Bye-Elections (1987)

Rosie Barnes

From the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Greenwich groan

There is one way in which the SDP/Liberal Alliance, self-proclaimed mould breakers of British politics, are set rigidly in tradition. Whenever they win an election they elevate the result into an historic event which will change the face of politics.

So it was in Greenwich where Rosie Barnes, ex-Labour Party and straight out of the Posy Simmonds mould of a Blackheath liberal, won a by-election famous for making an issue over whether the Labour candidate's father had been a drunken wife-basher. Another enduring tradition ensures that elections should concern themselves with such irrelevant nonsense.

The Alliance claimed their victory was evidence that the working class are fed up with the established two party system and are looking for another way, a third party. This does not square up with another well used Alliance ploy, to encourage people to vote "tactically" to keep one party out rather than let another one in. Tactical voting — if it ever happens — could be used to the benefit of the Labour and Tory Parties; it does not indicate any disillusion with the two party set-up but a strong revulsion against one or other of those parties. And there is nothing new, or mould-breaking, in that.

In any case it is the depth of negative thinking to argue that workers should vote for a party they don't really support rather than another which they like even less. That is a cynical misuse of workers' political power to change society. The Alliance, which is a re-arrangement of the failed leaders and policies of other capitalist parties, is bound to feed off the cynicism and disillusion which those failures have nurtured.

The two Davids, then, offer nothing that is new or hopeful. On economic policy they deal in the same sterile ruses of trying to make British capitalism more profitable by holding back wages. On war weapons they concern themselves with trivial debates about which method of mass annihilation they favour.

The authentic mould breakers of politics aim for a fundamental change — for a different social system with none of the desperate social ailments which are the stuff of capitalist politics and of the parties, like the Alliance, which seek power to run the system.

. . . Truro Tremble

In Truro, "tactical voting" had a different meaning for the Alliance. There they urged voters to support the candidate of their choice — because they always assumed they had victory in their pockets. The big issue was the "Cornishness" of the candidates with the Labour man. who comes from decidedly un-Cornwall-like Hillingdon in West London, upstaging the rest by speaking Cornish. A famous victory for the Liberals, they say; a typically cynical and irrelevant contest, we say.

GLC: working for capitalism (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1963 the Local Government Act set up the Greater London Council. At the time the Labour Party opposed the creation of the GLC, arguing that it widened the boundaries of the old London County Council too far and would lead to a built-in Tory majority. In fact, Labour won the GLC election in 1964 and that put an end to their campaign against the GLC. Twenty years after the 1963 Act the Tory manifesto for the 1983 General Election proposed the abolition of the GLC on the grounds that it was "wasteful and unnecessary". This contrasts with earlier Tory attitudes to local government:

  There are plenty of people who feel that local administration is wasteful and extravagant and hold that there should be a much tighter degree of Treasury control over spending. I pray you will never lend substance and ammunition to that charge.
(Earl of Home, quoted in Local Government Campaign Notes. 15 April 1954. p.8)

Again, in a document entitled Background Material for Election Address, issued by the Conservative Party Central Office in 1953 it is stated that

  Conservatives believe that local government should be local and that decisions on local matters should be made with reference to local conditions, not in obedience to the rigid direction of a central . . . machine.

So. why the change in positions: why in 1983 did we see the Tories advocating the elimination of the GLC as a local government and the Labour Party fighting to keep it? The immediate answer is party-political. The fact is that the Tories lost control of the GLC, as well as the Metropolitan Counties which it also sought to abolish, and. rather than having a local government marching in the opposite direction of a powerful central government, it decided to abolish the former. This political distaste for the GLC was admitted in a speech by the Tory Opposition leader on the GLC, Richard Brew:

  Leaving aside the ideologically committed, he (Livingstone) is seeking out the feminists and the gay activists. He is topping up these with the ethnic groups and the Irish. He is mobilising the anti-police brigade and he is seeking out the pressure groups CND. Babies Against the Bomb and so on. In other words he is going for the nutters.

(Quoted in Citizen Ken by John Carvel, p.208)

And when "the nutters" are in a majority you abolish elections. They have psychiatric hospitals for such "nutters" in Russia and Brew shows that the Tory reasoning in abolishing the GLC was not very different from any other centralised state which refuses to hold elections because the electors cannot be trusted to vote properly.

