Issue 252 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published May 2001 Copyright © Socialist Review
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| The Socialist Alliance takes to the streets of Bristol |
'Supremely unconcerned' was how the Blairite Jane Griffiths chose to describe the Socialist Alliance challenge to her in the forthcoming general election for the seat of Reading East. She was responding to a front page article in the local paper which had as its headline 'Socialists Take On Jane Griffiths'. Standing against her, and representing the Socialist Alliance, is local train driver and Aslef member Darren Williams. 'The result of this article and the arrogance of Griffiths', said Darren, 'was that loads of people came up to us in the street, shook our hands and said they'd be supporting us in the general election.'
Griffiths should be concerned. Regardless of what happens to her seat (and Reading East is regarded as a marginal for New Labour), what is taking place among Labour supporters there is truly remarkable. As elsewhere up and down the country, discontent with the Labour government has reached high proportions. That in itself is not new--we saw it in the late 1960s with the Wilson government and again in the late 1970s with James Callaghan--but this time the beneficiary has not been the Tory Party. Labour's standing in the opinion polls has remained much higher than the Tories', showing how discredited the Tories still are after their 18 years of rule which left public services in ruins, privatisation running amok, and the vast majority of people working harder for little or no extra money while a tiny minority got richer and richer. But the lack of threat from the Tories, paradoxically, has also laid bare many of the deep wounds felt by Labour supporters at the Blairite 'project'. So there has been a significant break of individuals and groups to the left of Labour.
Liz Davies, former Islington councillor, prospective parliamentary candidate in Leeds and Grassroots Alliance member of Labour's NEC, is the most high profile of those who have broken with Labour to the left. Her public decision has clearly promoted much support and debate on the left. She has been criticised for abandoning Labour in papers such as Tribune, whose editor, Mark Seddon, was her one-time ally on the NEC. But the ferocity of some of the attacks on her, for example in the review of her book in the New Statesman, indicate the chord she has struck among Labour supporters and how worried many Labour leaders are by the Socialist Alliance. They know that in solidly working class towns such as Newark, Runcorn or Dudley, Labour members--sometimes former councillors--have broken with the party to back the Socialist Alliance. This is still not a direct threat in terms of winning seats from Labour. But already the Socialist Alliance has won significant minority votes in by-elections and council elections which put it in a position to pressurise Labour in many constituencies. The impact on Labour's cadre of activists is even greater. These are people who carried Labour's policies when the party was out of office in the 1980s and early 90s--now they find these policies thrown back in their faces by traditional Labour voters as they have to defend much more unpopular Blairite decisions. The contradictions between Blairism and what they have fought for all their lives in many cases becomes too great, and they leave.
But perhaps the greatest threat to Labour is that the Socialist Alliance publicly expresses what so many people feel--that there is a left alternative to the market, and that it is possible for such policies to be popular. This is even true in 'Middle England' epitomised by Reading (such an average town that it is a centre of marketing research), where most Labour voters are concerned by issues such as rail privatisation--it is a major commuter town--job losses in high tech industries, and the NHS.
So in towns like Reading, as elsewhere in the country, candidates and supporters of the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party have found they are tapping into a rich and very deep vein of support. For many socialists and working class people this coming election will be different--not simply for the fact that the level of support for the Tories is so low that the likelihood of William Hague winning is virtually nil. A second term Labour government is more or less assured even before the election has been called. But this election will be unique for a different reason--because Labour will face the greatest electoral challenge from the left that it has faced for generations. Many thousands of people will be keenly watching the election results coming in not because they have voted Labour in a desperate bid to keep the hated Tories out, but because they have voted positively, for a local socialist, working class candidate who stands for policies which they agree with.
One of these candidates is Steve Godward. He's a Fire Brigades Union rep and is standing in his local seat of Birmingham Erdington. Less than two months ago he was a member of the local Labour Party, and he was particularly incensed about a number of PFI projects for the local fire service. But what finally made him tear up his party card was being forced to watch the humiliation that a number of asylum seekers went through as they tried to pay for their groceries with vouchers. Just a few weeks later he found himself standing as the Socialist Alliance candidate for the general election. The result has been to galvanise and enthuse local activists. One local resident has allowed the Socialist Alliance to use the side of his house to paint a giant mural on it. The mural will picture a fireman hosing away a Blair lookalike, and will be done by local cartoonist Dave Minto.
Erdington is a safe Labour seat with a majority of over 12,500 votes at the 1997 election. Unlike the seat in Reading East there is very little chance that the Socialist Alliance vote will cause too much trouble for New Labour. Yet rather than leading to the demoralisation of activists, the challenge has led to the revival of the left, as Carol Williams, Steve Godward's election agent, describes: 'This is the first time in the eight or nine years I have been around that so many activists have been together. It has led to more confidence and more activity. Just last week a number of teachers came up to the stall we were doing and took leaflets off to do some canvassing. This weekend they will be going on and off buses in the local area with the candidate trying to drum up support. Everything that we do, we have people coming up to us saying "Good luck". Everyone is taking it very seriously.'
In part this is because the anger against New Labour goes so deep--this is why so many former Labour members are breaking and backing the Socialist Alliance. In Clive Solely's seat in west London--Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush--a former agent of Hammersmith Labour Party, Jane Hackworth Young, has drawn on her experience in the party to call a special briefing meeting which will go through the ABC of canvassing, explaining all the nitty-gritty stuff of what to do during an election campaign. She has also been joined by former Labour councillor Keith Mallinson, who has declared the Socialist Alliance to be 'a genuine alternative to Labour'. He stated, 'In the forthcoming general election Labour will attempt to portray itself as the party of the ordinary people. The reality is that the gap between rich and poor is widening, and our pensioners are among the worst off in Europe. Public services are in crisis, and all the government can suggest for London Underground are gimmicky deals which benefit private business... There is no need to be disillusioned. In Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush socialists can vote for an alternative. They can vote for Nick Grant and the Socialist Alliance, and I urge them to do so.'
