Promises, promises (1992)

From the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few months ago we heard the politicians of capitalism making their overblown speeches and promises, vowing they’d do this and swearing to do that when in office. And once again, sufficient numbers of gullible enough voters let them get away with it, put them back in power to run the same old system the same old way.

When they get office we witness all the usual traditional reneging and treachery, the feeble excuses and transparent pretexts for "expediency” and compromise—the same old sell-outs and U-turns on policy and supposed “principle".

All the parties of the Profit and Wages System keep on making promises they never keep. The promise to solve the housing problem, which stays as bad as ever or gets even worse no matter what any politicians say. The promise to do something about unemployment, which has gone on rising over the years in spite of every “job-creation” scheme and YTS programme. The promise to make “our” country more democratic—when more and more civil and legal rights have gradually been eroded away by successive governments of whatever political hue. And with each fresh election the promises seem to get more vivid and extravagant. Kinnock promised us the sun, moon and stars if we voted for him; the Tories promised things which a couple of years ago, under Maggie Thatcher, they wouldn't have dared contemplate for fear of invoking her Divine Wrath.

All the other parties in Britain, such as the Liberals, the Nationalists, the Greens, the SWP, and various far-Left parties, all make promises of some kind. All want power to rule and govern us just like the two main parties of capitalism. And none of them can keep their promises, whatever it is they say they can or will do. This is because the existing social system won't allow it; the profit-motive takes care of that, forbidding any significant change in the way society is run or structured.

One political party stands out for its absence of promises. One party alone doesn't make any: the Socialist Party. We don’t ask people to vote for us as leaders or for any leaders whatever. We tell workers what capitalism is all about, what’s wrong with it. and why it should be abolished and replaced with Socialism. We tell workers all about what socialism really means and how to achieve it. None of this entails making any promises, or making any extravagant claims for ourselves. This is because the Socialist Party doesn’t strive to run capitalism or solve the perennial problems arising within it; that fruitless task we leave to our capitalist opponents to deal with if they can. We are not in the business of theorising quack remedies for the social ills capitalism has created; we want rid of capitalism, lock, stock and barrel, and that’s the only item on our agenda.

Nor do we promise that socialism will be a perfect Utopia; socialists are far too realistic for that. We analyze the real world and offer ways and means of changing it so that the basic needs of the entire human race may be fully satisfied. This, we consider to be a positive step forward in social progress, not to eradicate all problems from human life—which is impossible—but to make it a lot easier to solve them when they arise.

D. E. F.

Letter: Socialist voters (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist voters

Dear Editors,

In the May issue of the Socialist Standard, Steve Coleman, in Story of an Election, claims “50,000 genuine socialist votes". In Between the Lines, he points out that £25,000 is needed to stand fifty candidates and have an election broadcast on BBC TV and radio.

This works out at 50p per person; 50,000 could easily afford this over five years, in time for the next General Election. Furthermore, if 650 candidates were to stand this would cost £325,000. Dividing this sum by 50,000 “genuine socialists” would only require £6.50 over five years. Not an impossibility surely.

T. Hilton,

Stockport

Reply:

If you are one of those who, given the chance, would vote for a genuine socialist candidate, why not start the hall rolling and pay your £6.50 into our Election Fund?—Editors.

Socialists and the Election (1992)

Party News from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is standing one candidate in the General Election, in the Holborn and St. Pancras constituency in London. Our candidate is Richard Headicar. If you want to help with leafletting, selling the Socialist Standard, canvassing or in any other way contact: Michael Ghebre, 169 Royal College, St. London NW1 0SG (tel: 071-482 XXXX).

The amount now standing in the Election Fund is £1524. So we still need another £476 to reach the target of £2000 we have set to be able to mount a credible campaign. Any further contributions will be gratefully received and should be sent to: Election Fund, the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.

Blogger's Note:

There is a report of the Party's election campaign in Holborn and St Pancras in the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Socialists and the coming election (1991)

Party News from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is currently considering putting up two candidates in next year’s Genera) Election, one in London and possibly one in the Greater Manchester area. A meeting is being held in London on Wednesday 11 December to finalise plans to contest the Holborn and St Pancras constituency, at present held by Labour frontbencher Frank Dobson: all members and sympathisers who can help are invited to attend (for details see Meetings Page).

To pay for the deposit and mount a credible campaign, including making full use of the postal distribution of the candidate's address, we need at least £2000. At the moment the amount standing in our Election fund is £697. Readers wishing to help us reach the targetted amount are invited to send their contributions (made payable to "the Socialist Party of Great Britain”) to: Election Fund, the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7 UN.

Blogger's Note:

The Party didn't end up contesting a seat in the Greater Manchester area at the 1992 General Election but they did contest the Holborn & St Pancras seat in London. A write up of that election campaign appeared in the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Socialist election campaign (1992)

Party News from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plans to contest the Holborn and St Pancras constituency in London in the coming election are going ahead. Our comrade Richard Headicar has been appointed the candidate and a Socialist Standard sales campaign has been launched in the constituency. Further details of the campaign can be obtained from: Michael Ghebre, 169 Royal College St, London NW1 OSG (tel: 071-482 XXXX).

Meanwhile, thanks to further gratefully-received contributions from readers and collections, the amount in the Election Fund has reached £1157, well on the way towards our target of £2000 set to mount a credible campaign. Any further contributions should be sent to: Election Fund, the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St. London SW4 7UN.

Caught In The Act: At Issue (1992)

The Caught In The Act Column from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Issue

Months before polling day the 1992 general election has got under way. Along with the frantic politician’s speeches, the polls and the press conferences we are being deluged with what Tony Benn would call "ishoos" — diverting and irrelevant matter which the politicians exploit in order to undermine their opponents and suck up votes for themselves.

One such issue is the argument about whether taxes would be higher under a Labour government than under the Tories. In this argument tradition is powerful: the Conservatives have always represented themselves as the party of low taxation, fixing Labour in the voters’ minds as the avaricious collector, and profligate spender of taxes. The Labour Party, skewered on this attack, have had a hard time pointing out that it is hardly justified by the evidence and that they are as prudent and stingy about the finances of British capitalism as any Tory could be.

What both parties ignore is that the whole issue is irrelevant because the majority of people — the working class — do not effectively pay taxes and indeed can't pay them. Our income is determined by what it takes to reproduce ourselves as wage labour, whatever apparent deductions are on our wage-slips at the end of the month or week.

Taxes are a charge on the class who can afford to pay them and in whose interests they are collected — the capitalist, employing class. The state machine in all of its manifestations exists to protect and maintain the position of the capitalist class and they pay for it to do that. Workers who allow themselves to be misled about this and who vote for one capitalist party or the other on the basis of whether they will raise or lower taxes are wasting their votes and denying their own political power.

