Weekly Worker 419 Thursday February 14 2002
Local Elections May 2002
Not just votes alone
Is the Socialist Alliance using elections to build a mass movement for socialism from below, or building a movement just to win votes? That is effectively the question before delegates at Saturday’s first meeting of the SA national council in Birmingham. Apart from discussing report-backs from the rail disputes and Ogmore by-election in south Wales the February 16 meeting will also decide our manifesto for the May 2 local government elections in England.
Two substantive approaches will be presented. One - drafted by Liz Davies, our national chair - is essentially about how the Socialist Alliance would run local government. Comrade Davies’s draft is riddled with phrases such as “We will provide public funding for local community groups” - as if we were just about to quietly assume control in town halls across the country. However, this well-meaning approach - that the Socialist Alliance could simply take over local councils and run services in the interests of the working class - is deeply flawed.
In reality, any council with a Socialist Alliance majority - even if it attempted to implement a few meaningful measures in favour of our class - would soon find itself on a direct collision course with central government. We would not be in a position to deliver services in any ‘normal’ sense of the word, but would have to build a mass political movement from below to aid our battle against the government. Our councillors would have to be prepared to set illegal budgets, defy bailiffs and risk imprisonment. There is no municipal socialist road to working class liberation.
It is with that in mind that the other manifesto, from the CPGB, has been drafted. The CPGB has also moved amendments to the guidance notes to alliance members - again drafted by comrade Davies. One such amendment reads: “We are under no illusion that we could run local government in the interests of the working class just by winning a majority on this or that council. Implementation of our manifesto People before profit would lead to strong resistance from central government. In short, we need to use our local government campaigning to build a national movement against central government.” Such an approach needs to be at the heart of our thinking.
A further difference between the two outlooks is our attitude to campaigning. Votes are important. However, we must not subordinate our political approach in an effort to maximise them. In Liz Davies’s draft guidelines we read: “The SA’s aim is obviously to get the best vote possible at the local elections. Elections are only won, however, on the basis of long-term electoral work, active local branches and a permanent and high-profile presence in the area. The local elections provide us with an opportunity to build up our profile, locally and nationally, to recruit members and to start to achieve name-recognition among the electorate. Recruiting, and retaining, new members during the election is therefore as much a priority as maximising our vote.”
For comrade Davies, then, winning elections is the principal, if long-term, aim. We recruit in order to do better in elections rather than contest elections in order to win recruits. She favours a limited number of candidates to ensure an overall high average vote. This is not the right way round either. We need to aim to maximise our audience for socialist politics and build our fledgling organisation.
That is why the draft manifesto presented by the CPGB states: “The Socialist Alliance is standing in the 2002 local government elections to put forward a voice for independent working class politics. Through campaigning for our independent socialist voice against New Labour and all the other pro-capitalist parties we aim to build our presence and organisation in the localities and as a national force. As well as our prime objectives of maximising the profile for our politics and building our organisation on the ground, we aim to win as many votes as possible for socialism.”
To this end, the CPGB favours standing across local authorities wherever possible, including standing paper candidates. Dave Parks from Exeter has made a good case for standing as many candidates as we can (Weekly Worker February 14). There are even suggestions that the Socialist Workers Party is shifting to this position as well. As I have said elsewhere, there is no contradiction between maximising the number of contests and concentrating on a smaller number of wards.
Contrary to comrade Davies’s draft guidelines, paper candidates do not take up resources, financially or in terms of comrades’ time (apart from getting 10 nominations per candidate). Standing across an authority while targeting selected wards for campaigning gives us the opportunity to present ourselves as a real alternative to the pro-capitalist parties. In addition catch-all activities such as shopping centre stalls and publicity in the local press will win us votes in wards where we do not directly campaign.
Another difference emerges in relation to the extreme-right, racist British National Party. Comrade Davies’s draft states: “We should not, under any circumstances, support a split in the anti-BNP vote if that would lead to the serious threat of the BNP winning.” This is ambiguous at best. What is the “anti-BNP vote”? Does this mean letting Liberals or even Tories win? Should we further alienate working class people by saying their best bet to keep the racists out is to vote Labour or Tory or Liberal? It is thorough disillusionment with the mainstream parties that leads working class people to consider voting BNP to begin with. Implicitly presenting the pro-capitalist parties as the answer in marginal areas is completely the wrong way to confront the fascists.
