Mass opposition to the Iraq war has acted as a pivotal crisis point that has galvanised all this into rank hostility to New Labour, leading to the possibility of an opening for a new left wing alternative
The gloss has been taken off Tony Blair, whose days are
certainly
numbered. But,
notes PIERS MOSTYN, New Labour still won.
Working class electors had every reason to feel alienated from Labour, a party that has governed for the rich and against the poor. Under Blair:
• Inequality has grown
• Social immobility (the poverty trap) is second only to the USA in the West and is getting worse
• The life expectancy gap between rich and poor has escalated to levels not seen since Victorian times
• And savage attacks on pensions, the ending of comprehensive education and more privatisation by stealth in the welfare state are yet to come.
But, despite a slashed majority and an historically low 36% of the vote, working class voters backed Labour by voting in their millions. How should socialists respond?
Before they got the vote
workers sought to influence
elections indirectly - for
instance through boycotting
property owners who didn't
not support worker-friendly
candidates.
Many then turned to these Liberal Party MPs when the franchise was extended. But having fought long and hard for the vote, inevitably, a party was created to give a voice to workers themselves- the Labour Party -at the end of the nineteenth century.
Such was the attachment to liberalism, however, that not all unions backed the formation of Labour. The Miners, for instance, remained wedded to the Liberal Party well into the 20th century. For all that Labour trumpets its founding of the welfare state in 1945 - the seeds of modern welfarism were planted by the Liberal governments of a hundred years ago.
This overlap of liberalism and labourism is important. One of Labour's weaknesses has always been that its focus on giving a parliamentary platform to the working class combined with a failure to break with some of the political traditions of • liberalism. It also shows that class and community-based voting allegiances can take a long time to shift once they take root. Nonetheless, from the 1920s Labour developed a
base of solid working class
support that delivered votes.
A minority could be persuaded to back the Tories or
didn't vote at all and the size
of this minority tended to
determine who won the
But the majority
stayed with Labour, through
repeated betrayals, as an
expression of class interest and support for the minor reforms that Labour promised.
But the ending of the postwar economic boom in the 1970s and subsequent economic restructuring under Thatcher, led to a series of defeats for the working class. Labour responded over the 1980s and 90s by breaking from its moorings and moving substantially to the right.
It had always implemented pro-capitalist, if reformist, policies - breaking promises of a more radical redistributionist agenda once elected.
But it now adopted neoliberal economics as matter of programme and in 1997 pledged to continue Tory privatisation, the squeeze on the unions, privileging the rich and a salami-slicing of the welfare state. The promise of reformism and the symbolism of the class vote were crushed.
This did not go unnoticed in Labour's support base. Despite the party's majority, its working class support slumped as • turn-out Not only is the Labour vote down, but long term allegiances are beginning to change or are up for grabs. The question is whether this can be translated into support for a new socialist party.
dropped from 70 to 59%
between 1997 and 2001. The
slightly higher turnout in
2005 has been more than
cancelled out by the drop to 36% of vote. In short only 25% of the electorate now vote Labour.
The New Labour "project" anticipated this, repositioning itself to the right and scooping up a layer of
class voters in replacement.
The gamble was that disaffection would be disciplined by the union bureaucracy, dissipated geographically and politically or wander off into the wilderness.
Accordingly, despite hundreds of thousands of working class electors no longer voting for Labour or anyone, Labour sustained its position of strength.
In part this has been because of Tory ineptitude and Blair's ability to hegemonise the centre ground with help from Murdoch and other press barons.
But it also reflects working class political demoralisation after two decades of retreat, expressed through a rightward radicalisation (with the growth of the BNP and UKIP) as well as abstention. However, mass opposition to the Iraq war has acted as a
pivotal crisis point that has
galvanised all this into rank
hostility to New Labour,
leading to the possibility of
an opening for a new left
wing alternative. One consequence is that in 2005 more of Labour's base turned to other parties instead of simply abstaining.
Labour responded by coldly playing the undemocratic first past the post system. Who forms a government turns on the votes of a narrow layer of "swing voters" in a minority of marginal constituencies and the only "alternative" was dishonestly posed as being the return of a Tory government.
But the Blairites over-estimated their position - imagining that the Iraq war would fade, the working class heartlands could be loyally mobilised and the new class base cemented through plans for selective education and "modernisation" of the welfare state.
Nothing of the sort happened. A significant chunk of the Labour base engaged in tactical anti-Blair protest vote, to "send a message» on the war and other issues. So the spin doctors changed tack. Yanking
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FIRAO