The far left and the general election
Posted on Friday 7 May, 2010
Filed Under The left
ENGELS famously compared election results to a thermometer capable of registering the political temperature among the working class. If yesterday’s outcome is anything to go by, it is distinctly nippy for the time of year.
The next few days will doubtless see the Marxist left advance the same excuses for its poor performance that it put forward in 2005 and in 2001 and in 1997 and in [insert date of contest here].
Far left candidates were squeezed by the pressure to vote Labour to keep the Tories out, Socialist Worker is already arguing on its website. OK, comrades. So when wasn’t this the case? When will it not be the case in future?
The other all-purpose platitude is the claim that the appalling results are irrelevant anyway because ‘the real struggle is outside Parliament’. Like all good truisms, such an assertion is logically unassailable. But if that is so, why bother walking down the parliamentary road to lost deposits?
The blogger most closely associated with Respect is glossing over the collapse of his earlier fantasies about his party holding the balance of power in a hung parliament perspective with an incisive post about speed cameras in Swindon.
The point is, if left groups attempt to play at mainstream politics, they will be judged by the yardsticks of mainstream politics. And the principal yardstick of mainstream politics is winning seats.
Scrabbling around for votes in many instances lower even than those secured by local whackjobs banking on the support of their mum and their mates from down the pub can only have demoralised the many activists who invested their personal energies in such efforts.
There are two cohesive strategies open to the serious class struggle left right now. Option one is putting together a permanent socialist party capable of encompassing a wide range of leftwing opinion and then settling down for at least a decade of hard graft putting down roots in local communities.
Such a formation might just – as the Scottish Socialist Party experience proved before it was wrecked by a combination of one man’s rampant priapism and the machinations of actually existing democratic centralism – cross a low proportional representation threshold.
There is not the slightest evidence that the far left as currently constituted is capable of rising to the dizzying heights of elementary common sense. The prospect is rather that it will instead stick to the brand of classic Leninist microsect building entirely out of step with British conditions, while continuing to flit lightmindedly from one electoral flag of convenience to another.
Hint, guys: even standing under the same name in two elections running would represent some kind of progress on this front. You really should give it a try sometime.
The other option is to promote basic socialist ideas – in a fashion that will inevitably fall far, far short of a full Marxist understanding of class politics – inside the Labour Party. The space available to do so is highly limited.
But it does exist, and may marginally expand if there is some sort of intellectual reassertion of social democracy within Labourism in the coming period.
Attending ward meetings may not seem much of a step forward for the world revolution. It hardly promises the sort of white knuckle ride that will appeal to newly-radicalised young activists, or even many older comrades who have been there, seen it, done that. I guess that dialectics can be deceptive, right?
However, such is the degree to which class consciousness has been eroded by decades of industrial defeat and free market fundamentalism that no other approach is even remotely feasible.
Or is it really impossible even for the most delusional SWPer not to see the contradiction inherent in running headlines such as ‘TUSC tapping anger against Labour’ over the news that star Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates picked up under 2% of the poll yesterday? Attempts to talk up failure will fool few observers.
There is a final warning on offer in last night’s voting statistics. The British National Party now has a palpable base several hundred strong in every working class area in Britain, something that need not have happened if the radical left had been able to articulate discontent at the base of society.
The dangers of not embracing sobriety should be plain to all.
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125 Responses to “The far left and the general election”
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Whatever their faults the Greens are at least part of a debate on capitalism (its environmental unsustainability, waste and inequality) that is not (and probably cannot) take place in the Labour Party. Part of the Labour left may have taken up the idea of the Green New Deal but not the wider picture of working for alternatives to capitalism that do not depend on relying on reformist parliamentary parties to deliver centralised, statist services to a dis-empowered, client electorate.
When was the last time anyone in the Labour Party discussed ending wage slavery or the division of Labour? Not since 1910 I’d guess.
