By Sally Low and Peter Annear
Most of Britain's relatively large but deeply divided left campaigned hard for a Labour victory in the April 9 election, even though they opposed Neil Kinnock's "consensus politics" and "new realism".
The Conservative election victory has begun a new period of reassessment for the left, at the centre of which is the long running debate on how best to relate to the Labour Party itself.
The demoralising prospect of a fourth term for the Tories and the undemocratic first-past-the-post voting system helped draw the left into support for a Labour vote. Some voices were raised, however, for a "tactical vote" for the Liberal Democrat or Labour candidate most likely to win. Key to this tactic was the prospect that a hung parliament would force Labour to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats, who favour proportional representation.
In the event, Labour secured about a 6% swing but was short of the 7-8% needed for government. Much of this swing came from the Liberal Democrats, who did worse than expected, while the Tories held most of their former vote.
The Kinnock strategy of pushing the party to the right to appeal to business interests and the fabled political middle ground has many similarities with the record of the Hawke-Keating ALP government, but there are also important differences. The most striking of these is the continued presence of a radical left inside the Labour Party.
Figures such as Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone - both of whom were remajorities - have no parallel in Australia. Even Kinnock's purges have not eliminated all far-left currents from the party. Other factors include some less subservient trade union leaders and a radical black section.
Green Left surveyed a number of prominent individuals in the British left and Labour movements on their response to John Major's victory and their current thinking on left strategy.
'Spectator sport'
Veteran left MP Tony Benn said the economic recession made people "frightened and cautious" and that many voters felt they had already had a change of government when Margaret Thatcher was dumped.
As well, though, "the campaign was turned into a World Cup type of spectator sport and confined to the studios". The influential business newspaper Financial Times called for a vote for Labour. Such support, said Benn, was incompatible with the interests of the party's base - workers and people concerned with social justice - and meant the party could not win an elected majority.
For many it was this rightward shift, the alienation of traditional voters and the party's inability to properly differentiate itself from the Tories that feat. "They ran a slick campaign but tried to fight the Tories on their own ground rather than among the grassroots", said Denise Searle, editor of the socialist.
Campaign Group MP Ken Livingstone aimed his fire at Labour's economic policies, in particular its plan to fund increased government spending with tax hikes on incomes above Pd 21,000. This, he pointed out on BBC radio, was just Pd 1000 above the average male earnings in the south-east region, where the party failed to pick up crucial seats.
Livingstone's campaign for the party leadership, following Kinnock's resignation, is focussed on an alternative economic program based on cuts in defence spending, devaluation of the pound and government support for British manufacturing industry.
John Ross, a contributor to the Socialist Economic Bulletin, said it was an irony that shadow chancellor John Smith would almost certainly win the party leadership when it was he who had engineered Labour's economic policy. Ross believed the pre-election discussion about proportional representation had only acted to shift votes from Labour to the Liberal Democrats.
Social Democratic and post-Communist parties in general need to rethink their strategies, said New left Review editor Robin Blackburn. "The whole program of the left and socialism has to be reformulated and rethought at every level. We need to rethink the doctrines of the welfare society and the command economy and develop a new concept for a society based on equality, liberty and solidarity."
In his view, while Labour did not distinguish itself from the Tories on important issues such as disarmament, it nevertheless presented policies that were in many ways traditional. It called for higher taxes and increased government spending, and "talked a lot about the need to increase spending on health and education, but showed no interest in changing the way these services are presented".
Undemocratic
Known as a strong advocate of electoral reform, Blackburn said the result had once again demonstrated the undemocratic nature of Britain's' voting system - well over 50% of the population had voted against the Tories, who nonetheless got a majority of seats in Parliament.
In Scotland, even though the Tory vote rose by only 2% to 25.7%, they picked up two additional seats. There was "despair and anger", said Joyce McMillan, an Edinburgh-based journalist. By contrast, she pointed out, while 21% - 7% more than in 1987 - voted for the Scottish National Party, it lost one of its four seats.
Before the elections, Blackburn argued for a tactical vote. "The Westminster system", he wrote in the socialist, " has blocked the emergence of a 'new left' coalition or party of the sort existing in most other European countries. While I have a great deal of respect for the Labour left, they cannot present a national alternative to the Labour leadership."
In the light of Labour's defeat, Blackburn told Green Left, he thought the formation of a new left party would be "premature", but it was important to consolidate groups such as the Socialist Movement and the socialist newspaper. He thinks there will be majority support for a change to some form of proportional representation at the Labour Party's conference in October.
Proportional representation, however, is opposed by many because it would make a majority Labour government almost impossible. The party has never won 51% of the vote. With such attitudes, the Labour Party left deserves to be marginalised, argued Mike Powers, editor of New Times, the newspaper of the Democratic Left (formerly the Communist Party), who argued strongly for a tactical vote. "Labour's vote went up by one and a half million", said Powers. "It's still a big and powerful class weapon."
Split?
Tony Benn opposed the idea of a split to form a socialist party in opposition to Labour. Historically, he said, those who have split have been on the right. He believed that, under the pressure of a deepening economic crisis, Labour would swing back to the left.
While there was a pressing need for a broad, left united front, said Alan Thornett, a leader of the Trotskyist International Socialist Group, the idea of a new party "has been blown out of the water" by
Labour's defeat. Left MPs and unions need to fight back inside the party, which, through the support of the trade unions, maintains its links with the working class.
Denise Searle thought the fight for the new Labour leadership, to be elected in October, would be the left's "last chance to reassert itself within the party". There is no doubt that the right is on the ascendancy, and if the left does not manage to win the debate and at least one of the two leadership positions, "there will be even more grounds for looking towards the formation of a new left party" that will be feminist, green, democratic, anti-racist and socialist.
"Boundary changes are about to be introduced that will make a Labour victory even more difficult and therefore increase momentum towards a Lib-Lab pact", she said. This would be a victory for the right and leave a huge section of the left disenfranchised, as happened when the Green Party shifted to the right and the Communist Party dissolved.
"The Socialist Movement is planning a conference in October that will draw together the disenfranchised left to discuss perspectives. We have five years. Any new left party has to be carefully planned and as broad as possible."
Bob Steel, Green Party candidate for Carshalton in London, attributed his party's failure to reach 1% of the vote to the polarisation between the two parties. This, plus the voting system and lack of media coverage, meant that small parties were squeezed out, he said.
Several far-left candidates did well in the election. This is testimony, some believe, to the fact that a more left-wing Labour campaign could have succeeded. For others it is evidence that a party to the left of Labour could win support.
In Coventry South East, Dave Nellist, the former Labour Party incumbent who was expelled for alleged Militant membership, polled 10,551 votes to Labour's 11,902 and the Tories' 10,591. Similarly, in Liverpool Broadgreen, Terry Fields gained over 14% of the vote. In Glasgow Pollock, Tom Sheridan, who ran his campaign from jail, where he was serving a sentence for refusal to pay the poll tax, polled over 19%.