14.05.1998

Our flag stays red

The local election and London referendum results produced no great surprises. Neither New Labour nor the Tories notched up any great successes or victories. Labour lost almost 100 councillors, while the Tories emerged with net gains of more than 200 seats nationwide. The Liberal Democrats took Liverpool from Labour, but lost a string of other authorities in the south of England.

Everyone from the bourgeois to the left press has commented on the phenomenon of mass apathy. The turnout for the London local election, which many believed would be bolstered by the referendum on Blair’s proposals for a London mayor and Greater London Authority, was 34.13%. This was far below the 45 to 48% turnout in past local elections. In many parts of the country, especially in the northern cities, the turnout was far lower. This meant that the electoral fate of the major cities sometimes depended on the say-so of no more than 25% of the electorate. Therefore - in theory - any party that can attract 12% of the vote could win control of cities like Liverpool or Manchester.

Blair conclusively won his ‘yes’ vote for a puppet, US-style mayor and a weak Greater London Authority - with 72% in favour and 18% against. In some respects though this is hardly a resounding success for the Blair project - though it has certainly been advanced. Almost two thirds of London’s five million electorate could not even be bothered to express an opinion. Blair would certainly prefer to mobilise overwhelming popular support for his vision of New Britain. The low turnout also hands the trade union bureaucracy a convenient weapon in the tussle over recognition. As Peter Kellner wrote in the Evening Standard: “If this was a ballot for union representation in a private company, then Labour’s new law would almost certainly deem the workforce to be far too unenthusiastic to warrant any disturbance in the status quo” (May 8). Not that Blair will let the turnout deflate him too much. Confidently - and with the ‘yes’ vote safely behind him - Blair announced that the result was “a great boost for the capital” and told reporters that he was “delighted that the people of London have voted so convincingly for a mayor and an assembly”. So full steam ahead - still - for the remaking of Britain and the constitutional monarchy system.

 The left did not have a particularly good night on May 7 - nor did it have a disastrous one either. The Socialist Party, who stood 45 candidates, lost its sitting councillors (all had been defectors from Labour), such as Ian Page in Lewisham, who received 836 votes. It must also be very disappointed with the poor results from Merseyside, its former ‘power base’. It won 174 votes (12.7%) in Sefton Orrell, but in some other Liverpool wards it only managed to secure between one and two percent of the vote. Bucking the trend, Dave Nellist gained a seat in Coventry. He got by far the largest vote for any SP member, with 1,799 votes (52.7%). But Nellist is almost a national politician with a high profile in Coventry - he lost his parliamentary seat by a whisker in 1992 and performed respectably well in 1997.

But as a whole the May 7 results were not good for the SP. All the grinding local work, of ‘digging roots in the community’, of being the ‘sensible’ local politician … wasted? Fragmenting organisationally and declining electorally, its prospects for the future are not bright.

 The SLP stood some 50 candidates in London and up to 200 nationwide. Unfortunately it is very difficult to secure any reliable information about the exact number of candidates - let alone what votes they got. When the Weekly Worker phoned the SLP’s headquarters, comrade Dave Collins could not say how many candidates had stood. Indeed, he was so much in the dark about the actual election results that in desperation he contacted the government’s statistical office. They were unable to help him.

Despite the complete lack of national coordination or any sort of meaningful local base - and the continued Blair honeymoon - the votes of some of the ‘star’ SLPers stood up relatively well. Imran Khan in Central ward (Newham) got 478 votes, beating the Tory candidate who got 321. Similarly, Harpal Brar, editor of the Indian Workers Association’s journal Lalkar,got 606 votes in Northcoate (Ealing), trouncing the three Tory candidates whose highest vote was 198. Steve Cowen in Mount Pleasant ward got 315 votes while Carolyn Sikorski in Wall End got 206. In Bidston on the Wirral Alec McFadden got a good result with 183 (13%).

CPGB candidates in London secured the following votes: Mark Fischer - Rectory 79; Phil Kent - Kilburn 54; Anne Murphy - North Defoe 52; Danny Hammill - Manor Lee 48. In Manchester on an extremely low turnout our results were: John Pearson - Moss Side 29; Steve Riley - Hulme 18.

Significantly, all the CPGB comrades scored over two percent of the vote - a figure comparable to many and better than some SP and SLP candidates. This is not bad considering our supporters - including those who stood as SLP or Socialist Alliance candidates - did so defending an explicitly revolutionary manifesto. So what is particularly notable is that we were not unduly punished.

Standing on principle loses only a few votes. Abandoning principle gains little or nothing in electoral terms. A useful antidote to the ‘heads down’ localists, who think such a principled approach is akin to political suicide

Paul Greenaway