08.05.2002

Socialist Alliance inches forward

The Socialist Alliance stood 220 candidates on May 2 - by far the largest number on the left. No alliance candidates were elected, but nationally its vote was creditable, with a clutch of results over 10%. Our vote in London was undoubtedly boosted by the fact that voters were electing three councillors per ward: thus they were able to cast three votes. Hackney saw the SA chalk up its most impressive result. Comrade Paul Foot, standing in Clissold ward, polled 487 votes - 22.7% of those who turned out. The other 11 SA candidates in Hackney also did well, with over 3,000 voters giving one of their votes to the Socialist Alliance, which sometimes beat the Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates. Hackney SA's ambition in standing in 13 of Hackney's 19 wards clearly paid dividends. Other notable London results were achieved by Simon Hester (Haringey, St Ann's) with 324 votes (19%), Paul Phillips (Forest Gate North) with 272 votes (15%), and Lee Rock (Waltham Forest, William Morris) with 254 votes (9%). Outside London, while the average vote was lower, there were still some impressive results, like those of comrade Barry Conway, who polled 21% in Wigan. Contesting the mayoralty of North Tyneside, comrade Michael Roberts won over 2,000 votes. Clearly comrades have worked very hard. However, in some areas results were poor. A sober and rounded analysis would suggest that we managed only to inch forward. The general election in June 2001 established a national profile for the SA and in that sense our campaign was a success despite the low vote. This time around it has been a different story. There was no national manifesto launch and no national campaign to speak of. The absence of a regular Socialist Alliance political paper is costing us dear. Furthermore there exists a danger that, as happened after June 2001, the momentum built up will be allowed to dissipate. The Socialist Workers Party shows no sign of abandoning its propensity to flit to and fro between its different 'united fronts' - giving the SA a grudging priority at election times, but then shelving it in favour of the Anti-Nazi League, Globalise Resistance, etc. Given what happened following June 2001, it is hardly surprising that one frequent complaint heard by activists on the doorstep was that 'we only see you at election times'. The answer is not just local and grassroots campaigns, but a Socialist Alliance paper - which will educate, agitate and organise our supporters. After May 2 we have a golden opportunity to revitalise the alliance. Those who canvassed will have records of many of those that voted for us - obviously these need to be regularly contacted and over time drawn into the organisation. Some local SAs grasped the importance of having a means of communication during the campaign - they published local news sheets. If we can do that in Manchester, Hackney and Wales, etc, and if our five principle supporting organisations can produce a whole range of publications, including two weeklies, then surely the resources can be raised for a Socialist Alliance weekly - and why not a daily during elections? If the Socialist Alliance's SWP-dominated leadership refuses to take up this challenge, then others must act. An unofficial paper, backed initially by the CPGB and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, would fit the bill. Reviving Arthur Scargill's moribund Socialist Labour Party will require necromancy. Short of visiting the website of every council where elections took place, it is impossible to draw up a complete list of SLP results. However, we can safely say that the SLP's intervention was very limited indeed - in stark contrast to the 114 mostly paper candidates that Scargill almost single-handedly managed to stand in the general election. May 2 gave us a more accurate picture of the organisation's state of decay. Ealing in west London - a favoured stamping ground of the Stalinite Indian Workers Association - is perhaps the only area where the SLP's politics have any social resonance - thanks to mass migration from the Indian sub-continent and the social base established by the Communist Party and the Communist Party (Marxist) in places like West Bengal and Kerala. The SLP stood three candidates in some wards and its best performance came in South Broadway, where Harpal Brar polled 424 votes, almost certainly the highest vote of any SLP candidate in the country. Despite the SLP's sectarian disdain for left unity and the Socialist Alliance, there were mercifully few instances where our candidates clashed. Something due more to the SLP's lack of members and consequent inability to mount a wider challenge than any warming of relations. In the two wards where a clash did occur (Manchester and Bolton), the SLP came off marginally worse. The Communist Party of Britain is an organisation whose view of the alliance is somewhat less clear. There is currently a serious debate going on within the pages of the Morning Star about what the CPB's attitude to the SA should be - with some favouring drawing closer and others wanting to remain in isolation. Significantly our national chair, comrade Liz Davies, now has a regular column in the Star. Let us hope that this engagement yields positive results and the Socialist Alliance will soon have a sixth principle supporting organisation. It is certainly hard to fathom what the CPB hopes to achieve by standing - its British Road to Socialism programme envisages socialism being introduced from above by a Labour Party government. Only four candidates were fielded, the same number as in the general election. Of those four, Anne Kruthoffer, wrongly listed as the 'Communist Party of Great Britain', recorded the CPB's highest vote of 131 in Walthamstow. Nick Wright - a former Straight Leftist who is fond of denouncing "sectarians" - is for sure not at the forefront of encouraging the development of more fraternal relations between the CPB and SA. No doubt he will have relished his clash with the Socialist Alliance in the Peckham ward of The Lane. His 49 votes put him behind our three candidates. Peter Taaffe's Socialist Party in England and Wales - standing under the Socialist Alternative banner - lost two councillors and retained two. Comrade Dave Nellist, the Socialist Alliance's former chair before SPEW walked out, retained his seat in Coventry, beating his nearest rival by more than 300 votes. Ian Page in Lewisham also retained his seat, notching up 1,065 votes in the process. Sam Dias, the SP's other Lewisham councillor, was defeated by a combination of boundary changes, a Labour candidate and a strong showing by the Local Education Action for Parents (Leap) group. Its candidate, Helen LeFevre, edged out comrade Dias by 53 votes. Leap was originally formed out of a campaign to open a new school in the Telegraph Hill area. It describes itself as a "single-issue political party" that believes that "the best type of education is provided by local comprehensive schools which serve the whole of a community, giving opportunities to all their pupils" (Leap website). The attentive reader may think that this is precisely the sort of organisation that SPEW, which was a constant critic of the Socialist Alliance over such 'community campaigns', would consider standing aside for. Apparently not if you have a sitting councillor. Perhaps the most surprising result was the success of the Independent Working Class Association - the brainchild of Red Action, a 1970s split from the SWP - in getting Stuart Craft elected in the Northfield Brook ward in Oxford. The IWCA's other candidate in Northfield Brook came only a short distance behind with 328 votes, and in Blackbird Leys ward - also in Oxford - Daphne Kingston got 197 votes. Elsewhere the IWCA did almost equally well. Carl Tailor came within 100 votes of being elected in Haggerstone ward in Hackney. The IWCA's programme is unashamedly localist and in some instances downright reactionary - for example, its manifesto in Hackney states: "Dealing in hard drugs in this ward must be stopped" and calls for "the council and the police" to "take [unspecified] action" to stop it. Surely a better response is the demand for NHS treatment for addicts and the legalisation of all drugs. Nevertheless the IWCA is to be congratulated on putting in sterling and consistent work, especially in the housing estates. * BNP, Burnley and fighting fascism