Editorial 2
The "other" local elections
MAY 4 is not just decision day in London: a round of local elections will take place across the country, and all of the preliminary soundings suggest that Tony Blair and New Labour are likely to suffer more setbacks.
The last time these council seats were contested was in 1996, as John Major’s unpopularity mounted, and record gains were notched up by the Labour Party.
While Blair and co were quick to grab the credit, it was obvious even then that there was a large element of anti-Tory voting in the results, leaving the party controlling only a handful of councils at any level in England.
To maintain this high level of support was always going to be a tall order: but party campaign organisers have been warning that the situation could be especially serious as core voters register high levels of demoralisation, and numbers of party activists have nosedived.
The Welsh Assembly elections gave a graphic account of how this could cost Labour control under conditions where voters see a credible alternative to vote for to express their opposition to Millbank’s hand-picked stooges.
But damage could be done even if there is no alternative on offer. Projections leaked from Millbank show that even if William Hague’s dire effort and anonymous team failed to win a single extra vote to the Tories, it is only necessary for 20 percent of Labour’s voters in core constituencies to be so fed up as not to vote for the bulk of Blair’s massive parliamentary majority to be destroyed at the next general election.
A similar groundswell at local authority level, where abstention rates are traditionally extremely high, could create some really embarrassing upsets for New Labour councils, which have been obediently bulldozing through cuts, coupled with such vote-losers as privatisation, PFI and "Best value schemes".
Throughout many parts of the country the air has resounded with the thuds of Millbank’s insipid leaflets being dumped in the bin as ever more activists vote with their feet and opt to sit out the election campaign. Many councillors are finding that the price of acting as Blair’s bag carriers is that they have to carry round their own posters and do their own canvassing as Party supporters fall away.
But being cheesed off with Tony does not necessarily lead to an electoral bonanza for the left: a sufficiently broad and credible platform needs to be constructed before this can develop.
In Scotland the left has been able to launch a successful alternative in the SSP: in Wales, disaffected Labour votes have swung behind the left nationalist politics of Plaid Cymru; now in London we have a first test of the potential for the London Socialist Alliance.
But in much of England such developments are yet to get under way. A few areas will see protest candidacies opposing cuts in hospitals or other public services, and these may well prove an attractive alternative as happened last year in Kidderminster, where over a dozen campaigners against hospital closure were elected to Wyre Forest Council.
Socialists should appraise these campaigns, and determine whether they stand on a progressive platform in seeking to win over Labour voters. The decision on whether to support such candidates is a tactical question in each given set of circumstances.
But where no acceptable left or campaigning alternative has been constructed, the fight must continue within the labour movement.
Socialist Outlook calls — as we have consistently done in previous elections — for a critical vote for Labour candidates in these areas, despite the inadequacies of their programme, and for a fight through the trade unions and the Labour Party for alternative policies around which a genuine challenge can be mounted to the politics of Blairism.