Election report
Date: 9th May '02
Name: article from Weekly Worker
Weekly Worker 431 Thursday May 9 2002
May 2 saw local elections in many parts of England, and seven ballots for
newly created mayors. The British National Party may have grabbed all the
post-election headlines, but there was also a significant left challenge at
the council ballot box. James Mallory analyses the results
Socialist Alliance inches forward
The Socialist Alliance stood 220 candidates on May 2 - by far the largest
number on the left. No alliance candidates were elected, but nationally its
vote was creditable, with a clutch of results over 10%.
Our vote in London was undoubtedly boosted by the fact that voters were
electing three councillors per ward: thus they were able to cast three
votes. Hackney saw the SA chalk up its most impressive result. Comrade Paul
Foot, standing in Clissold ward, polled 487 votes - 22.7% of those who
turned out. The other 11 SA candidates in Hackney also did well, with over
3,000 voters giving one of their votes to the Socialist Alliance, which
sometimes beat the Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates. Hackney SA
s ambition in standing in 13 of Hackneys 19 wards clearly paid dividends.
Other notable London results were achieved by Simon Hester (Haringey, St Ann
s) with 324 votes (19%), Paul Phillips (Forest Gate North) with 272 votes
(15%), and Lee Rock (Waltham Forest, William Morris) with 254 votes (9%).
Outside London, while the average vote was lower, there were still some
impressive results, like those of comrade Barry Conway, who polled 21% in
Wigan. Contesting the mayoralty of North Tyneside, comrade Michael Roberts
won over 2,000 votes.
Clearly comrades have worked very hard. However, in some areas results were
poor. A sober and rounded analysis would suggest that we managed only to
inch forward. The general election in June 2001 established a national
profile for the SA and in that sense our campaign was a success despite the
low vote. This time around it has been a different story. There was no
national manifesto launch and no national campaign to speak of. The absence
of a regular Socialist Alliance political paper is costing us dear.
Furthermore there exists a danger that, as happened after June 2001, the
momentum built up will be allowed to dissipate. The Socialist Workers Party
shows no sign of abandoning its propensity to flit to and fro between its
different united fronts - giving the SA a grudging priority at election
times, but then shelving it in favour of the Anti-Nazi League, Globalise
Resistance, etc. Given what happened following June 2001, it is hardly
surprising that one frequent complaint heard by activists on the doorstep
was that we only see you at election times. The answer is not just local
and grassroots campaigns, but a Socialist Alliance paper - which will
educate, agitate and organise our supporters.
After May 2 we have a golden opportunity to revitalise the alliance. Those
who canvassed will have records of many of those that voted for us -
obviously these need to be regularly contacted and over time drawn into the
organisation. Some local SAs grasped the importance of having a means of
communication during the campaign - they published local news sheets. If we
can do that in Manchester, Hackney and Wales, etc, and if our five principle
supporting organisations can produce a whole range of publications,
including two weeklies, then surely the resources can be raised for a
Socialist Alliance weekly - and why not a daily during elections? If the
Socialist Alliances SWP-dominated leadership refuses to take up this
challenge, then others must act. An unofficial paper, backed initially by
the CPGB and the Alliance for Workers Liberty, would fit the bill.
Reviving Arthur Scargills moribund Socialist Labour Party will require
necromancy. Short of visiting the website of every council where elections
took place, it is impossible to draw up a complete list of SLP results.
However, we can safely say that the SLPs intervention was very limited
indeed - in stark contrast to the 114 mostly paper candidates that Scargill
almost single-handedly managed to stand in the general election. May 2 gave
us a more accurate picture of the organisations state of decay.
Ealing in west London - a favoured stamping ground of the Stalinite Indian
Workers Association - is perhaps the only area where the SLPs politics have
any social resonance - thanks to mass migration from the Indian
sub-continent and the social base established by the Communist Party and the
Communist Party (Marxist) in places like West Bengal and Kerala. The SLP
stood three candidates in some wards and its best performance came in South
Broadway, where Harpal Brar polled 424 votes, almost certainly the highest
vote of any SLP candidate in the country.
Despite the SLPs sectarian disdain for left unity and the Socialist
Alliance, there were mercifully few instances where our candidates clashed.
Something due more to the SLPs lack of members and consequent inability to
mount a wider challenge than any warming of relations. In the two wards
where a clash did occur (Manchester and Bolton), the SLP came off marginally
worse.
The Communist Party of Britain is an organisation whose view of the alliance
is somewhat less clear. There is currently a serious debate going on within
the pages of the Morning Star about what the CPBs attitude to the SA should
be - with some favouring drawing closer and others wanting to remain in
isolation. Significantly our national chair, comrade Liz Davies, now has a
regular column in the Star. Let us hope that this engagement yields positive
results and the Socialist Alliance will soon have a sixth principle
supporting organisation.
It is certainly hard to fathom what the CPB hopes to achieve by standing -
its British Road to Socialism programme envisages socialism being introduced
from above by a Labour Party government. Only four candidates were fielded,
the same number as in the general election. Of those four, Anne Kruthoffer,
wrongly listed as the Communist Party of Great Britain, recorded the CPBs
highest vote of 131 in Walthamstow.
Nick Wright - a former Straight Leftist who is fond of denouncing
sectarians - is for sure not at the forefront of encouraging the
development of more fraternal relations between the CPB and SA. No doubt he
will have relished his clash with the Socialist Alliance in the Peckham ward
of The Lane. His 49 votes put him behind our three candidates.
Peter Taaffes Socialist Party in England and Wales - standing under the
Socialist Alternative banner - lost two councillors and retained two.
Comrade Dave Nellist, the Socialist Alliances former chair before SPEW
walked out, retained his seat in Coventry, beating his nearest rival by more
than 300 votes. Ian Page in Lewisham also retained his seat, notching up
1,065 votes in the process.
Sam Dias, the SPs other Lewisham councillor, was defeated by a combination
of boundary changes, a Labour candidate and a strong showing by the Local
Education Action for Parents (Leap) group. Its candidate, Helen LeFevre,
edged out comrade Dias by 53 votes. Leap was originally formed out of a
campaign to open a new school in the Telegraph Hill area. It describes
itself as a single-issue political party that believes that the best type
of education is provided by local comprehensive schools which serve the
whole of a community, giving opportunities to all their pupils (Leap
website). The attentive reader may think that this is precisely the sort of
organisation that SPEW, which was a constant critic of the Socialist
Alliance over such community campaigns, would consider standing aside for.
Apparently not if you have a sitting councillor.
Perhaps the most surprising result was the success of the Independent
Working Class Association - the brainchild of Red Action, a 1970s split from
the SWP - in getting Stuart Craft elected in the Northfield Brook ward in
Oxford. The IWCAs other candidate in Northfield Brook came only a short
distance behind with 328 votes, and in Blackbird Leys ward - also in
Oxford - Daphne Kingston got 197 votes. Elsewhere the IWCA did almost
equally well. Carl Tailor came within 100 votes of being elected in
Haggerstone ward in Hackney.
The IWCAs programme is unashamedly localist and in some instances downright
reactionary - for example, its manifesto in Hackney states: Dealing in hard
drugs in this ward must be stopped and calls for the council and the
police to take [unspecified] action to stop it. Surely a better response
is the demand for NHS treatment for addicts and the legalisation of all
drugs. Nevertheless the IWCA is to be congratulated on putting in sterling
and consistent work, especially in the housing estates.
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