The Labour-led "Save the GLC Campaign" has been a popular reformist movement in London and, as Edward Heath pointed out in the House of Commons, the Tory decision to abolish the GLC has had the totally unintended effect of making Ken Livingstone one of the most popular politicians in London. If the polls are to be trusted, it seems that abolition is sufficiently unpopular to result in serious Tory losses in London constituencies in the next General Election. Patrick Jenkin, the Minister responsible for pushing the abolition Bill through the Commons, is now politically ruined and the government appears to have handed the Labour Party a gift.

As the GLC is buried a myth is in danger of being born: the myth of “GLC socialism". It is a common belief amongst many leftists that the GLC under Livingstone was responsible for making moves towards socialism in one city, and the further we drift away from the period in which this is supposed to have happened the more elaborate the legend will become. Let us look at what these so- called socialist measures were which the GLC implemented.

Firstly, they lowered the fares on London Transport, only to have this action ruled illegal by the capitalist Judges. As we pointed out at the time of the so-called Fair Fares campaign, socialists want no fares, not low fares. The trains, the buses and the rest of the transport system should belong to the community as a whole and when they do we will not have to pay to use them. Such free access, and nothing less, will be socialism. The GLC move to lower fares by rate subsidy was an understandably popular reform and was in line with transport policies in other European capital cities. But it was not compatible with the profit system and was thus ended by the central state. This is the inevitable fate of any city government which attempts to impose rules upon capitalism which are unacceptable to the capitalists on a national level.

Secondly, the GLC gave grants to several organisations of workers seeking facilities which would not be granted by central government. We are not denying that many of these facilities were put to good use (we refer to those which were not politically reformist causes) and that the GLC won many friends that way. But, as GLC defenders were at pains to point out throughout the anti-abolition campaign, these grants to radical groups amounted to only 0.6 per cent of their annual budget. In a socialist society women would not need to fill in numerous forms and negotiate politically with leaders before they can have a centre to meet in; if Irish people living in London require a cultural centre they shall have free access to the space and buildings available and will not have to be beholden to some government body in a socialist society.

Thirdly, the GLC has acted controversially in declaring London a nuclear-free zone. What exactly does such a declaration mean? Are we to expect that London will no longer be a target for nuclear missiles because of this absurd nominal gesture? In fact, if the GLC had wasted less time upon such pious nonsense and a little thought on considering the cause of war (namely, the capitalist system) workers could now be organising to abolish the cause of war rather than wasting time pretending to be free from its effects.

Fourthly, the GLC set up the Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB), the "socialist" function of which was to persuade capitalists to invest more money in exploiting London's workers and to convince unemployed and other workers that by setting up capitalist co-ops they could succeed in business. This is hardly the action of any movement intending to replace capitalism with socialism.

In fact, there have been some positive changes in London in the early 1980s. but these have not happened because politicians have legislated for them. Workers in London are taking a more conscious attitude to racism and to the problems of women; after many years gay men and lesbian women are less afraid to come out in the open than they used to be; community groups, such as tenants' organisations, are trying to take more social responsibility over their areas — although they still do not own or control their areas and their efforts are all too often hijacked by Labour opportunists who use workers' organisations for purposes of vote-catching. There are some positive developments, but that is because workers are in certain respects becoming more socially conscious and there is little doubt that such consciousness will continue to develop with or without the GLC.

The myth that the GLC somehow humanised capitalism in London must be resisted, for if it wins workers' minds we will see yet another political diversion of workers organising to return to "the good old days'' of the GLC. The fact is that in those "good old days" the GLC was evicting council tenants who could not afford to pay their rents, NALGO and NUPE workers employed by the GLC had to fight hard to exist as wage slaves, there was widespread deprivation within London and the GLC, like any other capitalist government, was impotent to tackle it.

It is a major waste of energy for workers claiming to want socialism to be fighting to retain a level of government. Socialists are opposed to all government, because the state, both local and national, is but the executive committee of the capitalist class. Why should workers campaign for the right to be governed? Of course, we must see through the sordid political opportunism which led the central government to abolish the GLC and we must recognise the contempt which the capitalists have for democracy when they are losing the elections. But it should be remembered that there is no government or ruling class which could abolish democratic facilities once workers have a class-conscious interest in democracy. It is the workers who elected the capitalist national government, just as it was workers who elected the capitalist local government of London. As soon as workers are socialist-minded we shall democratically conquer both local and national governments and these will be used to dispossess the capitalist class of their wealth and power. There will be no socialist state: local and national government will not wither away in a socialist society, but will be abolished because in socialism there will be no propertyless class to be governed and coerced.