Protection

Another point at which the Tories are making some powerful attacks is the Labour Party policy towards the armed forces. Their ease here is that a Labour government, influenced by the pacifists and nuclear disarmers who infest their party membership, would reduce the British forces to impotence and so leave us undefended. This is always a popular issue — after all we need "our" soldiers, sailors and airmen to prevent the Germans, Russians, French, Japanese or whichever group happens to be the enemy at the time from pouring into this country and raping our grandmothers while they generally defile the British Way Of Life. On the other hand the Tories, their ranks thick with ex-officers, can be trusted to protect All That We Hold Dear.

Reality is rather different. As we have seen under the present government Tory ministers do not shrink from slashing back the forces to what British capitalism can afford. While Labour has done the same thing in similar circumstances, they have always made it clear that in government they are quite unmoved by the woolier opinions of their membership: they have supported every one of British capitalism’s wars and they have maintained, protected and used British forces whenever they saw this as necessary, they could not have put it any clearer than in their 1989 Policy Review: "Labour is determined that in the 1990s and beyond, Britain shall be properly defended ..."

In any case, the people who will vote about this in their millions do not have a Britain to defend; all they have is their degraded status as workers. The issue of which party will keep the larger forces should not intrude into the polling booths.

Property

So is there no important issue? Is nothing at slake in the election? Well, as a start, we can say that whether the Labour or Tory party wins, the class structure of society will not be changed in any significant way. One effect of this will be that the inequalities in society — the existence of riches and poverty will continue to be something politicians promise to do something about.

A recent study by Inland Revenue, dealing with marketable wealth — goods which can be sold quickly as well as savings and investments — stated that in 1989 the richest ten per cent of the population owned 53 per cent — more than the other 90 per cent put together., the poorest 50 per cent owned just six per cent of the wealth. These figures will not surprise anyone who has been concerned to look behind the political sham fight to the real issues. They will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that poverty is basic to capitalism and will not be eradicated by voting for the parties who support capitalism's continuing.

New Image

In the run up to polling day the Tories have had to confront the problems of ridding themselves of the lingering image of what has been called Thatcherism. It is instructive to observe how they have set about this task. The object has been to wipe out the memory of our being subjected to the harsh but bracing winds of the market system and to convince us that we are now cossetted in the warmth and comfort of a new, caring Tory Party. It has been to replace Thatcher’s style as a strident, abrasive dictator with Major's image as the nice guy next door.

This has been done with a ruthless thoroughness of which the Tories, experienced as they are in political in-fighting, are the masters. It has been done with no regard to the fact that Thatcher's style and characteristics were once represented to us, by the very people who are now trying to eradicate them, as vitally necessary to our welfare and even our survival.

To some people — the Tories hope to a lot of voters — this will come as an easeful relief. But should we accept so easily that we can be manipulated in this way? Is a social system supportable when it requires such massive cynicism to defend its political representatives? What justifies all this investment in deceit? The answer is that elections are times when society can be up for grabs. The working class —the majority of the voters — do not have to choose between one bunch of cynical impotents and another, so that capitalism carries on. They can replace this social system with one based on human interests with all that that implies. That is the issue at the election — food for thought and for conscious political action.

Ivan

Sting in the Tail: So What’s New? (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

So What’s New?

America is determined to remain the world's sole unrivalled superpower and is ready to guard against any Western European challenger, It is claimed.

The New York Times, quoting a Defence Department document, said the US must convince potential competitors "that they need not aspire to a greater role".

Instead, a single superpower will use its military might and "benevolent domination" to deter any challenger.

The US would "selectively address" those wrongs which threatened America and its allies' interests.

ITN's Oracle 8 March

Breaking into Jail or Militant Martyrdom

Tommy Sheridan, the leading light in Scottish Militant's anti-poll tax campaign, contested Glasgow Pollok from his cell where he is spending a six month sentence for defying an interim interdict.

According to his election leaflet Tommy is, as every good Trotskyist aspires to be, a "hero” and a "martyr": He runs in charity marathons and if he spots any local laden with shopping bags he will stop and say "c'mon, jump in". Mother Teresa isn't in it.

In case all this wasn't enough to impress the voters then much was made of his "university education” but Tommy's trump card was to be his list of reforms which he would pursue "when elected”. These included a Scottish Parliament, the re-nationalisation of privatised Industries, mortgage-to-rent conversion, and many other measures which would leave capitalism untouched. Incidentally, the word "socialism" didn't appear once.

And what was the result of all the martyrdom and goodies offered to the workers of Pollok? Tommy still lost by nearly 8,000 votes.

Jumping the Queue

In a report in The Herald (6 April) the medical correspondent reported that nearly 2,000 staff, most of them nurses, stand to lose their jobs in Glasgow's psychiatric hospitals over the next four years. This would cut nursing staff by half.

The unit general manager, Mr Tim Davison, said of these cuts that they would serve to increase further the "relative efficiency and competitiveness" of the unit.

Competitiveness in treating mentally-ill workers? This is the economics of the mad house indeed!

So while mentally-ill people roam the streets lacking even the minimum of health care, patients are being turned away from psychiatric hospitals. As the waiting list grows there is always one way to beat the system. According to a psychiatrist working in Glasgow:

  "They have to be placed somewhere else. Occasionally, you get the situation where there isn't a bed available in Glasgow at all. You have a suicidal patient you want to admit, and you have to leave him to turn up at out-patients next day, hoping he hasn't killed himself In the meantime."

Empty Slogans

"My Vote", "It's Time For Labour", "The Best Future For Britain". These were the election slogans of the three big parties, and the Socialist Workers Party had to have one too.

Remember some of their past slogans, gems like "Labour To Power Minus The Bomb" and "Vote Labour But Without Illusions"7 This time it was "Vote Labour And Build A Socialist Alternative”.

The one constant factor here is their urging workers to vote Labour, but with such a talent for slogans surely the SWP ought to be in advertising — just think of the mountains of soap powder and the rivers of lager they could be selling!

Well, maybe, but we can be sure that one slogan we'll never get from the SWP is "Abolish The Wages System".

A Deeper Slump

Capitalism's long-promised economic recovery will eventually come but things may get worse before they get better.

This would be due to the international nature of capital and in particular to the recent plunge in share prices on the Tokyo stock market. From a peak of 39,000 in 1989 the Nikkei share index has fallen to below 17,000.

These falling share prices mean falling profits for Japanese banks which own vast amounts of shares, and it is these banks which are responsible for providing much investment worldwide — 24% of British financial assets are held by Japanese banks and they provide 14% of the ECs direct inward investment (The Guardian 8 April). They also fund America's huge budget deficit and we all know that when America's economy sneezes then the world economy catches cold.

If these falling share prices mean that Japanese banks severely reduce their lending then the recession will deepen. Of course all of this may not happen; the Nikkei climbed by over 1,200 points in one day (9 April), but it shows that events in one part of the world influence events elsewhere and it also shows that the economic plans made by businesses and governments are — well, just plans.

Rich Pickings

The popular press never tire of telling us about working class scroungers. Those workers who actually have the effrontery to claim social security payments while working part-time in a public house, or doing a spot of gardening on the side.

