The trade union leaders, as well as in the main acting as a brake on possible action, still resist any formal rupture with New Labour. Despite the fact that – as our party was the first to spell out – New Labour is now an entirely capitalist party, which acts solely in the interests of big business and finance capital, the union leaders still propagate the idea that it is better to buy ‘influence’ by paying large sums of union members’ money to New Labour than to turn to the task of creating a new workers’ party. Unison, Amicus and the T & G have provided around £2 million towards New Labour’s election fund. Several union leaders have also helped sow illusions in the idea that Gordon Brown will be a more worker- friendly Labour leader than Blair, by, among other things, making it clear they will support Brown when the next Labour leader is chosen.
The rottenness of most of the union leaders was typified by comments made when Gordon Brown first announced plans to axe tens of thousands of jobs in the civil service in his 2004 budget speech. Kevin Curran, general secretary of the GMB, simply echoed government propaganda regarding increasing front line jobs at the expense of back room functions, and Prentis, general secretary of Unison, called it a ‘win win’ budget. Then came their cosying up to New Labour at the Warwick summit last summer, where they dutifully promised Blair their loyalty for the general election and assured him of their continued funding of a third of Labour’s income. They gained very little in return at Warwick in terms of concrete concessions – some promises on issues such as ending two-tier workforces in public services and excluding the eight bank holidays from four weeks guaranteed leave, but nothing on low pay, job losses, PFI, and virtually nothing on pensions. Yet they tried to portray the results as highly positive and illustrative of the benefits of union links with New Labour.
However, in the recent period, especially since the attacks were announced on civil service jobs and pensions, many of the same union leaders are being forced under workers’ pressure to lean the other way. Twelve general secretaries felt compelled to give verbal support to the PCS’s initial call for action over the pension attacks, and this, as outlined above, is likely to be transformed into some concrete action. And despite aiding illusions in Gordon Brown, regardless of who is in the Labour leadership in future, events over time and immense pressure from rank and file union members will both push the union leaderships into more active opposition to the government and force a process of leadership renewal, replacing them with leaders who better represent workers’ interests. The early beginnings of this process were seen with the election of the ‘awkward squad’ trade union leaders, the left in the PCS, and in recent weeks with Christine Blower and Matt Wrack being elected deputy general secretaries of the NUT and FBU respectively. Although at this stage the layer of activists who will stand for positions and concretely build for action in the unions is still very weak, this will be transformed over time, and Socialist party trade unionists who at present carry a large burden of work and leadership at ground level will play an important role in training and developing the new layer.
In the meantime, a general warning is necessary on the need to preserve the unions as fighting instruments for workers, as they are an essential tool, but have suffered reduced membership in many cases. Of seven million trade unionists in Britain, the private sector now has just two million, with the public sector making up the rest – and if the Blairites get their way the public sector union membership will be cut down with the attacks on the civil service and other attacks on the welfare state. The mainly private sector unions Amicus and the T&G are discussing a merger to become the largest union in Britain, with 1.5 million workers, and have invited the GMB to consider joining them, which would bring in a further one million. Their move is driven mainly by reduced union membership and dues payments; union membership has almost halved from its 13 million-strong level in the 1970s, with over 60% of public sector workers being unionised but only one in eight in the private sector. Union mergers can have potential advantages for workers, but a united pot of money for recruitment and other uses will not in itself attract new members; only concrete steps to act in members’ interests, leading industrial action when necessary, will do this. As a Financial Times journalist noted: “IG Metall, which claims to be Europe’s biggest trade union, would be roughly the same size as the new union. But its mass has not saved it from a rapid decline in membership, a fall in the number of companies covered and a swingeing defeat over working hours”. Despite our small forces, our comrades are not only leading one of the unions that is increasing its membership at present – the PCS – but are also almost alone in engaging in discussions on unionisation with groups of unorganised workers, playing an important role in doing so.
NHS
The NHS has suffered badly from the government’s onslaught on the public sector in a number of ways. Although the government has tried to promote their increased NHS funding of recent years, which is now an unprecedented 9% of GDP, the amounts being put in are nowhere near enough, coming after previous decades of underfunding – including the continuation of the Tories’ spending levels during New Labour’s first few years in power. The Audit Commission has said that 107 NHS organisations (hospital trusts, primary care trusts and strategic health authorities) failed to break even last financial year – about a sixth of the total – compared with 71 the previous year. Only one out of 28 English strategic health authorities is predicting a surplus for this financial year.
