14.04.2004

Not hiding his views

The Socialist Alliance's only elected councillor, SWP member Michael Lavalette, heads the Respect list for the European elections in the North West constituency. He spoke to Peter Manson

How is the campaign going?

I think it’s going well. We’ve had a number of really big meetings in the North West with as many as 400 people attending - two in Manchester, one in Preston, a couple in Liverpool. I have also been speaking at trade union annual conferences - NUJ, NUT, as well as the National Union of Students. By and large the reception we’ve had at all these meetings has been good.

Two RMT union branches, Victoria and Piccadilly in Manchester, have voted to support Respect and this question is on the agenda in the coming month for a whole number of RMT meetings, where we’ve been asked to speak. We have also been invited to their grades conference, which is taking place in Manchester next week. It is also significant that we are talking with the Fire Brigades Union - although obviously, until their annual conference, things are less clear-cut with them.

In terms of breaking through into the RMT, we’ve done incredibly well - probably up there with London. Of course Unjum Mirza and Greg Tucker are well known RMT members in London, whereas we have gone in cold. But we have managed to link up with a number of very serious and important officials. We are consulting with the RMT with a view to putting on a series of showings of Ken Loach’s film, The navigator. Hopefully the North West region will sponsor this with us, and it should start in a couple of weeks time.

We also have what we call the ‘North West on tour’. For the next week or two we’ve organised meetings where we’ve never had them before - Carlisle, Barrow, Whitehaven, Burnley - where Respect has not yet been launched. At least two of our candidates will be at each meeting.

Another important area is the Asian community and in certain places we have been invited to talk to people from the mosques. Last week we jointly ran an exhibition on Palestine with Bolton council of mosques - I managed to get two young students from the International Solidarity Movement to come to the North West. They had heard about our attempt to twin Preston with Nablus. In terms of breaking into the muslim community, that was quite useful. A number of key names in the Muslim Association of Britain have come on board and we are trying to arrange more meetings in those communities.

So in these three areas - the unions, anti-war groups and the muslim community - we’re doing well. We’ve broken into the unions in a way the Socialist Alliance never did. I know things have changed after the anti-war protests, but we’ve still taken some significant steps. There’s always more we could do, but overall things are going well.

Have the media shown any interest yet?

We’ve found it difficult to get any publicity, to be honest with you, but we’ve got a press conference coming up. We’ve given a commitment that our main candidates will all twin with asylum-seeker campaigns, so we’re going to try and bring together the campaigns’ representatives - this is something we want to highlight that distinguishes us from all the other political parties.

One problem we have is that some of the things that have been in The Guardian or The Independent nationally have not made the northern editions, so Respect isn’t really getting into the papers up here yet. That’s something we must try and address. But the Greens don’t get in that often either.

It may depend on what happens in terms of the uprising in Iraq. If its level and intensity continues for another couple of weeks, the whole question will be thrown back onto the agenda in a much more obvious way. If so, we could start to get a hearing as the clear anti-war party.

Have you been able to use your status as a councillor to the benefit of the campaign?

We’ve managed to raise our profile in Preston Town Centre, where I was elected. People say none of the other parties ever bothered to come into the ward, but they have to now because ‘Michael’s there every week’.

It’s also given us an advantage in terms of our support network - groups that we work with, such as Stop the War activists, amongst the unions and the muslim community. We can show what we’ve done over the last year. There are many more people from the muslim community in Preston who are now on board with Respect - more than those who voted for the Socialist Alliance. They’ve been a bit more proactive in making contacts with the community in Blackburn and Bolton, so getting elected was a huge step forward for us.

We’ve learnt from the experience of the way we’ve been recognised and taken seriously and used that to gain access in other parts of Preston and the North West. We are getting some coverage because I’m a councillor, where otherwise we’d get none.

You were elected as Socialist Alliance, but you’ve now switched to Respect, I believe.

