22.09.2004

Needed: a party of the left

John Bloom is the Respect candidate for the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election on September 30. He spoke to Peter Manson

How is the campaign going?
It’s going well. We’re in there the same as the big parties - putting leaflets out, talking to people and getting a terrific response. I’ve just been to one of the local shopping precincts and every two or three shops is taking one of our posters. That’s what makes the difference - when we actually go and talk to people we can win them over.

The corner shops that are putting up our posters are not Asian-owned. This is a white working class area and we’re making an impact way beyond the very small Asian community here. When we explain what Respect is about, people respond to that. Also I am a reasonably well known campaign figure around here and people respond to that too.

Especially after the experience of Peter Mandelson, a lot of people very much want someone who’s going to campaign for the town and not just suck the life out of it in order to further their own career. We are not only offering a candidate who’s a bona fide local campaigner, but someone who’ll only take the national average wage. The rest will be pumped into my constituency surgery to make sure that we can offer people the kind of service they’ve never had in living memory.

What people on the left used to know as a worker’s wage is going down terrifically well. When people say, ‘They’re all the same. What’s the difference?’, we can respond, ‘Our candidate is actually only going to take half the money.’ That really does make people sit up and think.

We haven’t had a surgery in this town these last dozen years and more. The atmosphere in the town is that Peter Mandelson has just used the people. He’s been here once a fortnight, if at all, for an hour or so and he’s never been available to ordinary people. If you’re the head of ICI, Mandelson has all the time for you. But if you’re someone on a council estate who’s having problems getting their kiddies the right school or being ignored by the local councillors, Peter Mandelson wasn’t there. So there’s a real appetite for someone who’ll actually work with the people and not just live off them.

So we’ve really got a lot to offer. But what we desperately need, of course, is help with the campaign. We are already getting quite a lot of help, with comrades coming from all over the country, but the more, the merrier.

The Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party are trying to buy this election by paying people to come over here and to put out material and they’re absolutely drowning people in leaflets coming through the door - to the extent that people are getting quite sick of it. Some people seem to have had a dozen leaflets from the Liberals. So when we actually knock on the door and talk about a candidate with local campaigning credentials, that makes a difference.

We’re not blaming asylum-seekers or blaming the poor for being poor, but actually talking about something with a bit more vision and a bit more of the hope and promise that we believe Respect brings to people. They are very receptive to that, but we desperately need more people to come and help us.

This isn’t just about an election campaign. For any socialist thinking about coming up to help us, it’s a fantastic experience to be able to talk to people on the doorstep about socialism - about why we are different, what we can offer. It feels terrific. In fact it’s therapeutic, especially after being in the Labour Party for so long! It’s so good to be able to be part of a party that you can believe in and with comrades you can have confidence in.

Do you think all Respect candidates should make that same commitment to a worker’s wage?
Well, I don’t know about that. It was very much a personal decision for me. I am a socialist and I feel I have to live as a socialist. If I have a lifestyle beyond the ordinary person, it’s going to separate me from my class. I’m not such a superhuman being as to be able to resist all the temptations thrown in front of me. Therefore I’ve got to protect myself from succumbing to the system and live the same kind of life, with the same kind of pressures and problems, as the people I’m representing. As for other candidates, they’ve had to make their own decisions and I respect that. This is a decision for me.
What are the main issues in the campaign?

The war in Iraq is upsetting a lot of people in this town, where a lot of service families are based. The lads and lasses who are going out to Iraq tend to come from the poorer parts of the UK - it’s working class people being sent out to fight working class people on behalf of American capital. It’s amazing the recognition you get when you put it in that way.

More generally the question of the breach of trust is one that’s hurting Labour in particular. People do believe what Kofi Annan said just the other day: Tony Blair lied to parliament and by implication is a war criminal - I’m quite happy to say that to anybody, anywhere. When you put it in those terms, you get an absolute acknowledgement from ordinary people.

