Vote Socialist or Labour!
How should socialist activists, trade unionists and anti-war activists vote in the 2005 election? The immediate choices of government are miserable.
The main thing socialist activists can do in this election is to convince more people to become socialists, and to make efforts to organise workers more broadly towards socialist ideas.
That is why it is right for us to stand under our own colours and offer our own ideas to the electorate in as many areas as we have the resources for. But this can only be part of a longer-term campaign to win support for socialist ideas.
The Socialist Green Unity Coalition is standing in 27 constituencies in England, and the Scottish Socialist Party is standing all over Scotland. AWL member Pete Radcliff is standing for the Socialist Green Unity Coalition in Nottingham East. Serious activists should vote for these candidates.
What do we do elsewhere in England and Wales?
Before and after the election we need to build up campaigns for better wages and conditions; for publicly-owned and democratically-controlled public services (against privatisation); for trade-union rights and civil liberties; for peace and international solidarity; for open borders and against racism.
It is in those struggles that the organisation, the confidence will be built which can create a better world - and give us better options in future elections.
That said, we still have to make our choices about which way to vote in this election.
Some left activists have been tempted to back the Liberal-Democrat or the Greens. Brian Sedgemore, a long-time left, "Bennite" MP has even joined the Liberal Democrats! As we explain elsewhere in this paper that is wrong.
And what of Labour? Why would we want to vote for a party that is so wedded to capitalism and screwing the workers? Because the Labour Party still organises the forces that can advance working class struggles - the trade unions. We can vote Labour, but on the basis of being involved in those struggles.
We say vote Labour not because we support the New Labour manifesto, or endorse Blair's leadership of the Party. We completely oppose what the war-mongering, privatising New Labour clique has done in government.
We say vote Labour only because of the potential strength the trade unions - the bedrock organisations of the working class - still have in the Labour structures. If we can organise in the unions sufficiently to get them to use their weight in society, to campaign for the policies their members have voted for - against cuts, privatisation, the anti-union laws - that will also have a huge knock-on effect inside the Labour Party.
A concerted fight from the unions will not happen in this election, or next month or maybe not even in next year. But it will happen. And there is the beginning of a fight going on now. Many unions and individuals are sponsoring the Labour Representation Committee, a body campaigning to restore working-class politics inside the Labour Party. We should be involved in any and every fight in the labour movement and that is why we say: where we haven't got the resources and forces to propose a socialist candidate, vote Labour.
Don't vote Respect
Some activists have been tempted to vote Respect, seeing it as a left-wing alternative. As we explain elsewhere in this paper, it is not. It has leftish policies - against privatisation and so on - but all are encased in a framework of promoting personalities like George Galloway, who as an MP was never more than a "soft left" rebel, distinguished from the rest of Labour's MPs only by such things as his links with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. In the main areas where it is standing Respect is also appealing for Muslim votes on a communalist basis. Respect does not offer class answers to the poverty and unemployment of the working class in those Muslim communities.
Electing Galloway to Parliament, the best chance for Respect, would be a shame, not a victory, for the left.
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at the bottom of the barrel
So it seems if Galloway was still in the Labour Party you would vote for him but because he is outside your millions of supporters (sic) will not be backing him but Oona King who supports attacks on Asylum seekers, privitisation and of course the war. Well doen the AWL- 7You are scum at the bottom of the barrel. No wonder you are seen as scabs!!!
Well done
So, no positive reason to vote for Galloway, then?
And resorting to contemptible little insults, as well? "Scabs", by the way, is a labour movement term for people who break strikes. So anyone who "sees the AWL as scabs" does not know the meaning of the term. Mind you, not surprising from people who look at Iraq, see a workers' movement and an anti-working-class 'resistance', and choose to back the 'resistance'. If the AWL were as litigious as Mr Galloway, we'd have you in the libel courts for that. If you'd come out from behind your anonymity, that is.
By the way ... Scum floats to the top, not the bottom. That's one thing that New Labour and Respect have in common.
Scum?
As any socialist knows, there is no electoral path to a socialist society; only revolution from below can hope to acheive this. That said, why are you so against using the electoral system we live under to promote socialist ideals? The longer you and sectarians like you insist on undermining the work of getting socialist ideas to as wide an audiance as possible the longer the struggle will be.
