Stechford offer revolutionaries the opportunity to explain the socialist The forthcoming alternative to the anti-working class policies of the Labour Government. been massive reductions in Labour's vote in by-elections in Thurrock and Rotherham, accompanied by a significant increase in support for fascist candidates. The situation is clear. Unless a challenge to the cuts, unemployment and falling living standards can be offered from the left and at all levels, the more disillusioned workers will fall prey to the right. We will not only face the prospect of the most right-wing Tory Government since the war, iamentary boot-boys.
Worker candidate Jimmy McCallum in the Walsall seat vacated by John Stonehouse.
Socialist Worker have announced their intention to Stechford seat of Roy Jenkins. Below we look at some of the questions raised by these candidacies.
OPPOSES CUTS PUBLIG Photo: CHRIS DAVIES (Report)
by-elections in Walsall North and Birmingham The opportunity doesn't come a minute too soon. There have already but one well-equipped with extra-parlThat's why Red Weekly has announced its support for Socialist That's why both the International Marxist Group and stand in NUPE General Secretary, Alan Fisher, with union members lobbying the TUC against the cuts. NUPE has also decided to lobby the 1. Doesn't standing candidates in parliamentary elections suggest that the workers can settle their problems through Parliament?
No, not at all. Standing candidates is an opportunity to make propaganda to a far larger audience than we can usually attract. There is a difference between using elections to explain to working people that they can only solve the problems of unemployment and the cuts if they take action themselves, and simply saying Vote for us and we do it for you.
In this way elections can actually be used to develop the self-activity of working people, cutting across the parliamentary reformism peddled by the Labourites. We can't simply say that Parliament is dead and forget about the millions of workers who still believe that Labour's reformism can JIMMY McCALLUM improve their lot.
2. Won't standing separate candidates split the Labour vote and let the Tories in?
Let's be clear. It's the present policies of the Labour Government which are already doing that. Red Weekly supports standing candidates as part of the struggle to drag the whole of the labour movement away from this disastrous course, as part of the struggle to build a united class struggle opposition to the labour traitors.
If a Labour Party candidate is committed to opposing all cuts, mobilising action against unemployment, and campaigning for the repeal of the racist 1971 Immig ration Act, then we would support him or decisive issues we've mentioned, they do offer a clear alternative.
Of course, the best situation would be where we could get a prominent loca militant to stand on a class struggle platform supported by all sections of the far left and supported by forces in the local Labour Party and trade unions. Of course IS have no intention of attempting to do this in Walsall or Stechford, and are simply putting forward candidates to promote IS That is sectarian. But it is a question of their poston on accisive issues and McCallum's in Walsall are better than those of Stonehouse's successor Those who call themselves revolution aries but then say that because IS has a useless programme vote Labour not IS are simply vulgar opportunists. Their pseudorevolutionary phrases are a cover-up for snuggling up to the Labour rank-and-file without posing the key political issues sharply - including in elections.
In 1935, for example, Trotsky fully supported the decision of the Independent Labour Party to stand candidates against the Labour Party. This was not because the ILP had a correct programme. Trotsky clearly characterised their programme as non-Marxist. But on the main issue, th drift towards war, the ILP refused to back the war preparations of the ruling class. In Bradford, by the way, that actually meant that the ILP took sufficient votes to allow the right wing in.
4. But what about where Tariq Ali for the IMG and a Socialist Worker candidate are standine in the same seat.
That's most unfortunate, and the IMG is approaching the IS about standing a single candidate on an agreed platform. We are quite prepared to withdraw if a suitable
----- pull-quotes -----
FIGHT THE CUTS FIGHT THE CUTS SLING CUT