Little or nothing is ever reported about the gigantic legal frauds carried out by members of the ruling class. The Observer Magazine (5 April) did however carry a report about a group of well-heeled landowners who have a nice little earner.

Under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act many of them are coining it in. This was an Act intended to keep some land free from the overdevelopment that is the norm of capitalism. All the owner had to do was threaten to develop the land and the Act would provide him with lavish compensation for doing nothing.

John Grant of Rothiemurchus owns 25,000 acres of Scottish wilderness. The government are about to give him a payment of £670,000 for not developing it and he is claiming an annual payment of £92,000 on top of that!

Story of an election (1992)

From the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the end the workers voted for the devil they knew. Kinnock, whose readiness to sell his soul and any physical parts of his anatomy to the devil as the price for power, finished with neither principles nor power. Ashdown, the shady middle man, ended the day firmly in the middle of the wilderness. dealing cards in a game which nobody needed to play with him.

The Greens suffered what future historians may decide to call The Fate of Kinnock: after a heated Conference debate as to whether they should be pragmatic and voter-friendly or say what they meant, the opportunist majority won, but the workers refused to offer the Green politicians the remotest lick of power. The Natural Law Party, created in 1992 with the backing of hippy millionaires and the ability to buy their way on to TV stations which have refused electoral broadcasts to socialists since TV started, proved that you can buy a few hundred votes in a few hundred constituencies if you have enough money and enough voters with enough madness.

It was a dull election which was dominated by media rambling and boring polls which proved to be wrong. It is too unkind to wish that the pollsters, together with the now obsolete kremlinologists, enjoy a short while on the dole queue followed by a long while doing something useful with their lives?

The essence of the election was negativity. The Tories did not win; indeed, most voters opted for parties other than Major’s. The Tory election campaign, backed by nearly every newspaper, was designed to scare workers against voting Labour. The Labour Party, wedded to the market and virtually the same in policy terms as the Conservatives, used most of its fire attacking the wicked Tories and presenting slick, sick ads with film stars and no ideas. As ever, the Liberals played it dirty. The most interesting poll of the election showed that negative motivation amongst younger voters outnumbered positive reasons for voting choice by three to one (Guardian, 12 March).

The socialist campaign

The Socialist Party decided to contest the London seat of Holborn and St Pancras. The campaign, organised by Camden branch, owed its success to enthusiastic support from many people, both members and supporters of the party. Manifestoes were printed by the party printers on our own presses and delivered free by the Post Office. Thousands of posters and stickers were printed and displayed. Open-air meetings were held in Camden Town. Kentish Town. Brunswick Square and Lincoln’s Inn. A loudspeaker car toured the constituency blasting out somewhat different messages from the other parties. Three different types of leaflets, in addition to the manifesto, were printed and delivered across the constituency. One thousand extra copies of the election issue of the Socialist Standard were distributed and so were many more back-issues. An eve-of-poll rally in Conway Hall had standing room only and was followed by a less formal gathering in a nearby bar where those interested met and talked with us. It was hard not to notice us in the area: the campaign is but a beginning of our serious work in Camden where we are determined to make the Socialist Party a force that the defenders of capitalism will be unable to ignore.

It was not all cheer and beer. The campaign had its down points and these told us a thing or two about how the capitalist system works. This party, which is hostile to both the market and to the rule of bureaucrats, was more than once the victim of both.

First, the market and the election. For the days after the election was called we roamed the constituency looking for an election office to rent. There was no shortage of empty shops in prime sites, but a combination of ridiculously high rents and lousy premises kept us out in the cold.

Finally, we found a shop which was affordable and more than half decent. The price was fixed with the agent and we arrived on the first Friday of the campaign (three weeks from the election day) ready to set up for action. A complication had arisen, said the agent: a well-known property company was the owner of the shop and was uncertain about letting us use it for “political reasons”. No Socialists Wanted Here. This is called democracy. We were told to wait for the directors to think further on the matter, but gently suggested that they jump somewhere where the water is less than fresh, and by that same Friday evening we moved into a shop in the less convenient area of Chalton Street, off Euston Road. The election office was transformed from a slum into a pleasant environment and was used efficiently for the three-week campaign.

Bureaucratic interference in our campaign came from the Post Office who told us that our manifesto, which had been stamped and approved by them, could not be delivered because it advertised our election rally. We pointed out to them that our last manifestoes had advertised meetings, and that the Post Office stamp of approval was placed right next to the rally announcement. They accepted that they were in the wrong, but not before wasting two days when the manifestoes could have been distributed by them. We are now in dispute with the same bureaucrats concerning several thousand manifestoes which they failed to arrange to distribute in the Kentish Town area.

Honest Politics

As ever, we made it clear to our fellow workers that while it is in their interest to vote for our candidate, we did not want their votes unless they were socialists. We asked the workers not to vote for us unless they agreed and they obliged: we won 175 votes.

Little can be said about our vote, but, for the psephologically-minded, here are a few points worth thinking about—“just for fun”, as the man with the silly swingometer might put it. Firstly, 175 votes equals 0.4 percent of those who voted, or four voters out of every thousand. It is a higher percentage of the vote than any national election we have contested for over twenty years, and since we were up against the Greens, the Natural Law Party and a Leninist outfit, as well as the big three parties, we may presume that our votes were not all mere protest votes but represented genuine support for our unequivocal socialist manifesto.

Secondly, even if we assume that not all the votes were as sound as we would like them to be, even if we halved the number of votes and then projected it across the country (assuming that socialist consciousness is not innately higher in Camden than elsewhere) we would have had 50,000 genuine socialist votes. If such a calculation is reasonable, it is amusing to think that there are already twice as many socialists in Britain as there arc millionaires!

Thirdly, the tactic of Leninist opportunism has been discredited by our result. Standing against us was the Revolutionary Communist Party, a disreputable Leninist sect. Being opportunist tricksters, they employed the old tactic of standing under the name of a front organisation: “Workers Against Racism". Yet, despite their reformist campaign and their efforts to appeal to populist single issues, the Socialist Party’s undisguised principles won more votes than them. This was not only the case in our constituency: the Socialist Party won more votes than any of the Leninist candidates standing in London constituencies. In times past parties like the Communist Party told us that appealing to the workers on the basis of tactical reformism was the only way to win votes. It is gratifying to note that honesty was respected more than tactics.

As for the other Leninist sects, their position in the election was just as disgraceful. Their call was to vote Labour. Workers News, the paper of the “Workers International League (Leninist-Trotskyist Ten- dency/Britain)” had as its election headline: “Kick Out The Tories! Vote Labour . . . But Reject Kinnock's Cowardly Policies”. The election headline of Workers Power stated “Vote Labour—But Organise To Fight!”. Rather like telling workers to jog on the M1, but remember to take some bandages.

