www.tusc.org.uk the www.socialistparty.org.uk Socialist 29 May - 4 June 2014 Issue 812 Price: £1 (Solidarity: £2) CON-DEMS GET A KICKING Now build a mass voice for the working class Sarah Sachs-Eldridge capitalist parties and was the and council tax arrears. class alternative gained an echo. super-rich get ever richer. Editor, the Socialist main beneficiary of the protest In Southampton, the Labour We were able to ask: who would This election gave us a tiny vote against parties making cuts group expelled Councillor Keith you like to represent you - a party glimpse of what a new mass at national and local level. Morrell. His crime? Standing up led by former stock-broker Far- workers’ party could offer. Now n the elections for English But in reality Ukip is another and voting against cuts. But the age or an organisation founded the campaign for the trade un- councils voters sent a mes- pro-cuts establishment party of working class gave its verdict by by class fighter and former RMT ions to break the link with pro- sage to the Con-Dem cuts the super-rich 1%, which whips re-electing him with over twice leader, the late Bob Crow? Even cuts Labour and build TUSC coalition. Get out! up racism and division. Among its the vote of his Labour opponent. the BBC admitted that RMT must be stepped up. No to cuts! The Tories are now 230 coun- backers are bosses and bankers, Voters were looking for a way to members had “pay rises every See inside for election analysis Icillors lighter and they lost con- among its leaders are disgraced express their opposition to aus- year even during austerity, good and TUSC trol of eleven councils. 310 Lib ex-Tories, and when faced with terity - planned poverty, as the pensions and good holiday al- reports. Dem local government repre- the choice to cut services and Socialist has explained it. The 561 lowances”. Surely that’s the best Socialist election sentatives were unseated and jobs its councillors have voted in Trade Unionist and Socialist Coa- basis for a party to defend us. victories: in Ireland they now lead only six councils. favour. It actually represents all lition (TUSC) candidates pledged Trade unionists who every day Socialist Party member They were reduced to one MEP in that is rotten in capitalist politics. to vote against cuts and offered a fight to defend workers’ rights Ruth Coppinger was the European elections. In local government Labour working class alternative. in the workplace were able to elected as a TD (MP) as For months the capitalist press councillors have also chosen to TUSC suffered a blackout in explain that they would take well as 14 Anti-Austerity gave Farage a platform to peddle make cuts rather than fight back the capitalist press but nonethe- the same approach in the coun- Alliance councillors and in his false ‘man of the people’ against the cold cruelty of Con- less, where campaigners were out cil - not accepting the capitalist Greece a CWI member image. Ukip was undoubtedly Dem austerity. Labour councils the streets, in the work places, ‘logic’ that workers always have was elected as a presented as the best stick are issuing eviction notices for speaking at meetings and on the to tighten their belts and accept to beat the hated traditional non-payment of the bedroom tax doorsteps, the idea of a working cuts while the bosses and the councillor PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD telephone: 020 8988 8777 email: [email protected] 2 ELECTIONS join the socialists - www.socialistparty.org.uk 29 May - 4 June 2014 the Socialist the Socialist The paper of the Socialist Party. Issue 812. The Socialist, PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Published by Socialist Publications, printed by Sharman & Co Ltd. ISSN 1366-9621 article page 9). Only a class programme, involv- ing such concrete measures as a cap Euro elections: a revolt on skyrocketing rents, an emergency council home-building programme, and fighting the cuts, could lay the basis for beginning to answer Ukip’s against the capitalist empty demagogy. Nigel Farage in his ‘former life’ was a stockbroker, a scion of the rich, a member of the bankers’ fraternity, who dragged us into the abyss of a devastating crisis establishment from 2007 onwards. Many confused working people, in desperation, were seduced to vote Peter Taaffe for Ukip because they could not see Socialist Party general secretary an alternative in these elections. In some areas, where they could, they gave one vote for Ukip, and one for he long-predicted ‘earth- TUSC. This is just one indication quake’ - the electoral ‘tri- that there was no entrenched racism umph’ of the far right and among the majority. They could be their allies - took place in won to a radical anti-capitalist party the