06.03.1997

SLP vote squeezed

After Wirral South the writing is on the wall for the Tories. But will the Socialist Labour Party be up to the challenge of a New Labour government?

Last weekend John Major was reduced to spouting absurdities. He admitted that with any repetition of the Wirral voting pattern “there would be a Labour government with a clear majority, able to do what it wished, without let or hindrance pretty much”. But he added: “The battle is still to be fought. Does Britain change course? Does it move to the policies of socialism? Or does it stay in the policies that have made it successful over the last few years?”

Only a visitor from another planet might be prepared to believe that Tory policies have been “successful”. The Thatcherite programme to put the ‘Great’ back in Britain has failed dismally to halt British capital’s relative decline and the Tories are floundering as a result. Similarly, who really thinks that New Labour has the remotest connection with socialism?

The Conservatives cannot make up their minds whether they ought to be dismissing the by-election result or giving dire warnings that it foretells a 290-seat Labour majority, which would deliver, according to one Tory adviser, “more than 100 fully fledged socialist MPs into the Commons, with all the risks that entails”. Both options are unconvincing, to say the least.

It now appears certain that Tony Blair will be returned to Westminster with a large majority, leading a government every bit as reactionary as anything John Major could dream up. It will be by far the most right wing Labour government ever. But the advantage it will have (for the bourgeoisie) over the Tories is that at least in the short term it will have none of the Conservative Party’s paralysing divisions, particularly over Europe. The ‘left’ - even in Labour Party terms - will be reduced to an impotent rump.

So where does that leave the Socialist Labour Party? Despite the media portrayal of Range Rovers and golf clubs, and middle class parents, interested only in keeping their grammar schools and getting tough on crime, the Wirral South constituency has a substantial working class population.

Although the affluent Clatterbridge and Heswell estates account for half the electorate, there are also the mixed areas of Bebington and Bromborough, not to mention the solidly working class council estates of Eastham and New Ferry. Although it was previously considered one of the Tories’ safest seats, it has always had a large Labour vote. In 1992 Labour received 35% (well up with the national average) and today there is a Labour council.

Many Vauxhall workers live in the constituency, as well as employees of Unilever, whose local workforce face the possibility of 1,000 job losses. In these circumstances the 156 votes (0.36% - or less than four per 1,000) cast for Mick Cullen, the SLP candidate, can only be described as dismal.

Ignoring the evidence of the most recent council by-elections, Arthur Scargill has been continuing to claim that SLP candidates have won 14-15% on average. This attempt to talk up the party’s prospects and to encourage more local branches to stand candidates in the general election has been badly hit by Wirral South.

Given the fact that there was no real attempt to mobilise the membership for the campaign, the decision to stand so close to the general election has to be questioned. At best it was a gamble. It could have come off only with the most vigorous and carefully targeted campaigning. The SLP needed to save its deposit at the very least in order to give the membership a much needed boost.

Now the position of those who do not want to contest in 1997 has been strengthened. Of course the ‘Trotskyist’ elements in the party who put the defeat of the Tories before everything - even if the alternative is Tony Blair - would have dragged their feet whatever the result in Wirral. But the mass of semi-active or non-active members will now have their fears confirmed that ‘we don’t have the resources’.

Arthur Scargill is right to think big and fight for the maximum number of SLP candidates. We do not agree with those on the left who say “standing candidates where we have no base is useless and ... a symptom of parliamentary cretinism” (Socialist Labour Action no2, February 1997). The SLP has no real base anywhere, and elections provide an excellent opportunity for putting out propaganda in order to start creating them.

What is really useless is to continually claim that everything is rosy, that the party has won, and will continue to win, excellent results. Wirral South has exposed those claims. Members can only really be mobilised in the long run by being presented with the truth. The truth is that the SLP is unlikely to make much impact at all in the general election - the desire to get rid of the Tories is so overwhelming.

Nevertheless, it is important that a genuine working class alternative is put forward as widely as possible. Some recruits will be made and some campaign points will be remembered by workers, but more importantly the SLP will be putting down its marker.

Far from ‘voting with the class’ and in effect backing Tony Blair, it is correct to warn workers of the vicious attacks about to be launched by New Labour. The SLP is still in the best position to recruit in the wake of an anti-working class Blair government. That is why revolutionaries must continue to make their voices heard within it.

Peter Manson