As ever, the barmiest Leninist nonsense came from the SWP whose 4 April issue of Socialist Worker (the paper for those students who can only achieve a Leninist level of consciousness) had the following headline: “Major Out. Vote Labour. But Build A Socialist Alternative". Of the Labour Party, which they urge workers to waste their votes on, the same issue states that:

  the word socialism is not used once in labour’s election manifesto. Labour leaders have hardly uttered it throughout the campaign. Labour's priority in recent years and in its manifesto has been to appease big business and the bankers. (Our emphasis)

So, here is a so-called socialist organisation bemoaning the fact that Labour never speaks about or stands for socialism and instead supports the interest of the class enemy and therefore workers should vote for them.

In order to diagnose the symptoms of this political insanity (as well as put socialist leaflets into the hands of workers attracted to it by the pseudo-socialist title of the SWP), we attended their rally in our constituency where they were urging workers to vote for the party of “big business and the bankers” against the Socialist Party. Their speaker, one Alex Callinicos, a politics lecturer from York University, declared how delighted he was that Labour was ahead in the polls and how workers must be persuaded to vote Labour in order to learn that a Labour government will attack them just like the Tories!

SWP meetings are stage-managed and most of the “questions" from the audience take the form of pre-arranged harangues from members of the cult. The SWP is a party of confused capitalist reformism and urges workers to vote Labour "without illusions”. Interestingly, the rather less confused. but equally non-socialist Financial Times came out on election day with exactly the same recommendation to vote Labour but without illusions.

In place of leaders

Our candidate did not stand as a leader or potential leader. What he called for was a democratic socialist mandate. All of the other parties called on the workers to follow rather than think.

The manifesto of the Natural Law Party informed its readers that "our candidates have demonstrated greater orderliness of brain functioning, indicated by EEG coherence; and greater command of Natural Law, indicated by improved mind-body co-ordination—Yogic Flying”. On the basis that these self-styled superbrains can fly through the air in ways that would have left Lamont and Smith standing in silent awe, it behoves the floating voter to examine the economic section of the manifesto of their local floating candidate: "The Natural Law Party upholds the principle of free-markct economy".

Not to be outdone by such spectacular activities, Frank Dobson, the elected Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, performed the much-admired circus feat of The Disappearing Man: he ran no meeting in the constituency throughout the campaign and appeared on BBCTV on election night saying that he had spent the best part of the campaign touring Britain.

Should he ever extend his tour into the constituency which political ignorance has made his, he might like to consider that there are two as yet unacknowledged challenges to debate awaiting him from the Socialist Party and there are 175 local voters who would like to see him respond to the genuine case for a socialist transformation.

Steve Coleman

Election Result

Abstentionists 23.863: Dobson (Lab) 22,243; McHallam (Con) 11,419: Horne- Roberts (Lib-Dem) 5.476 Wolf-Light (Green) 959: Hersey (NLP) 212; Headicar (Socialist Party) 175; Lewis (Trot) 133.

Between the Lines: An Open Letter to the Director General, BBC (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

We note that your news and current affairs department allocated two hundred journalists to cover last month's British general election. Some spent the duration of the campaign following the three big party leaders around the country; others attended the daily news briefings by the three big parties; some reported from marginal constituencies; others paid careful attention to the now discredited poll results. We assume that you would justify this as a useful expenditure of journalists' time in covering what the BBC tells us is a democratic election.

The Socialist Party was formed in June 1904. We contested our first local election before the Labour Party was ever officially formed. Whatever attitude you might have to our clear-cut case for world socialism and nothing less, we trust that nobody at the BBC would try to dismiss our party as either incoherent eccentrics or insincere publicity-seekers. Since 1945 no election year has passed without the Socialist Party mounting a campaign. Lack of funds prevents us putting up more candidates than one; in the recent election we stood in Holborn and St. Pancras. The right to stand in an election costs £500 and we have no rich businesses directors or union chiefs to supply such money for us. Standing in an election means more than having our name printed on the ballot paper. If elections are to be more than nominally democratic, the contestants must have the chance to put their case to those who are to vote. Neither locally nor nationally was one minute of air time devoted to our campaign or our message by the BBC in this recent election. Why not?

Permit us to anticipate your reply. There are agreements determining that only parties receiving enough votes to win seats in the previous election or contesting fifty or more seats in this one may have an official election broadcast. Small parties like ourselves must do our best to make "news". The BBC is not intentionally discriminating against the Socialist Party.

As for the election broadcast carve-up. into which our political opponents cynically and undemocratically join, we can only note the absurdity of the situation. For example, prior to the recent election the SDP was given a broadcast, on the basis of its 1987 vote, even though the party no longer officially exists. More absurd still, the Natural Law Party, a crankish cult backed by a few millionaires and formed only this year, was able to pay the £25,000 required to stand fifty candidates and therefore had an election broadcast on BBC TV and radio. Their right to such a broadcast rested on the £24,500 higher price that they could afford to pay than our mere £500. Is this the best way to determine the democratic dissemination of ideas?

As for "making news", we accept that there are cheap stunts that we could have performed which might have won us two or three minutes precious BBC time. We leave such electoral follies to the likes of "Lord Sutch" and others whose contempt for democratic and reasonable debate seems to make them attractive to TV producers. We are a thoroughly principled and peaceful party, but had we used our campaign to threaten bombing campaigns or mob violence that would doubtlessly be deemed "news" and we would be invited to explain our threat — if only so as to indict ourselves in public.

We note that the loser in the West Belfast constituency was given more than a little TV attention, regardless of the absurd media ban on Sinn Fein, when it became clear that the result of Adams losing his seat could well have had immediate military consequences. In Europe neo-fascists receive TV coverage for making disparaging racist statements. In this country left-wingers, in and out of the Labour Party, are often given BBC coverage disproportionate to their size because of the outrageous and politically embarrassing policies they sometimes espouse. Are we to assume that the price of "making news" would be for our party to descend to such a level? If so, the price will never be paid. If it is not "news" that a party stands in the election with the object of winning majority support for the establishment of a moneyless, frontierless, stateless society, then we shall have to continue to conduct our publicity without the aid of the BBC.

The question of whether the BBC's lamentable failure to give any coverage to our party and its ideas, in or out of election time, is intentional is not the issue. Our protest does not rest on any conspiracy theory. Nor do we seek to reform the BBC. Wc do not expect money-dominated elections to be fair. We leave it to the good sense of the workers, whose ancestors fought for the vote, to decide whether or not to give a democratic hearing to the case for a sane alternative to the profit system. In the meantime we are willing to publish any response which you may wish to make.