The latest cost-cutting scandal is that of the MRSA super-bug, caught by 100,000 patients last year and causing the deaths of about 5,000 people each year. A recent study by Unison showed that the number of hospital cleaners has halved over the last ten years; there were 100,000 in 1984, yet there are now just 55,000. Coupled with underfunding has been the ongoing privatisation drive, handing public money to private hands while worsening services at the same time. Blair and his co-‘modernisers’ want to turn the clock back to the pre-NHS days when the ill could only be treated if they had the money to pay for it, or if a charity stepped in to help them. But as the NHS is so popular, won by the working class through great pressure in the post-war period, Blair has been unable initially to go for charges at the point of use (though there are charges for dental care, glasses and prescriptions), and is instead destroying the service by introducing privatisation into treatment provision.
This process of privatisation is now turning into a fiasco as great as that in the rail industry. The last round of ‘reforms’ in the NHS, presently being forced through, are causing immense problems in many areas for NHS workers and patients. NHS and private fast-track treatment centres are being opened, in market competition with existing NHS hospitals. The government intends that from 2008, patients will be able to choose any hospital ‘that meets NHS prices and standards’. By then, all are supposed to be foundation trusts, run like businesses but without shareholders.
In the meantime, the Department of Health is insisting that 8-10% of hospitals’ non-emergency work is bought from the ‘independent’ sector. But the independent treatment centres take the easiest and most ‘profitable’ treatments, leaving the mainstream NHS hospitals with the more difficult and expensive cases. The ‘independent’ sector is also in most cases giving more expensive treatment, for instance: “Birmingham and Black Country Strategic Health Authority is being told it has by 2008 to shift 20-30,000 cases out of its hospitals and into the independent sector on contracts that cost around 15% more per case than average NHS treatment”. And the contracts stipulate that the NHS has to pay for operating slots in the private centres whether or not it uses them! All this has raised the spectre of NHS hospitals going bust.
The British Medical Association’s conference of senior hospital doctors warned last June that after the next election, the government’s policies would lead to “the biggest hospital closure programme ever. It will spell the end of the NHS and it must be stopped”. Even the hand-picked bureaucrats at the top of the NHS, the chief executives, are feeling forced to voice opposition to the government. In a survey by the Health Service Journal, three quarters of them do not believe the government’s use of private sector treatment centres is good value for money, and almost 80% say that they divert resources from the NHS.
Fearing hospitals collapsing before the general election, the Department of Health has decided to throw more money at private consultants to set up a “failure regime” aimed at “identifying the warning signs of failure”. This has been triggered by the experience of hospitals like the Bradford Royal Infirmary, one of the first hospitals to be declared a ‘foundation trust’ – chosen because it was considered to be a leading hospital in relatively good financial health. However, a report in the Observer revealed that the hospital has gone into dire crisis since its new status was awarded, suffering a dramatic decline in its finances in just a few months. The Financial Times subsequently reported that “The Bradford Teaching Hospitals went from a projected £1m surplus into a possible £11m-plus deficit within four months of starting operation”. Now emergency cuts are affecting all aspects of the hospital, including clean linen and basic equipment like tubing. Foundation hospitals were a project spearheaded by Blair’s favoured successor Alan Milburn, now promoted to be New Labour’s election organiser.
Money for provision of new health service buildings continues to be poured into private hands through the Private Finance Initiative. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants recently confirmed that the government has paid up to 30% more to construct PFI hospitals and concluded that “PFI is likely to lead to redistribution of income from the public at large to the corporate sector” and that “the chief beneficiaries are the providers of finance… leading to a redistribution not from the rich to the poor but from the mass of the population to the financial elite”.
Health workers not only face constant stress as a result of all the above turmoil, but are also suffering attacks on their pensions and changes to their working arrangements and pay as a result of the Agenda for Change agreement. This latter deal brings in a small increase in the NHS minimum wage, to £5.69 an hour (£5.88 from April), from £4.85, but increases flexibility in the interest of management and means that around 80,000 workers have to have ‘protection’ to stop their wages from falling, will face several years with no pay increases and could have their pay cut after 2011.