Socialists possess no blueprint as to how administration will be conducted within a system of common ownership and democratic control, but two points are quite clear. Firstly, socialism will not be a centralised society. After all, we are talking about a world society (socialism cannot be established in one country or city) and it is inconceivable that there will be a single global administration. Secondly, it is very likely that there will be plenty of opportunities for local community involvement in decision-making in a socialist society, with local bodies and global bodies feeding ideas and initiatives into one another on the basis of dynamic democracy. But not until society and everything in it belongs to the people who inhabit it can we speak of genuine democracy, so instead of shedding any tears over the passing of the GLC and the Metropolitan Counties workers should think enthusiastically about a society in which democracy means a lot more than the right of Ken Livingstone to sit and make decisions in County Hall.

Steve Coleman

Running Commentary: It's the council (1987)

The Running Commentary Column from the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people are almost totally disinterested in local politics. Many people don't bother to vote in local elections; most probably couldn't tell you who their councillor is. or which tier of local government is responsible for which services, or which political party runs their local council.

The only exceptions are the London boroughs which attract sensational and distorted media coverage because of their so- called "loony left" policies. The tabloid newspapers are, in general, not the slightest bit interested in what councils do or don't do about council housing or social services, but let any council give a few pounds to a gay or lesbian group and it becomes front page news. It is little wonder, therefore, that Kin- nock is doing all that he can to dissociate himself from them since his overriding concern is the achievement of political power no matter what policies he has to ditch on the way to Number Ten.

In fact local authorities do affect our lives in important ways. They are responsible for providing education, social services, housing, home helps and day centres. They maintain the roads and remove the rubbish. They provide leisure and recreational facilities — parks, swimming pools, libraries and community centres. They regulate the environment in which we live by granting planning permission to builders.

But local authorities are important for another reason: they are the only other elected authority besides central government. This does not mean that they are especially democratic however. Most councils are out of touch with the needs of workers; they are dominated by representatives of the business community and operate in their interests. It is little wonder that most people are not interested in local politics, since it makes very little difference which party controls the council — life will go on pretty much as before.

In recent years local authorities have seen their powers diminished: a number of areas of responsibility have been removed from council control and have been given instead to non-elected, unaccountable administrative bodies. Councils have also been constrained by the financial limitations imposed on them by successive governments beginning with the cash limits instituted by the last Labour government in the 1970s. and continued by the Tories by means of rate-capping. The Tories carried the attack on local government a stage further when they abolished the GLC and the metropolitan authorities.

The Socialist Party has no illusions about local politics. Unlike the Labour Left or the Town Hall Trots, we do not believe that it is possible to bring about "municipal socialism". Council housing, day nurseries and non-sexist, non-racist educational policies are not socialism. Local authorities are a part of the state structure for administering capitalism, and must necessarily operate within the constraints laid down, not only by central government, but by the capitalist system itself. Any council which attempts to challenge the priorities of capitalism will find itself under attack.

But political participation, however limited and democracy, however flawed, are important. The attack, not just on the policies of certain councils, but on the very existence of elected bodies, is also an attack on our already very limited opportunities for political participation.

Janie Percy-Smith

Running Commentary: Honest John (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Honest John

The Sunday Express is one of those newspapers which is deeply proud of the organisation of mass murder by the British government between 1939 and 1945 to “keep the fascist huns from the door”. So it is rather curious to find the following rather “illiberal” sentiments in the edition of that newspaper for 27 September, in John Junor’s “Current Events” column:

  They are part of the same band of fist-clenching comrades who are active in every riot, every demonstration, every picket line. They are the rats attacking our society from within. And in the end they will destroy us if we do not destroy them. The IRA-loving, poof-loving Marxist leader of the GLC Mr Ken Livingstone was prophesying the other day that the time was coming when a right-wing government would send militants to the gas chamber. I wouldn't go as far as that. But might we not all be a lot safer if at least half of them were in clink?

Junor is right that there is a fierce struggle going on which will lead to the end of what he calls “our” society, that is “their” society of capital and profit. But the real challenge to him and his anti-social prejudices does not come from Ken Livingstone, Tony Benn or any of the parties of the left. The threat to the misery and insecurity of the present social order lies in the working class developing the idea of dispossessing the parasitic minority we work for.

War for what?

