When pushed he agreed to sign up to a manifesto which as yet does not exist, even though that manifesto may include the government's plans to privatise the tube. Such vacillation will do nothing to build the confidence of his supporters and will bring little comfort to the many people who are opposed to Labour's privatisation plans.

Furthermore, Livingstone argues that all the slurs against him were put out, not by Downing Street, but by the 'control freaks at Millbank'. He claims all that separates him from Labour's leaders on most issues is a matter of emphasis and not fundamental differences of policy, and he has gone out of his way to say how many of the polices that were carried out by the GLC in the early 1980s are ones which Blair himself supports today. This tactic certainly tied the selection panel up in knots. But it was not clever talking that got Livingstone on the ballot paper--rather it was the pressure of ordinary Labour Party members and trade unionists who have invested so much hope in him.

Yet, despite concessions and overtures of conciliation, the barrage of abuse continues. Blair has made it abundantly clear that his animosity goes much deeper than Livingstone is prepared to acknowledge, and that he will do all he can to try and stop him winning. For Livingstone to win, and for his popularity to remain high, he must fight like with like. Now is not the time to talk about reconciliation and the common ground. It is time to stress what is wrong with New Labour and what, as the popularly elected London mayor, he would do about it.

Swing to the left

Every indication is that this is what the bulk of people who are supporting Livingstone want. The audience at the hustings meeting organised by the transport unions in November was to the left, not only of Glenda Jackson, but also of Livingstone. He is tapping into core Old Labour support, people who have been pushed to the left under the Blair government. Many of them could not bring themselves to vote for New Labour in the European elections in June. Many also stayed away or voted for candidates who pitched themselves to the left of Labour in the Hamilton South and Leeds Central by-elections. But just as many of these people have moved to the left over the last two years, and continue to move to the left, Livingstone has moved to the right.

So Livingstone enthusiastically backed Nato's bombing of the Balkans, even though one in three people (and probably over half of Labour supporters) opposed it. And the contradiction is deeper than just that one issue. People are investing their hopes in him because they want to see a break from Blair's whole approach. Many of them see in Livingstone a left electoral alternative to Blair. This means that Livingstone is caught in the growing polarisation between the narrow layer of Blairites and the deepening mood among working class people. So he vacillates between articulating people's hostility to Blair and trying to downplay his differences with the Labour leadership. The fact that Livingstone is not outlining a root and branch programme to shift Labour to the left means that many Labour Party members who are desperate to see him win are also discussing whether it is time to build a socialist alternative to Labour. It is striking just how many people who are backing Livingstone as Labour's candidate are aware of the limitations of what he is offering. Support for Livingstone is seen as part of a wider project of building the forces of the left against Blair.

The position of London mayor could be used to mobilise opposition to Blair. Such a mobilisation would mean presenting a systematic alternative to the direction of the Blair government and building an alternative to Blair outside parliament and outside the official structures of the Labour Party. But to do this means cutting against Livingstone's strategy, which is to seek the endorsement of New Labour's leaders.

The stakes are high and Blair is prepared to go to any lengths to get Dobson selected. In part, Livingstone will be subjected to a torrent of personal abuse, but on top of this the lies will fly thick and fast about the record of the GLC and the Labour Party. Already it has been claimed that Livingstone and the GLC were responsible for the anti-gay Section 28 passed by the Thatcher government. There is also Blair's extraordinary claim that Ken Livingstone, Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn controlled the Labour Party during the 1980s and were responsible for its defeats.

Labour and the 1980s

In fact, Labour's problems during the 1980s had much more to do with the politics that are associated with Blair than he is prepared to admit. Underpinning the defeats of the 1980s was the experience of the last Labour government. For most people the Labour government of James Callaghan and Denis Healey in the 1970s meant incomes policy, IMF cuts which savaged areas such as education and health, cuts in the wages of most workers, a Social Contract, and a rising tide of unemployment. The Tories and the media present Labour as giving in to the unions during the Winter of Discontent of 1978-79. In reality, Labour's defeat was about groups of workers in public sector unions fed up with wage restraint and with Labour's inability to deliver them anything. The defeat had a polarising effect inside the Labour Party. Most moved to the left in the groundswell around Tony Benn for deputy leader, which culminated in Benn's narrow defeat in 1981. But the right of the party also moved--splitting away to form the Social Democratic Party which consistently split the Labour vote throughout the 1980s, allowing the Tories to hold on to power.

Far from the left controlling Labour in this period, the party was led by Michael Foot and then by Neil Kinnock, both of whom made repeated concessions to the right and both of whom are widely regarded as failures today. As Labour suffered electoral defeat through the 1980s, so too did the relentless shift to the right continue. Yet Labour could have beaten the Tories, in both 1987 and 1992. Following the miners' strike of 1984-85 Labour's popularity surged. In opinion polls after the strike Labour's support was at 40 percent in March 1986 and 41 percent in October 1986. The strike, more than anything else, brought the real class divisions in society to the fore. Yet Kinnock gave indifferent support to the miners, and after the strike went down to defeat he launched a vicious attack on socialists in Liverpool and a witch hunt against the left in the Labour Party. Labour also embraced the market and declared its intention to 'leapfrog Thatcher' by promoting wider share ownership.