Education
Likewise with education, the resources being put in are completely inadequate and the service is being worsened by privatisation. The government plans to expand the number of privately run ‘academies’, where a private sponsor puts in up to £2m capital and the government up to £26m plus all the annual running costs. The academies are outside local authority control, with the sponsor able to dictate the learning curriculum and environment based on any personal ideas they like, and also to set the hours and pay of teachers and support staff outside of national agreements. The government’s labelling of academies as “independent state schools” is designed to give the impression that they are a half-way house taking the best of the public and private sectors when the exact opposite is the case – they take public money but allow no public control. Of 55 approved academies, 22 will be run by Christian organisations. Many others are to be run by businesses, who intend to promote their own profit-making needs directly to the students; some are already doing this.
Two hundred academies are planned by the end of the decade, but only seventeen are up and running so far. Opposition campaigns are developing by parents and teachers, such as in Doncaster where a victory was scored against a city academy sponsored by the creationist car-dealer Peter Vardy, and in Walthamstow, where our comrades were involved in a campaign that led to fashion designer Jasper Conran withdrawing from a planned academy. The new Education Minister, Ruth Kelly, pushes academies as helping to provide greater ‘choice’ to parents, whereas they are just another way of trying to justify privatisation and cuts. Attempts are made to bribe parents with brand new school buildings and modern facilities, while the control the sponsor will have is largely covered up and long-term adequate funding of the school will not be assured. Most parents want a good, well funded comprehensive school in their own locality that is run by their local authority.
Other attempts to pursue privatisation in education go on, for instance, nine Local Education authority areas have been ‘outsourced’, and are reported as having a rise of 6% a year in pupils gaining 5 or more good GCSEs (compared with 2.5% across all schools in England), but even the CBI admitted that they were starting from an extremely low base, as it was low results that were used as an excuse for the privatisation in the first place.
In higher education, the future debt burden on students has been worsened with the introduction of higher tuition fees and a graduate tax from 2006. This is on a generation that faces greater housing problems than previous generations due to housing shortages and the exorbitant level of house prices and rents, and whose parents’ have unprecedented levels of household debt so are less able to offer help. The average student debt is now £12,100 according to Barclay’s graduate survey, a 10% increase since last year and a 500% increase since 1995. On this basis, most graduates will have to work for ten years before they have paid off their debt. Barclay’s predicts the average debt will be £33,700 by 2010, so this will mean working for nearly 30 years to clear the debt!
Working class and middle class students and their families have been hit very badly by the changes to student finances. This will rebound on New Labour to some extent at the general election. However, the statistics show that it is particularly working class youth who have been put off from going on to higher education altogether. This was confirmed in a recent study by the Sutton Trust which showed that despite increased student numbers in the 1980s and 1990s, the number of graduates among the poorest quarter of families went up from 6 per cent to just 9 per cent. For the richest quarter of families the figure went from 20% to almost 50%. One of the study’s authors was quoted in the Observer as blaming this on the move from maintenance grants to student loans. Only 15% of children with unskilled parents go to university compared with 79% from professional families.
The government’s overall financial package for universities up to 2007-08 allows for just a small increase in student numbers, revealing that it knows it won’t meet its target of getting half of all young people into university by the end of the decade. As with other levels of education, the amount of funding promised is well below what is needed for even the existing number of students. The degree of financial crisis in higher education received media publicity with the decision of Exeter university to close its chemistry and music departments, and more recently with Oxford university discussing cutting the number of British students in order to take more higher-fee paying students from abroad. Attempts to attract private funding into universities are being stepped up; the government recently decided it would match donations from private sponsors with public money up to £7.5m over the next three years. The FE sector is also in crisis, with lecturers being forced into industrial action in some areas by attacks on their contracts and conditions.
‘Anti-terror’ legislation
Under cover of ‘anti-terror’ legislation, following Bush’s example, the government is carrying out a massive attack on civil liberties. The likelihood of dying while crossing a road is many times greater than of dying in a terrorist attack, but Blair is using the issue of terrorism to whip up fear and appear to be acting against it. He had a small knock back with the law lords ruling in December against the indefinite detention of foreign terrorist suspects without trial. The first reaction of new Home Secretary Charles Clarke, was to continue with the same practise and just modify the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act to avoid further legal criticism. They have since been forced to backtrack on that and accept the ruling, but want to modify the legislation to allow indefinite house detention without trial – a tool used by some of the most authoritarian and brutal regimes in the world. The announcement of this draconian measure has led to an outcry, including from a layer of professional middle class people – lawyers, human rights workers and even judges. The Tories and Liberal Democrats have jumped on the bandwagon and are joining in the opposition on this issue. More than 600 people have been arrested in Britain under the Terrorism Act since 9/11, but only two people have been successfully prosecuted for terror offences.
