07.05.1998

Referendum silence

Around the left

Thursday saw the London referendum. The campaign for a puppet London mayor and an emasculated Greater London Authority forms an important part of the Blairite project. It will provide an elected dictator under the guise of ‘renovating’ local democracy. If Blair gets what he wants, New Labour’s hegemony over society will be further advanced.

The referendum confronted the left with a very real, all too concrete political issue. Was it correct to boycott the whole charade - or should we have voted ‘yes’ or ‘no’? There were no other options - even in the imagination. Anyone eagerly turning to the left press for guidance will find ... nothing. Or to be more exact, they will find fudge, evasion and Delphic utterances. Clarity and leadership are two qualities they will not find.

In reality of course, the ‘mute left’ were sending out the subliminal message - ‘Vote yes, vote yes, vote yes ...’ This certainly seems the case with Socialist Worker. Under the headline, ‘Proposals for London mayor offers less than the GLC’, we are told:

“But the proposals for a new set-up in London will bring hardly any change. The five million London voters will be asked ... to vote to set up a directly elected mayor for the capital and a 25-member assembly. The majority of Londoners want to see a return of the Greater London Council which Margaret Thatcher abolished in 1986. But the proposed mayor and assembly fall short of even the limited democracy of the GLC” (May 2).

The SWP comrades seem unable to grasp that the May 7 referendum - and the May 22 joint referendums in Ireland - are all part of Blair’s wider plans for constitutional reform from above. Blair wants his ‘democracy’ to smother real democracy and usher in - in theory - the victory of ‘third way’ capitalism. However, for opportunist ideological reasons the SWP wilfully refuses to understand or recognise this basic fact of British political life. Then again, how can it? It enthusiastically said ‘yes, yes’ to the September 11 Scottish referendum and it will - albeit perhaps slightly less enthusiastically - say ‘yes’ on May 22 to the imperialist peace process.

Socialist Worker complained:

“The city will be divided into 14 voting districts, each of which will elect just one assembly member ... With only one member covering more than two of the current boroughs, the assembly will be insulated from democratic pressure. The assembly will need a two thirds majority to challenge the mayor. The mayor will simply appoint people to the fire authority and economic development boards. The government will prevent the GLA from redistributing wealth in Britain’s most class-divided city by taxing the rich.

“New Labour’s plan for London is a thin democratic veneer on a system which will leave most power in the hands of unelected quangos”.

So, why did the SWP vote ‘yes’ to “unelected quangos” and Blair’s anti-democratic “veneer”?

The Socialist Party, in even more cowardly fashion, choose to ignore the referendum issue altogether, so deep has its internal crisis become. It simply wished it away. The front page of The Socialist proclaimed: “Vote Socialist where you live, join the Socialist Party and fight for a real alternative to Blair’s Tory policies” (May 1). But what if there was no “Socialist” standing “where you live”? Should you have voted SLP or Socialist Alliance? Or was it OK to have voted New Labour? And what about the referendum itself?

The only possible way to fathom the SP’s position on the referendum was by actually attending a meeting - and then forcefully dragging an answer out of a tongue-tied SP spokesperson. However, the determined interrogator will discover that our fearless SP comrade would have said - cough, cough; eyes down; shuffle the feet aimlessly - ‘yes’ to Blair and his anti-working class project.

Don Preston