Letters

Elections

I hardly expected that my brief comments as a member of the small audience on a recent Zoom webinar about communists running for election would form the basis for the lengthy lead letter in last week’s Weekly Worker … and be sent all the way from the land of the free, no less (Peter Moody in New Jersey). It must have been a slow news week!

Peter and I agree on one point, but on a second point I think he has misinterpreted what I said.

He writes: “Story isn’t speaking nonsense when he says that communist electoral campaigns resulting in tiny votes (and lost deposits, in the case of British elections) can be demoralising. While there will generally be a core of committed activists eager to run such campaigns, running year after year to consistently gain only three-digit vote totals per constituency isn’t going to be the most inspiring use of an organisation’s time and resources.” Here Peter has correctly interpreted what I said.

But his second point puts the wrong spin on it. He writes: “comrade Alan Story disagreed with the whole notion of communists running in elections, proposing as an alternative an active spoiled ballot campaign.”

I did not say and don’t believe that communists should never run in elections. But I do think that it needs to be part of a wider political strategy. It does not convince me to quote from Lenin’s masterful work, ‘Leftwing’ communism: an infantile disorder - as one Zoom panellist did - to try to refute my main point (I first read that text back in about 1968 and have just reviewed it again). Lenin repeatedly stresses the importance of basing tactics on a concrete analysis of concrete situations and asks whether or not a tactic advances the working class struggle.

No-one in the Zoom webinar did that. And I fail to see how Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition chair Dave Nellist gaining 2.1% of the vote in a 2022 Birmingham-area by-election did that either. Remember, Nellist is a former MP, a credible speaker, the long-time head of Tusc (meaning he could tap the national resources of the Socialist Party) and this was a by-election (meaning activists could come in from other parts of the country - I know people living 100 miles away who canvassed for Nellist).

I know Nellist did beat nine other candidates - an outfit called ‘Church of the Militant Elvis’ got eight votes! - but the by-election resulted in an easy-peasy Labour hold with a 55.5% vote share. Who can be enthused by that? I ask, where have been the positive electoral campaigns in the UK in the past 50 years?

Meanwhile, I have read reports that up to 150 ‘indy’ socialist and small ‘left party’ candidates may run in the upcoming general election. We really need to scrutinise whether socialists and communists should back them. A significant percentage of them will be of the ‘the only thing wrong with the Labour Party is Keir Starmer’ variety. I know I will not be assisting their cause. For a whole number of reasons, I doubt few will poll beyond 2% - or do what I would call effective socialist agitation either.

Of course, we will not break the general sense of despondency among what we might call ‘left of Labour’ forces merely by reading … and not even by reading Lenin. But can I recommend to colleagues one piece resulting from a small group called the Learning Our History project. It looks at the rise and fall of the Scottish Socialist Party - which, it should be noted, given we are talking about elections, did get six members into the Scottish parliament in 2003 (and it was a positive electoral campaign). Here is the link: theleftlane2024.substack.com/p/socialism-in-scotland-lessons-from.

The interview is a concrete analysis of a concrete situation. The person interviewed, Gregor Gall, alerted me to Peter Moody’s letter in the Weekly Worker and I am sure he would respond to comments and criticisms anyone might raise.

Alan Story
The Left Lane

Vote WPB?

On April 30, George Galloway announced in a press conference in Parliament Square that his Workers Party of Britain (WPB) is planning to stand in (almost) “every constituency” in the forthcoming general election, including in Ealing Southall, where former England cricket player Monty Panesar will stand as the WPB candidate. The aspiration certainly is admirable and something the rest of the timid left could learn a lesson from.

But, in my opinion, socialists should be very careful before they throw their weight behind the WPB. I disagree with comrade Mike Macnair, who argued at the recent CPGB aggregate that, when it comes to any potential electoral clashes, “the Workers Party of Britain is slightly to be preferred to Tusc” (‘Thinking through the options’, April 25). At the time, it looked like there might not be (m)any clashes, as the Socialist Party’s electoral campaign, Tusc (Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition), had been making a big effort to get Galloway to agree to at least a non-aggression pact - to no avail, it appears. Galloway has just stuck two fingers up to them.

