["A lot of people who had chosen change…]

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"A lot of people who had chosen change have not always seen this change day-to-day. We have to refocus our attention towards daily life."

Socialist Party secretary Lionel Jospin put it delicately in his comment on th French left's poor result in last weekend's municipal elections. Since summer 1981 French workers have seen the SP-led government shift from glowing promises to policies barely distinguish able from the previous 23 years of right-wing rule, and many are very disillusioned.

The Left's vote went down 7.6% as compared with the second round of the presidential election in 1981 The far left did not do well, either. 888 fat lett candidates got an average vote of 155 each.

THE US is expanding its military base at Diego Garcu to accommodate B52 nuclear bombers and other planes and ships. The Observer last Sunday, 6th, reported that "its main purpose is to provide strike facilities for the Middle East with back-up aircraft based in the Philippines.

The southern Indian Ocean island was leased by Britain to the US - and Britain also deported the işland's whole population to make room for the US military. The new left wing government in nearby Mauritius is demanding sovereignty over Diego Garcia and reinstatement for the islanders, and is boycotting work on the US base.

Together with the report: that Cruise missiles may be sited in South Africa, this news indicates a continuing US military build-up in the East.

"IN a general context of corruption and structural violence ... the future of the religious life in Central America will depend on the priority we give to the poor"

That's the former chief THE weekend's elections resulted in victory for the Australian Labour Party, but defeat for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in West Germany.

In both countries decades of boom capitalism have recently turned into slump. West Germany, the land of 'the economic miracle' has 2½ million unemployed (9%). In Australia, the official unemployment figure is 10.1%, and the real rate is reckoned to be higher. Inflation is running at 13% p.a.

Industrial production in Australia is 10% down on a year ago; in West Germany, 2% down.

The common element in both elections was that the previous governing party was defeated. In West Germany, the SPD had ruled in coalition with the small: Free Democratic Party (FDP) since 1969; in Australia, Malcolm Fraser's Thatcherite Liberal Party had governed together with smaller bourgeois parties since 1975.

In Australia there was a looks at 5.5% swing to Labour. In West Germany the SPD lost 4.7% - getting 38.2% of the vote as against 42.9% last time - but the ecology narty, the Greens, gained 4.1%, moving from 1.5% to 5.6% and winning representation in parliament for the first time. By all acounts the Green voters will have been mostly young people and left'wingers who. might otherwise have voted SPD.

The basic right/left division of the vote therefore changed very little, but the right-wing CDU/ CSU gained a big victory thanks to the FDP shifting alliances. The CDU/CSU got 48.8% of the vote (44.5% last time), the FDP: 6.9% (10.6% last time), and between them they will have 278 seats in the 498seat parliament. The CDU/CSU/FDP coalition which took over a few months ago when the FDP switched sides in parliament will therefore continue.

The results give little support to some of the theories now going around to explain the Labour Party's poor results in Britain. Is it that Labour is too left wing? The defeated SPD displayed a moderation that even Dennis Healey could not fault.

Is it (as Socialist Worker would argue) that working class political consciousness in Britain has declined so drastically that Labour cannot win votes? By no reckoning is the level of working class consciousness in Australia (where Labour won) higher than in Britain. Is it the Labour Party's internal divisions? The ALP dumped its previous leader just weeks before the general election.

Despite the fact that its actual policies were none bel too left wing, the ALP appeared as a left alternative to Fraser - and it was not tainted by recent experience suggesting that the leftism was simply futile gestures, or by its own leaders denouncing the Labour Left as the worst of the dangers (at least, not to the same extent as in Britain). The ALP has been in office only once since the '40s - and Gough Whitlam's brief administration before he was pushed out in a coup by the Governor-General in 1975 included sufficient reforms to leave Labour a serious reforming image.

For all that, Australian workers will need to look to their own independent struggles to safeguard their interests under the new ALP government.

True, Labour leader Bob Hawke announced after his victory that he was cancelling a £l billion order for a new aircraft carrier from Britain.

But on the eve of the election he also waved aside ALP policy for making Australia a republic reg* - the Governor-General, appointed by Britain's Queen, has power to make and un-make governments, and used it in 1975 against Labour! - and said he would like to see references to nationalisation and socialisation deleted from ALP policy.

The ALP platform calls for 'democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange to the extent necessary to the elimination of exploitation'. 'I would be just as happy with it out of the platform' said Hawke. No wonder when he had gone into the election with incomes policy as a main plank.

The worst condemnation of the SPD in the West German election campaign came when an opinion poll showed that many more voters had confidence in the CDU/CSU • to cure unemployment (50%) than trusted the SPD (21%). The CDU/CSU proposes no answers to unemployment except relying on capitalism to boom again - but the SPD, while making a great noise about being the party that would safeguard workers' jobs, essentially proposes nothing different! ic to the Greens with indignant denials of the CDU/CSU's claim that there would be a 'Red/ Green alliance' The same on nuclear weapons, the other big election Issue. The SPD tried to be critical of the NATO moves to instali Cruise/Pershing missiles without actually opposing them. Thus they laid themselves open to CDU/CSU red-baiting without giving themselves the possibility of rallying support on the basis of a clear anti-nuclear policy. They created cynicism on all sides.

The big issue now, after the election result, is whether the extreme rightwing CSU leadeer, Franz Josef Strauss, will get the job of Foreign Minister and/or Vice Chancellor, displacing FDP leader Genscher. If he does, it will be a warning of heavy-handed right-wing policies to come.

What about the West German left? Large sections of it have disappeared into the Greens, and moved away from a focus on the working class.

But there are left-wing stirrings - still very small and weak - in the

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Martin Thomas

W. Germany and Australia

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