I changed the designation, given that’s the profile we wanted - I am the lead candidate in the Euros for Respect. We are also going to contest as Respect in the local elections - there’s another seat up in my ward and we’re going to stand in the neighbouring ward too. Hopefully some time in the next two weeks at least one Labour councillor is going to come over to us. There’s one in Preston and another in Cumbria. Possibly they’ll both come over together towards the end of this month. That way we may get some coverage.

It’s for those reasons I changed my designation and I’m now known as Respect. Sometimes, to make it clear, I say, ‘Respect councillor who was elected Socialist Alliance Against the War last May.’

What would you say were the achievements of the SA?

The Socialist Alliance started a process which is still continuing. It did bring people together who historically had not cooperated. But the difficulty was it didn’t make any major breakthrough. It’s sad that the most significant came in Preston.

But Preston wasn’t really a breakthrough of the left coming together, was it?

No, outside some of the big cities the other groups on the left just don’t exist. If anything, what happened here was the precursor to Respect - the same groups and communities were involved.

Once we made that breakthrough, we were taken seriously in the labour movement in Preston. Quite important trade unionists will come on our platforms now. For example, the Lancashire brigade secretary of the FBU will speak any time I ask him and the regional organiser of the Communication Workers Union will address our meetings, as will our contacts in Unison and Natfhe. When I was just Michael Lavalette from the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Alliance, that didn’t happen.

The problem for the SA, though, was that there was only one council success. Sometimes I think the analogy with Scotland is a bit misplaced. I was sharing a platform with a Scottish Socialist Party comrade at the NUJ conference and he was talking about the achievement of the SSP, which now has 130,000 people voting for it, which is fantastic. But we need 130,000 votes just to get one MEP in the North West, which gives you some idea of the scale of things.

Proportional representation for Scottish parliamentary elections has clearly aided the SSP. The difficulty for the SA was that we were always contesting first-past-the-post elections - you can pick up 20% and that looks good, but you don’t get anything. The SSP achieved their breakthrough with Tommy Sheridan through the single transferable vote for the Glasgow area and, once he established himself as an MSP, he used that position to gain credibility and eventually this produced six MSPs last time round.

For the SA, the cards were stacked against us because of the electoral system. Even then it might have been different if the breakthrough had come in central London or Manchester, but Preston is pretty marginal when it comers to political discussion in Britain.

SSP comrades say that, as well as PR, the fact that the Scottish Socialist Alliance transformed itself into a party, which became the permanent and main focus for the left groups, made the difference. Anyway, the SA failed for whatever reason. So how should socialists behave in Respect?

In the first instance, we should all be working as hard as possible to increase the membership, hold lively meetings and make the biggest impact so as to get as good a turnout in June. If that happens, then there are a whole number of possible scenarios. We’ve got to be membership-driven, which means we’ve got to get the membership first. We’ve got to become an organisation that can get substantial votes, and the most important thing is to get the best possible result for Respect.

After that, there needs to be some assessment of what all those people want to do. Do we want to go forward and become the Unity Party, and start to focus on the general election, campaigning as Respect? Those are possibilities, but if we end up with one percent of the vote, then it may well be that we just have to accept that it failed. If we get one or two MEPs, if we save our deposit or if we achieve significant votes, then we can start to move forward, but in the short term it’s all hands to the pump. You never hide your socialist politics and, as a socialist, I don’t have any problems whatsoever with Respect’s minimum programme. But many of those questions are the questions we start to address on June 13, after the votes have been counted.

What if you were invited by Granada Television to be interviewed and asked specific questions about current issues? Do you answer as a socialist or do you temper your answers so as to stay within the bounds of Respect’s declaration?

I can’t really think of an example where my answer as a socialist would be any different.

For example, recently the resignation of Beverley Hughes has brought the question of migrants into the limelight. Our policy is for the defence of asylum-seekers and refugees, but migrants from Romania are neither of those. As socialists you and I agree that they should be able to come here if they want to. So do you say that?