Also, while the WPB says it will not stand against left-of-Labour candidates and is, for example, supporting Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North), Andrew Feinstein (who is standing against Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras) and Tahir Mirza (contesting for Newham Independents in East Ham), it is, however, putting up a candidate against Zahra Sultana in Coventry South, one of the very few ‘left’ MPs in parliament.

Yes, Galloway’s election victory in Rochdale was a victory for the Palestine solidarity movement. But the rest of his political programme is as uninspiring and problematic as you could expect from somebody to the right of the social democratic consensus. And, yes, it clearly is “his” election manifesto - it is decorated with a charming family portrait with his wife and two young kids (workerspartybritain.org/manifesto-britain-deserves-better). Next stop Hello Magazine?

Take away his support for Gaza and the Palestinians and the WPB programme is incredibly socially conservative and reeks of national chauvinism. While Galloway’s opposition to a woman’s right to choose an abortion did not make it into the WPB programme, many of his conservative views certainly have. There is, for example, a long section on ‘Supporting the family’, again decorated with a picture of the traditional ‘husband, wife and two kids’ combo - clearly aimed at what he believes is his conservative audience in the Muslim population.

The party promises to “ban foreign interests from interfering in British culture untowardly”. Sounds very sinister indeed - he mainly means the US, it appears, which apparently “imported racism” via “American troops in the Second World War”. Right. So before that, Britain (the one running the empire, murdering and exploiting millions of slaves) was racism-free?

When it comes to the issue of ‘law and order’, the WPB declares: “We are not soft-hearted liberals who believe that everyone is capable of redemption.” Oh. Some people are just beyond the pale - lost causes? That is a very odd thing to say for a self-declared socialist party.

Instead, the WPB wants to “overhaul liberal laws that weaken the ability of the police to protect the most vulnerable, while continuing to ensure appropriate civil liberties protections, increase police capacity in high crime areas, increase funding and capacity for operations targeting organised crime”, etc. Of course, the police are all about ‘protecting the vulnerable’.

Then there is Galloway’s well-known and long-standing opposition to ‘mass migration’. It makes for a very unpleasant read: “The Workers Party of Britain offers a migration policy that reflects the anxiety felt among the working class about an influx of migrants, which appears to be out of control. While some of this anxiety is stoked by the racist right, people are not wrong to worry about undue burdens being placed on local services, about disproportionate herding of migrants into poorer parts of the country, and about the cost of hosting escalating numbers of asylum-seekers.” And on and on it goes.

He might have gotten rid of his openly Stalinist wing in the form of CPGB-ML (run by the Brar family), but his programme still stinks of the same political national-chauvinist method.

Having said all of this, it is likely that the issue of Gaza and the oppression of the Palestinians will remain one of the key issues come the general elections. Socialists might well end up calling for a vote for the WPB, especially in areas where there are no (other) socialists standing. The WPB might also manage to get one or two MPs into parliament, from constituencies with a large and active Muslim population. But in reality Galloway’s version of ‘socialism’ is actually ‘no socialism at all’.

Carla Roberts
London

Privatisation

James Linney’s ‘Lights going out’ was the usual sophisticated mixture of professional experience, insightfulness and factuality (Weekly Worker April 25).

However, maybe with the Labour Party’s role as poisonous agency on behalf of the capitalist system, there’s one facet not sufficiently investigated: where it’s openly stated that ambitions to continue with privatisation of the NHS will achieve what the Conservatives are unable to do, given how the population are more acutely aware (and so more cautious) about their intentions and belief systems, etc.

This will be an eventual outcome, where Labour will secure a ‘resigned’ acceptance of US-style outright privatisation - appearing by then to be unavoidable, with no ‘socialist’ alternatives available. Thanks a million, Starmer and Streeting, and other members of your gang: true socialists will not forget if or when the tables are turned within some not too distant future conditions.

Bruno Kretzschmar
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