Editorial 2
May 2: another chance to vote socialist
AFTER last year’s record low turn-out of voters helped Blair secure another landslide victory in the general election, New Labour faces an even tougher fight to enthuse the electorate in the run-up to council elections on May 2.
Five years in which Labour ministers have maintained the Tory vice-like grip on council finances, driving forward repeated waves of cuts, privatisation and closures, have given working class areas little reason to turn out and vote Labour.
And the party’s local election campaign, like a right wing parody of the infamous "loony left" diversions of Labour councils dodging hard issues 20 years ago, focuses primarily on demonising unruly youth, with plans to crack down on street disorder, youth crime, graffiti and abandoned cars.
Such desperate efforts to make populist capital out of the continuing polarisation and social decay of towns and cities, despite Blair’s occasional crocodile tears over "social exclusion", is a feeble smokescreen to divert from the mounting shortage of affordable housing – and the knock-on impact on staffing levels in key public services, especially in London and the South East – and the problems of desperately under-funded social services.
Even while property prices have spiralled upwards out of reach of almost all working class families, New Labour has done nothing but make the problem worse. With little or no affordable housing now being built, Labour have now taken over from the Tories as the most avid sellers and privatisers of council housing – though such plans can go seriously awry, as the recent bloody nose suffered by New Labour’s efforts to hive off council estates in Birmingham has shown.
The steady privatisation of elderly care is just part of a constant drive by New Labour councils to undermine many of the remaining areas of locally-controlled public services.
As a result councils have been rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant as a factor in their local areas – and New Labour has also drawn the conclusion from that, seeking to restructure councils, concentrating decision-making in the hands of ever-fewer councillors – or, where they feel they can bamboozle the electorate sufficiently, pushing for the establishment of an elected mayor with sweeping executive powers that would render the election of local councillors even more redundant.
The model for such mayors would not be the impotent and hog-tied Ken Livingstone, who cannot even organise a firework party for Londoners, but US-style mayors with genuine executive powers.
Small wonder that the sponsors of the drive for more elected mayors include not only Blair – a Prime Minister notorious for spending less time in the Commons than almost any of his predecessors, and his acolytes, who also see Parliament and council democracy are seen as a tedious charade, impeding their deals with the private sector – but also big business interests.
Big business has not the slightest interest in democracy for working people, but sees the establishment of a mayoral system as their best hope of pressing home even more privatisation of the remaining council services.
The "P" word is indeed a common strand linking New Labour’s policies at national and local level. This is why – while still formally affiliated to the Labour Party – the GMB union, as part of its continuing campaign against New Labour’s drive to privatisation, has taken the novel step of writing to all 8,000 Labour council candidates demanding that they sign a 6-point programme opposing any further privatisation as a condition of GMB support.
Other public sector unions could usefully follow this lead and pile on the pressure against Blairite candidates in every area.
New Labour’s track record suggests that few Party candidates will be able to pass the GMB test. But that raises the question of which party working class voters should support.
Once again the Lib Dems are presenting an apparently progressive and comparatively "left" face at national level, while their councillors in practice work – whether in their own right, or with Labour, or (as in Oxford) with the Greens – to put forward their own variety of cuts, closures and privatisation.
However there will be a developing challenge this year from the left, with the Socialist Alliance standing over 200 candidates in selected wards in a number of towns and cities across England, taking up local issues, but also putting forward a common 7-point programme and a platform of consistent support for the needs of the working class.
In many areas the Alliance will be the only party committed to oppose privatisation, fighting for an expansion of council housing, and challenging central government refusal to give councils the cash they need to sustain vital services. The Alliance also brings in a nation-wide policy of fighting racism, supporting asylum seekers, and opposing the Blair-Bush war drive.
Given the relatively low turn-out in council elections, there are hopes that local campaigning by the Alliance can secure a respectable share of the vote, and force a genuine debate on the key issues.
Other socialist and working class candidates will also be running, such as veteran anti-cuts campaigner June Hautot, who has won the backing of the Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Council in her challenge to one of the last remaining flagship Tory councils.
Once more working people in many areas now have a real chance to vote socialist and take a stand in defence of public services. Every blow struck against the Blairites, every success and every inch of progress notched up by the left will help strengthen the fight for a genuine political alternative for the labour movement as a whole.