WeeklyWorker

27.04.1995

Vote communist on May 4

As Blair promises to move Labour more and more, not only down the Tory road, but actually down the Thatcher road, there is less and less to choose between the bosses’ parties in the local elections. Labour, Tory and Liberal all promise to run capitalism at the expense of working class rights. But there is an alternative - vote communist on May 4 and join the fight for what we need, not what Labour or Tory say they can afford

THE COMMUNIST Party election campaign around England has been very different to that of the bosses’ parties. Communists have been using the elections on the street, on the doorstep and in the press to raise the demands for what working people today need and should demand. We have been using the campaign to fight against attacks on the health service, jobs, education - against all attacks on workers.

This election campaign is part of our struggle to reforge the Party that the working class needs to fight for our rights. A vote for the bosses’ parties is only a vote to attack our own living standards, and this is becoming increasingly obvious.

Many workers we talk to are fed up with the Labour Party, but are so determined to get the Tories out that they will vote for it anyway. We say if we are to rebuild our own combativity we must stop this trend by building our own independent workers’ organisation.

Blair has made it clear this week that he has every intention in office of continuing the Tory attacks. Blunkett has rounded on the teachers and Margaret Beckett promises to do nothing to stop the rot in the NHS. But Labour’s leader tops it all by promising to carry out a wholesale attack on all workers.

In an interview with The Sunday Times he told of his admiration of Thatcher: “I believe Mrs Thatcher’s emphasis on enterprise was right.” Laughing off any suggestion that Labour might repeal the anti-trade union laws, he promised to keep “laws about ballots before strikes and restrictions on mass picketing” (April 23 1995).

The proprietor of this paper, Rupert Murdoch, will no doubt be pleased. The Tory Party is now held in contempt by many Tories. Even those who maintain some loyalty cannot stomach the constant round of failures and embarrassment. Only this week their tired leader returned the whip to his rebels without so much as a ticking off.

Blair on the other hand is commanding the loyalty and discipline of virtually the whole of his party - the constituencies, the executive and even many of the union barons, whom he promises to marginalise in the near future.

This is all part of his process to win the rightwing votes of disaffected Tories and Liberals. But with his stolidly rightwing agenda the working class can surely not hand over its votes to Labour? Blair of course is counting on the fact that it will, because there does not seem to be any alternative.

Unless we organise ourselves, independently of the Labour Party, it will ride into office with a supposed popular mandate to attack us. After all no one can honestly believe now that the Labour Party in power will do anything for the working class. Blair’s promises on anti-trade union laws, law and order, etc, are not just clever electioneering to attract ‘natural’ Tories. He will deliver what he promises.

Blair will deliver nothing but more cuts, more sackings, more speed-ups, more closures. Don’t use your vote for that. We deserve much more and with organisation we can win it.

A vote for the Communist Party is not a wasted vote: it is not a throw-away vote; it is not a vote for the bosses’ rightwing agenda.

It is a vote which begins the task of building the working class organisation that can say to Labour and Tory alike that we will not be offered up to slaughter for the sake of the bosses’ profits.

Minimum platform of working class defence

Where there is no Communist Party candidate, we say voters should only vote for candidates who support the following demands:

There should be no vote for candidates who cannot support such a platform. Do not vote for those who will not fight capitalism and who will only misrepresent and oppress the working class. Under such circumstances, write ‘communist’ across your ballot paper.