The SDP was an even greater disaster than Labour and eventually collapsed, merging with the Liberals. Today many of Tony Blair's closest advisers are former SDP members, all of whom said in the 1980s that Labour would never form a government again. Now they are trying to introduce the policies they could not win in elections by stealth. Ken Livingstone's GLC, on the other hand, never lost an election and was abolished by Thatcher for this reason. Its policies on fares were extremely popular and could only be defeated by unelected judges.

Whether Blair achieves a rewrite of history, or whether he succeeds where former Labour leaders left off--to continue the attack on the left and the working class--depends on the level of resistance he meets both inside and outside the Labour Party. Tony Blair has declared war. He has picked the battle over who represents Labour for mayor. The victor, however, has yet to be decided--and the fight is crucial for socialists in the coming months.

London election

Londoners have to endure a public transport system that is one of the most expensive in the world--as Livingstone says, 'It is cheaper to travel one mile on Concorde than it is to travel one mile on the London tube.' The tube has suffered from a long term lack of investment. The government's own figures show that years of neglect have resulted in the tube accumulating an investment backlog of £1.2 billion. But despite predictions of future increases in passenger numbers, the government has made it clear that it has no intention of pumping more money into the tube.

There has been a clear split between Livingstone, who is opposed to Labour's plans for the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for the tube, and the other Labour mayoral candidates--Jackson and Dobson--who are enthusiastic supporters. The argument has become all the sharper because of the Paddington rail crash. This produced huge anger against the privatised rail companies and Railtrack. It marked a watershed for the Blair government that was forced to delay the announcement that Railtrack had been awarded a contract for part of London Underground. The last thing Blair needs is a fight over tube privatisation and there is now talk that they are rethinking Railtrack's contract altogether.

The PPP involves handing over the underground's track signalling, stations, tunnels and depots to three private companies. Two of the companies will be responsible for the deep tube lines, the other for the sub-surface lines (already awarded to Railtrack without any tendering process). Under the PPP the companies are required to invest approximately £7 billion in the tube infrastructure over a 15 year period--but it will only be a one-off injection of cash. There is no provision to add new lines or extend existing ones. In return they will be awarded a contract period of 30 years. Profits are guaranteed--the private companies will charge the public sector body that will be responsible for the overall operation of the tube a rental for using the network's infrastructure.

The PPP process has already got under way. The contracts are being drawn up and decided, and Labour has opted for a scheme that will cost the taxpayer and the tube traveller billions. City accountant Chantrey Vellacott DFK estimates that the private finance raised through the PPP scheme will cost £8 billion more than if the money had been raised publicly. This is because, as with private financing for the NHS, the private sector is forced to raise money at commercial rates of interest. The Blair government refuses to allow the public sector to raise finance for large capital expenditure projects by borrowing because this will be counted against the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR) figures.

The only option, it is argued, is to get private finance to save the tube. This is now Labour's policy for every single area of capital expenditure. In part this helps explain Livingstone's popularity--the introduction of PFI into many areas of the public sector is accompanied by attacks on wages and conditions. If Livingstone were to win Labour's nomination, and if he stood firm on the basis of opposition to the tube sell off, it would give confidence to all those up and down the country who are under attack from PFI schemes. The London mayor campaign has not only the potential to scupper tube privatisation, but could also throw Labour's entire spending plans into disarray.

The New York experience

For this, though, Livingstone has to offer a clear alternative. His proposals for the tube--to raise finance through issuing bonds--may not be privatisation today, but it does mean going cap in hand to the City. Livingstone refers to the experience of New York, where the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has raised billions of dollars through the bond scheme, but it is based on one simple premise--that it is underwritten by the fares that passengers pay and, ultimately, the value of the rolling stock. As a leaflet put out by the TWU Local 100 (the union that organises those who work on New York's transit network) explained:

'Five years ago the Metropolitan Transportation Authority borrowed billions of dollars by issuing bonds for mass transit not by tax revenues, but by anticipated fare increases. Debt service on the bonds is growing at an alarming rate, and fares can expect to soar if too few dollars are earmarked for transit. Sure, there are huge budget surpluses now and the economy is booming, but something strange seems to be going on. No one in city or state government or at the MTA offers any assurance that subway and bus fares will remain stable. And they aren't saying much about whether transit workers will finally receive long-delayed pay and improvements, either.'

And in a worrying sign of where the bond scheme leads to they conclude,

'New Yorkers are already paying far more than people in other cities are for subway and transportation. Fares cover some 66 percent of New York City Transit's operating expenses, compared to 29 percent in Boston, 30 percent in Los Angeles, 46 percent in Chicago and 50 percent in Washington DC.'

At a time when the Labour government has billions in its coffers right now the demand must be that some of this should go on improving the Underground. Indeed, the enormous social and economic problems in London--which contains 13 of the poorest 20 local boroughs in Britain---can only be tackled if the person elected to be London mayor fights for a redistribution of income to address many of these problems. For this to be done means not only opposing Blair's plans for tube privatisation, but offering an alternative to the pro-market policies of the Labour government. It also means organising the greatest resource in London--the millions of workers who have had to endure years of cutbacks by the Tories and now by Labour.