Poor electoral results etc

[Nigel Irritable <nigel_irritable@xxxxxxxxx>]

During the discussion on the Australian DSP reference
was made to an Australian Socialist Alliance electoral
result of 48 votes. It was claimed that this is as
close to zero as it is possible to get in an election.

Sadly this is not the case. Some left wing groups have
managed much lower votes than that. The most recent
example would the English Socialist Alliance
(effectively a flag of convenience for the SWP) which
managed just 9 (nine) votes in a Council election in
Tower Hamlets this week. This meant that they came
last, behind two different fascist parties.

Nine votes can't even be considered to be a friends
and family vote, unless the candidate is an unpopular
orphan. Some in the SWP might well be expected to see
that this rather gives the lie to their claims that
the Socialist Alliance is the authorative alternative
to New Labour through which opposition must flow.

With that in mind some on the list may be interested
in an open letter written by the Socialist Party to
the Socialist Alliance recently.

Is mise le meas
Brian Cahill

An appeal for socialist unity

A letter from the Socialist Party to the Socialist
Alliance national
executive

10th June 2002

Dear comrades,

We are writing to the Socialist Alliance (SA) to
propose that our two organisations begin talks on the
possibility of re-establishing a broad, inclusive
alliance of the left.

The recent local elections once again showed the
vacuum of working class political representation that
exists in Britain today. While, ominously, the
neo-Nazi BNP made an electoral breakthrough for the
first time since 1993, still the overwhelming feature
was the widescale disenchantment the local elections
revealed with all the establishment parties and
therefore the possibilities that exist for building an
alternative to New Labour from the left.

These elections were important in that respect for the
socialist left. We believe they vindicated the
Socialist Party's perspective that, in absence of an
authoritative alternative to New Labour - a new mass
workers party -or a resurgent mass socialist
consciousness, opposition on the electoral plane would
develop in many variegated forms. Thus we saw the
Greens winning their best ever result since the
European elections of 1989; the victory of the
Kidderminster Health Concern group in Wyre Forest; and
the respectable scores recorded by other independent
tenants and community campaigners - from the WATT
anti-housing transfer campaign in Southwark, the
Community Action Party in Wigan, the Save Our Services
trades council-backed candidate in Wandsworth, to the
Local Education Action by Parents (LEAP) group which
won a seat in Lewisham (campaigning alongside the
Socialist Party there).

Although we would argue that such organisations can
not offer a clear way forward, in ensuring the
political representation of the working class or
promoting the necessary socialist programme to achieve
the transformation of society, the vote they recorded
is symptomatic of a broader search for an alternative
which the socialist left must relate to. Many of these
groups and campaigns could - and should - be involved
in a democratic socialist alliance if the right
approach is adopted to them. We would also in this
context point to the re-election of the independent
socialist councillors in Preston's Deepdale ward -
former members of the Socialist Alliance - and the
votes achieved by the Independent Working Class
Association (IWCA), which won a seat in Oxford and
polled well in the five other wards where they stood,
in Hackney, Islington and Havering.

While we disagree with the approach of the IWCA, which
deliberatelyrestricts its campaigning to local
community issues, we should acknowledge that the main
initiators of this group are also former members of
the Socialist Alliance.

It was, as you will recall, precisely this issue - how
to relate to the disparate forces which will emerge in
the absence of an authoritative mass alternative to
New Labour - that lay behind our decision to leave
them Socialist Alliance in December last year, despite
being a founding organisation of the Alliance.

At the SA conference then, the Socialist Party argued
for a 'federal'Alliance that could bring together
different socialist organisations,individuals,
community campaigners and trade unionists - without
themhaving to give up their own independent
organisations, activities and views as a step towards
a new workers' party. Unfortunately, however, the
conference rejected this approach and voted for a
structure that gave control over any groups that join
the Socialist Alliance to the numerically dominant
group in it, namely, the Socialist Workers Party
(SWP).

So how then does the SA assess the local election
results, the first electoral test since the December
conference? It is a fact that the Socialist Party
remains as the only socialist organisation in England
and Wales with elected councillors, polling 10,078
votes with 34 candidates, an average vote of 296
(11.48%) per candidate. In comparison the Socialist
Alliance's 204 candidates polled an average of 138
(5.8%) per candidate, 28,071 votes in total, with
unfortunately not a single councillor elected. In the
'top twenty' socialist results, not only do Socialist
Party candidates dominate the top of the list but
there also feature candidates from the Leeds Left
Alliance and the Socialist Labour Party, also not
currently participants in the Socialist Alliance. And
even in areas where you polled respectably or claim
your greatest numerical strength, such as Hackney or
Southwark, your candidates were consistently outpolled
by the Greens or community campaigners. Surely now you
would no longer defend the conception that the SA will
be the only vehicle for building working class
political representation, to which all other groups
and organisations should defer?

Of course, we would not expect to reach full agreement
on the issues raised by the local election results or
on all the broader questions posed on how the struggle
for socialism can be advanced. But we would hope at
the very least that the comrades are now prepared to
re-visit with us the question of how an inclusive
socialist alliance that can unite the left could be
built.

Yours comradely,

Clive Heemskerk,
on behalf of the Socialist Party executive committee

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