programme. But
instead, unfortunately, Respect could unconsciously further the
beginnings of a polarisation based on racial division, by not
countering the growing perception that it is a ‘party for Muslims’."
The SWP made its objection in its ‘Party Notes’,
which it distributes internally within their party. But why have they
not publicly taken up the Socialist Party and others if they feel so
strongly about our criticisms and, it seems, those of Bob Crow (of the
railway workers’ union RMT)? The increased number of councillors for
Respect is an important political development. It is related, in our
view, to the manifestation in this election of a certain racial
polarisation (see accompanying article). Socialists should do nothing,
even inadvertently, to widen this divide, which is not wide or
unbridgeable at present. This was the concern of the Socialist Party
in raising the above criticisms of Respect and the SWP.
In their notes, the SWP wrote: "We have to take
these arguments on and should not be defensive in the slightest. These
people consciously ignore the excellent results of comrades like Jerry
in Bristol, Maxine in Sheffield and Albert in Harlesden. Our
candidates are not just Muslims – Olli Rahman, one of our councillors
is a PCS activist, Abdul Sheik a councillor in Newham is an ex-shop
steward at Fords in Dagenham and two of our key candidates in Newham
are RMT members (Bob Crow didn’t know this! That maybe because he
didn’t look beyond our candidates’ ethnic/religious origins)".
Are the criticisms of Respect and, by definition,
the SWP made by the Socialist Party and Bob Crow inaccurate and
unfair? The simple aphorism, ‘show me who your friends are and I’ll
show you who you are’ applies in politics. In the 2004 European and
London Authority elections, the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB),
as Clive Heemskerk pointed out in the July/August 2004 edition of
Socialism Today, "gave selective support to Respect, claim[ing] that
support for Respect amongst Muslims was higher ‘in the five regions
where MAB specifically recommended Respect candidates… endorsing the
Muslim bloc phenomenon’. (MAB press release, First step in the right
direction, 17 June 2004)."
Our article went on to state: "MAB’s aim is clear,
to establish ‘a Muslim bloc’ to bargain for the ‘best deal for
Muslims’ from any party, including pro-capitalist ones, rather than to
join a drive for a new mass workers’ party that could address the
needs of all sections of the working class. Respect, by portraying
itself as ‘the party for Muslims’, unfortunately has not challenged
this approach, which will advance neither the real interests of
workers who are Muslims nor aid the development of working-class
unity".
We also pointed out that if Respect represented a
turning away from Labour, now a capitalist party, by Asian workers
towards a more developed class consciousness, this would indeed be a
positive step. But, unfortunately, under the leadership of George
Galloway and the SWP, Respect has so far not acted as this bridge to a
new workers’ party, but reinforced the idea of ‘Muslim interests’
completely separate from those of other sections of the working class.
Neither the SWP nor George Galloway repudiated these criticisms at the
time nor do they in their current statement.
Despite the protestations of the SWP it remains a
fact that all the successful candidates for Respect were Asians. The
SWP did not get a single member of its party elected in 2006 and now
has just one councillor in Respect’s ranks, Michael Lavallette in
Preston. He was elected in 2003 under the banner of the Socialist
Alliance. The fact that some successful Respect council candidates
were PCS activists, for instance Oliur Rahman in Tower Hamlets, does
not, however, alter the political character of Respect.
During the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and now
there were shop stewards in the ranks of Sinn Fein, some of whom were
effective in the workplace, often representing workers from both sides
of the religious divide. Some of these workers believed, no doubt,
they could appeal to Protestant workers on a political level because
of the industrial positions which they held. But the perception in the
eyes of Protestant workers of Sinn Fein as an organisation based on
one section of the Catholic community made it, and continues to make
it, impossible for this organisation to reach over the religious
divide to workers on the other side. That can only be done in Northern
Ireland through a new mass workers’ party, bringing together Catholic
and Protestant workers, which rejects the sectarian policies of the
main parties on both sides of the divide. The Socialist Party in
Northern Ireland has tirelessly worked for this goal at a time, by the
way, when the SWP at times acted as uncritical supporters of Sinn
Fein.
The situation in Britain is nowhere near that of
Northern Ireland at the present time. But the Northern Ireland of 35
years ago was not what it is today. Before the Troubles, Catholic and
Protestant workers came together in the Northern Ireland Labour Party,
which managed to win 100,000 votes in the 1970 general election.
Despite its limitations, this represented a bridgehead for the
beginnings of a process for cementing class unity. Unfortunately, this
prospect was shattered through the ‘troubles’ and the resulting
sectarian polarisation which scars the lives of workers in Northern
Ireland today.
The lessons of this conflict and how it began, as
well as other examples from history of how the labour movement sought
to overcome religious or sectarian divisions, is lost on the
leadership of Respect and particularly the SWP. The fact that some
non-Asian, SWP members received reasonable votes in the circumstances,
is to be welcomed. But this does not undermine the perception among
broad layers of the working class, not just ourselves, that Respect is
narrowly based on one section of the community, including the
perception by many Asians, Muslims in particular, that it is ‘their’
party. Respect itself did nothing to refute this.
Contrast the approach of the SWP and Respect to
the successful campaign of Jackie Grunsell in Huddersfield. She stood
on a ‘Save the NHS’ platform, a clear class issue, which cut across
communal divisions. We wish that Respect had positioned itself and
campaigned in the same way because, as we explained in The
Socialist, if these electoral victories of Respect had been on a
clear class programme and perspectives, the left would have welcomed
this as a starting point for a discussion on a new mass workers’
party. Of necessity, this would also involve a discussion on the need
for a federal approach towards a new workers’ party, something the SWP
rejects.
However, despite our criticisms of Respect and
George Galloway, we would still hope that, through a discussion –
which involves honestly dealing with political differences – the basis
could be laid for a common approach to assembling the forces of a new
mass workers’ party in Britain. Because of its origins, its appeal to
one section of the community, as well as its limited programme and
internal regime, Respect – if it continues on its present trajectory –
will not be able to break out of its present political cul-de-sac.
|