Workers' Liberty

The Independent Working Class Association has announced a candidate for the London Mayoral election on 10 June 2004.

The IWCA was launched by a small left group, Red Action, but has won some good election results by a dogged focus on local campaigning on council estates.

Its results show that the message of "giving a political voice to the concerns of millions of ordinary working class people" strikes a chord.

Some of us see some problems with their approach.

1) They tend to define the working class almost exclusively as council tenants, and to counterpose it not to the capitalist class but to the middle class or, indeed, better-off workers ("the fashionable chattering classes").

2) They dismiss the trade unions.

3) Their campaigning tends to be excessively localist. When they have run for borough elections in Finsbury, the southern part of Islington, where mayoral candidate Lorna Reid is active, and where I live, I have voted for them, but with misgivings.

They present themselves as standing up for "Finsbury" (which has a greater concentration of council housing) against the Town Hall in a bettter-off part of the borough. Their campaigns have headlined teenage crime (which is actually not a huge problem in the area) while saying nothing in defence of asylum seekers (who are numerous here and suffer some hostility). In a by-election during the Iraq war they did not mention the war.

Ken Livingstone, recently readmitted to the Labour Party, is standing again as Mayor. George Galloway says his new "Respect" coalition (mainly organised by the SWP) may stand against Livingstone.

Below is the IWCA's statement.
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Lorna Reid, 39, an advice worker who lives on a council estate in Islington was elected to receive the party nomination at a recent all-London IWCA meeting.

'The aim of myself and my party during this election is to give a political voice to the concerns of those millions of ordinary working class people in London who, unlike the fashionable chattering classes, find their concerns ignored by all the mainstream parties,' said Ms Reid.

Lorna continued, 'In many areas of our city turnout at council elections has fallen to as little as 20% as voters abandon a political process that has abandoned them. Out-of-touch politicians from the three main parties battle for the 'middle ground' and the votes of 'middle England' because they believe, in the words of the prime minister, that 'we are all middle class now'. And with former 'independent' Ken Livingstone welcomed back into the Labour Party, the options available to us all on June 10th are likely to be even narrower still. But for the majority of people in London this scenario simply doesn't reflect the reality of their everyday lives.'

In May 2002 Lorna, who has two young children who attend the local primary school, stood for the IWCA in the local authority elections. Standing for the first time in the increasingly gentrified ward of Clerkenwell (London Borough of Islington), Lorna and her colleagues came second, winning enough support from working class council and housing association tenants to knock Labour into third place in the former home of New Labour guru Peter Mandelson.

Lorna Reid is also the chair of her tenants and residents association and a voluntary director of the Federation of Islington Tenants Associations. She has a long record of working alongside fellow tenants to secure better conditions and facilities on her estate and has been at the forefront of campaigning for increased play and youth provision in her area. Locally, many believe it is this record of local action that led Islington's Liberal Democrat council to mount an unsuccessful attempt to remove Lorna as chair of her tenants association last year.

Lorna believes that most working class Londoners are dismayed over the lack of progress on key issues since Labour took power in 1997. Issues such as increasing anti-social and drug-related crime; the growing housing crisis; mounting council tax bills; the farce that is privately-run public transport; the closure and privatisation of public buildings and facilities; and poverty pay - will all feature prominently in the IWCA's forthcoming London manifesto which will be published later this month.

Lorna said, 'Statistics show that the gap between the richest and poorest in our society - which widened under the Tories - is actually increasing under New Labour, with child and pensioner poverty in the capital amongst the worst in Europe.

'According to the government's own figures I live in one of the poorest and most deprived boroughs in London. Yet life here is portrayed in the national media as the home of luxury lofts and celebrity dinner parties. This scenario is true to working class people across London. But the reality is that day-by-day, in every sphere of life - whether it be housing, education or pay - our city is becoming ever more polarised between the super-rich and the rest of us, many of whom lead increasingly desperate lives.

'To make sure our interests are top of the agenda every time, working class people in London need a strong political voice. I want to play my part in making that voice heard. The message we are sending is: We live here too!'