Hustings triumph

It turns out that the BNP is standing three candidates in this ward. It used to be one of their areas of strength. I had feared that they might have tried to attend last night’s hustings meeting in which case the Labour candidate and Glyn for Respect would have refused to share the platform and…

Liam

April 21, 2006

2–3 minutes

Respect

The event was a Respect triumph. The Lib Dem councillor is pleasant enough. The Labour candidate blew it right from the start. He used six of his ten minutes speaking time and should have quit while he was ahead. A groan went up when I told him he had four minutes left and he went on to use them. His main problem though was that most of the audience, who in the past would have been Labour voters, disagreed with him. On every single round of questions Glyn got by far the most support. Housing has cost Labour a lot of votes. On the flip side Big Brother is still being raised a lot and people are rarely saying it was a good idea.

Forlorn

The Greens and the Socialist Party both cut forlorn figures. A Green candidate from another ward turned up even though the party isn’t standing in this one. He gave a very convincing impression of an eccentric Irishman and I repeatedly had to shut him up.

A full timer for the Socialist Party handed out leaflets for the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party and another member asked questions of the “let’s expose Respect for reformist” variety. Both the leafleting and the questions really misjudged the type of meeting and I thought it was a shame that people choose to cut themselves off from what’s really happening in that way. But when an organisation is in a sectarian tailspin that’s what happens.

Now for a fortnight of knocking on doors trying to consolidate the vote. On the strength of last night’s performance in a white working class stronghold we are in with a real chance. Provided that the mad people don’t throw us over a balcony.

3 responses to “Hustings triumph”

Mark P

April 24, 2006 at 5:37 pm

If you were to tell us what these horrible questions a Socialist Party member asked were actually about and what the answers were we might be better placed to judge their merits. Sighing in faux-disappointment isn’t really that informative.I’m equally unsure what purpose your ritualistic reference to other socialists as “sectarian” is meant to serve. Does it mean anything here apart from everyone who isn’t in my organisation is sectarian? You may think that the Campaign for a New Workers Party is a bad idea or that it won’t work, but clearly as an attempt to engage with wider sections of society it is anything but “sectarian”.As for being in a “tailspin”, it seems that the Socialist Party is about the only far left organisation which is visibly growing at the moment. It’s still a small grouping in the greater scheme of things and it still has some way to go to recover from the damage it suffered during the 1990s but I suspect that your own grouping would dearly love to be in such a “tailspin”!

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Liam Mac Uaid

April 24, 2006 at 9:22 pm

I’m afraid I didn’t take notes of what the questions were but the tone stuck with me. In this ward working class voters have a choice between voting for 3 BNP candidates, 3 pro-capitalist parties or an organisation that actively tries to defend the gains of the working class and is opposed to imperialist war. In those circumstances, given Respect’s obvious mass support, there shouldn’t be too much reflection required to endorse it electorally. This is the thinking that made me choose the word “sectarian”. Yes it would be nice if my current were the size of the SP but since when has the size of an organisation been a decisive political criterion for Marxists?

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Mark P

April 25, 2006 at 11:34 am

Liam, I quite agree that size isn’t everything. In the greater scheme of things every group on the socialist left is small. But remember it was your original posting which described an organisation which is not only many times larger than your own but which unlike your own is visibly growing as being in a “tailspin”. It’s a bit cheeky to make remarks of that kind and then get all holier-than-thou about the relative unimportance of size when you are pulled up on it.I’m a little amused also by your response to my main point. You can’t remember what questions you were complaining about and you can’t remember what the answers were, so what was the point of moaning about them on the internet! Last time I checked it was perfectly reasonable for Marxists to ask questions of other political formations, even awkward questions.As for endorsing Respect candidates, the Socialist Party has generally called for a Respect vote where there is no better candidate available. By better candidate I mean a socialist or the candidate of a progressive campaign with some rooting in the community. The other circumstance in which we would not call for a Respect vote is where dangerous appeals on the basis of religion or a soft-communalism form the centrepiece of the Respect campaign. As you are no doubt aware Respect has a record of sporadically issuing leaflets describing itself as “the party for Muslims” and the like. As far as I am aware that stance hasn’t changed and we will continue to vote Respect in most areas where Respect stands. But such support would obviously be on a critical basis. It doesn’t mean giving a free ride to an organisation which is standing defectors from the Tories and Lib Dems as candidates and which has politics which are dubious at best.

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