Just to add the main task is preparing to fight the onslaught on the public services being prepared by the Tories. That plan is in trouble now, I’m glad to say. PR’s take on it all is here
http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/3033
Have the Greenies settled their internal dispute as to whether wind turbines replace fossil fuel [GOOD!] or shred up critically endangered birdies [BAD!] yet?
Victory to The Green Man!
P.S. Relax and be happy
http://www.workersoftheworldrelax.org/combined7.swf
Remember the Miners’ Strike?
There’s this in Al-Grauniad:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/05/peter-heathfield-miners-num
Shouldn’t the slimmer possessors of ASBOs be working down the mines? The plumper ones – the Vicky Pollards – could play at being pit ponies, too!
Dave’s analysis is spot on. I am greatly encouraged to see many now talking about re-joining Labour. That is exactly the mood I have picked up in the last 48 hours in Calder Valley .
It really is time those fed-up tilting at windmills helped us in the coming period – the game is up for RESPECT and it never started for TUSC. look at the results in Scotland and the North. wake up, smell the coffee, and come back to Labour.
The Greens, Carolne Lucas aside, got nowhere – and stood candidates against socialist Labour MPs.
As it stood, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell romped home – and showed remarkably what appetite there is, not for grandstanding, but solid work and socialist values. Congrats to all LRC-supported MPs……
For those who haven’t seen them, the full far left general election results are here. Apart from the three Respect results and the odd independent, the results are uniformly awful. Will this cause a rethink on the far left? Not on your nelly.
“As I understand it Caroline L will have to give up here MEP role to be MP so won’t be quite as rich as you imagine. “
Er, not immediately? Only getting about 65K a year….poor thing… No EU pay off eh?
Still, no one ever started in politics for self advancement eh?
I always find this amusing, how bits of the British left and particularly those who consider themselves revolutionaries (chance would be a fine thing) are perfectly capable of analytical criticism of business or political leaders, yet should one of their heroes achieve some power, then criticism is ditched.
The obvious questions about, where’s the money? What about careerism? Are avoided at all costs.
We’ve seen this before (Galloway, etc) and how it weakens any alternative, as those leaders are seen as merely just another part of the elite and indulging themselves.
It is a pity that elementary lessons are not learnt.
the real struggle is outside Parliament’. Like all good truisms, such an assertion is logically unassailable.
But if that is so,why bother walking down the parliamentary road to grand delusions?
The demise of Respect’s hegemony over the left (even if the corpse still walks in local government for a while)should be an advantage to the latter. And as johng pithily pointed out, Respect with the SWP could win a seat last time out.
Attend ward meetings and embrace sobriety? Now there’s an unresolvable contradiction.
Sue R – it’s not necessarily about influencing the Labour Party through conference, branches etc although this is part. It is also about strengthening and fighting in the trade unions to push their considerable weight in the party that relies heavily on donations from them.
I didn’t suggest that it is going to be easy, it may even prove impossible. But the struggle against what is coming has to be parliamentary as well es extra-parliamentary. The two are complimentary.
I just don’t see the point in staying outside the party anymore. I have spent years campaigning against NL policies and wars etc. but I can still do that as a party member.
I understand that people don’t feel the same and respect that. I would have laughed at anyone who said at the beginning of the year that I would have joined Labour. But concrete circumstances change. Revolution is not round the corner and the masses whether we like it or not still identify Labour as their party and as a socialist I feel that it is an important arena of struggle
This will be of interest to those who give some thought to a post-industrial future:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/07/real-requiem-for-detroit#start-of-comments
I notice that some – NOT all – people who currently contribute to CiF seem to be snarling ‘Mail’ readers at heart but more literate and better-informed than most ‘Mail’ readers.
