24.09.1998

Euro-election fund

Party notes

The Communist Party is launching a £65,000 election fund to ensure that our revolutionary politics are presented to masses of ordinary people in next year’s European elections.

At the very least, this total would enable us to stand a full slate of 10 CPGB candidates in London - if agreement is not reached within the London Socialist Alliance to form a common list - and to produce propaganda to be distributed to up to three million electors. Given the regulations of the new proportional representation electoral system, the deposit for London will be £5,000, whether we stand one candidate or the full 10. Any political organisation that takes itself seriously will surely aim for ten candidates to maximise its impact.

This would be the largest electoral intervention of our Party for many years, a difficult but exciting challenge for our organisation. We have identified communist work in bourgeois elections as critical for the development of a viable proletarian alternative under the conditions of today’s class struggle. As Jack Conrad wrote in the book In the enemy camp, “In the conditions which pertain today the ‘election question’ delineates the main divisions within the working class movement in our country” (p7).

When this was written, we faced relatively few left rivals in the field, the majority of other organisations being tied to auto-Labourism. Blair has changed all of that. The evolution of the Labour Party away from even a nominal relationship to the working class has at last precipitated some movement. The arena of electoral challenge to Labour is starting to look quite crowded. The Socialist Workers Party has timidly intimated that it will start to stand in some elections; the Socialist Party will contest (for as long as it survives or remains able to do so - see below); in Scotland the new Scottish Socialist Party will be throwing its national socialist hat into the ring; Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party will certainly contest and, hopefully, the Socialist Alliances will present a challenge.

In London, the Communist Party is suggesting to our allies in the LSA that we present a united left slate, with candidates selected on a proportional basis from the constituent parts of the Alliance to ensure a true reflection of forces involved. We are also urging our LSA comrades to run as ambitious a campaign as possible, to take advantage of the provisions of bourgeois electoral legislation to get our material into the hands of every potential voter. There could be tremendous political rewards for forces with courage enough to rise to the challenge.

If CPGB comrades stand as part of an LSA slate across the capital, the money from our electoral fund will be used both to pay our fair share of the expenses of the joint slate and - crucially - to promote our politics alongside this bloc, to fight for a maximum vote for it through critical communist propaganda. If the LSA fails to grasp this opportunity, or turns its back on proportional representation within the slate for participating groups, the CPGB will stand alone. Given problems of logistics or finance, we consider it obligatory for serious working class forces to stand in elections. We will utilise every avenue to propagate the ideas of communism to masses of people.

Comrades can contribute to our fund confident that their money will be used to get communist ideas to millions. It is an ambitious target because as a political organisation we are ambitious. Some of our bloc partners in the Socialist Alliances appear a tad less confident about the future, however.

The Socialist of September 11 announces the launch of an “emergency fund appeal” because of the “economic crisis buffeting the world and now hitting Britain”. And what prompts the launch of this crisis fund? What bold initiatives are our comrades planning? Well, it seems the Socialist Party in England and Wales is attempting to inspire its readers to dig deep because “producing leaflets and posters is expensive”.

In other words, the financial crisis engulfing world capitalism has its counterpart in the financial hole the Socialist Party is in. Just as with the loss of its whole Scottish organisation to left nationalism, SPEW seems organically incapable of telling its readers - or even itself - the truth. The dramatic membership contraction of the organisation since decamping from the Labour Party has placed huge strains on the SPEW apparatus, built up in the halcyon days of 8,000 Militant members.

With ominous separatist noises coming from Wales - probably the organisation’s most successful fundraisers - SPEW has to launch ‘emergency funds’ simply to ensure the continued production of run-of-the-mill campaign material like “leaflets and posters”. Similarly, the following issue talks of the “the resources to produce our material” and the need to “urgently rebuild our war chest” (September 18). Not very inspiring stuff.

This sad scene underlines how dubious the rallying call in the fund launch article actually is. Given everything we know about the desperate situation in SPEW, the idea that “a donation to the Socialist Party is your best investment for the future” is hard to read without a wry smile. On the contrary, many of the readers of The Socialist will probably conclude that now is the time to bale out, cut losses and stop throwing good money after bad.

Until SPEW confronts the political crisis that threatens to drag the organisation under, its downward spiral is likely to continue. This decline is a product of the period of profound world reaction we are living through and should not be viewed in a sanguine manner. Until there is a viable pole of communist attraction, the disintegration of organisations like SPEW will produce little positive for our class.

The Communist Party’s election fund looks a far better “investment” to plough your money into. The Weekly Worker will carry updates of the fund over the coming months. I urge all our readers, supporters and sympathisers to give it their maximum support.

Mark Fischer
national organiser