Lessons of the Ravenscliffe By Election

The results of last week's Ravenscliffe By-Election were.

Stephen Blair - Con - 229 (25.3 per cent)

Gill Burnett - Lab - 213 (23.6 per cent)

Sarah Barnes - BNP - 180 (20 per cent)

John Parsons - Lib Dem - 149 (16.5 per cent)

Geoff Locke - Ukip - 131 (14.5 per cent)

26.18 per cent turn-out (902 votes in total)

Even for a local by-election the poll was pretty low, so not too much can be judged by it. But, this was not a good ward for the BNP to stand in, and yet it came third. As can be seen, if the BNP Light UKIP vote had gone to the BNP they would have won comfortably, though, in reality, the UKIP candidate, who lives in the ward, is not your normal UKIP nutter, and he did warn against voting for the BNP.

Labour's showing was respectable, given the position of Labour nationally, and the fact that Labour's campaign was pretty abysmal. The Tories were able to use the fact that they now control the Council, and have done a few cosmetic improvements, in the area, to get out enough votes to win. It's possible some Lib Dems voted tactically, to make sure the BNP were kept out - the Tories were always likely to win - but, given the low poll, that seems unlikely to account for much of their poor showing. The BNP will no doubt see the result as encouraging for their further forays into Newcastle Borough, as a logical extension of their strong position in Stoke Council. Having won secure positions in the large Council estates, in Stoke, at Bentilee and Meir, and other traditional working class areas, they now look likely to expand into the deprived areas of Newcastle, in Chesterton and Silverdale, where large former Council estates could provide them with further bases.

The result shows that what I said in my previous blog clearly applies. It is no longer enough to simply attack the BNP, certainly not to base activity on the idea that its just a matter of preventing a vote for the BNP. Its necessary to provide a positive alternative, and realistically that can only be the LP. The events of the last week have shown to me that, also, what I said previously has been proved to be correct. The idea of an anti-fascist organisation that seeks to defeat the BNP, without itself developing a political alternative, is very limited. There are two alternatives. Either an anti-fascist movement has to be one which is fairly homogenous, that is it must essentially be one made up of working class organisations, which have at least some generally shared principles, or else that anti-fascist organisation has to focus on a very limited set of objectives - in effect just mobilising to counter the BNP when and where it mobilises.

If the BNP are attacking a local ethnic community, I'm not bothered whether the bloke standing next to me opposing them is a rugby player from the local Conservative Club, or a philosopher from the Socialist Party, but, if some propaganda is going out, then I know, in advance, that I will have some common grounds with the SP comrade, but absolutely none with the Tory. But, in reality, as experience has shown, if a political alternative is to be presented to workers, it has to be a credible alternative, and not the fantasy politics of the sectarian left. In reality, it means that the political alternative to the BNP can only be channelled through the LP. That is not going to come through the current LP leadership, and, unfortunately, it is unlikely to come through many of the ordinary rank and file LP members in the branches. It's only Marxists who can put forward the interests of the movement tomorrow in the movement of today. The long, balls-aching job of plodding away, day in day out, patiently explaining to those workers the solutions that need to be developed remains the main task of Marxists today.

Vote Labour But….

In Tomorrow’s Ravenscliffe By-Election workers should Vote Labour, but they should only do so, because Labour is still the only mass Workers Party. More than that at the moment cannot really be said. Far better, actually than just voting Labour, would be for workers, and particularly socialists to join the Labour Party, and begin to make it what it should be – the organisational basis through which the political struggle, for the self-activity of the working class is conducted.

The last of the propaganda from the various parties has now dropped through the doors unless there is some last minute offering on election day. It’s a sad fact, but if I were just an ordinary worker basing my decision on who to support based on that propaganda then I’d probably be voting for the BNP!!!!! Of course, I’m not just an ordinary worker, and I won’t. Fortunately, most of the other people voting tomorrow also will not be casting their vote solely on the basis of the propaganda put through their doors either, and so again fortunately, very, very few of them will be voting for the BNP either, or even for the BNP Light – UKIP. They too will come into the voting booth with a history whether it’s a history based on a tradition of voting Labour, a recognition of what the BNP really are despite their more toned down image, a history of respect for the work done by Liberals within the Community, or just that history of snobbery that is the hallmark of the working class Tory, who having bought a decent house in a nice area, now deludes themselves that despite the mountain of debt run up to buy the house and car and other trappings, despite the fact that they are just one pay check away from disaster, they are in some unfathomable way, now middle class.