Other issues are public services, privatisation and the closure of University Hospital - it’s all about PFI. Then there’s the question of having a decent MP (and I think we’re making an impact on that). There’s also the local environment. I was involved in campaigning against a second nuclear power station in Hartlepool a couple of years ago. We managed to prevent that by citizen pressure, by popular power. We’re doing it again - the government are pretty much on their knees over the hospital campaign and I think we may be very close to finishing them off on this issue.

There’s questions of toxic dumping and ‘ghost ships’ that are coming in from America full of asbestos and PCBs. They think Hartlepool, as a working class area that has taken a lot of abuse of this sort in the past, will take them. But some people are standing up and saying, ‘Enough is enough. We don’t want this rubbish, especially all the way from America. They can keep their own; we’ll deal with ours, thank you very much.’

This is a big issue: it’s about reclaiming the town for the townspeople because we’ve been very much put upon by the fact that we are a poor area that has a history of being used and abused by big companies and government in this way.

What are you saying about the democratic deficit that was exposed by the anti-war movement?
The way we’ve approached this is by pointing out that Respect has come out of a coalition of people, some of whom were from the anti-war movement. We were told that in a democracy the way to get things done is to go out and peacefully demonstrate your views; and that if those views are strong enough and popular enough, the government will listen. Well, the biggest demonstration in British history failed to influence the government one iota.

After that a lot of those people decided they had to get rid of the government. A lot of people agree that there’s something very wrong with this system and we need to do something very drastically different. Whatever the government is about, it’s not about democracy, as they claim.

I hear you have strong views on abortion. Can you explain what they are?
My position is a personal one - although not based on religion, as I’m not a religious person in any way. I have difficulties with what I suppose you would call the 1970s-80s feminist position, which says a foetus is essentially no more than any other organ in a woman’s body, presumably up to the point of birth. I believe that we need to look at that issue again, because that doesn’t really stand up scientifically or morally.

Having said that, it is very much my personal position and I would also say that I have every sympathy and understanding for women who go through abortion - nobody does it in any way lightly. But it’s a complex social phenomenon rather than a simple black and white issue. I certainly have misgivings about the situation as it is of abortion on demand, but before we’re able to move forward with any changes, we’ve got to offer women other opportunities. We can’t go back to the unacceptable situation in the 1960s, when you had back-street abortions.

If we were going to change things in this respect, it would have to be in the context of a much more socialised society, where people were given more support during pregnancy and more opportunities afterwards. At the moment, if a young woman becomes pregnant and has to go through the full term, that really could become something that completely changes her life for the worse. It could be something she really doesn’t want and I don’t believe she should be made to carry that burden.
But I do believe that late developed foetuses, for instance, should be afforded some kind of rights beyond simply being treated as a part of somebody’s body. It seems to me that much of the left cares more about animal rights than they do about the rights of a late foetus and I can’t really square that myself. It’s something we need to think about and something we need to tackle. I know this is a contentious position and not a very popular one on the left.

It’s very honest of you to be so open about it. But I suppose the key question is, if you were elected as an MP and Respect agreed to defend and extend woman’s abortion rights, would you be bound by the party position?
I would certainly hope that Respect, like all the major parties, would make this an issue of individual conscience. I don’t feel I need to go into battle with anyone else over this. I wasn’t going to say anything about it at last week’s meeting, but Steve Cooke from the CPGB asked the question - presumably, I imagine, to get some reaction over George Galloway’s position, which is largely religiously based. I’m very happy, in the context of a coalition, to work with other comrades, where we agree 99% about most things and maybe disagree in a comradely fashion over the one percent.

What is your political background?
I was in the Socialist Labour Party for a short time. My wife was in the SLP and Arthur Scargill rang her up one day to more or less inform her that she was going to be his election agent because he was the candidate in Hartlepool. Arthur was going to stand against Mandelson and there was really no question about which side you took. For the sake of appearances as much as anything else, I joined the SLP for a period - and left shortly after that election campaign.