The ‘anti-terror’ legislation includes powers to imprison people without jury trials, increase police phone-tapping powers, introduce a law on criticising religion, and legislation – initially aimed at anti-vivisectionist protesters – to enable the arrest and up to five years imprisonment of anyone causing ‘economic sabotage’, or ‘undue stress’ to individual directors, scientists or whoever. This is the thin end of the wedge, as this legislation could in future be modified (if necessary) for use against trade unionists and socialists. A warning on this came from parliament itself, with the parliamentary joint committee on human rights saying that the new offence aimed at anti-vivisectionists opened the “danger that the provisions could be used to inhibit ordinary political demonstrations”. As well as longer-term uses against the labour movement, Blair’s anti-terror measures have the short term electoral aim of trying to keep New Labour above the Tories as the leading party on security and law and order. This was spelt out bluntly by Peter Hain, leader of the Commons, when he said that that the government’s plans were a political strategy aimed at “crowding out any space for the Conservatives on the security agenda”.
The plan for ID cards – something even Michael Howard refused to bring in when he was Home Secretary in the 1990s – is part of this strategy. The government faces many hurdles in implementing them, particularly technological problems with how to record holder identity and with creating a large and sophisticated enough computer system that works smoothly. But if these are overcome, their introduction will be difficult to prevent in practise, as it will eventually become impossible to get a passport, driving licence, visit the doctor etc without one. The first cards are due to be issued in 2008 and a vote on making them compulsory is planned for 2011 or 2012.
While planning many measures attacking civil liberties, it won’t go unnoticed that at the same time more legislation in favour of big business is on the table, such as on expanding gambling casinos and reneging on promises to imprison directors responsible for corporate manslaughter, stopping at introducing fines. This, despite the fact that six workers die every month on building sites.
New Labour
Blair’s standing has been massively eroded since he came to power in 1997. He is seen as a liar over the Iraq war by a majority of the population and is hated for the cuts and privatisation that have been carried out. The only advantage he has, is that the alternatives seem no better. Like Jacques Chirac in France and Gerhard Schroeder in Germany, Blair has been sustained in power by the weakness of the opposition rather than his own strength.
A reflection of the weakness of New Labour is the situation within the party itself. Labour membership has halved since Blair became prime minister in 1997, to now being below 200,000, the lowest for 70 years. Electorally, disgust has been shown at the polls: In 2001 they got 3m votes less than in 1997, in the June 2004 Euro election they got their lowest share of the vote since 1918 (at 22%) and in 165 local authority election seats, also in June 2004, they came third with 26% of the vote, behind the Tories on 38% and the Liberal Democrats on 29%.
“Houdini should be Tony Blair’s middle name after his serial escapes over this past year” wrote Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. He was referring particularly to the period early last year when it was proved that there were no WMDs in Iraq just before the war and the scandal over US brutality in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad broke. These issues, combined with anger over his domestic agenda, pushed Blair towards considering resigning his position. He hung on to power, but with all the loss of authority that went with these events. He has suffered further in recent weeks, following the strong backing he gave to David Blunkett, until it became impossible to hide the fact that Blunkett had definitely abused his position in speeding through a visa application for his lover’s nanny; then when he stayed on holiday in Egypt during the aftermath of the tidal wave disaster in the Indian ocean; and then again with the recent exposure of torture in Iraq by British troops. Support for the war on Iraq has now reached a record low – just 35% according to a YouGov poll commissioned by the Sunday Times.
The Blairites ares seen as corrupt, arrogant and power-obsessed. Henry Porter, also writing in the Observer, commented: “There is a sense that Blair and his supporters have only one political conviction and that is their unique entitlement to power”. Showing alarm from the point of view of the ruling class, Lord Butler, reporting in December, attacked the way that all decisions are taken by Blair and the coterie around him. He wrote of “bad government in this country” and highlighted the fact that the cabinet no longer takes decisions and that the government ignores civil servants lest they produce “inconvenient arguments”. Power has been centralised by Blair to himself and his inner circle.