We live in fortunate times. The rise of the BNP, is a symptom of the failure of the Labour Party to address the needs and concerns of ordinary working people, including those that delude themselves into believing they are middle class. That failure, and the rise of the BNP is also a symptom of the bankruptcy of the Left, its failure over the last 100 years to relate to the working class in any other way than the way fleas relate to a dog. The working class knows something is there, does its best to ignore it, and on occasions has a good scratch to shake it off so that it stops being annoyed. The Left has been nothing more than an annoying parasite, feeding off the working class’s blood to engorge its own organisations. And for that great mass of the class, which simply does not meet up to its main criteria – that is it is not a potential recruit to its organisations – the left has had nothing but scorn, writing it off as reactionary, backward, right-wing and so on, as though that were not to be expected of a class exploited under the conditions of Capitalist production, as though that weren’t precisely the starting point from which Marxists had to relate to it, educated it, organise it and ultimately transform it!

It is fortunate, for now, that that is the cause of the rise of the BNP. Why? Because, the ruling class only calls forth the fascist solution when it has to, when its very existence is threatened. No serious person believes that is the case at the moment. If anything, the ruling class probably sees the BNP as more a threat to its interests than it does, the isolated, irrelevant Left, or the tame poodles of the mainstream Labour Movement. The Capitalists have no intention of letting their political power, and the advantages of bourgeois democracy for its profit maximising, fall into the hands of a bunch of yahoos, and rabble rousers. Keeping them simmering is one thing, allowing them to spread a certain amount of racism to divide the working class, and maintain a situation in which a certain pool of illegal immigrant workers can be kept as available cheap labour is one thing, creating the instability that a powerful fascist presence would create is something quite different. For now in the corridors of Capitalist power, in the heartlands of the rich the BNP are looked down on with disdain. If they become more powerful, the ruling class can be expected to put them down. First it will be the Capitalist media that will turn against them, turn down the open racism in its pages, the forces of the permanent state will begin to more heavily infiltrate them, undermine them and generally fit them up, just as during the 1970’s and 80’s they did with the left. That’s nothing the Left should be pleased about, it is just a reflection of the fact that the left is so weak that the bosses see the Right as the danger.

The left also shouldn’t be pleased, because the bosses will not destroy the BNP, just put it in its place, ready for when they do need it, when the current Long Wave boom ends, when the economic crisis that descends on world capitalism makes the current blip look like a holiday break.

And then the current weakness of the left, and of the mainstream Labour Movement could be catastrophic. I’ve read all the propaganda that has come through the door. The BNP have put out three leaflets. Each one has dealt in some detail with the main problems that ordinary people have concerns about, Jobs, Houses, Crime, and Living Standards. That is more than any of the other candidates have done. The Tories who now control the Borough Council – a situation that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago – have simply played up their role in running the Council, in getting a few footpaths and other improvements done locally. The Liberals have focussed as they normally do on the issues of Litter and dog crap, though to be fair they have been the only Party that has in any way tried to attack the BNP – the others have basically tried to ignore their existence – and they have used their new trump card of Vince Cable, who is wheeled out on any occasion now as the guru of the financial crisis. The Labour Party have also put out three leaflets, and it has to be said they could have saved a lot of time and money by not bothering, because in none of them have they had anything to say.

But, if you were an ordinary worker though you might be pleased that some of the footpaths have been tarmacced, that the local Country Park has had some investment spent on it etc. it is hardly likely to be your main concern if you’ve just lost your job, you can’t get a house or are facing being thrown out of one, or you are plagued with anti-social behaviour, or knife crime. On all those things it’s the BNP that is providing answers not the main parties.

Of course, they are answers that socialists profoundly oppose, but for now they are answers which workers could easily be attracted to, especially in the absence of the left having any other solutions apart from Socialism Now, alliances with “anti-imperialist” communities – even when the politics of them is hardly distinguishable from that of the BNP – or just calls for more militancy or worse “Build the party”.