I would say that, yes. I suppose if I was on Granada and that kind of question was asked, I would start off by saying that Respect’s position is for defence of asylum-seekers and refugees, but those who come here do so for a variety of reasons. Some flee their country because they are victims of political terror or war or because they’re poor or they want to protect their family. I would go on to say that in the North West we also have a position where our candidates are twinned with a campaign to defend individuals threatened with expulsion from this country - that’s a position we’re proud of. We believe people should have the right to come to this country if the jobs are there.

That ties in with Respect’s statement, but I’m not hiding what I think myself.

No, but some people have said that they’re not going to stand on a platform of open borders.

It’s partly about what sort of organisation we think Respect will become. I don’t think there’s any difficulty. If Labour Party candidates were asked that question, Blunkett and Beverley Hughes would answer one way and, say, Tony Benn would answer a different way.

So we shouldn’t get caught up in those kind of things. We have a general statement which places us clearly to the left of Labour and we want as many people involved as possible. But within that I’m not going to hide my position.

Another issue over which some people have refused to give a commitment is the idea that elected representatives should only accept an average worker’s wage. Let’s hope you are elected, but if you are you’ll be entitled to a salary of £70,000. While I know that you wouldn’t for one moment keep it all for yourself, in the Socialist Alliance all the candidates actually made that clear.

In last week’s Weekly Worker you said that it was ludicrous to turn this into a principle. I agree with that. Clearly it’s something we should strive towards, but this is being used by some people just to have a go at George Galloway. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty were in the Labour Party for years and never placed a worker’s wage as a condition for their support for Labour candidates.

I’m not going to say that all those elected for Respect should take an average worker’s wage, because we haven’t given that commitment - George can do what he wants and we can debate with him. But from my point of view I can guarantee I will not be taking the £70,000 - I didn’t even know it was that much! I haven’t thought how I would do it, but I would hand in my wage slips and make sure I don’t take any more money than what is agreed.

That statement is clear enough. By the way, what we said was that it’s not a principle to make voting for candidates conditional on their accepting a worker’s wage, but it’s certainly a principle that our elected representatives don’t see it as a gravy train.

I don’t have any huge problem with that. One difficulty is, though, the way the SSP calculate a worker’s wage. They do so on the basis of what they consider to be working class jobs, so, for example, they take out teachers from the equation. I’ve got a different view of class perhaps.

There are a number of people who aren’t revolutionaries and don’t understand what this is about. If we were in the SSP we might be asking Steve Metcalf, an RMT railworker who is on our North West list, to take a salary cut. He’s not a revolutionary, but it’s fantastically good he’s come on board, so we just have to be careful how this works. To be honest, it’s not a huge question for him, because he’s listed at number five, so if he gets to be in the European parliament we’re looking at forming the next government!

But my answer to your question is the same as it was for migrants. We have a general platform which is the position of the coalition, but I’m not in the business at this point of time of imposing my revolutionary views on anyone or of saying they’re the condition for anyone to stand. However, as a revolutionary socialist, I’m aware of these debates and, if elected, I will be acting in what I consider to be the appropriate way.

You mentioned the possibility of a Respect party. How would you hope things develop?

I’m really excited by what’s happening. Last night I spoke at the NUT fringe meeting and there were 110 people in the room and we raised almost £800. One in seven of those at the conference came to the Respect meeting. It wasn’t just the left - the Socialist Party and AWL didn’t come because they both had their own meetings. The NUJ’s conference was small, but there were about 45 people at our meeting. All these meetings are very lively and people are really up for it.

One of the difficulties has been that the time between our launch in January and the elections is short to build an electoral campaign, but, if we can capture that excitement, if we can pull in the votes, then I think Respect can start to coalesce into something more permanent, viable and to the left of Labour, which can provide a real challenge - not just in the Euros, but in other elections as well.