European elections in some key and a campaign which fought against Tcountries. In Britain Ukip came first, the shallow, false notion that immi- pushing Labour into second position grants are the cause of the problems and the Tories - the ‘governing party’ they face. This in turn could help to - into an ignominious third position. cement class unity by fighting for the The Liberal Democrats were com- ‘rate for the job’, against zero-hour pletely humiliated, left with just one contracts and for a living wage. MEP! In France, the governing Socialist Party suffered an even worse disas- Establishment panic ter, reduced to just 16% of the overall In complete panic following this vote, with Marine Le Pen’s Front Na- election, the Tories, and even La- tional (FN) claiming victory against bour spokespersons like Ed Balls, both François Hollande’s misnamed have called for “noise” about im- ‘socialists’ as well as the centre-right migration. Without a complete UMP. withdrawal from Europe - which is not favoured by the capitalists, and therefore is unlikely in the short Far-right growth term - they know they will not be In both cases the far right man- able to immediately stop immigra- aged to hoover up the votes of many tion from the EU. workers who had looked towards Therefore, their propaganda is to the left and the workers’ parties stop ‘immigrant welfare scroungers’, in the past. The far right success- so-called benefit tourism, despite fully deflected workers’ anger and the fact that all figures show that very bitterness against their increasing few immigrants to Britain and else- impoverishment into a protest vote where take advantage of these ‘ben- against austerity and immigration, efits’. The only effect of this will be to which was presented as the author play up divisions and racism, which of all their misfortunes. The far-right must be energetically combated by Danish People’s Party also won the the whole labour movement. biggest share of the vote while eu- Not voting was a key trend in these rosceptics and right-wing parties elections and an expression of the gained across the Nordic countries. Ruth Coppinger celebrates her election to the Dail with Joe Higgins and Paul Murphy distrust of the political establishment Even in Germany, Alternative - with a farcical 13% voting in Slova- für Deutschland, a relatively new same time, the neo-fascist Golden Gilmore has been forced to resign. Britain, where the SWP are formally kia. In Britain, well over 50% did not eurosceptic party, gained seats for Dawn got over 9% of the vote and has But, like Spain and Greece, where in an alliance in the Trade Unionist vote, but the results do not necessar- the first time in the EU Parliament, entered the European Parliament for there was a left alternative it did well, and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) with ily indicate how people will vote in which meant that Angela Merkel’s the first time. The neo-fascists would and in the case of the Socialist Party, the Socialist Party. the 2015 general election. Neverthe- party, the CDU, suffered its worst have been undermined even further spectacularly so. The election to the What are the conclusions to be less Ukip threatens to become an en- result in European Parliamentary if Syriza and its leader Tsipras had Dáil of Ruth Coppinger in the parlia- drawn from this round of elections? trenched right-wing factor in Britain, elections. The neo-fascist NPD won not watered down some of its most mentary byelection in Dublin West, Firstly, the results of the national, like the Freedom Party in Austria or a seat, as did a number of small ‘pro- radical demands, such as the cancel- together with a slew of 14 councillors local and European elections repre- the National Front in France. Moreo- test’ parties. lation of the debt and the nationali- in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, rep- sent a revolt against the whole of the ver, the after-shocks are having an The new prime minister Matteo sation of the banks, in the mistaken resents a real triumph for socialism capitalist establishment, including immediate effect in Britain in raising Renzi in Italy bucked the trend be- belief that a more ‘moderate’ ap- and genuine Marxism. the leaders of the ex-workers’ parties question marks over the continued cause he is still in a honeymoon peri- proach would boost its popularity. Unfortunately, Paul Murphy was like Miliband, Hollande, etc. Even direction and leadership of all three od and workers crave some stability. not re-elected as a member of the these leaders speak of mass ‘aliena- main party leaders. That will change as his attacks on the European Parliament, despite nearly tion’ and ‘disenfranchisement’ with- working class are implemented.