As I get older I realise how quickly time moves on. And time is running out. The left needs urgently to wake up, to abandon its fantasies of being the next Lenin, the next Bolshevik Party, and begin to focus on the real working class. It is necessary to “build the party”, but not the make believe toy town parties that the left means by that, but the real existing Workers Party, the Labour Party. It needs to utilise what there is Left in terms of its organisation, its connection to the local working class communities, and connections to the Trade Unions – while they are still there – and to use them not as it has done in the past, for its own sectarian ends, but in the way Marx and Engels described, as means of mobilising the self-activity of the workers, of encouraging the workers to take things into its own hands, and provide its own solutions, to raise the class off its knees, renew its confidence and organisation, and in so doing the Marxists will as a necessary by-product strengthen their own ranks, their present often infantile disputes and concerns will be tested in the fire of workers concerns and reasoning, those that meet the needs of the workers, address its interests, and provide it with the right answers will grow, and the rest will either learn or be marginalized.

We are not yet again at one of those moments when the choice is presented starkly of socialism or barbarism. But that choice is coming, and unless the left uses the next ten years to address itself properly to the class that question is likely to be answered negatively.

Ravenscliffe By Election and a Socialist Programme

On 5th March there is a by-election in the Ravenscliffe Ward of Kidsgrove, which is part of Newcastle Borough Council in North Staffordshire. The election is caused by the sitting Tory Councillor standing down. The important thing, though, is that both the BNP and UKIP are standing candidates in the election. Neither have any chance of winning.

Labour

The ward, which was only created a few years ago as the existing wards became too large, is one of the more affluent areas of the Borough. Labour held the seat when it was first contested by existing Borough Councillors, but the Local Labour Party has gone downhill significantly since that time. It might have been expected that with the BNP, in particular, standing in this election, that the Labour Party would have made some attempt to counter the fascist ideas that they are now spreading, but no, the Labour Party leaflet sunk to an all-time low. It didn’t mention the BNP at all, in fact it didn’t mention anything political at all. The whole of the front page of the leaflet was taken up by a large headline and a few words condemning the previous Tory Councillor for not attending meetings, and now going off to Spain. That was an own goal to begin with because the Liberals in their leaflet were able to point to the fact that a Kidsgrove Councillor, and former Labour Group Deputy Leader, had disappeared to Spain a few years ago along with a Computer etc. The back of the leaflet did contain a very small story about the fact that a LP member through his own activity had managed to get trains from Kidsgrove station to Manchester increased, and a train from there to London for the first time. But, the rest of the leaflet was taken up by a half page asking for people to tell the LP what issues concerned them. In other words the message of the leaflet was we have absolutely nothing to say, we have no policies to put in front of you, and not only do we not have any solutions to your problems, but we have no idea what your problems are!!!!

At least the Liberals did mention the BNP in their leaflet with a bit of a jibe at them, and they did put an equal opportunities statement on the leaflet.

The BNP

The BNP have managed to put out two leaflets compared with just one so far from the main parties. They have concentrated on trying to jump on the bandwagon of “British Jobs for British Workers”, without of course, saying anything about the fact that where they tried to intervene in the refinery strikes on that basis they were cleared off in no uncertain terms by the strikers. It shows just why the “ignore them they’ll go away”, or “expose them as Nazis” tactics, though are no longer sufficient. Unlike the Labour Party, the BNP do recognise the fears of local workers, and unlike the Labour Party, they have something to offer those workers in terms of a solution. It is a thoroughly reactionary solution, it is a solution, which would, in fact, create even greater problems for British workers, let alone the foreign workers on to whose shoulders they want to place the blame, but, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King.

Having listed all of the local industries that have gone to the wall over the last 25 years the BNP offer a series of nationalistic solutions – though, in fact not much different in some ways from the nationalistic demands the Communist Party and its hangers on advanced in the Alternative Economic Strategy, mixed in with references to all the eastern European and other migrant workers coming into Britain.

