27.03.1997

Red flag raised against Blair

Lee-Anne Bates spoke to Brian Gibson, who is the SLP candidate in Sedgefield, County Durham, standing against Tony Blair. He is a long-standing trade unionist, a member of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union in the area and was a Labour Party member until expelled in 1988

You live in Sedgefield, which is obviously a strong Labour seat. What is the political landscape of the area?

It is mostly mining communities. Labour took over 50% of the poll in the last general election. Clearly this is an excellent seat for us to challenge all the parties of capitalism - based on clause four, traditional Labour Party policies: not nationalisation, but public ownership. I honestly believe that, given time, that message will get over. Obviously it is difficult at the moment, given the desire to ‘get the Tories out’.

Do you think that Labour was ever really a workers’ party in a socialist sense?

Not really. Even though clause four was there, there was never any intention of introducing it.

I have been in the trade union movement in the area for 30 years. I was a member of the Labour Party and was on the local executive when Blair applied for selection and of course there is a story to tell there about fiddled votes. About three or four years after he took the seat I attacked the local Labour councillors in the press for corruption and self-gratification in claiming excessive benefits for themselves. So they expelled me in 1988.

A group of us then set up a local party fighting Labour on local issues. We eventually had at one stage two district, one county and two town councillors, but at the last district elections we got wiped out in the loyal ‘Blair fan club’ vote. So when the opportunity of the SLP came along I joined and I am secretary of the branch.

There are some on the left that say we shouldn’t stand against Labour because we must get the Tories out.

In the election address I say that like every other socialist and person in the labour and trade union movement I want the Tories out. But it is simply no good replacing them with another set of Tories dressed up as New Labour.

With the SLP standing in the elections, I am pleased that in this constituency voters for the first time will have a socialist manifesto and a socialist to vote for. There were comrades in this constituency who were disenfranchised and were just not going to vote. We have had a struggle to get the money together but we’ve done it and there is a lot of hard work going in now to ensure a successful campaign.

The County Durham branch is now up to 27 members. We are contesting a seat in Newcastle and we will also be contesting either Darlington or a Sunderland seat.

Can socialists give their vote to Labour candidates where the SLP is not standing?

No. The Labour Party has declared itself as a capitalist party and for us to go knocking on doors to help present a manifesto of a capitalist party to me is just not on. Those claiming to be socialist within the Labour Party are coming to this election on a capitalist manifesto and in fact on a manifesto that declares that two more years of Tory finance policies will be carried out.

Are there other socialist candidates in your area?

There is a Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate in Easington, so we have left that alone. The Socialist Party is contesting a seat which again we have avoided.

Would you be advising people to vote for them?

Any socialist party is better than anything that is on offer from the Tories or New Labour.

What particular issues are you fighting on?

There are a lot of local issues: for example, the local quarry burning is producing toxic fumes. I have won legal action against them and there will be a full judicial review later in the year.

Then of course we will be fighting on all the national issues: education, unemployment and restoration of union rights will all take central place.

The constitutional question will be a major issue as well?

Certainly, I have already been quoted in the local press, because I voted in the TV debate to end the monarchy and, along with that of course, I want the scrapping of the House of Lords. In Scotland the people should have the right to run their own affairs. I want to see a full decentralisation with regional governments that would look at local as well as national legislation, with MPs in touch with their local communities.

Self-determination is a right for any person. It is a right for Scotland and Wales. I am however afraid of regionalism and nationalism. I put a paper out for discussion in the SLP suggesting that we drop the word ‘regionalism’ and look for constituent assemblies.

Are you in favour of continuing along the path of parliamentary democracy?

I’ve never been a revolutionary socialist. In terms of guns and tanks I think I am pretty well outnumbered. If we can persuade the army to the side of socialism, that would be helpful, but I can’t see that I can man the barricades against them.

We have put forward the federal republic slogan to unite the class against the constitution and the state itself.

That is what I am saying: the whole constitution must be challenged and we have to put forward how we govern as socialists. We should not be divided along national and local lines - we should be meeting centrally, but with local representation. This would be in fact a soviet-type system.

Do you think we can have socialism without revolution?

We can take it so far that the mass of the people decide that there is a need for a revolution. We have to push it as far as we can.

The other key issue in the election is Europe. Views on Europe in the SLP are quite divided but the policy document calls for pulling out of Europe. Do you think that the course of socialism must be linked throughout Europe?

It is a capitalist club and I firmly believe that we need to get out of Europe and into the world. I have two fears: one is the economic control that we can already see - so what on earth would happen if we went for public ownership I don’t know. The second problem is enlargement: if we have 24 nation states in Europe the large companies will squeeze out the manufacturing base in the UK. Rothmans in Darlington is putting pressure on the workers to reduce their costs by 30% and they are setting up factories in Europe.

Obviously the capitalists are using the European Union against workers, but workers need an international response to that. Socialism in my view will have to be built on a world scale and therefore, instead of trying to break the world up again and saying, ‘out of Europe’, we should be calling for a workers’ Europe and fighting for an integrated economy under workers’ control.

If you begin to do some positive socialist things in Britain, the working class in Europe will see that and begin to make common demands with us. Somebody has to begin. I am not a little Englander: I’m an internationalist. But I cannot see us making any headway under the capitalist European Union.

Rather than simply waiting for European workers to follow us we should perhaps be in that sense taking our cue from the capitalists and starting to set up working class organisations across Europe - both trade union and political.

Any socialist would argue for that. But at the end of the day if we are going to bring the capitalist system down, then we have to start somewhere. I believe a socialist system can be developed in one country, with a lot of problems of course, but that would be a guiding light for others.

Is not the Soviet Union and other states an indication of the dangers of trying to build socialism in one country?

Of course, and we see it in Cuba now as well, which is totally under fire from the US. We have to see where we can find friends to trade with immediately to overcome some of those problems, though obviously the powerful capitalist organisations would try and stop that. But what are we going to do? Let the situation continue, where trading blocs compete with each other and force down wages and conditions, not just in Britain or Europe, but throughout the world?

Somebody has got to say that there is an alternative and put the flag at the top of the mast as red as it can be, and say, ‘Here we are going to try it - follow’.