25.01.1996

Hemsworth by-election: Support the SLP!

On Thursday, Hemsworth goes to the polls. This by-election is an important one for the left in Britain

THE Socialist Labour Party’s by-election campaign in Hemsworth is an important step forward. This fight deserves the wholehearted support of all sections of the left.

Communists have participated in the campaigning work in the constituency with enthusiasm. We say that a vote for Brenda Nixon, the SLP candidate, is a vote for a break from the Labour Party. Of course, we have many disagreements with the platform that the SLP has stood on in this election. But that is a secondary question. This campaign has put the call for a genuine workers’ party - a serious challenge to the poison of Labourism - firmly on the practical agenda of everyone in the workers’ movement.

How have other left organisations faced up to this challenge?

Militant Labour is supporting Brenda and working hard in the constituency. Like us, they believe that the blanket bans on organisations selling their own papers or having any independent voice is wrong. They too have made their opposition to these proscriptions quite clear and the arguments continue amongst the activists in the campaign. But for now, the bigger issue must come first.

What about others?

The remnants of the Communist Party of Britain still stand firmly against the SLP and with Blair’s Labour. It thus makes itself increasingly irrelevant to working class politics.

But it is the stance of the Socialist Workers Party that is the most contradictory. It has now dropped its ‘hard line’ objections and has been eager to be involved in the by-election. More generally, it has shifted to a position of soft support for the new organisation ... but only where it stands in safe Labour seats!

The SWP is caught in a real contradiction. It seems to believe that as long as the new party presents no real challenge to Labour in the ballot box - the most important arena for Blair’s party - then it is perhaps worthy of grudging support. Yet the SWP will be “urging a Labour vote in most areas in the next election” (Socialist Worker January 10).

The SWP cites the SLP’s “electoralism” - Socialist Labour actually stands in elections - as the key problem. The mere act of contesting elections is crassly counterposed to ‘class struggle’: “the ballot box or the picket line,” as one SWPer artlessly put it to a recent socialist forum in London.

But there are plenty of brilliant examples of revolutionaries and communists using the tactic of standing in elections to spread their message of class struggle and to challenge Labourism. Surely the key problem of the SLP is not elections per se, it is the political platform the new organisation stands on?

The Socialist Workers Party must enter this debate in a frank, open and democratic way.

The formation of the SLP is a positive move. Not because it starts life as an organisation with a crystal clear revolutionary programme. Nor because it can command the loyalty of huge swathes of the working class. It is a step forward precisely because it opens the debate amongst important sections of the workers’ movement about what sort of party we need.

That is why ‘new’ Labour is desperate to stamp the SLP out of existence in this by-election. It has ten campaign offices buzzing with work in the constituency. Labour bill boards decorate the streets and around every corner a Labour big-wig lurks to shake your hand. This level of work is unprecedented for the sleepy Hemsworth Labour Party, normally happy to snooze atop a twenty thousand majority.

We should approach the fight with the same level of seriousness and determination. Whatever the result on Thursday, the debate on building a viable alternative to Labour has moved on. There are new, perhaps more important, issues we must all now face up to.

Yes, we all agree - Blair’s Labour is no good. But was Smith’s? Was Kinnock’s? Or Callaghan’s, Wilson’s or Attlee’s? We say that the Labour Party in office has always betrayed the hopes of the working class; it has always scabbed on socialism. It has not done this because of the individual psychology of its leaders, but because of what type of party it fundamentally is. It is a pro-capitalist, reformist party - now and always.

We don’t need a ‘better’ version of such a party: we need to make a clean break and build a combat party that fights not for governmental office, or for a few more crumbs from the capitalist table, but for our class to be the ruling class in society - for genuine socialism. In other words, what the working class needs is a communist party.

A successful Hemsworth by-election campaign will be a blow for independent working class politics and against the stranglehold of Labourism - a death grip that has paralysed the majority of our class throughout this century. Every socialist, communist and revolutionary should support the important fight of the SLP in Hemsworth.

Vote SLP. Vote Nixon!