09.01.1997

Build the alternative now

Should SLP members call for a Labour vote in the absence of an SLP candidate?

The comrades are quite correct in pointing out the lack of debate around this whole question and in calling on the NEC to “organise a discussion amongst the entire membership”. It is a disgrace that no discussion on electoral tactics (or any other matter) has been permitted in Socialist News. Elements on the NEC clearly want an atomised, politically illiterate membership, whose job it is to unquestioningly obey their directives.

But the comrades are wrong on just about everything else.

They believe that the central question in British politics today is the need to defeat the Tories and, as the Labour Party is the only realistic substitute, we should do everything in our power to ensure Blair is elected. Why then are we contesting the election at all? If our propaganda in constituencies where we are not standing will have, as the comrades imply, such an impact, surely SLP candidates themselves could produce a devastating effect? Isn’t there a clear risk of splitting the vote and letting in the Tories?

In fact that is exactly the conclusion that at least some of the 23 signatories have come to in practice. They have been engaged in this very debate on the letters page of the Morning Star, where they have announced that they have no intention of standing candidates themselves for those very reasons.

Russell Lambert of Berkshire SLP branch writes that the only way

“to achieve this highly desirable outcome [ie, getting rid of the Tories - AF] and the only realistic one. is to vote Labour. Our branch has decided not to engage in any electoral activity, given the very limited resources at our disposal” (Morning Star December 21 1996).

That amounts to sabotage of the effort to actually build the alternative they say they want. One gets the impression that these comrades cannot imagine life without the Labour Party and one wonders why they have joined the SLP at all.

The signatories write: “The re-election of the Tories would be a disaster for the working class.” This is because “it would deepen the demoralisation which exists throughout the labour movement”. Apparently there is an unwritten rule which says that workers cannot fight back under a rightwing government. This ignores all the evidence both from this country and internationally. One only has to recall the defeat of Ted Heath’s Industrial Relations Act and the Great Miners’ Strike a decade later.

The reason why workers were not cowed then was of course because there existed some kind of working class leadership, however inadequate: in the 70s it was in the form of the Communist Party of Great Britain, leading the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, which made the Act inoperable; and in 1984-85 it was militant trade union resistance, personified by comrade Scargill. It is as clear as day that we will build that leadership by posing the alternative now, not by vainly hoping that the fightback will magically materialise after we have put Tony Blair into Downing Street.

What specific material gains do the comrades expect for the working class as a result of a Labour victory? Well, a Conservative re-election “would lead to the privatisation of the rest of the railways, a further attempt to privatise the post office, more anti-union legislation ...” This is so pathetic, the comrades really are clutching at straws. Firstly, do they sincerely believe that capitalist ‘public ownership’ in this reactionary period makes one jot of difference to either working conditions or the ‘service’ provided? Whether enterprises or services are owned by individual capitalists or on their behalf by the state, the attack on our class continues unabated. As to the anti-union laws, these are already so all-embracing that they make any effective, winning strike action illegal. And Blair promises to keep them! Furthermore Labour is actually considering tightening the screws itself, such as through compulsory, binding arbitration.

What about the idea that if we do not call for a Labour vote “this will serve to undermine our chances of recruiting opponents of Blair who have not joined us, but may well do so in the future”? Again this a totally illusory argument. The comrades would have us believe that advising such Labour members to stick with their party helps us to prise them away from it. By firmly insisting that no support of any kind should be offered to Blair we will be much better placed to attract any genuinely working class partisans that remain with New Labour. That is the best way to ensure we will gain from the inevitable disillusionment that will follow his victory. And the Labour Party hardly needs our support to win the election. It is getting enough support from the ruling class.

The call for socialists to support the ‘lesser of two evils’ instead of posing the alternative of what we need is as old as the hills. An excellent exposure of such arguments was developed by Lenin during the period of the Second Duma (1906-7). He vigorously opposed the call by the Mensheviks to bloc with the Cadets as a means of keeping out the ultra-reactionary Black Hundreds:

“The ... flaw in this stock argument is that it means that the democrats tacitly surrender hegemony in the democratic struggle to the Cadets. In the event of a split vote that secures the victory of a Black Hundred, why should we be blamed for not having voted for the Cadet, and not the Cadets for not having voted for us?

“‘We are in a minority,’ answer the Mensheviks in a spirit of Christian humility. ‘The Cadets are more numerous’ ...

“The social democrats [ie, communist - AF] have not had, and could not have had, a majority over the bourgeois democrats anywhere in the world ... But everywhere, in all countries, the first independent entry of the social democrats in an election campaign has been met by the howling and barking of the liberals, accusing the socialists of wanting to let the Black Hundreds in ...

“By refusing to fight the Cadets you are leaving under the ideological influence of the Cadets masses of proletarians and semi-proletarians who are capable of following the lead of the social democrats. Now or later, unless you cease to be socialists, you will have to fight independently, in spite of the Black Hundred danger. And it is easier and more necessary to take the right step now than it will be later on” (VI Lenin Collected Works Vol 11, pp314-5).

So we see that even in a situation where the difference between the bourgeois parties was a hundred times more marked than the difference today between Labour and the Tories, Lenin knew where working class priorities lay.

But some people never learn. Today’s Mensheviks are just as adamant as their Russian counterparts that the way for workers to make progress is to back the Cadets.

Alan Fox