Liverpool demonstrates against the BNP Photo: Pete Carr EDITORIAL Left's electoral the hard right The European election results were a disaster for Labour. 1,337,000 fewer people voted for them in June 2009 as compared to the 2004 European elections. In many parts of the country the party came fourth or fifth. It now has the same number of MEPs as the hard right UKIP - the "BNP in blazers" - and only won 15.7% of the vote compared to UKIP's 16.5%.
Across Europe the big winner in the European elections was abstentionism. Voters were as unconvinced by what the centre left had to say in France, Italy or Germany as they were by New Labour. The beneficiaries were Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron. However the British Tories only increased their vote by 1%. UKIP only added 0.3% to its vote. The quirk there was that there was a serious underestimation of how strong a reservoir of support there was for its right wing nationalist populism. More attention was concentrated on the threat of the BP which won two MEPs with only a 1.3% increase in its vote. absence benefits
Although the Green Party outpolled the BNP and has two MEPs the left's performance in these elections in Britain was very poor. Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party emerges only at election times but polled 1% of the vote because it has a name that some disaffected left wing voters find attractive. No2EU, which Socialist Resistance supported, also won 1% of the vote, despite being a very recent creation with an ambiguous, unattractive name and uncertainty as to whether it is a temporary electoral coalition or one element in a future party.
The heavy irony is that this election was potentially very favourable to a left challenge. A long term trend in British politics is the fracturing of the Tory and Labour domination. In the 1951 general election they jointly received just under 97% of the votes. In June 2009 this had shrunk to 44%. What this means is that millions of people are willing to look for an alternative
3 political expression. With Labour's rightward trajectory, its puny measures to protect the working class against the recession, its reek of corruption, many working class people are either retusing to vote or are moving towards the hard right.
Yielding the electoral terrain to the right changes the balance of forces in society to the detriment of the working class. The recession has not been met with strikes, occupations and militancy. Examples such as Visteon grab the attention because they are so rare. For the most part job losses and pay cuts are accepted without a response. The absence in Britain of a combative working class party, which can unite the organised left with those in the unions who are willing to fight for an anticapitalist programme, which offers a response to the capitalist recession and to the growing ecological calamity - this is the challenge that the left has to address as its top priority in the next few months
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Time for united left alternative
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Socialist Resistance was and proposed part privatisation of established by activists who the Royal Mail show. agreed that Labour's neo-liberal Bob Crow, speaking on behalf trajectory has led to an absence of NoEU: Yes to Democracy, of effective working class political has called for urgent discussions representation in Britain. The involving socialist organisations, widespread corruption among campaigns and trade unions
MPs in a period of recession when to build a concerted response
many working class people are following the election of two
losing their jobs and homes, the fascists trom the BP to the refusal of the Labour Government European Parliament. This is to bail out industrial companies a very welcome and positive when billions were given to the development: the leader of the banks, the ongoing wars in Iraq only union in the country to take and Afghanistan, have destroyed action against pay cuts is calling its credibility among many trade for unity against the fascist BNP. unionists and working class The Socialist Workers Party voters. All this led to the collapse has also issued an open letter to the in its vote and the success of right left, making the case that it's time wing nationalist and racist parties to create a socialist alternative, such as the BNP and UKIP. and proposing a conference of
The one thing that is all those committed to presenting absolutely beyond dispute in the candidates representing working middle of 2009 is that socialists, class interests at the next election. environmentalists, trade unionists We support this initiative. and community activists need The socialist left has acquired to get together urgently to work a lot of experience in recent years out how we can respond to the of working together, sometimes hard right's political advance well and sometimes badly, but represented by the election of it is clear that any project which the BNP and UKIP MEPs. The aims to bring together the broadest election of these xenophobes and possible forces willing to offer racists will see an increase in a political challenge to the hard attacks on immigrants of every right can only be built by actively colour and the Tories will rush to seeking to include everyone who the right to win their votes. is willing to take part in such
Next year's general election an alliance. In practice this is likely • IO be won by the means no a priori exclusions, 13 Conservatives, and they are no bureaucratic manipulation of making no secret of their plans to votes or conferences, and a real attack what remains of the public commitment to pluralism and sector, the benefits system and democracy. workers' rights. The bulk of the The days when any part Labour Party has been complicit of the left can judge success by in supporting the party's neo- selling a few dozen papers or liberalism, and will be unwilling recruiting a handful of people to and too demoralised to lead any
La particular group, are over. Our opposition to Cameron's plans. aim has to be the launching of a If Labour wins, it too will launch national organisation committed an austerity drive against the to deteating the fascists and working class. It is already under nationalists and fighting for way as the Welfare Reform Act working people.
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