Workers' Liberty

Were it just a question of a vote between Livingstone and German I might possibly vote for German, more likely I'd not waste my time on either. But the vote is not a personal popularity contest - or unpopularity contest its a vote between two organisations that claim to represent workers - one that actually does, and the other than merely has illusions that it might some day. Given the choice of voting for a mass Workers Party that remains based on the working class and its Trade Unions, that still organises around 200,000 workers as members, that remains tied through its Branch network to working class comunities at a grass roots level, or voting for the representative of a tiny sect that refuses to support workers in struggle against clerical-fascists, and which has been in alliance with those fascist forces throughout the Middle East, the issue for any self-respecting socialist should be obvious.

I'd be voting for the Labour Party irrespective of who the candidate is. I suspect were the candidate anyone other than Livingstone the AWL would be recommending the same.

Arthur Bough

This stance isn't logically consistent unless the AWL would deny electoral support to the Labour Party in any circumstances. After all, New Labour is essentially a party commited to a neoliberal project in continuity with Thatcherism, centred on abasement towards finance capital. If it is permissible to back other New Labourites - some of them with political pasts more radical than Livingstone's - why make an exception in his case?

And what purpose would be served by a tactical vote for German, anyway? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to the overall political sanity of the far left for the SWP to learn a few lessons from its escapades in recent years?

Dave: huh? We do, in fact, have a totally consistent policy of backing socialist candidates against New Labourites. This is not a one off or something new.

As for the idea that we should want German to do badly so that the SWP learns its lesson, that's classic sectarianism: putting a desire to chastise the SWP before the demands of the class struggle. "To the mouse there is no bigger animal than the cat."

Arthur: we backed Labour against Respect in Bethnal Green (King vs Galloway) because at that point Respect was a popular front between socialists and religious reactionaries and businessmen, with a right-wing Stalinist demagogue as its candidate. Now there's been a split, and Respect is essentially the SWP plus a few allies - a not very good socialist group, but still socialist, and a hell of a lot more socialist than Livingstone.

You imply that this is motivated by some sort of personal animosity against Livingstone, which is bizarre. *Look at his record*. Embracing the City and property developers, privatising bits of the Tube, union-busting, backing the police over anti-capitalist demonstrators and Jean Charles de Menezes, supporting Gordon Brown for Labour leader... on all these issues and many more, Lindsey German and her comrades are on the opposite side from him, and the same side as us. (Plus Livingstone's positions on eg political Islam are hardly exemplary!!)

Why wouldn't we back her candidacy - except anti-SWP sectarianism or automatic and unthinking support for Labour no matter what?

So the SWP had nothing at all to do with that Popular Frontism then?? Respect was not actually a front organisation for the SWP??? Presumably, their was no foundation whatsoever to the infinite column inches the AWL gave to denouncing the SWP for being in alliance with Political Islamists, they were not at all responsible for supporting meetings organised by such people, and supporting the principle that women had to be in separate rooms from the men???? Are you telling us now that you fabricated all that!!!! Or what about the SWP and Left anti-semitism. What about the SWP's attack on Searchlight essentially accusing it of being a Zionist conspiracy over Bradford!

Are you really telling us that none of this was true, or is it just easier to forget about it in order for it to fit with your position de jour?

As for whether this might be motivated by animosity to Livingstone a look at your coverage might give the clue. Or what about looking at your position in relation to the previous time he stood, and you were going to oppose him until some of your comrades convinced you that to do so might look just an incy bit sectarian? But as I said this is not a beauty contest between Livingstone and German - God forbid - but a contest between two organisations that claim to represent workers, one that actually does, and the other a sect with reactionary politics - in fact soem time ago as I recall Jim Denham was quoted as saying that the SWP itself were clerical-fascists. UNder such conditions, of course socialists vote for the real workers Party and not the nasty little sect. But if it salves your conscience to vote for German as some kind of tokenistic politics of protest that is up to you. Its not the politics of a serious workers organisation, and the logic of it leaves you in the position of calling for support for the LibDems in a number of such contests where on paper they have more radical politics. But that's where Subjectivist, Opportunist politics made up on the hoof leads you.

Arthur Bough

I don't buy Sacha's argument, because I've seen AWL members campaigning for avowedly right-wing Labour party PPCs and prospective councillors against more left wing candidates - e.g. left elements of the Green Party. (Though it will, clearly, support left candidates associated with its own organisation - e.g. Janine Booth in Hackney - though again there the existing Hackney Independent group was opposed.) And why not support the SP's Campaign for a New Workers' Party? I don't either, but the AWL's logic clearly isn't simply a matter of picking the candidate politically closest to them. Nor is it a matter of picking candidates who can win, turning down those like German or Booth who don't have a chance. Interesting that the AWL is appearing to become gradually less Labourist though...