Policies

So mirroring the nationalistic politics of the AES they call for:

· Protect our core/strategic economic interests by the selective exclusion of certain foreign manufactured goods from the British Market

· We will ensure that wherever possible our manufactured goods will be produced in British factories, employing British workers. This will bring unemployment to an end , and give well-paid employment to many.

Other parts of the demands are if anything slightly more progressive than was the AES. For example,

· We will unite the ingenuity of the British People with their hard work. We envisage a manufacturing base of factories producing super high-tech products that will be traded around the world.

And in an area once largely based on coal mining they also say,

· We will instantly power up the British economy by opening up dozens of deep coal mines across our nation. There is 300 years worth of coal beneath our feet, an independent source of energy for our people.

But other parts are a bit zany.

· We see a strong, healthy agricultural sector as vital to the country. Britain’s farms will produce a much greater part of the nation’s food needs.

All this is combined with the normal attacks on Eastern Europeans coming into the country, and the spreading of the familiar fears about many more from Turkey coming in etc.

Attacking The BNP Not Enough

But, its clear given this approach that simply telling people not to vote BNP, because they are Nazis simply isn’t good enough. After all, that is open to some people responding “well if that’s what the Nazis were about, perhaps they weren’t so bad.” It requires not only a clear response to those politics, but even more it requires an alternative set of politics to be put forward that really can begin to offer workers a solution to their problems. Last week I tried to put forward a leaflet that began to do that, but it looks as though the local anti-fascist group will go with the same old attacks on the BNP, and possibly even some nationalism itself by attacking the BNP for using pictures of Spitfires during the Battle of Britain – partly because R.J. Mitchell the Spitfire designer was born only just outside the ward.

Cognisant of the fact that the ward was held by the Tories the BNP’s second leaflet in addition to being a bio of the candidate – who as a Vicar’s daughter surely trumps the usual comments from your friendly neighbourhood purveyor of opium to the people so much loved by many in the anti-fascist movement – goes with an attack on the Euro! Surely, a bit dicy as it didn’t work to well for William Hague, and given that the pound is collapsing against the Euro at a time when people are thinking about this year’s foreign holidays, not an obvious winner!.

The political response to the BNP’s nationalistic solutions should be clear,a nd have in part at least been rehearsed as a result of the refinery strikes.

If you exclude foreign manufactures from Britain then you will a) put the price of those imported goods up significantly for British workers, thereby making British workers pay for the inefficiency of British Capitalists, and b) other countries will respond in like manner. As a trading country dependent on selling into foreign markets in order to obtain those things that Britain cannot possibly produce itself at a reasonable cost, if at all, such a policy would be disastrous for British workers who would find themselves thrown on to the dole in droves just as such protectionism led to in the 1930’s.

They do not explain HOW they will ensure that “wherever possible our manufactured goods will be produced in British factories, employing British workers”. How will they force British Capitalists to produce here rather than abroad. Those Capitalists located production abroad precisely because they could make bigger profits by doing so. It would only be possible to attract those Capitalists to invest and produce here rather than in China or elsewhere if they could make the same kind of profits, and that would mean reducing British workers wages down to the level of Chinese and other Asian workers. Hardly a thing British workers should relish you would think.

And similarly, if that were adopted then logically workers elsewhere would look to their Governments to adopt a similar position. Here in Kidsgrove, many if not the majority of people actually work for foreign owned companies like Bentley at Crewe. If all those foreign owned companies upped sticks to go back to their own country it would mean tens of thousands of jobs lost just in this area alone.

And although, socialists would have no objection to Britain developing an economy based on the production of high-tech, high value products, which could sustain much higher wage rates than traditional low skilled employment, how on Earth would such production be sold “around the world”, under conditions where Britain was excluding similar goods from the British market? And how does this “unite the ingenuity of the British People with their hard work”? It doesn’t. It means bigger profits for British bosses. The only way the ingenuity of British workers could be united with their hard work would be if those workers owned the means of production themselves, if they developed Co-operative industries based on such production and technology.

