The last month saw the Labour government come closer to meltdown as the exposure of ministerial incompetence and incontinence coincided with local elections on 4 May. Predictably, after months of bad press, Labour did badly at the polls. Prime Minister Blair had to wring a few ministerial necks to drive the election results out of the headlines. Nevertheless, Labour’s declining vote is dominating its plans. It is this that is the impulse for new anti-working class and racist policies as Blair bids to rebuild his lead in the opinion polls.
The earlier months of 2006 were bad for Labour. Senior minister Tessa Jowells had to ditch her husband to avoid being linked to his corruption. A quick fix was not available when the ‘peerages for sale’ scandal broke. Labour had, allegedly, been offering places in the House of Lords to entrepreneurs, property-dealers and supermarket supremos who greased Labour’s palms with silver (secret loans of millions of pounds to party funds). This is now the subject of a criminal investigation. Matters were set to go from bad to worse.
Two jags, two jugs, many shags…
Crisis in the NHS meant that Blairite smoothy Patricia Hewitt, Health Minister, was booed by the nation’s favourites – the nurses. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was outed by his diary secretary as an office Lothario – she was forced to accept a six-figure sum from the press to tell all to ‘save her reputation’. Worse still, Home Secretary Charles Clarke had to admit gross incompetence – not treating foreigners badly enough. Many criminals who had served their sentences had not been considered for the double punishment of deportation.
Many would think it an extraordinary run of bad luck that all this became public in the weeks before the election. Not so. After eight years in power, Labour ministers have dipped their heads so deeply into the trough of high living and narrow self-interest that they scarcely ever look up. They do not expect to be caught.
The scandals set the scene for the local elections – a manifestation of Britain’s fitful democracy.
The chickens come home to roost
This year the local elections included the metropolitan and unitary councils in England, in other words, many big cities. Indeed, 40% of the contested seats were in London. The projected overall percentage of the vote at a general election from these elections would be:: Conservatives 40; LibDems 27; Labour 26; Others 7. Labour was back in third place. Overall turnout of registered voters at elections has been dropping steadily since the Second World War and reached an all-time low for the last two general elections (below 60%). For local elections the turnout is even lower, but this time the average of 39% does not tell the full story. In some inner London boroughs – scenes of a tiresome contest between Labour and the LibDems about who would promise to issue the most ASBOs, ‘name and shame’ the most working class children and put the most police on the streets – the turnout was 25%. In other areas where the votes of the labour aristocracy and middle classes were at issue, the turnout rose sharply to 50%.
In the North West, Manchester Evening News reported a ‘storming victory’ for Labour. The reality, however, is that the vast majority saw no reason to vote in another charade. In Manchester itself the turnout was 28%; Labour’s ‘storming victory’ consisted of only 16.97% voting for Labour councillors. The story was the same across the North West, with the overwhelming majority of turnouts lower than the national average.
The general pattern is the poorer the community, the less likely it is to vote. Manchester is a prime example. According to the government’s Indices of Deprivation 2004, Manchester is ranked as the second most deprived out of 354 local authorities in England. 34% of 16-24-year-olds in the city have no qualifications and only 33% are in full time work. Add to this the facts of Labour’s attacks on working class youth – Manchester is the ASBO capital of Britain, with over 1,000 orders issued – it is little wonder that 72% of the city’s population feels left out of local ‘democracy’, Labour has made sure of it.
Although Labour managed to hold on to the northern cities, it was trounced in the south. The Conservatives have a new leader who can match Blair, spin for spin, even if nothing distinguishes their politics one from the other. Like a shot of Viagra, Cameron restored Tory fortunes in the Home Counties where they gained 300 council seats from Labour. It was left to the smaller parties to inject some political ‘fizz’.
In the London borough of Tower Hamlets the election was held against a backdrop of court actions and fraud allegations. Special Branch are investigating accusations of gerrymandering in seven wards. Echoing similar events in Birmingham, whole streets and blocks of flats found they couldn’t vote because of postal vote fraud.
Respect, George Galloway’s party, claimed success by gaining 16 seats nationally: 12 in Tower Hamlets and three in Newham in London and one in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, repeating its strategy of standing in predominantly Muslim areas on an anti-Iraq war platform. While Galloway has made it clear that Respect is a united front for anyone opposed to Tony Blair and New Labour, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) sees Respect as a socialist vanguard and none of the SWP leading members, including John Rees, who stood as Respect councillors won their seats.
Playing the race card
In Barking and Dagenham, where the turnout was 50%, the British National Party (BNP) gained 11 of the 13 seats it contested, standing on an openly racist platform. However, it is not BNP success that is significant, but the response of the local Labour Party. Many blame the BNP’s gains on local Labour MP Margaret Hodge who announced publicly during the election campaign that eight out of ten voters were considering voting BNP. ‘My aim,’ she explained after the election, ‘was not to give the BNP publicity, but to raise awareness of the issues …I think we must have a much more open position on the issue of race’. Margaret Hodge is not the sharpest pencil in the box, but what she was arguing was that Labour must address the concerns of white racists if it is to win their votes at the next general election.
It is this necessity to win back the votes of the labour aristocracy and the middle classes that Tony Blair has addressed in the weeks since the local election results. Clarke was sacked as Home Secretary and replaced by John Reid who has a remit, according to Blair, to deport foreign prisoners automatically at the end of their sentences, regardless of the situation in their country of origin. The Human Rights Act – which Labour introduced – has been deemed to be as foreign as the ex-prisoners, and Blair has promised to rewrite it to remove the rights. Core British values of racism, self-interest, complacency and greed will be taught in all schools. More attacks on asylum seekers are brewing. Blair’s lady ministers Hewitt, Blears, Jowells have survived the cull to do more harm to the working class, and Prescott…well John, who still has his salary, houses and cars, is now so completely in the trough he cannot get out.
Louis Brehony, Carol Brickley, Jimmy German
FRFI 191 June / July 2006