The conventional explanation of the causes of the Second World War was further discredited by the recent publication of Auschwitz and the Allies, by Martin Gilbert (Michael Joseph, £12.00). It explains how Churchill's plan to bomb the railway lines to the German death camps was frustrated by the Foreign Office and the RAF. A. R. Dew, a senior official of the Foreign Office, noted at the time: “A disproportionate amount of the time of the Office is wasted on dealing with these wailing Jews.” J.S. Bennett, the senior civil servant for Jewish immigration at the Colonial Office, read eye-witness reports from concentration camps and remarked: “Familiar stuff. The Jews have spoilt their case by laying it on too thick for years past.” Britain declared war on Germany for principally economic reasons: Hitler’s policy of German expansion and imperialism directly threatened the previous European power structure and the trade interests of the British and French capitalists. In the final analysis, it was to defend propertied interests, and not democracy, that the Second World War was fought.


It’s their country

Patriotism is not natural. You may have been born in Britain but it is unlikely that you, or anyone else, came crying into the world with an innate, instinctual admiration for the Pennines, Prince Philip, fish and chips or the English language. However, if by the time you are adult the schools, churches and mass media have done a good job, you will have been persuaded to show great loyalty to “your” country, sometimes to the point of dying for it.

Perhaps it can be said that if a child is weaned on a particular style of food, acquires a single language and grows up in a particular national environment with particular customs, it would be natural to expect it to wish to continue living in that culture. Obviously in a democracy people would be able to opt for this sort of a life; the point is that now most people have this lifestyle—cramped with poverty foisted upon them.

What do they mean when they say we should have a loyalty to our country in preference to others? Workers have no country; we own none of Britain. We have nothing here worth fighting for. The only significant division between people does not relate to where they are born but to whether they are part of the small minority who together own and control almost all of the wealth of society, or whether they are part of the vast majority who produce and service all social wealth but own and control next to nothing of it.

Patriotism is inculcated into members of the wealth producing class to create an illusion that all inhabitants of a certain, arbitrarily delineated area of the earth, owners and non-owners alike, have a common “national” interest. This way, whenever the owners based in one country wish to have their economic interests protected against the expansion of their rivals, or perhaps when they want some enforced expansion themselves, the majority class (whose lot, apart from running society from top to bottom, includes the dirty work of war) will be prepared to fight “for the national interest”.

According to a Defence White Paper recently released by the Japanese government, “the Japanese people should cultivate a greater patriotic awareness and willingness to support the armed forces”. It says that it should be the duty of the government to instil in the Japanese a sense of patriotism which is defined as “a willingness to cooperate in defending the country in a national emergency”. That is, to butcher other workers if there is to be a show down between Japanese industrialists and their foreign rivals. While the Defence Ministry is repeating these exhortations the government is revising the school textbooks so that they contain greater emphasis on patriotism.


Shopping with Woolies

Woolworths is normally thought of as the leading supplier of cheap, shoddy goods to those who produce all the wealth of society, and therefore, according to capitalist logic, must remain relatively poor. But the pennies in the cash registers soon add up, and when Woolworths goes shopping, it doesn't do it on the cheap. They have just spent £20 million buying the Dodge City chain of DIY stores. Of this, £17 million will go into the pocket of Richard Northcott. In 1974, Northcott inherited a chain of wallpaper and paint shops from his father. A few years later, by employing wage- and salary- earners who gave more than they got (like all workers do), he doubled his money and is now a multi-millionaire. We have just one complaint: the whole world is run expressly for the benefit of a minority. If something is not profitable to them (such as feeding hungry people who have no money to pay) then it will not take place; if something is profitable (such as pollution, thalidomide, neutron bombs and wage cuts) then such things will be produced. That is our only complaint.

Clifford Slapper

Brent (1987)

From the January 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Education — or rather schooling, for very little education takes place in schools despite the sincere efforts made by many teachers — is under attack once again from the media. This time the target is multi-cultural education in the London Borough of Brent. Recently, Brent advertised for a large number of teachers to be involved in setting up the Development Programme for Race Equality in Schools. Every school in Brent will have a senior member of staff responsible for implementing the programme. The project is funded by a Section II grant provided by the Home Office to areas with a large population of workers from the Commonwealth.