Steve Coleman

Greasy Pole: How Not to Spoil Your Vote. And Why (2013)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The General Election of 1992. A reminiscence. Going to the local polling station after all the experts had used their surveys and samples and focus groups to let us know that our one and only choice had to be between the hysterical bluster of Neil Kinnock and the plaintive reticence of John Major. Planning to use my voting paper to state the socialist reasons to reject all of them and set out the real alternative. My six-year old son Tom agreed to come with me, probably after his own expert analyses had led him to hope for a consequent happy visit to the local Game Boy stockist; he had not then read any Upton Sinclair or George Orwell or The Communist Manifesto. The polling station was pretty busy with so many people hunched over their voting paper. Not long after I had begun my contribution, when I had barely had time to deal with the negatives of Kinnock and Major, Tom became impatient and embarrassed by my being immobile while so many others were so quickly in and out. When his muttering and sleeve tugging became too intrusive I cut short my mini-manifesto and we headed off for the Game Boy. I blamed the politicians.

This was brought to mind by the low voter turn-out in some of the recent by-elections – Corby, Manchester Central, Cardiff South – and the reasons suggested by the political pundits, who so often claim to be The Voice Of The People, that the voters were suffering from a compound of habitual apathy and election weariness. Which did not take enough account of the reports that an interesting number of those who did go to the polls completed their ballot paper not by a cross but a statement of their reasoned opposition to all the candidates and in some cases their disgust with the entire media-obsessed game of politics and its players. This was not apathy but an active statement of choice. Truly, it could have been better – more effective and encouraging – had it been driven by a conscious intention to point towards the valid alternative but it was enough to allow a tremble of optimism that as a habit it might catch on.

Corby

Meanwhile in Corby there was a notable turn-out of 42 percent to hint that the one-time steel town had shaken off its flirtation with the undeviatingly self-promoting Tory Louise Mensch. It says enough about David Cameron’s vaunted “A” List of candidates that it should throw up somebody like Mensch and it was to widespread relief that she announced her intention to resign the seat as soon as possible to spend more time with her trans-Atlantic family and her heavily prosperous pop-star manager husband. Which aroused some rumours about the reasons for Cameron failing to make himself aware of her glittering talents. And – perhaps crucially – about the evidence that had she clung on she would have been crushed in the next general election. None of this prevented her, during the by-election, praising her aspiring successor Tory Christine Emmett as “… a true local girl … she’d be a wonderful MP”, apparently unaware that this might have lost Emmett a bunch of votes.

Manchester Central

In Manchester Central, had she dared to show her face, Louise Mensch would not have received a warm welcome. This constituency’s turn-out of 18.16 percent was the lowest since the by-election in Poplar during the unusual circumstances of 1942; it is a place which has never before had a woman Labour MP. In a constituency where, according to one voter, the party could “put a rosette on a dustbin and it would win” Labour offered one Lucy Powell who, although undoubtedly a woman, was considered to be steeped enough in Labour politics – Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign manager and then Deputy Chief of Staff – to be welcomed as a “Labour Party apparatchik”. There was however one niggling doubt about her; in the neighbouring Manchester Withington in 2010 she surprised a lot of people by failing to unseat the LibDem MP John Leech. So that in the recent by-election her candidacy needed to be nourished enough for her to trot out banalities like “We have to think in terms of empowering communities to make decisions for themselves and get people involved so they feel they can aspire”. Well in the end it all went according to plan; the dustbin came out on top and Manchester Central has a new woman MP.

Rotherham

As the polling stations closed their doors and Louise Mensch faded away across the Atlantic attention switched to three other by-elections: Croydon North, (turn-out 26.5 percent) Middlesbrough (25.91 percent) and Rotherham (33.63 percent). The last of these contests was unusually piquant because of its similarity to Corby in the voters’ assumed anger over its MP’s behaviour. Denis MacShane was forced to resign over a succession of matters including some typically extravagant expense claims which brought his integrity into question. One example was a clutch of 19 false invoices which he submitted, described by a Parliamentary Committee as “plainly intended to deceive”. Little wonder that the Respect candidate ran a poster van publicising “Denis MacShame”. Rotherham’s reputation is as a tough town where once they dug coal and smelted steel; it has not elected a Conservative since Labour’s disaster days of 1931. And it has never before had a woman MP. Which raised some searching questions (and a walk-out of members) when the locally prominent Maroof Hussain was beaten to the nomination by a national party favourite Sarah Champion, who went on to win with a delighted UKIP in second place.

None of these elections would have caused any abstinent electors or polling booth essayists to doubt that, at the least, they had appropriate consistency on their side. If capitalism’s current crises have done nothing else they expose the impotent panic among the self-appointed experts – the economists, politicians, analysts and the like – as each of their preferred remedies is exposed as a discredited sham. It is in contrast to that feeble confusion that those who stand aside to put forward the case for a different, cohesively humane system can truly be described as the radicals.

Ivan

Caught In The Act: Future Uncertain (1992)

The Caught In The Act Column from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Future uncertain

John Major is famous for being the nicest of nice guys so naturally his motives in timing the general election for April 9 were the purest of the pure. It was. he said, the "right time", the people wanted an election and of course "we will win the election . . . with a working majority."

It is not clear whether Major was suffering from the delusion that there were crowds swirling around the gates of Downing Street, clamouring to be allowed to choose between the Labour and Tory methods of trying to organise British capitalism. Nor was it clear whether he had forgotten that his announcement of the date came the day after the Budget, which was supposed to be so attractive to the voters that they would insist on showing their gratitude to Major and Norman Lamont by returning them in a general election as soon as possible. In the event the announcement of polling day effectively removed the Budget from the headlines.

But docs anyone, anywhere, really believe Major when he says that April 9 was the right date because that was what the people wanted? Doesn't everyone understand that the timing was motivated by the desire to get the biggest possible vote. And doesn't the fact that Major, like all the other leaders before him, plays the election timing game, expose the myth that the Nice Guy is better than the Nasty One?

Nice Guys, as they say. usually come second and Major, when all is said and done, is a politician which means that coming second doesn't interest him. After all.,what will happen to him if the Tories lose? It can't have been entirely coincidental that immediately after the election has been called the media were speculating on his likely successor. Naturally Michael Heseltine was involved in this, declaring bashfully that he had no intention other than giving Major the kind of support, that football managers get from their chairman just before they arc fired.

None of this was calculated to comfort Major, who recently told the Tory conference that he likes being Prime Minister and intends to stay in the job. Depending on the election result, there will be a few other people with a say in that.

Forecaster unsuccessful

Of course Major got a lot of advice on the best dale for the election, some of it from Norman Lamont the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now Lamont has the vital job of keeping control of the economy of British capitalism so that it runs as he wants it to. This sounds very impressive except that Chancellors probably spend as much time complaining that the economy is out of their control as they spend celebrating that it is behaving as they want.

According to press reports Lamont was pressing Major to postpone the election until May. His reason was that the brilliant remedies he was applying to the recession and the other current problems of British capitalism would need a little longer to take full effect. By May their effectiveness would be plain for all to see and the voters would gratefully and dutifully return a Tory government and Lamont's job in the Treasury would be rather more secure than the three million-odd people on the dole.