It is this anger which has motivated many ex Labour supporters to now stand in opposition to it. Dudley striker Angela Thompson is not only one of the key leaders in the strike against PFI in her hospital, but has decided to represent her fellow strikers against Blairite Ian Pearson. 'We were given false promises in the 1997 election,' she says. 'In 1995 Ian Pearson led a march against the Tories. Yet since 1997 he has turned his back on us. Local support is overwhelming. Many people are appalled and disgusted.' Ian Pearson's majority of over 13,000 at the last election was undoubtedly boosted by the campaign against the Tories. He may not be under threat of losing his seat, but a good vote for Angela will not only give confidence to the Dudley strikers--it will also send a strong signal to the New Labour government that if it proceeds with more privatisation in the future it could face similar action by workers.
The candidacies of respected local trade unionists such as Steve Godward and Angela Thompson also highlight a major development for the Socialist Alliance--the discussion now taking place in many workplaces and union branches about whether trade union activists should continue to use the political fund to support Labour, or whether the money should go to an organisation which supports workers' struggle such as the Socialist Alliance. This means for the first time breaking the historic link between Labour and the unions on which the party was founded 100 years ago. The debates taking place on the letters pages of papers such as the Morning Star or Tribune, both of which oppose the Socialist Alliance, demonstrate that many activists in the Labour and trade union movement are in turmoil over whether to back a challenge to Labour.
Blair's decision to delay the election has allowed Socialist Alliance supporters a few extra weeks to increase the tempo of their campaign. Activists everywhere can use the extra time to try to inject politics into the election. In East Anglia they have bought a cheap second hand caravan which is being fitted with loudspeakers to tour the local shopping areas. 'When the election is called', says Ipswich candidate Peter Leech, 'we'll be able to go anywhere with it--they won't be able to stop us getting the message across. We'll be able to pull up outside a shopping centre, get the flags up on the caravan, get on the loudspeakers and start dishing leaflets out.' In Cambridge Socialist Alliance supporters have hit upon the idea of compiling a 'Nomination 500' list. Everyone who comes up to the stall on a Saturday is asked if they want to be one of the names on the official nomination of Howard Senter, the Socialist Alliance candidate. In Nottingham East when campaigners went door to door they came across a local charity worker who helps refugees. He invited the Socialist Alliance down to talk to local workers in the Forest Fields area where a lot of refugees have been placed.
It is this enthusiasm for what the Socialist Alliance stands for, and the positive reception it got so far, that is its greatest asset. New Labour is determined to make this a boring election campaign. It is in its interest that the issues are not discussed so it can cash in on its greatest vote winner--the continued unpopularity of the Tories. Hence it will avoid the hustings, it will be at pains to miss the public meetings, and the Blairite candidates will depend heavily on an expensive publicity campaign. For the Socialist Alliance it is the other way round. It will be a great boost to have an election broadcast on national television directed by Ken Loach, as well as a mailshot to every constituency where there is a Socialist Alliance candidate standing. But the basis of the Alliance is the simple fact that its policies are at one with what many millions of working class people believe in--whether to renationalise the rail network, raise the level of pensions and restore the earnings link, defend council housing, end tuition fees for students, or raise the minimum wage to £7.40 per hour. The key over the coming weeks is to get this across as far and wide as possible. This election gives the left a historic opportunity to shape working class politics in Britain after 7 June.
The question then will be, what next? Largely this depends on what happens over the coming weeks. The size of the Socialist Alliance vote nationally will determine with what confidence it goes forward to oppose New Labour in the months ahead. Many Labour and trade union activists are looking to see how the Socialist Alliance does in these elections, to see whether it can become a viable alternative for large numbers of workers.
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| Socialist Alliance supporters campaigning against racist scapegoating during the recent foot and mouth outbreak |
Some local factors may also be important. Where there is a Socialist Alliance candidate standing in clear opposition to New Labour over a very specific issue--such as Dudley striker Angela Thompson against Ian Pearson, or campaigning lawyer Louise Christian standing against Barbara Roche very specifically over New Labour's treatment of asylum seekers, or Ford worker Berlyne Hamilton standing in the solidly Labour seat of Dagenham against the closure of Ford--then this gives local working class people an opportunity to send a strong signal to the Labour government that they are angry about certain specific policies.
In turn this can have a huge effect on what happens after the election. One thing is certain-- New Labour is set to go on the offensive. The economic climate is set to get worse over the coming months. One of the reasons why Blair is desperate to go to the electorate before the summer is that the cold wind of the US recession will be felt even stronger in this country. New Labour's record so far suggests it will do little when the bosses shut factories and make people redundant. Therefore it will be up to local people and crucially the Socialist Alliance what the level of opposition will be.
New Labour will promise very little in this election campaign. Afterwards it will deliver more cuts, more privatisation, and more attacks on asylum seekers. Whether it goes ahead with the strong support of the electorate behind it, and with an air of confidence that this is what people want, or whether it will be looking over its shoulder at a sceptical electorate, shows the importance of the coming election. Today we can shape the level of opposition to the Blair government. We can translate the anger that many millions of people feel over what New Labour has done into a firm vote in favour of some sort of alternative. That is the task that confronts us, so that tomorrow we can ensure that things don't always go New Labour's way.
That means building the Socialist Alliance after the election as well, with a national structure and a broad campaigning platform which can contest future elections but which, even more importantly, can begin to build opposition round a range of issues from housing sell offs to attacks on asylum seekers. In this way we can begin to create a much stronger and livelier left, and put socialism back on the agenda.