Tom:

a) We don't back the Campaign for a New Workers' Party because of its *politics*, ie its abstract propagandism (and the fact that it doesn't really exist as a campaign), its sectarianism towards the struggle in the Labour Party and its crap, Socialist Party-inspired line on industrial issues, softness on sections of the union bureaucracy etc. But we *do* support Socialist Party candidates in local and parliamentary elections, not just on paper but actively when we can. In fact, we are part of a formal electoral alliance with the SP (and others) called the Socialist Green Unity Coalition. So your accusation is simply wrong!

b) I don't know enough about Hackney Independent to comment - can a comrade from Hackney help? - but to make the principle clear, we did support a 1st preference vote for the IWCA candidate in the last mayoral election.

c) When and where, in recent years, have you seen AWL members campaigning for right-wing Labour candidates against left-wing Greens? Details please! One or two possible free-lancing members aside, we don't campaign for right-wing Labour candidates, certainly not against left-wing Greens. We haven't decided for definite yet whether to positively back some Greens who are clearly socialist eg Peter Tatchell - our EC voted against, but it's still under discussion - but we don't campaign for Labour right-wingers, even when we passively support them.

d) It's not that we're becoming less Labourite. We were never Labourite. It's just that reality is changing, and we're trying to respond rationally.

Arthur:

a) "So the SWP had nothing at all to do with that Popular Frontism then??" Of course they were responsible. But what sense does it make to call on a workers' party/a group like the SWP to break with the bourgeois elements of a popular front if the fact that they were involved makes them forever untouchable, regardless of changes in position? Why did Trotsky raise the slogan "Break with the Radicals" for France? Why did the American comrades fight within the SP against the popular front line of Norman Thomas et al? Why advocate a vote for Labour when in 1945 when Labour had been in a coalition government with the Tories?

b) "Respect was not actually a front organisation for the SWP???" Actually, no, not simply. In some respects, eg in the student movement, it was. But at a national level it was not simply a front, as the split by Galloway et al indicates.

c) "Presumably, their was no foundation whatsoever to the infinite column inches the AWL gave to denouncing the SWP for being in alliance with Political Islamists, they were not at all responsible for supporting meetings organised by such people, and supporting the principle that women had to be in separate rooms from the men???? Are you telling us now that you fabricated all that!!!! Or what about the SWP and Left anti-semitism. What about the SWP's attack on Searchlight essentially accusing it of being a Zionist conspiracy over Bradford!"
Erm, no, of course not. But we need to separate out the issues here. i) The people who we denounced the SWP for allying with (Islamists, petty bourgeois communalist elements) are no longer in Respect, but in Galloway's organisation or operating on their own account. Respect now *is* essentially an SWP front: the SWP plus a few fellow travellers (or, in the case of the student movement, quite a few fellow travellers). ii) Yes, the SWP is still guilty of many political crimes, eg left anti-semitism. But why does it automatically follow that we can never vote for them - especially when the alternative is as bad as Ken Livingstone and the Labour GLA slate?

d) "As for whether this might be motivated by animosity to Livingstone a look at your coverage might give the clue. Or what about looking at your position in relation to the previous time he stood, and you were going to oppose him until some of your comrades convinced you that to do so might look just an incy bit sectarian?"
Not animosity, in the sense of personal hostility, but *political* hostility - yes, absolutely. We backed him actively in 2000 because we thought his campaign might represent some limited element of labour movement self-assertion against the Blair machine, with the unions mobilising around a broadly independent labour campaign for their candidate who had been blocked. (In fact, Livingstone ran such a crap, right-wing, popular front, media-driven campaign, that it didn't, but we couldn't have known that.) In 2004, we backed him quietly as the Labour candidate, but did not campaign for him. Get your facts right! What was position in 2000 btw? Support for Frank Dobson?

e) "But as I said this is not a beauty contest between Livingstone and German - God forbid - but a contest between two organisations that claim to represent workers, one that actually does, and the other a sect with reactionary politics"..."of course socialists vote for the real workers Party and not the nasty little sect."
Ah, so the Labour Party actually represents workers, does it? It's a real workers' party? Wow.

f) "in fact soem time ago as I recall Jim Denham was quoted as saying that the SWP itself were clerical-fascists."
If Jim said that, then he was obviously wrong. Of course the SWP aren't clerical fascists, any more than the French CP were fascists when they flirted with the French fascists for a popular front against Hitler. (And of course the SWP are a lot less degenerate than mid-30s Stalinism.)

e) "the logic of it leaves you in the position of calling for support for the LibDems in a number of such contests where on paper they have more radical politics."
More classic Bough logic. The SWP and a huge, conservative bourgeois party, the only one in fact which gets a majority of its funding from business. Clearly the same thing! No way for us to distinguish between them now we're on this slippery slope...