Although, many environmentalists would probably oppose the opening of deep coal mines, there is no real socialist objection to such a project, but those mines were closed during the 1980’s because they were uneconomic in Capitalist terms. It was more rational in Capitalist terms to import cheaper coal from abroad in return for higher value British exports. Moreover, the jobs in those deep coal mines were dirty and dangerous, destroying the lives of the miners who worked there. A socialist programme for utilising that coal would require the introduction of sufficient health and safety measures, the large scale automation of production to remove workers from the dirty and dangerous conditions, and would have to be linked to a programme of developing high tech, clean fuel technologies for the use of that coal in power stations. But, in reality that then would not create many mining jobs. It would create some high-tech jobs in developing the new technologies, but that is not the solution being touted by the BNP.
As for the idea of getting British agriculture to produce a much larger part of Britain’s food this is pie in the sky. Britain lost the ability to feed itself more than 150 years ago. A socialist agricultural programme that broke up all of the huge landownings still in the hands of a tiny minority of aristocrats like the Prince of Wales, which established large Co-operative farms – in fact the Co-op is already the biggest farmer in Britain so extending its remit would not be difficult – and turning agriculture over to an even greater scientific and industrial form of farming could increase production, but eve then not only would it be unlikely to meet all of Britain’s needs, but it is even debatable whether this would be an efficient use of resources, compared to importing food from other countries in Europe where they can produce more cheaply and efficiently. Partly, this demand seems to be an attempt to get votes for the BNP in the countryside where they infiltrated the Countryside Alliance, and where they have been winning seats on Parish Councils due to low turnouts.

The BNP have no chance of winning the seat. They are likely to be annihilated. But, the ward adjoins Stoke where in recent years the BNP have become a sizeable presence. As a by-election the context has already given them invaluable publicity, which will be their main reason for standing.

UKIP

What is perhaps surprising is that the BNP’s fellow nationalists the BNP ‘Light’, UKIP are standing against each other. UKIP’s politics set out in their leaflet are even more off the wall despite their candidate being a former lecturer, and having studied political philosophy.

They begin by warning Borough residents of the danger that the Borough Council might be abolished as have neighbouring Borough Council’s in Congleton, Crewe, and Macclesfield. Oddly, they try to blame this on Europe – well perhaps not so oddly as they blame Europe for everything – whereas the real reason is the inefficient and uneconomic nature of Borough Council’s. When I looked at the figures a few years ago, for instance, Newcastle Borough Council spent nearly 70% of its budget on “Finance and Management”, which meant paying the over-inflated salaries of its Chief Executive, and Chief Officers along with their numerous assistants and deputies, and on collecting the Council Tax, and the Computer Systems for doing this, along with all of the necessary Accountants and solicitors. In other words what Borough Council taxpayers were really paying for was not services, but for a machinery to do little more than collect their Council Tax.

UKIP even point to the fact that the Borough Council lost £2.5 million pounds as a result of the collapse of an Icelandic Bank they had put money into. Another good example. That money was part of the £55 million the Council got from selling off its Housing Stock to an ALMO – the Chief Executive of which was the former Director of Housing who in the process saw his salary double to around £70,000 – and the proceeds of which could have gone to refurbish the ancient and rundown facilities in the Borough, or to build new ones. Instead it was put to sit in the Bank, to cover the costs of new computer systems and other pet projects of the top bosses.

Again, in giving us this information UKIP seem oblivious to the fact that this has nothing to do with the EU, and in fact Iceland has been desperate to fast track EU membership as a means of protecting its tiny economy in the whirlwind its banking collapses have created. And without realising the irony the BNP 'light' UKIP say in their leaflet " But please think carefully about how you vote. The poor performance of existing Councillors can increase the likelihood of frustrated voters turning to extremists"! Yes, like UKIP.

Workers Solutions

Workers do need solutions to the very real problems they are facing in respect of jobs, housing conditions and so on. The nationalistic politics of the BNP and UKIP offer no real solution, but in the absence of socialists bringing practical solutions before those workers, they are likely to take what is on offer. Its clear that Brown’s Labour party cannot do that, and the forces of the left are too tiny, and divided more than ever into warring sects. It will be up to individual and small groups of Marxists to work through the LP and other channels of the Labour Movement to bring such solutions forward, turning LP, Trade Union and Co-operative organisations outwards into the communities with immediate initiatives that workers themselves can take up and implement.