There are other differences as well. Comrade Davies’ draft manifesto only touches on local government policy issues. The question of the state is not raised - its war, how it rules, what sort of system we live under, the monarchy (in another attempt to redress this the CPGB is putting forward a motion to prioritise our socialist republicanism in opposition to the royal jubilee).
It is the key task of making propaganda for independent working class politics that is absent from comrade Davies’s approach. To make votes the number one priority is to set us on a slippery slope of electoralist opportunism. Socialism will not come through this ballot or that ballot. It can only be the self-liberating act of the working class politically mobilised against the capitalist state.
We must use elections to make propaganda for that path. We must use elections to win new recruits to the Socialist Alliance. We must begin to forge the Socialist Alliance into a party that is able to coordinate not only electoral work, but the whole arsenal of political work necessary for the working class to take state power.
Marcus Larsen
Priorities for local elections
CPGB motion
The Socialist Alliance is standing in the 2002 local government elections to put forward a voice for independent working class politics. Through campaigning for our independent socialist voice against New Labour and all the other pro-capitalist parties we aim to build our presence and organisation in the localities and as a national force. As well as our prime objectives of maximising the profile for our politics and building our organisation on the ground, we aim to win as many votes as possible for socialism.
The Socialist Alliance will stand on the politics of People before profit. An electoral statement to appear on candidate literature will be written by the executive committee based on the following priorities.
- Democracy: For democratic and accountable local government. For transparent and responsive committee structures. For recallable councillors. Oppose the increased power for executives. No to directly elected mayors. No to the UK monarchy system. For proportional representation.
- Budgets: Based on what we need, not what the system says it can afford. Local budgets to have input from working class, trade union and tenant committees. No to capping, for ‘illegal’ budgets. Abolish council tax. Build a national movement against underfunding by central government.
- Privatisation and services: No to PFI/PPP. Take corporate greed out of our services. Defend the NHS. Concentrate on workers’ and residents’ control, not ‘public ownership’. For general propaganda against rail privatisation. For nationalisation under workers’ control. For a dignified old age: no sell-offs of old people’s homes. For pensions at £150 a week. For 24-hour childcare.
- Housing: No to sell-offs of council houses. Take pride in our estates. Avoid the approach of merely ‘defending what exists or what was’.
- Racism: For democratic assimilation from below. Oppose funding structures which divide working class communities in the name of official government ‘anti-racism’.
- Law and order and safety: For democratic and accountable community patrols. Accountable to local working class organisations, trade unions, tenants associations. No reliance on the police or neighbourhood watch.
- War and capitalism: Capitalism is a system of crisis and war. The answer to a society based on exploitation, oppression and profit before human need is a society run by the majority. For working class rule, for socialism. We call for a stop to the imperialist war drive on the poorest countries of the world. UK troops out of Afghanistan. For international working class solidarity. No to the so-called ‘war on terrorism’.
The Socialist Alliance believes that people should come before profit, that our common resources should be used for the common good. We believe that decisions about how and where we should use those resources should be made by the people themselves through democratic means. In order to build a society in which need comes before greed, we believe our economy must be reorganised on a radically democratic basis.
By socialism we mean nothing like the old Stalinist Soviet Union, with its repression and bureaucracy. Neither do we mean the old state-owned capitalism of clause four and the Labour Party. For us, socialism is about making solidarity the guiding principle of society. We mean the working class organising to liberate itself from the rule of profit and create its own democracy, abolishing the privileges of managers and officials. Every major industry should be reorganised on the lines of social provision for need - publicly owned, and democratically controlled by workers and the community. No rich and no poor, no profits and no wage slavery, no palaces and no homeless, no jobless and no overworked.
Within the ranks of our alliance there are different views on what will eventually be necessary in order to achieve this. But we are all united on one principle - the decisions on how to fight for socialism will be made by working class people themselves, through their own democratic organisations.