The snag is that Lamont's true claim to fame is his persistent inability to get his economic forecasts right — or rather to have the luck to do so. If Major had had any sense Lamont's advice to wait should have persuaded him to call the election as soon as possible, because as things are if Lamont says the situation is going to improve it's a fair bet that it's about to get worse.

Lamont’s style of assessing economic trends is not new. He is liable to interpret a slowing in the rate of increase in unemployment as evidence that unemployment is actually falling. He is also liable to assume that his forecasts are so reliable that industry and commerce can behave as if what was forecast has actually happened.

None of this deters Lamont from forging on, through the exposure of his bufoonery and his blunders, with even more assessments and predictions. There is only one way of taking him seriously — as the embodiment of capitalism's chaos, immune to the conceits of its politicians.

Millionaire unrepentant

Of all the MPs who will not be seen again in the Commons, because they are retiring, none will be missed more than Alan Clark, the Honourable Member for Plymouth Sutton, son of the famous art historian Lord Clark, millionaire owner of the splendid Seltwood Castle in Kent (and much more), disdainful racist and sexist bigot.

Clark made a name for himself through a succession of what may have been interpreted as indiscreet statements. Nobody seemed to consider whether what he had said was really perfectly discreet, in the sense that he was showing his boundless contempt for anyone whose skin is black, or whose sex is female or who is a member of the working class. Even his apparent disparagement of his old school had this edge to it. Only someone rich enough to have been a pupil there could afford to say that "Eton was a very useful lesson in human cruelly and deceit"

The same can be said about his sneer at those who, because they have to work for their living, were gullible to the Thatcherite dream of a land populated by mortgages: "It's not that one wasn’t scared of losing one's jobs, but at least one wasn’t scared of not being able to pay the, er, what’s it? . . . Yes, that's it, the mortgage!"

It is impossible to feel anything other than anger and contempt for his supposedly jocular — but actually bigoted and insulting — wish to send black people ". . . all back to Bongo Bongo Land" and for the arrogant sexism in his mock concession "I now realise that women can do all jobs better than men, except butchery and coal mining". This might have been a little more impressive if Clark had had the slightest acquaintance with butchery and mining as jobs.

His career — if that was what it was — in politics has yielded a rich harvest of such boorishness, yet there is this to be said for him. At a time when the Conservative Party is led by someone who thinks that capitalism can be a classless society it is not simply provocative to have a politician like Clark, who glories in the reality that this is a class-divided society of rich and poor, in which millions must be exploited and repressed. A politician who knows which side of the class division he is on and makes no secret of his resolve to stay there.

So that's alright then. We know where we stand; we should also know what to do about it.

Ivan

Election Fund (1992)

Party News from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of going to press the amount standing in our Election Fund was £1831.30, which means that by now we should have attained our target of £2000. The money collected will be used to pay for the renting of committee rooms, 45,000 copies of the election manifesto (mainly for free distribution by the Post Office), 5000 posters, stickers and leaflets, 1000 extra copies of this issue of the Socialist Standard and the candidate's deposit.

We express our thanks to our readers who contributed and will publish a detailed breakdown of how the money was spent in a subsequent issue.

Further details on the election campaign can be found elsewhere in this issue.

Election Latest: your help needed (1992)

Party News from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an ocean of hollow rhetoric, hopeless promises and sickening humbug there is still one small voice of political sanity. You can help to make it louder. You can support the Socialist election campaign.

We have a candidate, Richard Headicar, who is standing in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency in London. Our campaign is not just to win votes, but to raise socialist consciousness. However large or small our final vote is. our work will be relentless in getting the case for real Socialism across to as many people as possible. We shall be delivering tens of thousands of socialist leaflets, distributing literature, putting up posters, holding street meetings and attending all events run by our opponents. Please call 071- 622-3811 for details of the campaign office telephone number and ways that you can help.

An eve-of-poll rally at Conway Hall is aimed to be a climax of our campaign. You are invited to be there—and bring along any interested friends, family or workmates. After the rally a more informal chance for socialist discussion will be organised in a room above a nearby pub.

Our political enemies say that we theorise too much. This campaign is a chance to show just how practically and visibly the socialist alternative of production for use can be presented to our fellow workers. The more of us there are the more credible the campaign will be. This party needs you now; don't let us down.

Campaign Office

67 Chalton St, NW1 (Euston end). Open 10 am till 8pm.

Between the Lines: Debate of the Decayed (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Debate of the Decayed 

On a recent visit to the House of Commons, collecting policies for his long-term research into the fossil record, your TV columnist happened to stumble upon three familiar-looking party leaders, each rehearsing speeches which mass TV audiences were never to hear. In the absence of the TV show-down which would have been as politically illuminating as One Man And His Dog (without the Man, and with ballot papers issued to the sheep), we here publish the texts of the speeches which were never made.

Honest John

"Let me say at the outset that my government has nothing to offer you except more of the same. As you can see, this leads to enormous prosperity for everyone. If elected, I shall produce a Charter, to be placed on all bus shelters and town-hall lavatory doors, which will be signed by me so that nobody will dare to ignore it. It will promise that trains will run on time and

Prime Ministers will be honest — or else they will face a £200 fine, or a knighthood in the case of the Prime Minister. Above all, my worshipful followers, I remind you of my motto: If it isn't hurting it isn't working (based on an original idea by Harvey Proctor). I shall see to it that all NHS doctors be issued with framed parchments containing these comforting words. So, vote Conservative and don't be deceived by our opponents’ lies about poverty, unemployment, homelessness or beggars on the street, all of which are caricatures created by Channel Four documentary-makers".

The Future Lord Neil 

"Your Majesty, Lords, Ladies, Very Rich People, moderate trade unionists and little old ladies — I appeal to you to vote for the party which you can feel safe with. You see, there are mud-spreaders around who want you to believe that capitalism will be unsafe in our hands. Just because it has been the case that we have been in government eight times and been clueless how to make the profit system run in the interest of the working class. Now we have the answer: we intend, without reservation or hesitation, to make the profit system run in the interest of the capitalist class.

We believe — and we ask you to believe — and furthermore, we ask that you believe that we believe — that only by bleeding the workers dry will this great country of ours be even greater.

To this end, we shall continue the policies of the Thatcher government (selling off council houses, building nuclear missiles, breaking the unions), but we promise that, unlike the wicked, woeful Tories, we shall sing The Red Flag at our conference each year while we are administering the legalised robbery of our dear brothers and sisters in the trade unions."

Paddy Pointless

"I think . . .  I think I think that my party is different from the others. We are different because . . . And secondly, we are in favour of a system of voting which will get more Liberals into the Commons bar. Moreover, I am an extremely butch commando and can speak Chinese. So vote for the Alliance . . . .  I mean  . . . "

Open Debate

Democracy is not served by sound-bite exchanges between Presidentially-styled leaders who are looking for sheep to fleece. TV debates are not the answer. If you are convinced of your case you will stand up on a public platform and put it before an audience that can answer back.

