Let us be absolutely clear. A vote for Labour is:
- a vote for British imperialism and the City of London.
- a vote for more wars.
- a vote for state racism: attacks on asylum seekers and immigrants, racist policing and racism in prisons.
- a vote for more repressive laws to add to the legion the Labour Government has passed since 1997.
- a vote for more privatisation of the NHS and education at the expense of the quality of provision for working class people and for savage cuts in public spending.
Yet the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), which has the nerve to call itself revolutionary, is telling us to vote Labour at the forthcoming general election. Socialist Worker (13 February 2010) reports that the SWP’s National Committee has agreed that ‘we will…vote Labour against the Tories where there is no serious left of Labour candidate.’
The article itself is an exercise in empty sophistry. We are supposed to vote Labour because it ‘came into being to represent trade union leaders in Parliament.’ And so, in a period where trade union leaders have blocked any serious resistance to Labour attacks on the working class, we are asked to support their parliamentary representation! Why? Apparently because Labour is ‘a break from the idea that everything is best left to our “betters”.’ On the one hand there is an ‘idea’, on the other hand, the reality of Labour’s attacks on the working class and oppressed – and the SWP thinks the ‘idea’ is more important! Even worse, Socialist Worker adds to its justification by saying that Labour leaders ‘can exercise influence only by making at least some verbal concessions to working class connections.’ How easily pleased the SWP wants us to be!
Socialist Worker, putting on a radical face, quotes from a speech by Lenin in 1920 (Collected Works Vol 31 pp 257-63) where he describes the Labour Party as a ‘thoroughly bourgeois party.’ However, the article does not quote anything from later on in the talk where Lenin puts this characterisation firmly in the context of his position on imperialism, parasitism and the labour aristocracy, a context the SWP has always rejected. Instead, in a sleight of hand, Socialist Worker asserts that Lenin also describes the Labour Party as a ‘bourgeois workers’ party’ and concludes that ‘the party remains essentially the same’ today. This is utter nonsense. In 1920, communists and their organisations could be members of the Labour Party, which in Lenin’s words, ‘allows sufficient liberty to all the political parties affiliated to it.’ This was before bans and proscriptions on communists, before the General Strike, before the Labour Party had formed any government. To argue that the Labour Party is ‘essentially’ the same after 90 years of reaction is absurd. The thought that Lenin would today call for a vote for Labour is laughable, and it is intellectually dishonest to cherry-pick his views to justify a reactionary standpoint.
The article tells us that the ‘proportion of manual and routine white collar workers in the Labour Party has also fallen’ but that ‘this has not transformed the nature of the party.’ This mealy-mouthed statement is intended to cover up the reality that there are hardly any such members, and that already in 1987, over 20 years ago, an internal Labour Party report concluded that 60% of Labour’s members had a degree or equivalent. Labour Party membership is middle class through and through.
Scratching around desperately for further arguments to support Labour, the article tells us that ‘many workers will feel depressed and less confident to fight’ if the Tories win. This cod psychology is at variance with its earlier declaration that ‘Millions of workers are to the left of all the main parties over such issues as privatisation, ending the war in Afghanistan and making the rich pay for the economic crisis.’ So what the SWP wants to do is to drag these millions of workers to the right, to participate in an electoral fraud where what is on offer is a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. No, the instincts of those workers which might lead them boycott Labour and organise a movement against it are absolutely correct and should be encouraged and supported by honest socialists.
The truth is that there is no crime that Labour can commit which will stop the SWP from supporting it. And the SWP is not alone: virtually all the rest of the spineless British left will be calling for a Labour vote in one way, shape or form:
- The recently-formed Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) recognises ‘that there will be Labour and non-Labour candidates who agree with our policies, who share our socialist aspirations and who will be supported by left and labour movement organisations participating in our coalition.’
- The Respect Party at its November 2009 conference agreed that ‘The election of a Tory government would be a further setback for those who want to see a fairer Britain…Where there are good Labour MPs who deserve this support, we will back them.’
- The Communist Party of Britain says it ‘will also support some other left-wing candidates standing against new Labour types while stressing its overall preference for a Labour victory over the Tories.’ It emphasises that ‘it is vital to ensure that the small number of socialists already in Parliament are backed in their re-election campaigns.’ (Morning Star, 22 January 2010)
After 13 years of Labour government war, racism and oppression, there is not a single socialist remaining in the Labour Party let alone MP or parliamentary candidate. Anyone with an ounce of integrity would have resigned long ago. Those who remain do so because they do not wish to lose their privileged position. Whatever they claim, they are part of the problem, a problem which the TUSC, Respect, CPB and SWP then compound by fostering the illusion that they really are on our side. These left groupings will not advocate a complete break with Labour, they will not mention the imperialist and parasitic character of British capitalism, they are opportunist and reactionary. Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! will not be part of this deceit. We will campaign on the streets against a vote for Labour, and call for the building of anti-imperialist opposition.
Don’t vote, organise!