I could never really be comfortable in an organisation like the SLP. I admired and enjoyed the company of many of the comrades and I’m still good friends with some of them, but the degree of centralised control was one of the reasons I left the Labour Party. I was a Labour member for about a dozen years and I actually worked for Peter Mandelson when I was the northern region recruitment organiser. I’m damned if I’m going to be in another party that’s going to tell me what to think and do to that degree.
I joined the Socialist Alliance some time after my spell in the SLP - I thought it was time for me to get back into socialist politics, having been out of the Labour Party for quite a number of years. We formed a small branch in Hartlepool, which obviously became the Respect branch.

A section of the SA membership didn’t follow you into Respect, complaining about the watering down of socialism and working class policies. Do you have any such regrets?
I don’t buy any of that at all. I can’t find a single thing I disagree with in the statements that have come out. Respect is absolutely, overtly socialist. Of course, the conference in October is going to be important in deciding whether Respect remains a democratic socialist organisation - I certainly hope it will and I think all the signs are good.

I haven’t got a background in what people call ‘far left politics’ (I don’t accept that definition), but I’ve been surprised and impressed by the degree of comradeship from people in the Socialist Workers Party and other organisations. We’ve always been able to work together and it’s been fantastically encouraging. I am extremely hopeful for the future of Respect.

Should it go on to become an overtly socialist party?
I would certainly hope so. If the statements that have been put out are carried through, extended and codified at the conference, we’ll be well on the way to doing that.

What sort of internal regime should Respect have?
I would hope that it would be as open and democratic as it possibly could be and that as much direct democracy as is practical will be incorporated in the constitution.

The Scottish Socialist Party enshrines certain rights of representation for its constituent platforms. What is your opinion on that?
My own preference is for something close to ‘one member, one vote’ or, as has been proposed for the conference, one delegate for every 10 members or something like that. In so far as practically possible, that should be the case right the way through the organisation. If we try and replicate the constitution of the Labour Party - special interest groups getting special voting rights, etc - I think that would be something of a handicap. It was for the left and for socialism in the Labour Party.

I’m not saying, however, that I don’t recognise there are other views here and that I couldn’t live with some kind of compromise. The amount of compromise I had to make in the Labour Party, just to get by, is going to be far, far more than what I’ll have to make as a member of this coalition. If I can work with comrades of good will in a definitely socialist direction and in a generally democratic structure, then I shall be well happy.

The suspicion about the ‘one delegate for 10 members’ proposal is that it is designed to keep out people considered awkward. Most branches are overwhelmingly SWP and the feeling is that people like ourselves won’t get a look in.
That may be the concern for some people but, here in the north-east at least, most branches are not SWP-dominated. The experience I’ve had throughout this election campaign is that the SWP have behaved entirely openly, honourably and in a comradely way. They have genuinely listened to what the rest of us who haven’t come from that tradition are saying. I’ve got absolutely no complaints at all. I’m less suspicious than I was at the start of this campaign and I genuinely feel that we’re building something for everyone in this organisation. All the major parts are making an effort to live with each other, to learn from each other, to work with each other.

What sort of result are you hoping for on September 30?
I am encouraged by the campaign and I would think we’ll get a result that Respect will be happy with.
The Tower Hamlets results have cheered us all up in the office, of course, but I don’t think they’ve had an impact beyond that. They should have done perhaps, but we didn’t expect to get built up by the big media, because we’re a socialist organisation.

Many people have looked at the results in the European election and said that this is probably not the most fertile ground. But I think it is wrong to conclude that we will get a poor result again. What I really want your readers to know is that when we actually talk to people, we change minds. So it’s about coming to Hartlepool and talking to people.

Funnily enough, about five years ago, when you mentioned the ‘s’ word on the streets, quite often you’d get a bit of a funny look. But when I mention socialism now in the context of Respect, people say, ‘I know what you’re talking about. Socialism - we need a bit more of that.’ The atmosphere has changed and the time is right to build a new party of the left.

If people want to help in that process, tell them to pop down here and help out - it’s the best medicine in the world.

See also:
Abortion aberration. At a Respect meeting in Teeside, candidate John Bloom predicted that “one day people will come to regard abortion as a holocaust”. Steve Cooke reports.