The gloves have been coming off in the power struggle between Brown and Blair. The Sunday Telegraph, in its serialisation of the Brown biography, reported Brown as telling Blair: “there is nothing you can say to me now that I could ever believe”. Blair has tried to suppress Brown’s role by bringing back Alan Milburn and elevating him over Brown in New Labour’s election team. Reports show that Blair has also been weighing up whether to sack Brown from the Treasury after the general election. On Brown’s part, media reports that Blair has reneged on promises to hand over the party leadership to him will play into Brown’s hands as being viewed as an underdog who has been served an injustice by the power-insatiable Blair. The Blair/Brown division is said to be having an effect on the workings of the government. Senior civil servants have reported a “silo mentality” with ministers and officials in different departments no longer communicating with each other – let alone co-operating – and “some evidence that rival Blair/Brown camps try to keep policy plans secret from one another”. However, the Blair/Brown division alternates between periods of publicly exposed infighting and then suppression and attempts at reconciliation, so it is not a straight line process.
The division between the two men is a manifestation of the careerism and arrogance at the top of the party. In his power struggle with Blair, it suits Brown to allow reports of political differences to circulate, so he can appear to be more ‘old Labour’. He deliberately gave the impression of not being an enthusiastic supporter of tuition fees and the Iraq war. In a recent biography of him, he is said to oppose core NHS services being provided by the private sector. These stances undoubtedly fuel illusions in Brown, as they are aimed at doing, and this complicates attitudes to New Labour. However, Brown has always been at the heart of the New Labour project. He has arrogantly lectured his European counterparts on the advantages of a neo-liberal road. He has not only helped formulate and pass all of New Labour’s policies in government, but has been the key executor of most of them in his position as Chancellor. His main difference with Blair has been over the pace of market ‘reform’; favouring a more cautious approach whereas Blair has been more impatient. Wedded to big business in the same way as the rest of the party leadership, there is no reason to believe that Brown will carry out policies that are substantially different to Blair’s if he eventually becomes prime minister. There are bound to be differences in management style, but ideologically, they are not far apart. However, out of the clash with Blair some actual political fault lines can develop as a result of Brown striving to differentiate himself. Some of the leaders of all three main capitalist parties are capable of echoing an unease of some in the capitalist class at the extent of privatisation and what it is doing to services as well as to peoples’ view of market relations and profit-making out of vital services (as shown in Lord Browne’s comments cited above). However, this does not mean that the decisive sections of the capitalist class on the issue of privatisation will pull back from backing a determined drive to go further.
Tories
The Tories are still in complete meltdown and heading for another general election defeat. They are in such crisis that they are unable to renew the membership of their party – a majority of members are now retired, which means they are set to literally die out as a political party within 20 years! Only a complete root and branch renovation of the party could turn around their fortunes, together with carving out a more distinctive path from New Labour regarding management of the economy, and on other issues.
They are “flatlining” in the polls – at around 30% – the same level they had in 2001, and no better than when they were led by William Hague or Iain Duncan Smith. They are already positioning themselves for the aftermath of defeat, with even Michael Howard talking of the aftermath of defeat in an unguarded moment when asked whether he would continue as leader. Their dilemma lies in the sticking power of people’s memories of their previous time in power and in not being able to find any policies at present with which to differentiate themselves from New Labour. Blair has stolen most of the Tory’s old policies, leaving them floundering without any clear direction. Their promises to cut taxes by £4bn and to cut spending by £12bn more than New Labour just brought media ridicule – for the relatively small amount of the tax cut and because New Labour are already seen – from the standpoint of the ruling class – as going as far as they can in their next round of proposed cuts.
In desperation, unable to go further than Blair on the ‘anti-terror’ front, Howard is leading a turn to the race card to try to stiffen up the Tory vote and to win votes from other parties. He promises a “draconian clampdown on asylum” with “even those with genuine claims to persecution [to] be rejected”, through setting a limit on the number of asylum seekers that would be allowed into the country and refusing to accept any applications from anyone already here. He has also proposed a limit on the total number of immigrants. New Labour Home Secretary, Charles Clark, rushed to counter Howard’s reactionary proposals with more from New Labour, such as the speeding up of ‘removals’ of failed asylum seekers and restrictions on the arrival of dependants of immigrants. The main capitalist parties are prepared to sink low in their battles on this issue, trying to win votes from each other and also from the BNP and UK Independence Party. In doing this, they have to try to hide their duplicity in wanting to encourage immigration of skilled workers to take up low paid public sector jobs and wanting to turn a blind eye to a certain level of illegal immigration of workers who will do even lower paid work.