To the best of my knowledge Norman Thomas never advocated anything amounting to a Popular Front during the 1930s. The CPUSA did, but not Thomas.

a) sure, but you could object - although on different counts - to the '*politics*' of the SWP as well. But you've chosen not to focus on those here. Sure CNWP (which I repeat, I'm not particularly interested in) it's propagandism (whether it's abstract or not remains to be seen), but that's because it's a campaign for a party, not an actual party. It's OK for concrete campaigns to have awareness building phases - though of course it remains to be seen whether it will ever go beyond that.

b) I'd be interested to hear on the Hackney question as well. Though, tbh, I believe I know the gist of the reasoning and I don't think it's accurate. But we'll see.

c) Oxford East. I'm not attacking the persepective of the comrades who did so, I'm just saying that it's inconsistent with the one being advocated here.

d) Doesn't mean you weren't labourist, or that you're not becoming less so. Of course you think you adopt your positions for rational reasons. Everyone does. I'm not even arguing that you're not being rational, I'm just saying it's an interesting change.

Tom,

"a) sure, but you could object - although on different counts - to the '*politics*' of the SWP as well. But you've chosen not to focus on those here."
But the point is that we DO support SP candidates in elections - roughly as critically as we're supporting SWP/Respect here (though with different criticisms, yes). If there was an election in which big bits of the left were jumping on the bandwagon of a Labour fake-left like Livingstone and the left opposition was the SP, we'd approach it in a similar way.

I think the CNWP is essentially a campaign for building the Socialist Party - which is fine, they have every right to do that, but let's not pretend it's something else. The unlikeliness of it ever moving beyond propaganda is shown by the fact that in PCS, which the SP and its allies control (with all the bad consequences for the class struggle on pensions, jobs etc in the civil service), they have never proposed even a debate about supporting the initiative. Why? Because it would make them unpopular, I imagine.

"Oxford East. I'm not attacking the persepective of the comrades who did so, I'm just saying that it's inconsistent with the one being advocated here."
Do you mean in the last general election? Do you mean our comrade Mike Rowley? Well, if he campaigned for Andrew Smith, he wasn't doing it under our instructions; hence the inconsistency. Our emphasis in that election was on campaigning for our comrade Pete Radcliff as an independent socialist in Nottingham East.

"d) Doesn't mean you weren't labourist, or that you're not becoming less so. Of course you think you adopt your positions for rational reasons. Everyone does. I'm not even arguing that you're not being rational, I'm just saying it's an interesting change."
Yes, but I'm saying it's reality that's changing, and we're responding. We haven't changed our minds, decided we were previously wrong etc etc.

a) I agree that the CNWP is effectively just a campaign for building the SP, though I don't doubt that most SP comrades genuinely do not see it that way. They see themselves as conducting an argument in the class about Labour, and the need for a real alternative. I suspect that the reason they have not proposed a debate is that they think they will lose, and they are waiting until they have won the 'debate' (i.e. got the delegates, power base) at a local level. Taafe is obsessed with waiting for the right moment, 'cause he thinks he's a bit like Lenin. I also am not sure it's accurate to say that the SP 'control' the PCS. If they 'controlled' the union, they'd definitely have it support the CNWP, not send Serwotka along to LRC conferences. You're just jealous 'cause you want a union of your own ;)

Furthermore, I think Lindsey German's candidature is pretty 'abstract propagandist' in the sense that she has no intention whatever of winning. She just wants to pose a challenge on an ideal level.

c) I'm not interested in discussing which particular member of your organisation did what on a rank and file basis - I don't like to discuss individuals by full name online without their consent. In any case, I think it was perhaps not just the last general election, and there was more than one comrade involved. Personally, I'm fine with political groups acting in inconsistent ways on electoral questions (within reason), but I raised the point because I thought yall were all into being unified about things. So I assumed that being an active member of local CLPs was a standard part of AWL membership activity. No? Come to think of it, the Labour PPC was campaigning against IWCA then as well.

d) I didn't say you had, I don't know why you assumed otherwise.

"I also am not sure it's accurate to say that the SP 'control' the PCS."

I'm damn sure its not accurate. The only way its accurate is in the same way that an ineffective brake stops a car from rolling on a perfect plane. "Revolutionaries", and even Broad Lefts "control" unions only because the majority of their members take no part. The struggle to win "the battle of democracy" as Marx put it has yet to be won. Come to think of it, it has yet to be properly started, because Leninists have consiistently only focussed on the minority.

Arthur Bough

Comrades, I really don't see what this argument is about. If voting for Lindsey German had any effect on the outcome of the election, then Arthur would have a point that should be carefully discussed - but this is an STV election in which German is not going to win or come second, so it's perfectly possible for people to vote for her and transfer to Livingstone (let's face it, they're hardly likely to transfer to anyone else!) For this reason someone considerably more Labourite even than me (!) recently said that would be unobjectionable.