The tabloids eagerly published the news, giving readers the impression that their children's minds would soon be in the hands of Orwellian Thought Police, nicknamed Commissars. They also suggested that this would lead to a further decline in educational standards, particularly where white children are concerned. The so-called hard Left of the Labour council in Brent were blamed. The newspapers failed to note that events in Brent were in fact initiated by the previous Conservative council. They also failed to mention that these "commissars" are not very different from many teachers in other local authorities who work in the field of multi-cultural education.

Brent Council has only set a precedent in that it is using Section II money on a larger scale and in a more tightly organised manner. It is doing this to meet the recommendations recently put forward by several government reports on the effects of racism on the educational achievements of black children. Governments publish such reports on aspects of schooling at regular intervals to suggest that they take the subject of education seriously.

The media continually presents multi-cultural education as being a threat to both the education system and to society in general. Nothing could be further from the truth. Multi-cultural education is certainly not revolutionary in its aims and objectives. It is an educational reform that has developed in Britain over the past 20 years in response to the needs of Commonwealth immigrants who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. But what is it attempting to reform? Education in a capitalist society is not worthy of the name. It is merely schooling. Achievement is not measured in terms of the personal development of each individual through his or her lifetime. It is instead measured in terms of success or failure at public examinations. This success or failure determines the young worker's future value on the job market. A school is, at best, a kind of factory which produces workers to meet the needs of capitalist society. But this is only a secondary function. Primarily schools are places where the energy and enthusiasm for learning of large numbers of young people are frustrated.

By the mid 1960s it was becoming clear that some kind of special English language teaching provision was needed if children of black and Asian Commonwealth immigrants were to succeed and compete as equals with white children in the British school system and later on the labour market. This resulted in the establishment of Section II funding directly from the Home Office in 1966. This is still the main source of funding for multi-cultural education. The Section II regulations reflect the origins of multi cultural education and have not changed for 20 years. Local authorities applying for the grant need to show that they have a large population of Commonwealth immigrants whose language and customs differ greatly from those of the rest of the community. They need to show that this population has proportionately greater needs than the rest of the community. This means that a school in an area with a mainly white population cannot claim the grant. Workers whose salaries are funded by Section II have to be individually and directly accountable to the Home Office. For example, Section II teachers are asked at regular intervals to send details of their pupils and the level of their needs.

In the late 1960s it was simply assumed that once the Commonwealth immigrants had acquired full command of the English language and were fully assimilated into British culture, the problem would disappear. The problem did not disappear — it got worse. Research into the education system showed that a disproportionate number of West Indian children were failing in the school system. Black and Asian workers continued to suffer discrimination in the labour market and in fact in all other walks of life. This was accompanied by the focussing of white discontent into the growth of the National Front and other violent fascist organisations. It was becoming clear that merely providing language classes for people who by now were no longer immigrants but established members of the community was not the solution. If schools were to continue to function effectively, both black and white discontent must be contained.

It was recognised that black achievement within the school system would continue to be low as long as schools presented a narrow curriculum based only on the culture of white Britain. The culture and history of black workers was either ignored or presented as inferior. This had a detrimental effect on the self-esteem and confidence of young black pupils which, in turn, affected their achievement at school. Britain was becoming a multi-cultural society, it was argued, and the nature of that society must be presented in the school curriculum. This would also challenge the racism of young white people. Of course, from time to time this results in the kind of right-wing backlash recently demonstrated by the press response to Brent. Meanwhile some black people view the reforms as merely superficial — a propaganda exercise aimed more at containing their discontent than with eradicating racism.

Multi-cultural education continues to miss several important facts about schools. Firstly, it is not only black children who fail at school. A significant number of children fail to pass any exams. Secondly, all school subjects, whether they take into account a child's cultural background or not. are forced down reluctant throats and so are hardly likely to be educative. In spite of the efforts of inspired teachers committed to education, at school children learn only how to accept oppression and how to compete rather than co-operate with their fellow human beings.

But the struggle to reform the school system continues and is growing more organised, as recent events in Brent show. Yet it is no more enlightened. However, it would be wrong to present a completely bleak view of multi-cultural education. It has stimulated much interest and research into language and culture. Information on African, Caribbean and Asian literature and history is increasingly accessible. There are also growing numbers of teachers who are opposed to racism and to giving all children access to a meaningful education. However, their energies are sadly misdirected in institutions where education rarely takes place. It is only when they challenge the existence of schools and the social system that produces such institutions that an atmosphere will be created where meaningful education can take place.