In scapegoating sections of the immigrant population, rather than countering the far-right and anti-Europeans, they are playing into their hands by whipping up fear of immigration and encouraging racist ideology. But also, turning to this issue is a thought-out, deliberate strategy, designed to tap into a mood of unease and discontent on immigration felt by a significant layer of the population, particularly in areas like London and the South East where the population has increased and there is a fear of pressure on housing, jobs and state provision of services and benefits. Net immigration has risen from around zero in the early 1990s to more than 150,000 a year in the period 1999 to 2003; these figures will be the basis for political arguments between parties in the run-up to the election.
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are doing better in the polls (by at least five points) than their level of support in the 2001 general election, and this is predicted to rise in the run up to the general election this year. They are benefiting from their stance against university tuition fees and the Iraq war, and are announcing a manifesto that aims slightly to the left of New Labour, including introducing a 50% tax on incomes over £100,000, abolishing tuition fees, reducing and changing the council tax, giving free personal care to the elderly and an increased pension to over-75s.
But these promises can’t obscure the fact that they are another major capitalist party that supports cuts and privatisations, and therefore isn’t able to attract workers’ votes in large numbers. They may win a number of seats off the Tories – of their top 35 target seats, all but a handful are Tory held – and they could take some off New Labour, though at present it isn’t predicted that this will be a substantial number, as many of their extra votes will increase their share of the vote in seats they already hold rather than be enough to make very significant inroads in Labour seats (though see also further points made below on this issue). Their own aim is to displace the Tories as the main party of opposition.
General Election
So, given the lack of alternative, Blair is likely to be re-elected in the general election, with the expected date being 5 May. New Labour’s majority is likely to be lower than in 2001, though at present, Mori polls are predicting it to be fairly substantial at around 100 (from 159 now). As always with opinion polls and predictions on election results, it is necessary to be very careful, as polls are not an accurate reflection of opinion even at the time they are taken, and unexpected events between now and the general election can influence the result one way or the other. The situation in Iraq is extremely volatile, and could take turns that rebound heavily on Blair in the pre-election period (- the situation in Iraq is not covered in this statement as it has been covered in other material). Domestic events have the potential to impact on him even more heavily, such as if Labour leaders’ present fears of a collapse of car maker MG Rover in the West Midlands are realised. Alternatively, there are possible events that could boost his prospects, for instance if there was a terrorist attack in Britain, Blair could try to exploit it to temporarily increase his support in the way that Bush used the 9/11 attacks. However, it is not a foregone conclusion that he could successfully do this; it would depend on the particular circumstances involved and the way in which he acted.
The British general election system means that a party can get a safe majority while only receiving the vote of a minority of the electorate. New Labour could get a comfortable majority on the basis of their present 33-35% standing in the polls, even though the Tories are not far behind – on around 27-32%. However, New Labour faces a major struggle in order to be confident of a good margin of victory. In particular, they fear the lack of motivation of past Labour voters to vote – out of anger with Labour’s policies – and also if they believe Labour will be re-elected anyway. Some Labour seats have big Muslim populations, so these will be especially vulnerable following the war on Iraq and occupation. In an attempt to improve his party’s prospects, Blair has felt compelled to change his election strategy since the last election, abandoning plans to tour the country and have daily press conferences, instead planning more public meetings and radio phone-ins. And at present, months before the election, New Labour is sending out 1.5 million items of direct mail each month.
Mass abstentions will be a major theme of the election, as a result not just of attitudes towards New Labour, but towards all the capitalist parties. Low turnout is an international phenomenon, especially in countries where workers have experience of regular elections and have become disillusioned with the results of capitalist democracy – electing one or other party that claims it can manage the system better. The Financial Times carried an article which said: “there are reasons to suggest Labour’s hold on power is more precarious than it seems. Turnout is expected to fall again, from 59% in 2001 and 71% in 1997. Opinion research by Mori suggests only 51% of the electorate intend to use their vote come the general election”. Labour will suffer most from further reduction in the turnout.
