09.05.2007

Mixed bag for the left

Respect did best out of the left organisations standing in the English local elections: it gained two new councillors, though it lost a sitting one. The Socialist Party also lost one of its six councillors. And the weird and wonderful Socialist Labour Party does not appear to know how its own candidates did. Tina Becker reports

In addition to Socialist Workers Party member Michael Lavalette, who with an absolute majority of 52% successfully defended the Preston Town Centre seat which he first won as a Socialist Alliance candidate in 2003, Respect gained two new councillors - but also lost one in Birmingham Aston. Not that anybody would know that, if they only relied on Respect's coverage of the elections: in its reports about "Super Thursday for Respect", Abdul Aziz does not even get a mention - and in the list of all Respect results his name is misspelt.

But then, he hasn't exactly been one of Respect's greatest or most reliable assets: he only joined Respect in December 2006 when he failed to get re-elected as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in the Birmingham ward of Aston. Before that, he was a member of the Labour Party. God knows where he will go now.

In Birmingham, Mohammed Ishtiaq was elected with 42% (3,514 votes). He joins Salma Yaqoob in the Respect group on Birmingham council. She was elected in 2005 in the same ward, Sparkbrook, whose electorate is almost 50% muslim.

Respect contested 45 wards in the English council elections, clearly targeting the most promising areas - for example, Easton in Bristol and Rusholme in Manchester, which, like Birmingham Sparkbrook, have large muslim populations. Twenty-one of the 45 Respect candidates are of Asian background. This concentration on a particular section certainly worked in terms of election results: the organisation polled just over 30,000 votes - an average of 15.5% or 672 votes per ward. Respect beat the Greens in 24 out of 25 wards in which they both competed.

But there was disappointment elsewhere. In Sunderland, for example, the vice-chair of the city's Bangladeshi community centre, Tafazzal Hussain, who recently left the Liberal Democrats to join Respect, only came fifth with 5% of the vote - one of Respect's worst results.

A real surprise was the election of Ray Holmes in Bolsover Shirebrook, a pretty solid, white working class area. The ex-miner and former official of the National Union of Mineworkers gained 53% of the vote. As this is quite a small ward and the turnout was relatively low, 295 votes were enough to secure his victory. Previously, comrade Holmes stood as a Socialist Alliance candidate in the area and has built roots as a local working class fighter.

But this (limited) success also brings a lot of problems for Respect and its main component, the Socialist Workers Party. Overwhelmingly the current 20 Respect councillors are neither SWP members nor even close allies. Not only is the SWP unable to control them - some have started to rebel against the party that set up Respect.

Accountability to the local Respect organisation does not feature high in the list of priorities for most of the councillors. What is real to them is that they have been elected by the 'local community'. They do not feel the slightest obligation to answer to their branch, nor to do what John Rees or even George Galloway tells them - but will instead concentrate on local problems and issues, as viewed from their own class (mostly bourgeois or petty bourgeois) perspectives, interests and instincts.

Tensions there are aplenty:

l In Tower Hamlets, the majority of the 11 Respect councillors recently tried to oust SWP members from leading positions in the local Respect branch (see Weekly Worker July 6 2006). Clearly, those councillors have their own caucus meetings, their own decision-making structures, their own Respect organisation.

l In January 2007, businessman Yasir Idris was selected at a meeting of South West Birmingham Respect to contest the Moseley and Kings Heath ward in the May council elections, beating the SWP's Helen Salmon by 35 votes to 20 (see Weekly Worker February 8).

l Last year Birmingham city councillor for Sparkbrook Talib Hussain resigned from Respect only a week after joining. He admitted to the Weekly Worker that he joined without knowing that the 'S' and 'T' in Respect stood for 'socialism' and 'trade unions' (see Weekly Worker March 30 2006).

The SWP has not only allowed this situation to develop - but has actively opposed taking steps to prevent it. By refusing to establish democratic decision-making structures and repeatedly voting down motions on accountability and principles such as a worker's wage for workers' representatives, it has pandered both to George Galloway and so-called 'community leaders'.

Socialist Party: not so good

The Socialist Party stood 14 candidates in 13 wards in England, most of them under the name of 'Socialist Alternative' (they are barred from contesting as 'Socialist Party' under the undemocratic terms of the 1998 Registration of Political Parties Act). On average, its candidates polled 340 votes (10.7%).

In Coventry St Michaels, SP member Lindsay Currie - standing for the first time - lost by a mere 84 votes to the Labour Party candidate, achieving 40.4% of the vote. The seat was previously held by SP member Karen McKay. However, Dave Nellist and Rob Windsor remain councillors in the same ward, as their seats were not up for re-election.

The SP now has five councillors. The seats of Dr Jackie Grunsell (Crossland Moor and Netherton), Chris Flood and Ian Page (both Lewisham Telegraph Hill) were also not up for re-election.

Clearly, this underlines the fact that the SP is still unable to make any kind of wider breakthrough. The SP has long had representation in St Michaels and Telegraph Hill (previously Lewisham Pepys) - thanks almost entirely to the personal support built up over a long period by comrades Nellist in Coventry and Page in the south London borough. Both were formerly Militant Tendency members first elected over a decade ago as Labour representatives - comrade Nellist as an MP.

All of its councillors who stood under the SP's electoral name of Socialist Alternative are concentrated in just two tiny pockets. And the comrades are simply unable to make headway even in neighbouring wards - in Coventry the SP contested two other seats and picked up 5.6% and 11.2%.

It is also clear that the SP-led Campaign for a New Workers' Party has failed to revive the SP's fortunes. And, as long as the comrades cling to the mistaken belief that you have to build a new Labour Party in order to break the masses from Labourism, those fortunes will not change. Why would anybody join or support a poor man's version when the real thing is still alive, well and much, much more influential?

SLP: power of TV

The Socialist Labour Party is a very weird organisation. It has virtually no branches. Its website looks absolutely atrocious and was last updated weeks ago. Its politics are unbelievably backward-looking and conservative. The undemocratic shenanigans of its leader, Arthur Scargill, have been well documented.

Nevertheless, this rump chauvinist organisation (which campaigns to get Britain out of the European Union) got more votes than the SSP in Scotland and all its left opponents in Wales - not that that is saying very much (see pp6-7).

Undoubtedly, the Scargill name still has resonance for many older workers. However, it is likely that the party's TV broadcasts would have swung a few extra votes. The fact that the SLP stood candidates in all regional list elections in Wales and Scotland (including several comrades who live in England) entitled it to a party political broadcast.

They might have been rather shoddily produced, but they had the support of actor Ricky Tomlinson, who fronted both of them. With as serious a face as he could muster, he preached about the need to "rebuild and restore our deep mine coal industry", steel and other heavy industries as the way to "bring about socialism". Nevertheless, the broadcast clearly reached tens of thousands of people - and some of them voted for the organisation as a result.

As we go to press, it has proved impossible to find details of the SLP's performance in the council elections in England, where, of course, it was not entitled to a TV broadcast. Our emails and phone messages have remained unanswered. The website carries no results, nor the actual number of contests it fought. My guess is there were a dozen or so candidates who did not exactly set the world on fire.