Red Ken for mayor?

Mark Osborn of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty relates the strange story of Ken Livingstone and Workers Fight

A comrade from Workers Fight circulated the following petition at the Workers' Liberty London forum (December 16):

• "Ken Livingstone for mayor of London.
  "Dear Tony Blair,
  "You claim to be for democracy, but your attempts to stop Ken from being the Labour candidate for mayor when the vast majority of London Labour Party members want this - and when the polls all show Ken would win hands down - show that you are no democrat at all.
  "It is clear you want to silence the left wing and genuine socialists in the Labour Party - who have opposed you, consistently wanting a stop: to privatisation of London Underground; to low pay for health workers, teachers and council workers; to the anti-trade union laws of the last 20 years since Thatcher began them.
  "We, the undersigned, want Ken as mayor of London, and you, Tony Blair, should not stop London Labour members democratically deciding who they want as mayor."

The petition is not to be sent back to Workers Fight, but to Ken Livingstone at the House of Commons (ie, it looks like an official Livingstone petition sheet; however, it is published anonymously by Workers Fight). The petition suggests that this campaign should be taken to every high street and workplace.

Firstly: note the obsequious and matey repeated use of "Ken"; note the objection to low pay of teachers, health and council workers - why not just object to low pay in general? More importantly: the petition presents Livingstone as "leftwing" and a 'genuine socialist' - which he is not (and because this petition sheet appears to be Livingstone's own work it seems as if Livingstone is describing his own programme). The comrades suggest that Livingstone is the candidate who opposes the privatisation of the underground, who opposes the anti-union laws and low pay - which is news to us; and is, in fact, a straightforward lie.

Our objections to Livingstone are quite simply stated:

1. He is superficially plausible, but not what he seems. He has no principles except the drive for self-advancement. In the past he has enjoyed an (unearned) image as a radical; now he is desperately attempting to get into bed with Blair. Livingstone's programme for mayor includes demanding 'London's' money 'back' from the Scots, etc: "Londoners are subsidising the rest of the country". This is the same as Jeffrey Archer's main theme. A socialist would argue for redistribution - not from Scotland to London, but from the rich to the workers!

Londoners are considered as one homogeneous unit - rather than divided into classes. Livingstone's website pronounces that "to be effective the mayor must not only create a consensus with the 25 members of the assembly, but must achieve a wider consensus with the London boroughs and public opinion." In other words, he is saying he will create a consensus with Liberals and Tories, etc across London. That is, of course, what he did during his campaign against the abolition of the GLC.

Recently Livingstone has said that his politics are similar to those of John Prescott; he has said that he agrees with 95% of government policy; he has said he would like to join the government. The man is not leftwing. He is (currently) admitting as much. So why do Workers Fight (and Briefing, Socialist Outlook and the SWP) play along with the fiction of 'Red Ken'?

2. His record on the GLC was - contrary to popular myth - lousy. Livingstone led the GLC not to confrontation with the Tory government, but - via passing on Tory cuts through raising local rates - to defeat and abolition. He failed to fight alongside the miners, or indeed anyone else.

The early 80s were the days of the Bennite movement and the Labour left - and so Livingstone made some radical sounds, met Sinn Féin and printed some anti-racist posters. It suited Kinnock, and the Thatcher government and the Evening Standard - for their own different reasons - to portray Livingstone as a socialist threat. Livingstone thought he was positioning himself for the post of Labour leader and went along for the ride. So what's Workers Fight's excuse? - we shall see.

3. Livingstone has associations with organisations which are the political equivalent of pond life - Healy's WRP and, more recently, the Stalinist sect, Socialist Action. As Workers Fight well know (all of you are ex-Healyites, and Steve M worked on Healy's Labour Herald), Livingstone linked up with Gerry Healy's lunatic, Libyan-funded, anti-semitic WRP through Labour Herald.

And this link almost certainly still exists. For example: a) Livingstone spoke at Gerry Healy's memorial meeting in 1989 - four years after the WRP had expelled Healy for rape and violence; b) Livingstone wrote a review in The Guardian (September 6 1994) of the Healyite biography, Gerry Healy: a revolutionary life, praising Healy and repeating claims that MI5 were responsible for the demise of the barmy WRP. He also wrote a preface for this book.

Up to this point comrades might simply believe that Workers Fight are only engaged in a little bit of idiotic opportunism (trying, SWP-style, to jump on a bandwagon, looking for short-term influence and recruits at the expense of principle). But here Workers Fight's reasons for backing Livingstone take a turn for the worse.

Steve M worked on Labour Herald with WRP central committee member Steven Miller. Steve M has Miller's diary. Steve M refuses to allow the diary to be published. Why? Workers Fight's stated reason is that the bourgeois press would use the facts in the diary against Livingstone and the left. Of course we have seen this sort of demagogic nonsense before. For decades the Stalinists demanded silence about repression and the gulags in the USSR which would 'be used by imperialism' against the left.

The left must make honest, public balance sheets of its actions, policies, etc. This is a matter of our political health. We should also seek to define the left clearly - and neither the Stalinist rulers nor Livingstone are part of the genuine socialist left. This is why our organisation makes publicly available our assessment of our own and other socialist groups' policies and activities. And that's why our organisation told the truth about Stalinism, was right to expose the WRP as being in the pay of Libya, and that is why we should tell the truth about Livingstone now.

Nevertheless, Steve M and Workers Fight have another - and the real - reason for being pro-Livingstone. When Gerry D - their third member - was threatened with the sack on the buses, Livingstone, who is Gerry's local MP, helped him get his job back. So Workers Fight are indebted to "Ken" and cannot find it in their hearts to tell the truth about "Ken's" poor record.

Finally, 4. Livingstone engages - together with Socialist Action - in some of the most deranged faction fighting I have ever seen - in the anti-racist movement, ARA, and, more recently, in the student movement where Livingstone/Socialist Action's activities stopped the left winning the NUS's presidency (one of our comrades came within 15 votes of defeating the Blairite candidate in March 1998). More recently Livingstone told a student meeting that Sean Matgamna, editor of Workers' Liberty, was in the pay of MI5, suggesting that Livingstone is not just factional, but a bit of a nutcase too.

So, comrades from Workers Fight, what do you have to say for yourselves?