European Elections: The Real Cause of Far-right Gains, By Robert Griffiths

European Elections: The Real Cause of Far-right Gains
By Robert Griffiths


















Political Affairs Magazine
Original source: Mornihng Star (Britain)

We don't need academic studies on voting behavior to explain what happened in the European and local elections last week.

Anyone active in a trade union or living in a working-class community should know that many workers and their families do not regard Labour as a party that speaks or acts in their interests.

Yes, those interests may not be clearly defined in people's minds, least of all in consciously political ways. They often contain the illusions and prejudices fanned by the state and capitalist monopoly mass media.

But at their core they represent the interests of the working class, those whose main source of income derives from the fact that they have to work for a living, have done so in the past, will do so in the future or are caring for yesterday's, today's or tomorrow's workers.

They need decent jobs, pay, pensions, benefits, housing and public services. They want to enjoy their leisure. They want to be treated with dignity and live and work in peace. They want their children to inherit a better life.

They may well care about bigger issues of the environment, Third World poverty, civil liberties and gender equality as well as immigration.

And they don't believe this Labour government is doing anything to address these problems, real or imagined.

"The fact remains that the No2EU initiative represented a historic development in our labour movement"

That's a major reason why only five percent of the electorate turned out to vote Labour in the EU elections on June 4. Of those who thought the European Parliament was worth their attention, only 16 percent voted Labour.

But while the Labour vote fell by more than one and a quarter million from the 2004 EU elections, there was no great enthusiasm for the alternatives.

The Tory, United Kingdom Independence Party and Lib Dem votes all fell by hundreds of thousands.

Among the main winners were the Greens, whose votes and share of the poll rose by around a third, and to a lesser extent the SNP.

The No2EU – Yes to Democracy alliance struggled to break through an almost total wall of media silence at national level. As a new-born initiative, it desperately needed the oxygen of publicity.

Most of the state and capitalist media were far more comfortable puffing the BNP fascists and UKIP British nationalists.

They quickly understood what some sectarians on the left could or would not, namely that No2EU was at root a pro-worker, pro-trade union, anti-EU, anti-privatization and anti-big business coalition with a potentially popular appeal.

This was confirmed by the warm reception received by No2EU campaigners in shopping centers and on the doorsteps.

Yes, the alliance was late to be formed. Perhaps a better name and a sharper program could have been devised – although it is difficult imagining a forum of different left-wing organizations in Britain taking less than 12 months to reach an agreement, splits and walkouts aside.

The fact remains that the No2EU initiative represented an historic development in our labour movement. A major, militant trade union decided to forge an alliance with left and progressive forces to mount a challenge to big business and the new Labour clique across the whole of Britain, in circumstances which did not cut across the labour movement's opposition to the return of a Tory government.

Launching 11 million leaflets, more than a hundred public meetings, hundreds more street stalls and seven election broadcasts, winning 153,000 votes and 1 per cent of the poll, and all from a standing start, is a creditable achievement.

Above all, No2EU presented an election program which focused on the EU and its neoliberal policies to an extent unmatched by Labour, the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

And so we come to the biggest winners on June 4 – the BNP fascists, which is what their new MEPs Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons undoubtedly are.

The BNP vote rose by just under 150,000 to nearly one million, while their share increased by a quarter.

There can be doubt that mass campaigning by Searchlight, Unite Against Fascism and others succeeded in blunting their appeal on a substantial scale. Exposing their nazi sympathies and the futility of their false 'solutions' does work, although this needs to be done all year round.

There is no room for complacency. Winning seats in Yorkshire and Humberside and the North West will give the BNP a bigger platform and a shedload of Euro-cash.

A more united response to the fascist threat is required, but this will not be helped by the scapegoating that has emerged in some sections of the left.

It is true that in the North West, BNP fuhrer Griffin would not have been elected had at least one-quarter of the No2EU or SLP or 2 percent of the Labour vote gone to the Greens, or 20,000 votes from anybody else gone to Labour, or 14,000 to the Lib Dems, or 2,000 to UKIP.

To single out No2EU for attack for having the temerity to stand, however, is reprehensible. Not least because it ignores the extent to which that alliance contributed extensively to the anti-fascist struggle on the streets, in its literature and – because it contested everywhere – through its widely praised election broadcasts which the television companies and the BNP tried to censor.

No, the blame for the BNP's breakthrough lies squarely at the door of the new Labour clique which has hijacked the Labour Party.

Its policies of privatization, war and a police state, its failure to assist workers and their families instead of bailing out the bankers and speculators, its record of lies and corruption at Westminster, have turned off working-class electors by the million.

Undoing the damage done by new Labour and salvaging something worthwhile from the wreckage is now the urgent responsibility of the labour movement and the non-sectarian left.

It cannot be done by electoral politics alone, and certainly not between now and the looming general election.

A big upsurge in mass campaigning of every kind, including industrial action where necessary, is needed to defend working-class interests and combat the pro-big business, pro-war policies of new Labour.

A movement for the People's Charter needs to be built in local communities across Britain, engaging masses of people in the demand for left and progressive policies.

This is the best basis on which socialist and trade union organizations can discuss the potential for developing a broad alliance which could also have a realistic, unifying and non-sectarian approach to electoral policy.

But above all, the Labour government must be compelled to change course in order to avoid the election of an even more right-wing Tory government.

The leaders whose trade unions bankroll the new Labourites wrecking the Labour Party should organize a five-man march on No 10 with a simple message for Gordon Brown – "Stop privatization and public service cuts, tax the super-rich, pledge to take the railways and utilities back into public ownership, support the Trade Union Freedom Bill, scrap plans for a new generation of nuclear weapons and withdraw from Afghanistan – or no money from our members to fund defeat at the general election."

--Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain.