This is the first draft of a piece for the next issue of Socialist Resistance. I occupied myself during a bout of gastro-enteritis by getting cross about how stupid Workers Power’s line on the local government elections was. That probably reveals a lot about the limits of my intellectual horizons and more besides. Anyway my mood wasn’t helped by the fact that, even if I had been able to drink, you can’t get beer in Marrakech. At one point I even bought a bottle of a monstrosity called “non alcoholic beer”.

I don’t normally approve of the “if you disagree with me you’re a fool” attitude to political discussion. It enlightens nobody and advances nothing. I’ve made an exception in this case because I think the error is so serious.

The matter of how socialists deal with resurgent fascist organisations has been given a new practical and theoretical significance by the BNP’s results in the local government elections. How the far left tries to provide leadership against the fascists and how it relates to existing mass organisations is already emerging as a source of some controversy.

The BNP had 33 councillors elected in May’s council elections, bringing their total to 48. Twelve of these were in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham but they also managed to win seats in Epping Forest, Havering and Redbridge, boroughs on London’s eastern periphery, three in Sandwell and Stoke and fewer in a number of other areas. The organisation fought in 354 wards and won 234,483 votes. This represents an average support of 18.1%.

In the same elections Respect won 16 new Councillors taking its total to 18. Respect has only existed since January 2004 and contested many fewer wards.

The underlying trend is a willingness of many traditional Labour supporters to start looking for alternatives. Labour’s dominance of the working class vote is still strong but it is starting to erode. Both Respect and the BNP are taking votes away from Labour. Much of the British far left is agreed that there now exists the possibility of the development of a new mass party to Labour’s left. However at a moment when the fascists too are seen as a serious alternative by many working class voters the issue of how to fight them becomes more than a theoretical question.

Workers Power during the council elections proposed that, in a ward in which the BNP, Respect and Labour were standing, voters abstain. The fascists could be defeated by a campaign against them. “The way to stop the BNP on the streets is to challenge them wherever they try to organise. More importantly we need a new mass party that can really fight for a radical working class solution, a party that can offer real hope to those left behind and ignored by Labour.” Workers Power May 2006.

This prescription would have carried some weight if the comrades had tried to implement it in east London where the fascists were standing. But much more serious is the political error contained in the approach. Voters in council elections are more likely to use their votes to express a momentary protest rather than a long-term commitment to a party. Nevertheless working class voters have a sharper understanding of the value of electoral politics than some on the far left.

Assuming that working class voters had followed Workers Power’s advice the fascists would have been given a free pass into the council chambers to which they had hoped to be elected. This would have given them confidence and demoralised their enemies. It is certainly the case that Respect has received a new lease of lease following its council election results. This is true of the fascists as well. We can predict with some certainty that their council groups will slowly start to unravel as they demonstrate their ineptitude and details of their pasts start to become public. But that isn’t really the point. Holding elected office gives them a broader legitimacy which helps persuade the undecided to vote for them elsewhere in the future.

Behind this ludicrous advice are wrong judgements on what types of party Respect and Labour are. Labour is, as it always was, a pillar of British capitalism. It has moved to the right and is evangelical in its neo-liberalism and its love of imperialist war. Nevertheless it still remains a bourgeois workers’ party. The majority of the vanguard of the British working class will look to it to help fight the fascists. Many of us may not agree with them on the correctness of this view but that is our problem and one which we need to deal with by engaging in united fronts with the Labour Party as well as Labour Party members. This also means calling for a vote for Labour where they are standing against the fascists. Unless of course a viable Respect candidate is standing.

Respect is emerging as a key element of a new workers’ party in Britain. Its local government election campaign was explicitly anti-imperialist and anti-neo liberal. It fought as a socialist organisation which had already demonstrated that it had a mass support. Calling for abstention in these circumstances is wilful blindness to a living process.