03.02.2000

Engage with real politics

Janine Booth, a national committee member of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, is a candidate on the London Socialist Alliance slate to contest May's elections to the Greater London Authority. Peter Manson spoke to her

What is your record in the trade union movement?

I work as a part-time station supervisor for London Underground and am the branch secretary of Central Line West RMT. I am a political officer for the London regional council and have represented the union at TUC conference. Previously I was a union rep for the MSF, but was victimised and sacked by my employer for representing a member.

Our branch was central in getting the regional council to set up the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation, and I was also active in pushing for the first gay and lesbian conference.

How do you view the London Socialist Alliance?

It is an extremely positive development - hopefully the first step on the road to the left working out how to organise more effectively. It shows it is possible for us to work together.

I believe there has been a failure of internal democracy. Marx came to be a Marxist through thinking through the question of democracy, but democracy seems to have fallen off the left's agenda: it's just 'woolly liberal nonsense'. But defending democracy involves practising it. It means treating political education and debate as healthy, not treating disagreement as something to be stamped out as quickly as possible. I sincerely hope the LSA will move forward on that basis.

It is of course early days, but it is quite exciting that we are working together rather than shouting at each other. And that is what working class people think too - they see something worth supporting. The test will come with what goes on after the election. In Hackney the alliance has set up a local bulletin, which I'm editing. We intend to carry it on after May, perhaps as a monthly.

The main task facing the workers' movement is to advocate anew the idea of working class representation. While Blair is attempting to make the decisive break, we want to give workers the chance to vote for working class representatives. That doesn't mean we want to tell workers what to do: they must stand up for themselves.

You mentioned your own role in the setting up of the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation. How do you feel about the CATP's decision to reject cooperation with the LSA?

It is such a syndicalist, sectionalist turn. This is hardly a 'mass uprising' - most tubeworkers haven't even heard of the CATP. Those running it are ex-members of left groups, like the Fiscites, who just want to prove something to their former comrades. But I am the eternal optimist - it is still possible there will be a joint slate. It depends on the pressure from the LSA and from tubeworkers themselves.

The CATP single-issue campaign is kind of anarchist: it's not really engaging with the election and refusing to take up any policy on other questions. But working class people are not stupid: they know the difference between an election and a referendum. During elections workers want to talk about the bigger political questions - they won't want to just talk about the tube. For black and Asian workers police racism is as big a question, if not bigger. And what about tubeworkers themselves? They are not just tubeworkers. As Marx said, a worker's life begins when they stop work. What about the state of the local hospital, the question of education?

I agree that those questions must be raised. But where the CPGB would take issue with the LSA platform is not so much over what it says, but what it does not say. There is no mention of the real big "political questions", such as self-determination for Scotland and Wales, the Irish peace process or the abolition of the monarchy.

I don't think I agree with you. We could have produced a really detailed programme, but obviously you have to prioritise. Self-determination for Scotland and Wales is something that would have been difficult to unite around. Democracy for Scotland and Wales - certainly. Just like we advocate democracy, not self-determination, for London.

The abolition of the monarchy is not a question to prioritise. If I am asked for my view on the monarchy during the campaign, of course I will demand its abolition, but it is not what most workers are concerned about. We ought to be advancing working class political representation - we want them to consciously vote for representatives of the working class. The key issues are taxing the rich, defending public services, and policing justice and policing democracy.

Another central issue is the abolition of section 28 - Labour has been utterly pathetic on this. As the LSA platform states, workers must not only oppose section 28, but defy it.

But why should we leave questions of the state to the ruling class? Blair is pushing through so many radical changes to the constitution, yet the left seems to have no opinion on how we are ruled. Just a moment ago you were stressing the question of democracy.

There are a whole number of issues where we can bang on about democracy, while our own politics become more and more buried. Instead we should emphasise the democratic question in the campaign over privatisation, for example. Privatisation reduces our ability to run an industry democratically. We don't just want to defend the status quo, or just demand increased funding for the tube. The best way to stress democracy is over an issue like that.

You are now very enthusiastic about the left uniting against Labour. So do you think the AWL was wrong to call for a Labour vote on May 1 1997?

Not at all: we were right. The main task then was to get rid of the Tories in order to put working class politics centre stage. The need to get elected was used by the Labour right wing as an excuse for all sorts of clamping down on party democracy and the left.

We had to engage in what the election was all about - who the government was going to be.

You might just as well say that the LSA is not engaging seriously in the GLA election by standing today. We are hardly going to form the London 'government'. Why couldn't we have united to champion "working class political representation" in 1997?

The left could have raised the banner of socialism, but today it is much more specific than in 1997, when the need was to kick out the Tories. We wouldn't have advocated voting Liberal if that had been the only way to do it. Labour was still some kind of working class party.

The whole issue changed on May 1 1997. Up until then it was pretty much mandatory to vote Labour, but May 1 changed all that. Now Blair has gone a lot further in transforming Labour. The Labour government set the scene for the left to come together: the opportunity is there to fight back.

Can I ask you how you felt on May 2? Surely you were pleased to get rid of the Tories?

In a way I was pleased that they got what they deserved and were wiped out. But I wasn't celebrating because New Labour was elected. How, specifically, did Blair's election help workers to fight back, and where is the evidence of that happening?

Before it needed a lot more effort for the unions to fight back in the Labour Party. Now Labour is in government we can pursue battles such as over the role of RMT-sponsored MPs.

The left must engage in politics, not just with itself. We must engage with the question of government.