27.03.1997

Chipping away at Labour illusions

Dave Nellist was a Labour MP from 1983 to 1991, when he was expelled from the Labour Party in the anti-Militant witch hunt, but remained in parliament until his defeat in the 1992 general election. Today he is a member of the Socialist Party’s national committee and will be contesting Coventry South on May 1. Peter Manson spoke to him

What do you see as the main issues in the general election?

Coventry was considered one of the richest working class cities, yet now has 29,000 workers earning less than £3 an hour. Today it is a city with low wages and sustained, long-term unemployment.

What about nationally?

In the 70s and 80s there was at least a degree of choice: whether the main utilities should be state-owned or owned by multi-millionaires; on international questions, whether there should be American bases in this country; whether Britain should be in or out of the European Community. That choice between the main political parties doesn’t exist any more. While the gap between rich and poor is at its widest, the gap between the parties is at its narrowest. What debate does take place is on secondary issues; on personality, not politics.

That is why the Socialist Party will be standing in England and Wales. A genuine socialist alternative will be offered in perhaps 100 constituencies - ourselves, the Socialist Labour Party, the Scottish Socialist Alliance, the Greens, and so on.

What would you advise workers to do in the rest of the country?

Come and help the Socialist Party where we are standing! A successful campaign doesn’t just depend on local people.

I was thinking of how we should advise them to vote.

If you come to Coventry you won’t have time to cast your own vote! Honestly I don’t think it will make a difference. Labour is likely to end up with a 100 majority despite itself - there will be a huge protest against the Tories.

But shouldn’t we try to intervene apart from where our own candidates are standing?

It really doesn’t matter how a small number of socialists vote - the few thousands who read your paper or the few thousand who read The Socialist. I can’t put my hand on my heart and with a clear conscience advise people to vote for the Labour Party - they only want to be a more efficient party at running capitalism than the Tories. I wouldn’t be able to face up to council workers in six months’ time if I told them to vote Labour today.

I will take great personal pleasure in seeing the Tory government defeated on the night of May 1. They are literally creatures who are not averse to taking £50 notes in brown envelopes - it will give me vicarious pleasure co see them defeated. But we’re not going to advocate that workers vote Labour. I can understand them wanting to, but I can also understand people, say, in the Isle of Wight voting Liberal - in some ways they might be seen as more radical than Labour.

It seems to me that, far from advising people to vote Labour, we should be trying to break that habit and pose the alternative, even where we are not standing.

We’re not advocating abstention. If you’re miles away from a socialist campaign and can neither campaign nor vote for us, then it doesn’t matter so much how you vote. I can see there could be good reason to vote for Tony Benn or Dennis Skinner, but we will definitely not be canvassing for a Labour vote.

But aren’t the likes of Benn, Skinner and Livingstone standing on Tony Blair’s platform? Shouldn’t we be challenging them to stand on a platform of very minimum working class demands to prove they are worth voting for? If they can’t even do that we will be demonstrating to workers Labour’s true nature and helping to break their illusions.

We are constantly trying to break the illusions of large numbers of workers. We reach a large number of people through our books, our papers, our meetings, and we invite them to join our party. Look how workers in France and Germany have acted, as steps are taken to meet the Maastricht criteria - we can expect similar events here.

In Coventry we have been campaigning against the closure of the Coventry and Warwickshire hospital. We’ve collected thousands of signatures on our petition. The three local Labour MPs nominally opposed the closure to a very limited extent. But the plans were put on ice because the necessary clauses couldn’t be passed before the election. So will Labour scrap the closure? No, they have now said they are in favour of this private finance initiative.

After that was reported in the local paper, we saw the anger of individuals on the street. They were saying, ‘Labour’s going to close down our hospitals - I thought they were on our side.’

Already there’s a bit of an illusion chipped away. Yes, we must challenge them - I’m not knocking that. But millions will be broken by events, and we will be putting our marker down.

How can we get the one, united party of the working class that we need?

Labour has gone over in every way co being a bourgeois capitalist party whose only aim is to be more efficient than the Tories. That means we need a working class party - one, I would hope, with an overtly socialist programme.

Arthur Scargill could have helped in that with the formation of the SLP. If he had campaigned for an open, united party he could have filled the Albert Hall. Instead he has tried to build the SLP top down. We have seen voidings - in fact they are expulsions - and groups and individuals have been pushed away.

So the SLP is a player, but it is not the main gathering ground. Apart from us and the SLP, there are the Socialist Alliances and the Greens, together with various individuals who could split from Labour. There are also one or two unions, like the FBU, who have been assessing where their money goes.

We need a mass working class party. It would have been nice if it could have arisen in a more direct way, like in Spain or Italy. What will kick it off I can’t say.