30.11.2000

Socialist Alliance

Last week's by-elections produced excellent results for the left. The Socialist Alliance, standing for the first time in Lancashire, saved its deposit in Preston, while the Scottish Socialist Party polled more than seven percent in the two seats vacated by the death of Donald Dewar in Glasgow Anniesland. Meanwhile the Socialist Party won another seat in a council by-election in Lewisham, south London.

Last week's by-elections produced excellent results for the left. The Socialist Alliance, standing for the first time in Lancashire, saved its deposit in Preston, while the Scottish Socialist Party polled more than seven percent in the two seats vacated by the death of Donald Dewar in Glasgow Anniesland. Meanwhile the Socialist Party won another seat in a council by-election in Lewisham, south London.

With Labour making a clean sweep of the three Westminster contests, as well as the Scottish parliamentary election, November 23 served to confirm that, in the absence of some extraordinary turn of events, the Tories have not the slightest chance of winning the general election. In mid-term and beyond it is the normal state of affairs in Tweedledum-Tweedledee bourgeois politics for the governing party to suffer a drastic loss of support to protest votes. Yet it looks as though this government will be the first in 50 years not to lose a seat in a parliamentary by-election.

With the Tories still unable to recover from the drubbing they suffered in 1997 as a result of the discredited Major administration's corrupt and inept performance in its final period of office, the next general election - now almost certain to be called in May 2001 - will offer the possibility for new forces to pick up the votes of disgruntled Labour supporters. The Socialist Alliance challenge will ensure that hundreds of thousands have the opportunity to back a working class candidate.

Preston demonstrated that we can make inroads in areas where we have had no previous record of contesting elections, where we do not have great numbers of supporters and where our candidate is not yet hugely well known. Terry Cartwright, who stood as 'Lancashire Socialist Alliance (Independent Labour)', had some local support as a councillor who defected from Labour, but he is hardly a household name in Preston as a whole. He gained 1,210 votes - 5.66% - mainly as a result of a vigorous and united campaign.

This result ought to scotch once and for all the notion that extreme rightwing groups like the British National Party are about to make a breakthrough. The BNP candidate polled a fraction over one percent. For too long the left has spent too much time chasing tiny bands of fascists instead of putting forward our own positive alternative. The most infamous example of this was the Socialist Workers Party campaign in the mid-1990s, calling on workers, 'Don't vote Nazi' - with the implicit suggestion that they should continue to vote for Labour council bureaucrats, or perhaps any of the mainstream bourgeois parties. Hopefully such negative interventions are now a thing of the past.

In Glasgow the SSP won 7.13% (1,441 votes) in the Westminster poll and 7.07% (1,429 votes) in the Scottish parliament election - almost exactly twice the percentage it won last year. Despite receiving a slightly lower total in the contest to elect an MSP, the SSP's Rosie Kane finished in fourth place - ahead of the Liberal Democrat. In the by-election for the UK parliament Charlie McCarthy finished in fifth place, behind the Lib Dem. The SSP is not only Scotland's fifth party, as its leadership modestly states, but in reality is challenging the Tories and Liberals for third place behind Labour and the Scottish National Party.

Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party stood only for the Edinburgh parliament seat and received just 298 votes (1.47%). This shows once again that Scargill's sectarian insistence on rejecting all unity approaches is bringing it nothing but discredit. Fortunately the SLP spoiling campaign had very little effect on the size of the SSP vote.

However, do not expect Scargill to throw in the towel. The next issue of his bimonthly paper, Socialist News, is more likely to trumpet the fact that the SLP share of the vote actually tripled in Anniesland compared to 1999, rather than keep quiet about last week's results in view of the trouncing it received at the hands of the SSP. It is still not too late for Scargill to unite with the rest of the left, but no doubt he will stubbornly keep to his chosen path - leading what remains of his party to oblivion.

The one thing the SLP had going for it was the fact that, in the context of the current nationalist orientation of the SSP, it represented, in a distorted kind of way, an all-Britain working class intervention. This, of course, would be exactly what we needed, but, leaving aside the question of his go-it-alone sectarianism, Scargill's actual answer to SSP Scottish separatism is 'Get out of Europe', 'Defend British industry' national socialism. The way to combat the left nationalism of the SSP is to offer the hand of friendship in a practical way, in the shape of a united England-Scotland-Wales general election campaign.

In Lewisham's Pepys ward, the Socialist Party's Sam Dias, with the backing of the local Socialist Alliance, snatched the seat from Blair's party, despite New Labour pouring in supporters from all over south London. She recorded an excellent 567 votes (39.38%), as against 533 (37.01%) for Labour.

Comrade Dias stood as 'Socialist Alternative (Ian Page's Team)'. Ian Page has been the sitting SP councillor in this three-councillor ward since regaining last year the seat he had previously held as a Labour Party member. Just as Dave Nellist's reputation in Coventry has enabled the SP to see another two of its comrades elected alongside him in the same ward, so years of dedication on behalf of Lewisham workers by comrade Page laid the ground for this latest success.

Unfortunately however, as we have previously reported, the SP refused point blank to allow comrade Dias to stand as a Socialist Alliance candidate, claiming that this would mean 'wasting 10 years of hard work' by the Socialist Party. On the contrary: it would have made use of it in the interests of the working class itself, not just in its own narrow interests. Despite this disappointment, Greenwich and Lewisham SA threw its weight behind comrade Dias's intervention with teams of canvassers distributing SA leaflets.

The SP might for historical reasons be able to win Pepys ward in Lewisham and St Michael's in Coventry, but everywhere else its votes have been poor. In fact, if the SP shuns unity in the general election, its non-'star' Socialist Alternative candidates are likely to do much worse than the Socialist Alliance average. Nevertheless we achieved in Preston we can duplicate across the country. Peter Taaffe can do no such thing.

Nevertheless this morale-boosting win shows what is possible. The left can make inroads in elections and win invaluable tribunes for socialism. In the short term Taaffe will be strengthened and the pro-unity anti-sectarians in his organisation considerably weakened. But in the long term his obstinacy, like Scargill's, will lead him nowhere. The left, and all its components, will be judged by the extent it is able to cement itself into a single working class force.

Peter Manson

Election results

Preston (Westminster)

Glasgow Anniesland (Westminster)

Glasgow Anniesland (Scottish parliament)

Lewisham, Pepys ward