@Bill Corr
Or how about Why are Cuban mechanics the best in the world?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/17/questions-new-world
@Steve
I recognise why you have decided to join the Labour Party. I felt similarly when I originally joined after Thatchers victory in 1979. I see that susan press’s web site quotes the LRC aim of “the election of a Labour Government and the implementation of a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of the working class and the promotion of internationalism, peace and equality.” It was this idea that kept me going through all the years of organising, fund raising, boring meetings, failures and defeats. I have to say that although this view was tolerated in the party and even seemingly endorsed by many of the party’s ‘bright young things’ who later went on to high office (and lobbying companies and corporate directorships) it actually counted for nothing. The primary purpose of the Labour Party is simply to get more Party members elected to national and local government, not to change the power structures of society. Its reliance on parliamentary activity and its ideology (or lack of it) undermines the intentions of its committed members. It is successful however (as long as the mainly two-party system continues) in providing a career path into the ‘political class’ and beyond for those willing to travel without too much ideological baggage. Useless in power and powerless in opposition. Good luck to you, all the same.
Sure the Labour Govt has done nothing against capitalism. However, by any measure public services, especially health and education, have improved greatly since 1997. Crime has fallen greatly. Also, if the Tories had been in power in 1998 when the economy collapsed, things would have been horrific.
Best comment from Les Abbey:
“If those on the left really want to make a difference they should do it from inside the Labour Party and take on the New Labour clique which now controls the party.”
I’d say that applies to Andy Newman, ironic that in some ways his blog is more pro-Labout than this one. Modernity seems to take a plague on all houses approach but I’d rather be in a mass party fighting our corner than stay at home whining on my computer.
Heh – Osler so well said.
What makes SU so delusional? Don’t they get tired of themselves?
OT –
SU will delete even the most mildly critical of comments. Their skin is even thinner than their Islamic fascist friends.
Steve. Better to be in a fight for power somewhere than out in the unelectable wilderness of the looney left.
David,
While your comments on the (delusory) reaction of far left groups to their abysmal results in the general electon are no doubt true and depressing in their repetitiveness.
The reaction of Respect by contrast is sober and conciliatory by contrast. Desite the disappointments of Thursday night, the simple of groups to the left of labour is that only Respect and the Greens had any resonance with broad layers of voters in a handful of consistituencies. That the starting point for the left in terms of building a left electoral alliance.
@Jimmy Glesga
We are all in the wilderness. Its just that some of us don’t have to pay membership subscriptions for the privilege.
Anyone know what the combined left vote was? Considering the BNP polled half a million votes across their 300 odd constituencys I’d say we haven’t heard the last of ‘em…
“I’d rather be in a mass party fighting our corner”
Good for you, enthusiasm often wins over experience.
But surely that is part of the draw of politics? For some it is a means to an end, a career, something to make them feel good, or even fulfilling the role of a private religion, who knows?
I would just hope that in three plus decades socialist wouldn’t hae forgotten all that’s gone on, the Labour party purges under Kinnock & co. then from the new Labour takeover, removal of clause 4, tens of thousands if not hundreds joining Labour.
Then ops, tens of thousands leaving Labour. Isn’t Labour Party membership down to an all time low? Hey no connection with New Labour’s attacks on the working classes??
I’m told that the political environment within Labour is comparatively sterile to decades ago and as you can see from some (once ex-Far left) blogs criticising the leadership is frowned upon.
Now if you’re ex-Leninists or something similar you probably find the rules of the LP loose, but to the rest of us, the working classes, who have to put up with all the new Labour bullshit, the dodgy training courses, poor council accommodation, etc it is a bit different.
I think Gordon Brown is a useless pile of shite, charmless and with the political nous of a budgerigar, however, I suspect that if I were a LP member (even a closet Marxist) such a statement would get me into trouble, but thankfully I am not.
I can’t stand New Labour, they drive me up the wall with their pseudo management speak, petty preoccupations and watered-down Tory garbage for policies.
Matthew Stiles, if you and others wish to bang your heads against New Labour then good luck, sadly I find the company of the new Labour bourgeoisie too much for my stomach, but you carry on, your naivete is rather touching.
PS: and don’t get me started on the Liberals….