The Socialist Party wrote to the sitting MP for Holbom and St Pancras, Frank Dobson, weeks before the election was called, inviting him to debate in public. At the time of writing he has not even replied. He knows that there is a big difference between the TV election soap opera and the glare of a large audience who want to hear answers to their problems — and then want to answer the answers.

That we have been spared the Major-Kinnock-Ashdown slogan exchange is a small mercy; that they have been spared the harsh judgment of workers who regard them as being as inspiring as a repeat series of Crossroads is a delay which must be rectified.

Steve Coleman

Election Fund (1992)

Party News from the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

As promised, we give below details of the amount finally collected in our election fund and how it was spent.

A total of £4122 was collected. £3600 from the appeal in the Socialist Standard and £522 by the local Camden Branch. Of this £500 was spent on the election deposit, £900 on the hire of election rooms, £768 on the printing of manifestoes, posters and leaflets, £200 on follow-up press advertisements and £335 on incidental expenses (telephone, heating, stationery, etc), making a total of £2703.

This means that £1419 is left in the fund—for the next election campaign, the elections to the European Parliament in June 1994.

Between the Lines: Letter from the BBC (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter from the BBC

Last May, following the total exclusion of the Socialist Party's ideas and actions from the BBC's extensive election coverage, we published in this column an Open Letter to the Director General of the BBC. We pointed out that it was a principle of democracy to allow time for the expression of minority ideas; that it is inexcusable to refuse radio or TV coverage to a small party such as ourselves on the ground that we are small, not in small part as a result of media silence as to our existence. We made what we regard as the strong case that we are confident that if we advocated bombings and street violence — and, better still, acted upon such advocacy — we would doubtlessly obtain plenty of media exposure. The BBC is penalizing our party for being democratic, rational and peaceful. The BBC failed to assist in creating a democratic electoral atmosphere, but contributed to the undemocratic carve-up of TV and radio time by and in the interest of the existing ruling parties.

On 15 December 1992 a letter of reply was received, not from the Director General, but from one Douglas Evans who is described as Chief Assistant, Political and Parliamentary Affairs. He writes as follows:

  "I think I would find it helpful to know more about the campaign which you conducted at the time of the General Election. For example, how many seats did you contest and how did you make sure that your views and policies were communicated to media organisations? Were these prominently reported by other news media?
  I am sorry that you are dissatisfied with the rules governing the allocation of Party Election Broadcasts, but I should point out that these rules are devised by the Committee on Political Broadcasting and are not the sole responsibility of the BBC."

We thank Mr Evans for his letter on behalf of the BBC and have published it because we intend to keep this correspondence open to the scrutiny of all our readers who will be free to judge whether the BBC is acting democratically or otherwise. We shall respond with some comments and some questions to Douglas Evans.

Firstly, we find it strange that the BBC, the largest news-gathering body in Britain, envied across the world for its professionalism, needs to ask the Socialist Party how many seats we contested in the last British election (a fact which was published in most quality newspapers). We contested one (Holborn and St Pancras), the main reason being that we are a small party and are restricted by the government-imposed deposit of £500 per candidate. It could be argued that a party contesting only one seat deserves to be ignored. If so, the BBC should let us know that this is their policy and tell us how many seats we should contest before they will stop ignoring us. We would remind the BBC that the Natural Law Party, with extremely rich backers and a few bizarre policies, paid to put up enough candidates to buy a Party election Broadcast. The Natural Law Party, formed in 1992 as an electoral stunt and now dissolved obtained that much BBC coverage, whereas the Socialist Party, formed in 1904 with eighty-eight years of principled and well-argued policies was worth no time.

Secondly, we can inform Mr Evans that the Socialist Party called a Press Conference, which was held in central London, within days of the election being announced. All media organizations, national and local, were invited to attend. We made it clear that if they could not attend they could contact our candidate, election agent or other speakers. They were sent copies of our official manifesto. No TV or radio station reported on these, "prominently" or otherwise. There was coverage in the local press. But our campaign was of national importance. We were the only political party standing in the 1992 election committed to the common ownership and democratic control of all social resources. We alone stood for the abolition of the money system; of the economy based upon buying and selling. We were the only leaderless party in the election, making it clear at all times that our candidate was not seeking followers and would refuse to lead anyone wishing to follow him or our party. We were the only party urging electors not to vote for us unless they agreed with what we stood for. Such policies might be rejected as absurd by controlling editors at the BBC. They are free to conclude that, but our concern is to allow the millions of people voting in the election, many of whom expressed the view that they were presented with little choice, with our revolutionary alternative. Let them judge what we say on its merits.

Thirdly, we note with disgust that the Committee on Political Broadcasting — a body appointed by and comprising those who have won previous elections — are free to determine the rules regarding media time for elections in which they intend to ensure that they will win again. In short, politicians who have deceived their way into power in the past set the rules for who may have public exposure in the future. We would be pleased to know when this Committee was elected, by whom, with whose authority and to whom it is accountable. We assume that this is not secret information.

Finally, some question. Would the BBC confirm or deny that any party, however newly-formed or lacking in policy, may have BBC exposure if it can afford to pay the £25,000 deposits entitling it to enough candidates to give it preference over the Socialist Party which has less funds? Is it the ease that an invitation to a press conference in which our party proposed to advocate acts of terrorism would have stirred more BBC interest than the total indifference which our democratic position resulted in? Is there a BBC policy to guarantee the right to be heard of minority political parties or does the BBC regard this aspect of democracy as unimportant? As the Socialist Party is refused a slot on the BBC "access" programmes on the ground that we are a political party, and we are refused electoral exposure on the ground that we are not a big enough political party, can we assume that the BBC expects us to either wind up as a political party so as to obtain half-an-hour of access TV or abandon our principles in order to be accepted as a winnable force by the BBC?

Steve Coleman

No ideas please — we're followers (1992)

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

This has been the no-ideas election. It has been an insult to our intelligence. Whatever important right to make the working-class voice heard the Chartists of the last century were fighting for, it was not for this foul process of bribery by reform, propaganda by smear, and policy formulation by opinion poll.

But for the pitiful enthusiasts of either side—the Major minors and the pink-rosed tame Kinnockites—nobody believes for one minute that anything big divides the contestants for power. The pathetic Lib-Dems—less “preparing for power” than preparing for a dodgy deal with the highest bidder—and the half-cooked Greens with their dream of a green and pleasant capitalist land, are about as inspiring as a Heinz sponge pudding with ready-made custard.

The Communist Party, once destined to win a few hundred votes in safe Labour seats where life is so bad that Bucharest looked good, is no more, and apart from a few latter-day Leninist nuts the Left is left to cheer for Kinnock and hope that he dies painfully. The fact is that none of them, from Lamont’s lunatics to Lord Sutch and the avowed lunatics, have an idea worthy of more than three seconds’ contemplation.