I am under no illusion that a vote for respect will bring about the real changes we need in society, but a united front against neo-liberal, new world order is neccessary until such time as the majority of the working class is in a revolutionary mood. this can not be forced, but nurtured - and the best way forward is to fight within the system on the one hand - for a platform for ideas, and on the street and in the work place for action.
There is not an "either / or" argumenbt to be had. All options are to be utilised.
There is a change occuring in British politics, you can sit and disparage those who would seize this opportunity to push our ideas, or join in the fight.
Be part of the movement or not - but do not attack those who are.
Huh?
Where has the AWL said that we are against using the electoral system to promote socialist ideas?! That's just weird.
We are very much in favour of it, and do it whenever we are in a position to.
The problem with Respect is that it does *not* "promote socialist ideas" - eith in elections or outside them. "It's not a socialist organisation" as its members keep on saying. It promotes vaguely radical-sounding ideas, and it also promotes the involvement of religion in politics. It pretty much avoids the mention of the 'S' word, let alone of the working class.
Worse, it has set itself up to do this by destroying the Socialist Alliance, and therefore gauranteeing that fewer people had the chance to vote for socialist candidates at this General Election than at the last one.
But the key question is what
But the key question is what the positive reason was to vote for King something you actually advocated..as opposed to a candidate who opposed the war (King supported it), and opposes privatisation (King supports it) etc. You have no idea how people long to be treated with respect. Read Salma Yaqoob's wonderful speech from Birmingham. Oh but I forgot. You think people like her are 'scum'. You have no idea whats going on have you? Britain is changing. And your going to be left behind.
Because King is a member of a
Because King is a member of a party that retains a structural link to the organised labour movement - a link that can still, in some small way, be exploited to fight for working-class interests.
Fighting for working-class interests? You know...socialism?
Remember that???
Not clear thinking
King is also a member of an anti-democratic clique within New Labour. Whatever use the Labour-Union link can be will be opposed and obstructed by King and her party within a party. In effect there are two Labour parties, the AWL strategy has been to split them in order to create a genuine workers party that could become a mass worker's party. In the last 10 years this strategy has taken a nasty hit as Blair has created New Labour marginalising the worker's element of this (once) bourgeois-worker's party.
Calling for a vote for Tony Blair in the Segfield constituency (there was no socialist candidate) and elsewhere that Blairites stand fails to progress that strategy. By saying 'vote labour' the AWL confuses the nature of our electoral process in much the same way that the bourgeois press and the main parties are keen to distort it into a kind of presidential race.
I believe that the Labour Party now has a tripartite existence, bourgeois, bureaucrat and worker's all have influence in roughly that order.
Calling on workers to vote for a political party is to pacify them with one of their 12 doses of 'democracy' unless you do so as part of a strategy to involve them in fighting to be represented. The slogan 'vote socialist or labour' does nothing to this end and so it is a bad slogan but worse still the article does not call on people to vote Labour as part of holding them to account (or indeed to join the socialist electoral groups).
The Labour Representation Committee is mentioned but people are not encouraged to 'vote Labour and join the LLC'. There is no explanation of how I can take control of my vote after I cast it for Joan Ruddock (who disenfranchised me from the Labour Party by closing down our local party and packing our Young Labour group with ringers, or at least collaborated with those who did).
The anticipated 'concerted fight from the unions' is crystal ball gazing as it assumes that fight will be mounted by unions within the Labour party. It is also yet more pacification of the electorate, we are not encouraged to push our unions to fight but assured that they will (against much evidence to the contrary).
Finally I'll critique the programme. Given that the electoral alliance thing is a propaganda tool I would have expected a shorter working week to be on top the agenda as it is a key 'transitional demand' this is known as the 'political economy of the working class'. The AWL is involved in a struggle on this issue and could have linked grass roots work place agitation in Tubeworker with political expression and the LLC organisation but you didn't. I'm struggling to remain civil now and I'm just getting upset so I'm going to shut up.