Kerima Mohideen

Bermondsey and the Press (1983)

From the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fleet Street's descent further into the gutters was clearly demonstrated by the campaign of vicious character assassination pursued in the run-up to the recent Bermondsey by-election. The power of the media to persecute those who do not fit in with its smug capitalist values is proof that the much-celebrated freedom of the British press is all too often a freedom for journalists to imitate the tactics of their colleagues in Moscow and Johannesburg in defaming with impunity the characters of their opponents.

Much as the press attack must be exposed and deprecated the Labour candidate in Bermondsey, for all his sincerity, was defeated because of his own political opportunism. It was only because he was a candidate for a party which traditionally wins votes from ideologically conservative, nationalistic workers that the press attack was successful. The press labelled Labour's candidate as a homosexual; the old Labourite bigot, John O'Grady, went around the streets of Bermondsey singing a song accusing his Labour opponent of homosexuality; the Liberals, whose official policy is supposed to favour "gay rights", also used the homosexual smear. But the Labour candidate, seeking votes from workers who detest sexual non-conformity, refused to stand up and affirm his homosexuality.

Similarly, the Labour candidate was attacked for being a "draft dodger" because he refused to fight in Vietnam. All socialists would seek publicity for their opposition to all war, and would make it clear that those who fight cannot call themselves socialists. But Labour, when in office, supported the war in Vietnam, just as it has given its support to many other bloody capitalist battles. The Labour candidate had to appeal to nationalistic Labour voters who are all in favour of flags and armies and wars. When that sickening enemy of the working class, Frank Chapple, President of the TUC, was asked on Any Questions why Labour lost Bermondsey he replied, "Well, I ask you, who's going to vote for a gay draft dodger?" In short, the man at the top of the TUC and close to the top of the Labour Party, admits openly that Labour voters are too bigoted to vote for a man who is homosexual and too chauvinistic to vote for a man who refuses to kill Vietnamese workers.

The hacks of Fleet Street made much of the fact that the Labour candidate was not even English -  the ultimate crime. Ignorant people with nothing more sensible to say, were reported as running after the Labour candidate and telling him to "go back to Australia". It is doubtful whether the same workers will be urging the Duke of Edinburgh to return to Greece. The Labour candidate for Bermondsey will not be the first aspirant political leader to fall victim to his own political opportunism.

Labour's opponents in Bermondsey accused them of being communists and Marxists; and the Labour Party does not like that. The fact is that Labour has no more to do with Marxism or true communism than the Mafia has with fighting crime. Communism and socialism are, when properly defined, synonymous terms: they have identical meanings. The Labour candidate for Bermondsey was not unacquainted with the real party of Socialism (or communism), the Socialist Party of Great Britain. But, like his fifteen electoral opponents, he dismissed the aim of abolishing the wages system and creating a classless, propertyless, moneyless society as one not worth working for. Instead, he spent his time on the traditional path of capitalist reform—trying to gain a few more crumbs for the wage slaves of Bermondsey from the cake that they had baked. When the lie-makers of the press called Labour's candidate a revolutionary he protested with all the horror of a radical vicar whose belief in god has been questioned. Any real socialist candidate in Bermondsey would have proclaimed to all the electors that he or she is a revolutionary—not in the anachronistic sense of building barricades in the street, but in the social sense of aiming to end capitalism and replace it with worldwide production for use.

Where there are leaders it will always be possible for the media to direct their viciousness against personalities rather than principles. That is why the Socialist Party enters elections as a political party, advocating a clearly stated object; our candidates are simply put up to satisfy the electoral laws of Britain—a vote for the Socialist Party is a vote for socialism, not for any particular socialist. If the media wants to talk to us they will have to discuss serious ideas. The Socialist Party, unlike all other political parties in Britain, does not make promises or ask for votes. Indeed, we alone urge workers not to vote for our candidate unless they are convinced socialists. Those who we have convinced will not be persuaded to desert the socialist cause by the puerile tactics of the capitalist-owned press. The greatest strength of the working class is the strength of ideas; once we are consciously organised the propagandists of capital can pervert the truth until their faces are as blue as their rosettes—the workers will treat them with the contempt they deserve. That is why socialists are so emphatic about the need for political education. A single worker who is conscious of the system which exploits him and understands the realisable alternative is better than fifty floating voters with floating minds.

In Bermondsey, an apparently solid Labour majority of 12,000 was reduced to a total vote of just over 7,000: the voter who lacks class consciousness can be manipulated by whichever trickster is the most cunning.

Steve Coleman