GordonD – Thank you for your considered response. I totally understand what you are saying. I take it you are no longer a member of the Labour Party? I have been agonising over this for some time to be honest. I have spent years campaigning against their shite policies and warmongering, but will continue to do this from inside the party. I still hold many of the same values bu am aware that we are not living in revolutionary times. The vote for the left in this election was entirely expected and I do wonder why they bothered to be fair. They must have known that this was the likely outcome and if they didn’t and were unable to read the current political landscape then it really doesn’t say much for them.
What you say is probably correct and I may rue the decision. Time will tell I suppose. At the moment I can’t see a viable alternative and don’t want to waste any more of my energy standin on the outside waving placards.
modernity – I don’t say this to sound faecetious, but how you have described the Labour Party as in purges, sterility and leaking of members could also be applied in equal terms to the left groups outside of Labour.
Sure, democracy is a problem in the Labour Party, there’s no denying that. But it seems a lot more healthy than some left groups I can think of, expelling members at the drop of a hat and mounting pretty viscous campaigns against individuals.
Steve,
I had similar discussions on whether or not the Labour Party was a viable political force for the working class some 30+ years ago, and I was forever being lectured by various entryist Trots and many decent militant supporters on how they would swing the LP around to Left etc etc
As we know that didn’t happen, and if we have a sense of history, not just thinking about last week but decades ago, then we can see the problems, if we wish.
If you feel the necessity to join **a** group then probably the Labour Party is less full of head-bangers, cranks and sparts, but you’ll have to put up with what you find there, which is probably a relatively sterile political debating environment, open careerism, etc etc and through gritted teeth defend the government’s accomplishments!
However, there are a lot of people who don’t feel the necessity to belong to a group, follow a political line or do what they’re told….I and many others belong to that, er, tendency
Still, if people want to join the LP that’s their decision, I just wish existing LPers wouldn’t try to pull the wool over our eyes concerning the state of the Left within the LP.
Steve- Sure, democracy is a problem in the Labour Party, there’s no denying that. But it seems a lot more healthy than some left groups I can think of, expelling members at the drop of a hat and mounting pretty viscous campaigns against individuals.
Is the fact that there are some groups on the left worse than Labour for internal democracy actually a legitimate defense of the Labour Party?
And there’s a lot of work that can be done outside any party- strike support, community campaigns etc. And it’s stuff that actually has more obvious benefits than going to Labour Party meetings does. And is a hell of a lot more likely to show at least minor victories now and again.
@ H.
If you include the Greens (not all of whom will be on the left of the party), approximately 310,000 votes for the left. (That’s including Scotland and Wales, but excluding Northern Ireland). So yes, the fact that some people seem to be claiming that this election means that the BNP have been crushed is rather optimistic, to say the least.
@waterloo – cheers for that. I looked on the BBC website and, excluding the Greens, I could only find some 80-odd thousand. Where’d you get your 310 from, mate?
I was including the Greens, so I think we’re working from the same data! Without them, I make the left vote around that as well. (Even more worryingly, if you add the UKIP vote to the BNP, it’s just under a million and half votes for anti migrant parties).
Whilst some further in from the outside left think it was inside job.
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/05/07/how-they-undermined-gordon-to-get-into-bed-with-clegg/
WS – No it’s not a legitimate defence of Labour. But often on the left people are told that the lack of democracy in Labour good enough reason not to join. And these are often those groups who practice the most awful bureaucratic anti-democatic regimes.
I agree that there is plenty to do outside – strike committees and community campaigns. But I intend to do both. The task as I see it is to push for the unions to use their weight in the party, thus strengthening the aforementioned.
H. The BNP will not go away. I recall watching a documentary during the seventies that the NF were being financed by certain business people and organisations. The rich always need to keep those people in existence as a back up. If the BNP go down the tube then another lot will appear. Just watch and see.
@Jimmy Glesga. Er, yeah, I know. That was kinda the point I was making. Shamefully, though, it’s been Labour’s total abandonment of its core constituency that has made the ground so fertile for the growth of the far-right but, obviously, there will be some bullshit excuse or attack on the ‘loony’ left coming back rather than an admission or acceptance of reponsibilty…
H. I disagree about the abandonment as you call it. The BNP were confronted in my Labour constituency and they vanished. It seems in England I am sorry to say they have a firmer base but this has always been the case since Oswald who was a member of the rich ruling class joined Labour just to be devisive. Well lots of onerous people have joined Labour! Anyhoo some good old guitar stuff on BBC 2 (SCOTLAND). BLASTS FROM THE PAST. Have a good night and look forward to the Dave and Nick roadshow.