Ah organic links. Well Respec
Ah organic links. Well Respect is trying to build them. You have to start somewhere you know. Otherwise it becomes an argument for never building an alternative to Labour. Which one suspects is the real motivation here, and the only possible explanation for instructing people to vote for Tony Blair against anti-war candidates, actually campaigning for votes for Labour against anti-war candidates. Interestingly Galloway's victory will be a fillup for many Labour Party activists. Apparently even in Bethnal Green many were overjoyed. Wiping the grin off the sneaky anti-working class blairite scum which, as they see it, have hijacked their party. The AWL meanwhile was shamelessly campaigning for them. Incredible. You don't even relate to those on the left of Labour.
I can quite believe this anecdote
The idea of working class Labour Party activists being pleased to loose highlights the contradictions which the AWL is trying to exploit by maintaining support for New Labour. It is very similar to what the SWP did pre 2000 with their 'vote Labour, join the Socialists' slogan.
Many working class people see Labour and even New Labour as their party, they don't understand the changes from a class perspective, only from a social perspective and those changes are not so large.
The way in which Marxists relate to the Labour Party and the Trade Unions is very much a tactical issue, you look at your strength and decide where your weight will best educate the proletariat of your politics. I think tactically the AWL got it wrong in this election and the lack of repudiation here leads me to think that many agree.
What the SWP did with Galloway was however totally unprincipled. This adventure (as is common with SWP activity) utterly ignored the sentiment 'march separately, strike together'. You agree with Galloway and various religious leaders about the war but you disagree about many (most?) other things. The Marxist method is to put forward an independent proletarian argument, if we want better schools and a businessman wants better schools then we put forward our argument for better schools and participate with their demonstration. What we don't do is create a common organisation that blurs the line between our politics and The Man's.
The idea that you build a party and then link in the worker's movement is characteristic of sectarian politics, you build the structures you want and then expect the worker's movement to feed into that. If you hadn't already based the party on a bunch of careerists and clerics then I'd be more inclined to think of it as a serious tactical error, as things stand Respect (and the SWP) are in the enemy camp. Or to put this in terms you may be expected to understand: "Smash the Respect coalition, Smash the SWP!”
bloody revolution
You talk about your revolution, well, that's fine
But what are you going to be doing come the time?
Are you going to be the big man with the tommy-gun?
Will you talk of freedom when the blood begins to run?
Well, freedom has no value if violence is the price
Don't want your revolution, I want anarchy and peace
You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain't it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me
But what about those people who don't want your new restrictions?
Those that disagree with you and have their own convictions?
You say they've got it wrong because they don't agree with you
So when the revolution comes you'll have to run them through
You say that revolution will bring freedom for us all
Well freedom just ain't freedom when your back's against the wall
You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain't it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me
Will you indoctrinate the masses to serve your new regime?
And simply do away with those whose views are too extreme?
Transportation details could be left to British rail
Where Zyklon B succeeded, North Sea Gas will fail
It's just the same old story of man destroying man
We've got to look for other answers to the problems of this land
You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain't it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me
Vive la revolution, people of the world unite
Stand up men of courage, it's your job to fight
It all seems very easy, this revolution game
But when you start to really play things won't be quite the same
Your intellectual theories on how it's going to be
Don't seem to take into account the true reality
Cos the truth of what you're saying, as you sit there sipping beer
Is pain and death and suffering, but of course you wouldn't care
You're far too much of a man for that, if Mao did it so can you
What's the freedom of us all against the suffering of the few?
That's the kind of self-deception that killed ten million jews
Just the same false logic that all power-mongers use
So don't think you can fool me with your political tricks
Political right, political left, you can keep your politics
Government is government and all government is force
Left or right, right or left, it takes the same old course
Oppression and restriction, regulation, rule and law
The seizure of that power is all your revolution's for
You romanticise your heroes, quote from Marx and Mao
Well their ideas of freedom are just oppression now
Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created
It's just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren't clearly stated
Nothing's really different cos all government's the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game
Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created
It's just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren't clearly stated
Nothing's really different cos all government's the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game
There's nothing that you offer but a dream of last years hero
The truth of revolution, brother................... is year zero.