07.05.1996

Labour’s big idea: Scrap welfare

After the local elections Labour was back in the headlines in the form of Gordon Brown and Chris Smith. But have they provided the big idea everyone is looking for to challenge the Tories?

After last week’s local elections, the Conservative Party is now in its worst ever position in terms of the number of its councillors and the authorities it controls. In Britain as a whole, it has only 4,415 councillors, compared to 11,326 for Labour and 5,182 for the Liberal Democrats. The Labour Party now controls 218 councils, the Lib Dems 56 and the Tories only 12.

In many towns and cities up and down the country there is not a single Conservative councillor. Formerly true blue areas have fallen to Paddy Ashdown and even Tony Blair.

Yet incredibly the Tory line has been that they have now “bottomed out”; they have “turned the corner” and there is “light at the end of the tunnel”. The reason they are able to make these pathetic claims is that they gained slightly more votes than in local elections for different seats last year: they had 25% in 1995, whereas last week was ‘only’ their second worst performance with 27%.

But what about Labour? Is it true, as Blair says, that “people are demonstrating a far greater enthusiasm for today’s Labour Party”? Not if the turnout of around 30% at last Thursday’s poll is anything to go by. In 1991, 46% voted in the council elections before the last general election.

Liverpool is a typical example. With the Tories already all but wiped out, Labour increased its majority from one to three, as they and the Liberal Democrats successfully defended just about all the seats they held. Some left candidates did well, with the breakaway ‘Ward Labour’ actually winning a seat from the official party.

These facts confirm our analysis. Only a miracle can save the Tories, but people are turning to ‘new’ Labour much more in hope than expectation: ‘They can’t be worse than this lot,’ is the reaction our comrades get every week on the streets. ‘Just wait and see,’ has been our ready answer.

And this week we have seen yet another confirmation of what both Labour and the Tories have in store. In what amounted to the signing of an official death warrant on the welfare state, both parties began to outline their plans for dismantling the benefits system.

Stephen Dorrell, the health secretary, said that the state could no longer afford the escalating costs of caring for the old. “The government believes that the principal responsibility for making that provision rests with the individual,” he said.

His Labour equivalent, Harriet Harman, retorted: “People were told they would be looked after from the cradle to the grave. They have left it a bit late to tell people to provide for themselves.”

But that was exactly what her shadow cabinet colleague Chris Smith was also telling them, as he contemptuously dismissed “the old statist left”. He called for an increasing role for private insurance. Smith, Labour’s social security spokesperson, also called for a redefinition of poverty. He has obviously discovered that millions can be relieved of their poverty simply by telling them they are not poor after all. The Tories have already used this method to ‘help’ the unemployed. Labour’s proposals to cut child benefit and introduce ‘work for benefi’” schemes, set alongside Smith’s outburst, make it perfectly clear that they can be worse    

In this context, the performance of many left candidates is encouraging. Now is the time to fill the political vacuum caused by the Tory/Labour/Lib Dem consensus by posing the revolutionary alternative. Those ‘revolutionary’ groups who continue to cry, ‘Vote Labour, but ...’ in today’s circumstances have shown themselves to be 100% part of the problem.

Peter Manson

Militant Labour votes

Socialist Labour Party

Liverpool ‘Ward Labour’