Perhaps ‘Andy’ Newman’s most amusing feature is his megalomania. He’s certainly a legend in his own mind, and it comes out in his blog. It’s almost equally amusing to witness him clutching at various cliches and recycling them ad nauseam. At one stage he couldn’t write a paragraph without resorting to grandiose conceits as contextualised discourses fought it out with deconstructed paradigms for narrative dominance. It occasionally made Lenny Seymour sound lucid and unaffected by comparison. A major achievement for anyone.
Despite Respect’s inevitable meltdown I doubt that Newman’s egomania will be held in abeyance for long – it’ll just find new political forms for its expression. It’s a depressing thought, but the poor bloody bore’s likely to be around torturing us all for a good while yet.
Winston,
Try not reading Newman’s blog if it upsets you. Simple really.
It’s interesting to note how many on the ‘left’ seem to be delighted by the election result.
Interesting that in all the gushing talk on tv, we haven’t haeard a word from the TUC, the Labour party or leftwing MPs. Helena Kennedy QC(and I think she’s a Dame as well) was on this morning. OK, she has roots in the working class, and she is an ex-member of the CPGB, but can’t we do better than that? Someone should be fighting the workingclasses corner in all this.
Will the remnants of RESPECT – and, one hopes, other people – succeed in making a big big fuss about the [alleged] voting fraud [possibly] perpetrated by [supposed] adherents of the Labour Party in the Bengali zones of East London ?
http://www.therespectparty.net/
The election was an effing shambles, wannit? Electors locked out by the ever-officious jobsworths and that?
It’s surprising that the African Union doesn’t offer to send supervisors to oversee the next one.
Here is the NuLieBore Chief Jobsworth herself …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1275445/Election-2010-Is-wonder-vote-shambles.html
… but you can’t believe every word in the ‘Mail’ can you chums ?
In all fairness to Newman, sometimes he does state the bleeding obvious “Compass leaders reveal themselves as rewarmed Blairism” http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=5820
Which was obvious for ages as anyone could have told him, yet it didn’t stop SU blog from writing gushing nonsense about Compass before the election.
I just wonder why they couldn’t have drawn that conclusion months ago?
Does this mean the Swindon Stalin is having second thoughts about joining the trickle of ex-revolutionaries into the party of cuts, privatisation and war? Where do Respect go from here? Hopefully, the socialists will join us in trying to build a genuine socialist party. Others will no doubt feel it’s more important to get their wards and constituencies to pass vaguely leftist motions (in the teeth of New Labour members disinterest, apathy or hostility) which will be contemptuously ignored. That’s if there’s any sort of local Labour Party organisation to actually get anybody to meet up and vote. Or they could sit back and accept people like Tristram Hunt being parachuted in as candidates. After all, the Labour Party is so much more democratic that these irrelevant Trot sects isn’t it?
Respect would seem to have three choices:
To reinforce its orientation on the Muslim community and drop the left pretensions.
To throw in the towel.
To keep pretending that millions will flock to its banner in time.
“To reinforce its orientation on the Muslim community and drop the left pretensions.”
The last part of the proposal worked for Labour!
The far left got really terrible votes in the General election. My neighbours, active in AWL have been solidily working in Peckham for months. Doing solid door knocking, canvassing holding meetings and street rallies, leafletting, had an excellent candidate, a community worker, in Jill Mountford – they appear to have run a lively and energetic campaign but the they got 75 votes! There is just not support from working people for a far left alternative, let alone at this stage a new workers party.
However there is another option the left should follow and study before jumping back into the dead Labour party.
