The Tweedles

For the last more than 60 years, the Liberals have used the same refrain. They attack both Labour and the Tories on the basis that both the other parties simply slag each other off, unconcerned by the fact that, what they are doing, by using this argument, is themselves simnply slagging off the other two parties themselves! In fact, as any activist knows when it comes down to local campaigns, the Liberals cuddly image soon disappears, and they have a track record of using dirty tricks, and nasty campaigns.

But, using this tactic, the Liberals have managed to survive as a Party during all that time by occupying a niche, somewhere between the other two parties. Like the Nationalist Parties they say one thing when trying to attract Tory voters, and veer Left when trying to attract Labour voters. In order to pull that off they phrase their national politics in vague terms, which even then they are prepared to abandon at a local level if needds be to win votes. Now, having been out of power for so long, the Liberals are able to try to portray themselves as omething new describing the other two parties as the "old" parties. But, the reality is that, if the politics of Labour and Tory amount to nothing more than that of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, all the intervention of the Liberals does is to turn it into Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum, and Tweedle-Dummer!

After all, it is not an accident that the liberals went from being the main Party of Government of the 19th Century, that they went from being the main Party of the industrial Liberal bourgeoisie, to being the also ans of today. For much of the 19th Century it was the Liberals that represented the interests of Capital, and of unrelenting Laissez-Faire Capitalism at that. It was the Tories that continued to represent the old Landed Aristocracy, and who in that role, as Marx says in the "Communist Manifesto" fought a rearguard battle in its defence, sniping at the Capitalists, even by attempting to be seen as the friend of the workers. It was Tories that made up the majority of 19th Century Social Reformers, and who with some enlightened Capitalists - also enlightened as to their own self-interest in not wanting to destroy their own supply of workers by overworking them - like Wedgwood, that pushed through measures like the Ten Hours Bill. As Marx points out, Disraeli himself still triewd to hark back to that golden age of the aristocracy with his "Young England" movement. And when working men got the vote the same Disraeli attempted with his "One Nation" Toryism, quite consciously set out to win their votes. In fact, it is the competition for workers votes that really spelled the end for the Libeals, because they were left trying to ride the wrong two horses, whilst the interests of he Aristocracy and Capital merged, enabling the Tories to assume the role of unquestioned Party of the ruling class.

The Liberals were Left as a Party of Liberal Capitalism, which at the same time was attempting to win the votes of workers by restricting the actions of thaat very same Capitalism. Unable to pull of such an impossible trick, workers eventually realised the need to create their own separate Party. New Labour should learn that lesson of history today. But, the reality is that, however much gthe Liberals try to brand themslves as being "new", there is nothing new about them. Nor do we have to simply guess about that, or give them the benefit of the doubt. In hundreds of Council Chambers around the country Liberals have sat continuously. Sometimes, they have been in charge of even large cities like Liverpool. But, wherever, they have sat, most particularly where they have been in charge there has been nothing new about their politics. On the contrary, they have carried out the same policies of attacks on workers whether against their own Council worekrs, or workers in the area dependent upon their services. In fact, in many of those areas, they have been in power jointly with Tories, and have jointly made those vicious cuts. And remember these Tories in the local Councils, are not the sanitised versions that are put up by the National Party, and which Cameron has had to go to great lengths to foist as Parliamentary candidates on local Associations, these are the real red in tooth and claw Tories of old, the same bigoted, hang-em and flog-em brigades, and Thatcherite class warriors that tore Britain apart in the 1980's.

Neew labour might not offer much of a programmatic advantage over these other two outright Capitalist Parties, but he reason it continues to win the majority of workers votes is precisely because it is the Workers Party, it is intimately linked with workers organisations like the Trade Unions - as the role of Unite is demonstrating - its members, and activists are still overwhelmingly ordinary working people rooted in local working class communties, and as such it remains accountable to those ordinary workers in a very real way, and at a personal level that those other parties can never be. It offers the chance still for ordinary workers to join it, pressure it and change it. The role of Marxists is to try to ensure that they do.