If the electoral scenario has been bleak here, pity the American voters, the victims of seduction by such mindless wonders as Tsongas. Clinton, Buchanan and Bush. The only clear result so far is that most people who could vote won't, and those who do are motivated by opposition to the nonentities who are worse than whoever they have wasted their primary votes on. The prospect of a race between Bush and Clinton, assisted by multi-million dollar ad campaigns and enough balloons to give a birthday party for every starving African child, is as dull as it is wretched.

Both the British general election and the US Presidential race are cynical exercises in mass manipulation. This trickery is paid for by those who are concerned to tranquilise the political imagination of the majority. A sleeping working class, either abstaining from voting or abandoning power by voting for leaders, is an exploitable working class which represents no threat. The workers, who run society from top to bottom by producing and distributing all wealth, are many; the idlers who own and control the means of life are very, very few. This election is about ensuring that the many follow the few.

The great ideological crisis

The defenders of the profit system ought to be laughing right now. After all, do they not claim to have defeated “communism"? To be sure, the state-capitalist perversions of the profit system have been falling as fast as . . . well, as fast as British businesses, seeing as a comparison is required. And here lies the cause of the absent laughter by the profit system’s friends. How convenient it would have been for them if the bogus communist regimes had fallen at a time when capitalism was expanding—employment rising, businesses opening, banks doing well, the distinct stench of corporate corruption far away. But this is not the situation these political conmen must defend. Try as they might, it is hard for them to brush aside the tragedy of millions on the dole, record bankruptcies, house repossessions, kids begging on the streets, chaos in the NHS, BCCI, high interest rates facing workers in debt, growing racism, inner-city squalor and poll tax resentment . . . the litany of capitalist maladies is endless.

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

Yet all of the electoral contestants defend capitalism as not only a tolerable system but the best one, and not just the best but the only possible one. Vote for more of the same, they implore, all else is utopia. Even the pitiful Labourites, once the advocates of at least the tiniest of radical dreams, is now so much in love with capitalism that the Bank of England is to John Smith what a brothel is to a sailor. Where once Labour leaders would lyingly speak of some kind of an alternative to the profit system (even though it was only the sterile state-capitalist non-alternative), now Kinnock asks no more than that he may be allowed to run capitalism better than the Tories.

Not only the politicians themselves, but the commentators and the professors have run out of ideas. They are like Chekhovian caricatures, awaiting the grinding completion of history in a soon-to-come, never- to-arrive moment of stabilised capitalism.

In contradistinction to the intellectual bankruptcy of those who profess to be the ideas-people. the situation within the wider world of material reality is everywhere pregnant with contradiction and change. The rapidity with which the dramatic overthrow of the state tyrannies in Eastern Europe and throughout the Russian Empire took place is proof of the electrical current that makes history live for those with the vision to be part of it.

The mess of nationalist conflict and the virtual economic collapse that faces the new "free" states could lead to anything— except stabilised capitalism. The war in the Gulf, fought at a time when the political "experts" of capitalism told us that the world was at last safer if not safe, has left a mass of unresolved problems. In Africa, where they starve while dictators spit at democratic aspirations, the struggle for change is far from dormant. In America an economic crisis, accompanied by deep and unhealable cultural divisions, is producing the greatest collapse of confidence in US history—one which the usually conservative BBC commentator. Alistair Cooke, predicted could end in civil war.

What a time this is to be alive. Who can resist the urgency of taking a stand, offering ideas and solutions? Only the mentally strangled, suffocated by the theme tune of Neighbours and tamed into a political consciousness which will follow the crook with the best advertising slogan, can sit back in passive acquiescence. If ever the age of political valium addiction should end, when could be better than now?

But not only do all of the electoral contestants stand for more of the same old failed system; they dress up their support with the most puny of Big Ideas. Major’s Social Charter; Ashdown’s Proportional Representation; Bush’s New World Order; Clinton and Kinnock’s New Deal for America/Britain (delete as appropriate and swallow the contents in case they cause a bush fire). Nothing less exciting could be offered. Never in the course of political history has so little been offered to so many by such prats—and at a time of such possibility.

 

A big idea

Here is a big idea: take the whole world and everything in it and let it he owned and controlled by the people who inhabit it. Let us no longer produce for profit hut solely for use. Let us do away with money and have free and equal access to available goods and services. Let us break down every national border and have a democratic global community, organised locally, regionally and worldwide. Let us stop tormenting ourselves with the nonsense that human nature makes us useless and foolish. Let us recognise that humanity is intelligent and co-operative and capable of living in harmony.

That is the vision. It is no utopia. It is realisable. It has never been tried. It offers a solution to the madness of having a world of potential abundance while millions starve and are deprived in a thousand different ways. It is a big idea. So big in fact that the little parties of capitalism — Labour. Tory, Republican, Democrat — can only deal with it by ignoring, distorting and ridiculing it.

The most exciting and empowering aspect of this big idea (call it World Socialism—call it Gladys if the word socialism offends you) is that it can only come about when the majority whose passivity gives leaders their power stop following and start uniting consciously and democratically.

Despite all the dishonest cynicism attached to this election, we do not dislike the ballot box. On the contrary, used by conscious men and women ballot boxes can be explosive. They can reflect the growing will, and ultimately the will of the overwhelming majority, against leadership and for World Socialism. When the workers of the world use their brain boxes and the ballot boxes, the consequence will be that the age of electoral following will end and John Major can go back to the circus.

Steve Coleman

Socialist Manifesto (1992)

Editorial from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people think that whichever government is elected it will make no real difference to their lives.

Most people are right.

Most people think that political leaders are dishonest timewasters.

Most people are right about that.

Most people think that the world is in a mess: millions unemployed, homelessness and house repossessions, kids on the streets, a collapsing health service, wars, ecological destruction, countless millions starving while farmers are paid to let food rot.

Yes, society is in a hell of a mess.

Most people think that little can be done to change it.

They’re wrong.

Society does not have to be like this. We live under a system where:

• Production is for profit, not primarily for need.
• The richest 10 per cent own over half of all personal marketable wealth.
• The richest one per cent own three times as much as the poorest 50 per cent added together.
• The economy is run to make the rich stay rich at the expense of the poor.

The world market can never be run in the interest of the majority of us who produce the wealth but do not possess the major resources. No tinkering with the profit system by any government can ever make it comfortable, secure and happy for the majority of us.

All of the politicians in this election are asking you to vote for them so that they can run capitalism—continue the mess—carry on putting profit before needs—piling on the misery. 

What we need is a new way of running society based on:

• The common ownership of all resources by the whole community, not just a rich minority.
• Democratic control of the community by everyone, without distinction of age, race or sex, instead of rule by unelected company directors or state bureaucrats.
• Production purely for use, not profit.
• Free and equal access to all goods and services—an end to the market and to money.

Only the Socialist Party stands for that alternative: genuine socialism.

A vote for the Socialist candidate means that:

• You reject the policies of the profit system.
• You understand and want the real socialist alternative.
• You do not need leaders to do your thinking and run society for you.
• You are going to vote for yourself—for a change.

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