The Left, the General Election and the Labour Party

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The Revolutionary Communist Group were outside Brixton Tube station this morning (and so got one of our leaflets) handing out a leaflet headed “A vote for Labour is a vote for genocide!” which says:

“The mantra “kick out the Tories” is a dog whistle for a Labour vote, since the Tories can only be ‘kicked out’ of government by a Labour general election victory. It is a call to replace one virulently racist, imperialist, anti-working class government by another. But it enables left organisations like the SWP, Socialist Party, Socialist Alternative, Revolutionary Communist Party to name but four, to maintain their support for Labour while pretending to oppose it. Meanwhile, the many organisations created by disillusioned Labour supporters – Transform Politics, No Ceasefire – No Vote, Collective, TUSC, Muslim Vote, We Deserve Better, Reliance Party, the Rise Movement, etc etc – are endorsing left Labour candidates like Zarah Sultana, even when such people brazenly place their parliamentary careers before any political principles. They are standing “independent” candidates ostensibly to challenge Labour’s support for the Zionist onslaught – but they have no intention of threatening a Labour victory and are targeting constituencies with a solid Labour majority and a right-wing Labour candidate.”

and

“A vote for Corbyn is a vote for nostalgia and nothing more, a vote for Galloway is a vote for a sexist, homophobic and transphobic charlatan, a vote for Feinstein is a vote for personal ambition. Such votes do not take the movement forward one iota. Nor does a vote for the many other opportunists.”

Their conclusion “Don’t Vote, Organise!” (in their vanguard party of course)

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This table, copied from the general
General Election thread, shows that all those on the list, with the exception of Scottish Socialist Party, are in the same league as parties averaging under 1 percent of the votes cast as in most constituencies you need to get more than 350 votes to reach that percentage.

Interesting that those who compiled this table did not include Galloway’s Workers Party, presumably because they did not consider it appropriate to because of its position on immigration, policing and sexual minorities.

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Phil B-C gives a full breakdown of the results on his blog:

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2024/07/left-of-labour-general-election-results.html

A few Trots were standing as independents in the election. I don’t think they were being deliberately deceitful. I put it down to the complications of registering with the Electoral Commission. But I do think it worked to their advantage.

For example, Maxine Bowler in Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough is a longstanding prominent member of the SWP. She stood as an independent, receiving 8 per cent of the vote. I’m skeptical that she would have received as high a vote if she stood with the SWP label next to her name on the ballot paper. Maybe we’ll know at the next election, or maybe the Left of Labour groups will now look towards the ‘Independent’ tag as a long term electoral strategy.

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or maybe the Left of Labour groups will now look towards the ‘Independent’ tag as a long term electoral strategy.

I wouldn’t have thought so. There is no real advantage to any group to do this even if it might well bring their candidate more votes.

If we strip out those Muslim candidates standing on an anti-Gaza War ticket who oppose the war not because it’s a war or even as “anti-imperialists” but simply because the victims are fellow Muslims, I suspect most of the others will be expelled Labour Party members, including councillors and former councillors. Their motivation will be to get as many votes as possible and increase their personal profile. At some point they will probably join the Greens or even rejoin the Labour Party.

As for the non-left Muslims, the result could be entirely negative — the formation of a Muslim communitarian party.

The reasons an organisation might contest as an organisation will mainly be, as somebody says in the comments, to raise its profile. I suppose this would include us, though, unlike all the others except perhaps Communist Future, our main aim is to put across ideas. In this respect, the others all play the game of conventional politics by making promises and pledges to do this or that but even more unrealistic than those of the parties represented in parliament, basically more and better of everything as if capitalism could be made to do this. In other words, they encourage reformist illusions.

In the case of SPEW which doesn’t contest in its own name but through its front organisation TUSC the aim is to recruit new members.

Galloway’s Workers Party will probably go the same way as Respect, which had a few local councillors but after a while deregistered as a political party. A flash in the pan.

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