There is no doubt that Johnson would be considerably worse than Livingstone. But the argument about risking the Tories getting in isn't particularly relevant - we're not calling on people to do that. So what's the argument for voting for German? Not her personal merits, obviously, but the fact is that for their own opportunistic reasons the SWP are articulating some basic socialist positions: against Livingstone's sellouts of Tube workers, for instance. A strong vote for the old, pre-split Respect would just prompt the Labour machine to select more visibly Muslim candidates, but a strong vote for German now would constitute pressure from the Left.

It's a pity there is no genuine trade union left candidate as, for example, some people in the RMT were planning to stand - because then there could be not only pressure from the left on Livingstone but a chance of a real movement developing, rather than just a sectarian electoral front. There's no chance of that with the German candidacy. But whether in favour of voting for German or not, comrades must surely recognise that there is a rational case to be made for doing so.

Comrades, I really don't see what this argument is about. If voting for Lindsey German had any effect on the outcome of the election, then Arthur would have a point that should be carefully discussed - but this is an STV election in which German is not going to win or come second, so it's perfectly possible for people to vote for her and transfer to Livingstone

uh yeah, that's actually a really good point.

It seems a good point at first glance, but it isn't.

1. The argument is "Vote for German to win knowing it won't happen." Isn't that what the AWL Majority argue against doing in relation to Troops Out Now in Iraq i.e. arguing for one thing whilst actually meaning another.

2. The fact of STV does not change the basic argument. This is a contest between a Workers party and a nasty sect with reactionary politics. The fact that the SWP has made a tactical zig for this election only tells us that it will quickly make a zag in the other direction. There is no more reason for Marxists to be fooled and go along with that than there was for them to be fooled by the Left turn of the Stalinists in the late 20's. The SWP's politics remain as reactionary as they were.

3. The call is not for a vote for Labour First and the SWP second, but vice versa. A first vote for Labour, and a spoiling vote for the SWP second would make sense.

4. My main argument has not been about letting in Boris, but the class argument about voting for a reactionary sect as opposed to a Workers Party. However, the argument that because this is a vote using STV it is okay to use a vote for the SWP safely is wrong. If the vote is close, and the SWP pick up a derisory vote then their second choice votes will be insufficient to give a win for Livingstone even on the basis of transferred votes. It will then go to the second choices of the other two candidates. That means that it will be a matter of which voters are more politically savvy Labour or Tory. If the Tory voters are savvy - and they usually are - they will cast their second round votes for the SWP. That way if the Labour voters cast even a significant number of votes for Boris then Boris will win.

5. In left-Wing Communism Lenin says that the purpose for Marxists of elections is not to win, but to use the period of more intense political activity to better win workers away from Bourgeois democracy, to make Marxist propaganda. Comrades from the AWL might want to ponder to what extent they will be able to talk to SWP members in any meaningful way during this period given the thoroughly undemocratic nature of the SWP. They might also want to question to what extent that lack of democracy and the SWP's history of such activity will allow them to conduct broader propaganda within the working class compared to the much bigger platform provided by the labour campaign for talking to workers both inside and out of the Party.

Arthur Bough

Atchally, momentary wikipedia-ing reveals that it's not STV:

The Supplementary Vote system is used for all mayoral elections in England and Wales. Under this system voters express a first choice and (optionally) a second choice. If no candidate receives 50% of first choice votes, the top two candidates go to a second round. Voters whose first choice has been eliminated but whose second choice is one of the top two candidates have their second preference vote added to the first-round totals for the leading candidates. This gives a result whereby the winning candidate can claim majority support.

1. Voting for German is risk free. Your argument, as you say in your point 4, might not be against risking a Boris win, but that is still an important argument and it will be most people's argument. Because it is about what will happen. It's reasonable to say that a hard left candidate taking a high place - third or fourth - would still be an achievement, a building block for the next time, and a signal of a certain shift which could inspire confidence. So it's not irrelevant for them to receive transferred first preferences.

2. Yeah nice one is Labour a 'Workers Party'. It's just a bigger reactionary sect than the SWP with more union bureaucrats on their side.

3. Whether STV or SV, German would be eliminated in a round before Labour, so second preferences from Ken to her wouldn't even be counted. It would be about as relevant as calling for a transfer to Winston McKenzie.

4. That is very unlikely. For it to make any difference, Ken would have to be below 50%, but Ken + German would have to be >50% AND second preference transfers for candidates below second place would have to net favour Boris. (In 2004 transfers added 3.5% to Ken's lead over Norris.)

5. Lenin was wrong.

Still, I reckon I'm probably gonna first pref Sian Berry.