30.05.2001

Canvass, canvass, canvass!

As we enter the last week of the general election campaign, the Socialist Alliance and Scottish Socialist Party are gearing up for the final push up to polling day on June 7.

Our campaign has been a success already, even before we count our votes. We have mounted the largest left challenge in generations to the electoral stranglehold Labour has over our class. Thousands of activists have been mobilised, hundreds of meetings staged and millions of leaflets pushed through letter boxes. The principal organisations on the left have united for this relatively huge effort, coming together for common action despite our ongoing political differences. There are many lessons - positive and negative - that we can learn. When we come to do it all again, we will be able to take much from this intense period.

We need to. One of the more stark lessons confirmed by the election campaign is the scale of the task ahead of us. Despite our successes, despite the resonance our campaign has met among layers of the population, the revolutionary left in this country has practically no real roots still. We have a huge job to do in order to re-implant ourselves in the class we claim to represent.

Election campaigns have an important role to play in this work of reconstituting our class as an independent political entity. All revolutionaries should become election experts. This does not mean we should ape the tired antics of the bourgeois parties. We need to develop our own methods of work, our own culture of electoral work.

In this context, a controversy in the ranks of the Socialist Alliance over the priority to be given to canvassing as opposed to mass leafleting is worthwhile examining. A circular has been sent out from four leading SA officers - Rob Hoveman, John Rees, Mike Marqusee, and John Nicholson - titled ?Urgent message to all SAs?. Much of it consists of uncontroversial and useful advice to maximise our last-minute impact. However, after listing suggestions for campaigning work, the comrades adamantly state: ?If you are able to complete all the tasks above, then - and only then - should you also consider canvassing ... we have to recognise that in most areas we do not have the forces for traditional canvassing? (SA press list).

It seems that on the ground, some comrades - notably members of the Socialist Workers Party - have gone as far as to actively block plans for canvassing that had already been organised. In fact, comrades should be throwing every-thing they can into canvassing in this last period of the election fight. It is a far more effective method of engaging with and persuading potential voters than yet another piece of paper. Most are not read. Those that are will prompt questions and objections - eg, what about Arthur Scargill? - and you can?t answer with a piece of paper.

The SA needs to become flesh and blood for the working class, not just another leaflet lying in the hallway among those for the other parties - not to mention pizza takeaways and freebie newspapers. Positive lessons need to be drawn, not simply from the history of Communist Party electoral work, but also from other political forces. The Socialist Party in England and Wales and the SSP in Scotland have been relatively successful in the electoral field in more recent years. For both, systematic canvassing of electors is a key priority.

Traditionally, it has been Labour and the other establishment parties that have had a ?hands-off? approach to canvassing, preferring to rely almost exclusively on mailshots, advertising and photo-opportunities. Partially this is because of a lack of committed activists. But also it is because of the hostile reception on working class doorsteps. I remember listening with glee to some of the florid and highly descriptive abuse voters dished out to the Labour Party canvassing team in a South Wales constituency where the Communist Party was standing in the 1970s. They were furious about the corrupt record of the local council. While Labour won the election, some of its canvassers nearly lost their teeth.

The limited amount of canvassing Labour does is intended to passively identify its vote. SA canvassing should be qualitatively different. We are actively engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of the working class. We need to establish a real dialogue with our class, to listen to its concerns and views and precisely gauge its moods and prejudices.

Perhaps it is this that actually explains the reticence on the part of some comrades to actively engage the voters. During last year?s Greater London Assembly elections, there were many reports of SA canvassers being hopelessly flummoxed by the depth of hostility to asylum-seekers they encountered from ordinary people. The optimistic call, ?Refugees are welcome here?, was quickly dropped as a ?sword issue?. In practice activists were forced to articulate versions of the ?shield? - the ?Refugees are not to blame? slogan that had been advocated by CPGB representatives to the London Socialist Alliance.

If reluctance to canvass is designed as an attempt to insulate SAers against the very working class constituency we are seeking to mobilise and activate, it is profoundly misguided. We need to develop something more than paper-sellers or leaflet-pushers. Our class needs an organisation of organic leaders of its own, a party with deep roots in the real working class, not a fantasy one in the heads of our sect leaders. Given the level of the class struggle and the rudimentary nature of our political organisation, canvassing is the only method we currently have of systematically talking to and listening to the working class itself.

Canvassing is the key now, comrades, not more leaflet drops! Every alliance must begin to systematically knock on doors in working class areas where we have a candidate. The results must be collated, not simply to ensure we get our vote out on June 7, but also for work after the election. Our supporters need to know us - and we need to identify our supporters. We must be looking to activate these people post-election, not leave them as passive voting fodder in the manner of the establishment parties.

We need to show them why the Socialist Alliance is different. Yes, that means dishing out millions of leaflets and election addresses - there is no argument there. But more importantly, that now means knocking on their doors and starting to talk to and listen to them.

Mark Fischer