The Wigan Community Action party gained more than 11,000 votes for its council candidates. In Lewisham, People Before Profit gained more than 13,000 votes for its candidates -more than the combined votes of the TUSC!
Socialist and progressives should seek to encourage the formation of broad anti cuts, anti privatisation local community alliances and borough parties as the round of cuts we are going to face takes hold. This could be a far more productive route to building the basis of a new left party.
Nick Long
Nominating officer Lewisham PB4P
Doug – After all, the Labour Party is so much more democratic that these irrelevant Trot sects isn’t it?
Probably, yes!
Indeed, the Labour Party not unsurprisingly would be more democratic than groupings which implements varieties of ‘democratic centralism’, but that’s surely obvious from the outset?
However, the more pertinent question is, will that democracy within the Labour Party count for very much?
Probably not, as the new Labour zombies control all the major decision making bodies.
The rest is just window dressing.
Politically I imagine it is a thankless task trying to get anything through the Labour Party bureaucracy, and even if you did it could be just struck down or ignored by the likes of Lord Mandelson, etc etc.
It is the political equivalent of pissing in the wind.
modernity. You would know about pissing in the wind and moreso wind.
I really wish people on this site would make the mental effort to get to grips with the ghastly realities facing Britain instead of yapping about nationalising the tramways and the boot-blacking factories and forming tactical coalitions with the Huddersfielf Marxist-Maoist-Trotskyites.
The U.K. is borrowing 500,000,000 quid a day from the future just to meet current expenditure.
Divided by 62,000,000 people that amounts to just over eight quid a day for every non-dom peer, hedge fund manager, cokehead, newborn infant, knuckledragger, mincing aesthete, militant Islamist and Vicky Pollard in the land per day.
Whoever get the job of trying to repair the damage caused by Grinning Tony and Surly McBroon has a thankless task.
Meanwhile, over on Harry’s Place, a contributor alerted sluggish can’t-quite-keep-up me to the existance of Operation Cage Action Plan, which may or may not be true or may equally well be a well-conceived False Flag operation.
Our tale is set in Turkey and attributed, truly or falsely, to – as they say – ‘elements within’ Turkish Naval Intelligence:
http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2009-12-16-ergenekon-berlin-based-think-tank-releases-operation-cage-plan-in-english-translation
IN SUMMARY:
Well-disguised operatives scare and intimidate the shrinking non-Muslim minorities remaining in Turkey, killing a few and maiming a few more.
Show the West [i.e. the EU and the USA] that Turkey under the crypto-Islamists is ungovernable.
The assumption is that that the EU and Uncle Sam [i.e. the few people in the State Department who can find Turkey on a map of the world] will squeal with dismay and happily look the other way when the Turkish General Staff is reluctantly compelled to restore order.
Among the Al-Gaurdianistas, Comrade McShane-owitz is convinced that Turkey ought to be in the EU, as is that Thinking Tory Liam Fox – who has met Turkish diplomats with clean fingernails and pronounced them “first-rate” in much the same sort of way that Joe Biden remarked on Obama’s not possessing a negro accent.
ShitPants (formerly known as Skidders or SkidMarx) said,
“Respect would seem to have three choices:
To reinforce its orientation on the Muslim community and drop the left pretensions.”
This is the kind of ill thought out, offensive bordering on racist remark I would expect to see spewing from the putrefied orifices of Jim Denham or Andrew Coates.
You give the sense that Muslims are the other, not quite to be trusted at face value and always operating behind a veil (pardon the pun) which belies their true intentions. So any party that attracts their support and has a comparatively high % of Muslim candidates cannot really be what it says it is. The statement assumes that the only people opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are Muslims (which is evidently incorrect) and any anti war party will ultimately have to pander to their as yet secret objectives (Sharia Law?). And finally it assumes Muslims can in no way be left-wing and can only pretend to be left-wing. Which is a rather odd position as it is a fairly well established empirical fact that minority communities in Europe tend to support left of centre (Social Democratic) parties.
No wonder the citizens of Socialist unity regard you with contempt.
Has Socialist Unity declared UDI?