· We need to build workplace organisation, breaking down sectionalism and the divisions that exist often between different trade unions in the same workplace. We need the development of at first even small groups of rank and file workers in each department across skills, across unions, and even including non-union members.

· We need to bring such groups together as Factory Committees able to organise immediate direct workers action within the workplace as a response to problems and attacks by the bosses rather than going down the road of full-time officialdom. The direct action and wildcat strikes of the last weeks should be the inspiration.

· We need to build on the basis of the involvement of real workers in such Factory Committees Industry wide combines of Shop Stewards as part of a European wide Shop Stewards Movement linked using all the facilities of the Internet to co-ordinate action.

· Socialists must join their local Labour Party Branch. The refinery strikes showed the lesson. If Marxists shun the workers because they do not yet come up to their expectations, then the workers will correctly shun the Marxists. Whatever, Marxists might dream for of establishing some new Workers Party, there is no demand for such a Party from the class. The LP IS the Workers Party for now, and as those strikes showed its necessary for Marxists to intervene in it, do as Marx and Engels advised, take the workers as they find them, and through patient work raise them up.

· The focus has to be on the LP Branches not the CLP’s, which the Left has focussed on in the past. It is the Branches that have the real contact with their local working class communities. It is the Branches that can organise campaigns in their ward, can help create and develop Tenants and residents Associations, Credit Unions and other such Co-operative organisations that workers can develop themselves control themselves, and thereby empower themselves with.

· The real work of fighting the fascists should be organised through the Labour Parties as the mass organisation of the working class. If others outside the LP wish to attach themselves to its activities fine, but the working class and its Party cannot allow tiny sects, or alien class forces to dictate to it, how it will proceed, they are in no position to do so.

· In providing answers to the workers Marxists should argue for and demonstrate how such solutions must be based on mobilising the direct action of the working class itself, on building its self-reliance, confidence, pride, and economic and social power. That cannot be done by appeals to the bourgeois state at the central or local level, but only by building Co-operative forms, the traditional form of workers ownership and control, the form as described by Marx as the transitional form between Capitalism and Socialism. Marxists do not put forward such solutions to workers in their Party, and their other organisations in a sectarian take it or leave it manner, but patiently explain why such solutions are needed, accepting decisions when they go against such an approach, but then calmly and patiently explaining why – as they must – those other solutions failed.

· The emphasis for such activity is not in the electoral sphere, not in Parliament or in the Council Chamber, but amongst the working class itself, in the workplaces and in the communities. By developing such rank and file organisation, and by developing Co-operative forms, workers will of necessity need to create a new form of democracy, a direct participatory democracy arising out of these new forms. But, for as long as Capitalism remains political power will continue to reside within the channels of bourgeois democracy. It will be necessary once those bastions of working class power have developed sufficiently for them to exert political pressure on the Workers Party, in the selection of its leading personnel, of its representatives and so on and to utilise its power to control such representatives in the carrying out of their functions. In this way, the necessary political struggle within the confines of bourgeois democracy can be undertaken from a position of strength.

· But, Britain is a small country in decline. Not only is socialism inconceivable within the confines of Britain alone, but the solutions to workers problems here and now also require a much wider perspective.

· The creation of a Europe Wide Shop Stewards network is only a start. It is necessary to create EU wide Trade Unions, preferably as industrial unions, and to create a European Workers Party.

· Britain already lags behind a number of EU Countries in respect of the Working Time Directive, or Pensions or retirement age and so on. An EU wide Trade Union Movement needs to fight for common Benefits and conditions throughout Europe alongside common Trade Union Rates of pay.

· But, a level playing field, and avoidance of opt-outs such as that of Britain on the Working Time Directive can only be achieved by a single state. It is not the job of Marxists to advocate such a solution to the bourgeoisie – our goal is rather a Socialist United States of Europe – but if the bosses do create such a state, we should not oppose it, rather we should demand a proper EU Wide Constituent Assembly to determine its basis, its Constitution and so on, and demand the right of workers assemblies throughout Europe to fully discuss it, and frame it.

This is an outline of the kind of programme that can really address workers problems and needs not just here and now, but in the future.

Workers of the World Unite.