There are other factors too that could worsen the situation for New Labour. There is media speculation that in areas where Labour has a narrow margin over the Tories, many Liberal Democrat supporters voted ‘tactically’ for New Labour in 1997 and 2001 to keep the Tories out, but that this time their anger against New Labour will move them against tactical voting to simply vote for the Liberal Democrats. An academic at Strathclyde university, John Curtis, has estimated that an 8.5% swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats combined with an end to tactical voting to keep the Tories out, would mean the Tories gaining 71 seats from Labour even if the Tories failed to increase their share of the vote. If New Labour end up with a majority of around 50 seats or less, Blair will be seriously weakened. As Andrew Rawnsley put it in the Observer: “It will be hard for him to fight the impression that the tide is going out on Blairism”. The party leaders would be more at the mercy of parliamentary rebellions, though a number of the New Labour ‘rebels’ who opposed Blair on Iraq and tuition fees are not standing again for parliament in the coming election, so this will limit their camp.
New Labour’s manifesto will contain a number of ‘bribes’, but the measures presently being announced and considered are not far reaching. They include extending paid maternity leave, childcare and tax relief to people on low incomes. They are offering some limited help with getting on the ‘housing ladder’, including proposals to build cheaper houses. However, these proposals also include the sell off of part of the housing association stock, which while being welcomed by some tenants, will further reduce the overall amount of public housing in existence. The housing associations will have the option of buying back properties if the owners decide to sell, but this is just a smokescreen to reduce criticism, as housing associations wouldn’t necessarily have the money to buy back at increased values.
Of course some of the manifesto promises made will be reneged on after the election, not least due to the economic problems the government will face. And, Blair intends to return with a vengeance to ‘modernisation’ of the welfare state and support for the capitalist class in cutting wages, increasing hours, casualising etc. However, given the massive level of anger towards Blair and New Labour, he’s now in a race against time for his survival in power and leeway to implement his measures. There are many issues that could potentially force him out, including further developments in Iraq, economic crisis, the referendum on the European constitution, and most importantly, public sector workers’ action in response to the pension attacks. If New Labour’s parliamentary majority is drastically reduced in the election, this will accelerate Blair’s departure.
Small parties
Small parties, including the Green party and left parties – but also the far-right and anti-EU parties – can continue to benefit from the widespread disillusionment towards the main parties. The Green party can gain votes from a layer who are particularly concerned about the environment, but as it encompasses political ideology ranging from right to left, it is not able to attract workers on the day-to-day bread and butter issues and does not even appeal to workers with a radical, left-reformist programme. Of the left parties that stand, it remains the case that our own party has the most successful track record on putting forward socialist ideas to the wide-ranging election audience, and we will continue to do this in the general election, concentrating on areas where we already have a history of community campaigning. However, as a small party with limited resources, we recognise that it is not easy to counter the general lack of enthusiasm for voting that is a feature at this stage. There is not yet a workers’ party that can be attractive enough on a large scale to substantially cut across the high level of abstentions. For this, a new mass workers’ party is necessary, or at least a new workers’ party with a membership in the tens of thousands, and with an anti-capitalist programme that appeals to workers.
The new SWP-led formation, Respect, is standing candidates in the general election with the aim of at least getting ex-Labour George Galloway back into parliament, this time for Respect. A layer of people – particularly those on the left of the anti-war movement and from the Muslim participation in the anti-war movement – are looking to Respect as a possible alternative and may support it in the areas where it is standing candidates in the election. It is not possible to predict at this stage though whether Respect’s highest profile candidate, Galloway, will win in Bethnal Green and Bow – the constituency with the second highest Muslim electorate in the country, mainly of Bangladeshi origin. He will be up against Oona King, the black sitting MP, who while inevitably losing votes on the issue of Iraq, intends, according to an article in the Observer, to campaign on the government’s “support for Islamic schools, Islamic mortgages, its funding of the Palestinians and the doubling of benefits”. Part of the anti-war vote can go to the Liberal Democrats, and the Tories will receive some of the votes of the Bangladeshi community by standing a Muslim candidate, as are the Liberal Democrats.
This illustrates the need for Respect to draw a clear class line between it and the candidates of the capitalist parties, and also the need for a socialist alternative to be posed. It is divisive to appeal to Muslims to vote simply as Muslims, without emphasising the need for working class unity between Muslim workers, workers from other ethnic groups and the working class as a whole. This has not been clearly done by Respect in their previous campaigns; on the contrary, they have often taken an opportunist approach towards Muslims. They have also decided to not spell out the need for socialism in their material. On the other hand, some of the Respect leaders’ recent speeches and campaigning work show they may have learnt some lessons from their experiences and also from the interventions and material of our party, so the exact nature of their election campaign is not clear at this stage.
In any event, their long term existence and growth is seriously in doubt, not just because of an unsound political basis, but because of the undemocratic consequences of SWP domination. As with the previous SWP-led Socialist Alliance, the SWP run Respect with an authoritarian hand, allowing very limited democracy at its conferences. At their last conference, anyone raising any disagreements or criticisms, however mild, was met with howls of derision from the assembled ranks of the SWP, leading some non-aligned ‘independent’ members to subsequently walk out of Respect.
The Scottish Socialist Party has put future growth and success in jeopardy by its political mistakes and more recently by the very public divisions in its leadership leading to the resignation of Tommy Sheridan and now a leadership competition between MSP Colin Fox and Alan McCoombes. These unfortunate events confirm the warnings given by our party when the SSP leadership majority broke from the CWI, when we said that without remaining organised in a Marxist, revolutionary organisation based on democratic centralism, the SSP majority would lose their previous Marxist political and organisational bearings and make serious mistakes. The present leadership struggle has undertones of the Brown/Blair clash in that it is hard to differentiate ideologically between the protagonists.
In the June 2004 European elections, the UKIP doubled its share of the vote to 16%, gaining 12 MEPs, not least by taking votes from the Tories, and beat the Liberal Democrats into third place. The Tories’ share of the vote fell by 9% compared with 1999. However, the Tories look likely to face a weakened challenge from UKIP in the 2005 general election, as UKIP has been riven with internal feuding since last June, including the loss of their principal donor, Yorkshire tycoon Paul Sykes, and the defection of the publicity seeking Robert Kilroy-Silk who is setting up a rival party.
The BNP expected to do much better than they did in the June 2004 European and local elections, and have suffered since from demoralisation and infighting. According to Searchlight magazine, the leadership expected to get 3-5 MEPs and around 60 councillors, but ended up with no MEPs and a net increase in councillors of only four. This is despite the fact that they had raised an election war chest of around £500,000. The North West was their jewel in the crown, with previous successes in Burnley, Oldham and Blackburn, but their vote declined there more than in any other region. Nationally there are reports of members leaving, of cancelled standing orders and of expulsions; the highest level expulsion being a second attempt to get rid of ex-leader John Tyndall. So overall, they face the 2005 general election in a weaker position. But the conditions that they exploit – poverty, insecurity etc – are endemic and their vote can still be significant – they did receive 16.7% of the vote in Burnley in the European election and 808,000 votes across the country. In the general election they are likely to concentrate on six target seats: Keighley, Bradford, Dewsbury, Burnley, Stoke and Barking & Dagenham. Our party is in a position to play a leading role in countering them in some of these areas. It remains the case that part of their appeal is to register a protest vote – which can be won by the left as well as the right.
Consciousness
As said at the start of this statement, there remains an underlying anger and frustration among British workers that is potentially explosive under the right conditions. It is the trade union leaderships that are preventing concrete action in most unions and not a lack of motivation and outrage from working class people. There isn’t yet a significant move by workers into trade union or political activism, though in the few unions such as the PCS and RMT that have led strike action there has been increased union membership. The delay in entering activity is partly due to the last lingering effects of the 1990s, which were marked by the capitalists’ ideological offensive following the collapse of Stalinism and a move to the right by social democratic parties and trade union leaders. It is also related to a strong ‘anti-party’ mood and even an ‘anti-meeting’ mood, fed by disillusionment with all the capitalist parties and a lack of confidence at this stage in what can be achieved through workers’ unity and organisation. This is not to ignore the fact that some significant struggles and actions have taken place, such as the Scottish nursery nurses’ strike and the one-day PCS strike.
The situation regarding the general level of struggle will change and maybe very rapidly. In the meantime there are profound changes in consciousness taking place such as the mark made by the anti-war movement – which cut across any idea that people are apathetic, and encompassed a layer that drew the conclusion that demonstrations are not the only type of action that is necessary. All the experiences that workers are facing under the government’s attacks, of privatisation, increased council tax, worsening workplace pay and conditions etc are fuelling changes in consciousness that are leading them in an anti-market, anti-capitalist direction. A growing layer of young people in particular, are also moving in the direction of socialist ideas. This was confirmed by the fact that our party was given the details of hundreds of young people who are interested in joining us at the university freshers fayres last autumn, and also by the steady stream of questions and requests to join that come via our website.
