Martin Thomas examines the entrails What the results mean for Labour '83

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THE June 1983 general election has marked the end of a chapter in British politics.

Since 1945-50 the political stock-in-trade of the labour movement has essentially been a promise to complete the work of the Labour government of that period. What has passed for socialism has been state-capitalist nationalisation plus welfare services.

The 1945-50 government did the essential groundwork of that programme: since then the labour movement has been promising to bring that programme up to the ideal form in which it was originally envisaged, in contrast to its grubby, humdrum reality.

The inadequacies of such politics have now been starkly exposed.

'1945 socialism' has been a decaying force in the working class for many, many years. Cynicism and disillusionment about Labour's promises has increased. Repeatedly pundits have interpreted this trend as 'the decline of working class politics'. In truth it is more a matter of the increasing irrelevance of the avowedly non-class, 'national interest' politics offered to the working class by official Labour leaders.

Declining

The big industrial struggles of the early 1970s, and the tremendous class solidarity for the health workers just last year, show that working class struggle, at least in its basic economic form, is far from a declining force in society. And for all the SDP's talk about new politics, the "real new force in British politics recently has been not the Alliance's rehash of right wing Labourism but the growing new Labour Left.

But at this election, two factors turned. longstanding cynicism and disillusionment into a substantial swing away from Labour. Firstly, the depth of Britain's economic and social crisis led working class voters to look for new answers. Vague talk from Labour leaders about 'tried and tested' methods of Keynesian reflation was not good enough. Labour came across as having good intentions, but only waffle and pious promises at the centre of its policy.

To win support for a socialist programme of common ownership and workers' control in the decisive sectors of industry and finance would not have been easy. Radical new ideas need strong enthusiastic argument to blaze the trail for them, and momentous ' experiences to shake people's prejudices.

But the fact that Labour centred its programme on borrowing from the capitalists, and the claim that such a policy could heal the economic crisis without struggle or trouble, made Labour's promises just not credible.

Alliance Secondly, the existence of the Alliance as an apparently viable, apparently: new, anti-Tory option meant that Labour did not automatically get the anti-Tory vote.

The anti-Tory vote actually increased. The Tories got 700,000 votes fewer than in 1979. But the Tories' support did hold up pretty well: the decisive factors behind this were the Falklands war and the failure of the union leaders adequately to challenge Thatcher in struggle. The Tories have managed to retain the image of a successful, decisive, resolute government, whose policies may be painful but will do good in the end.

Undoubtedly the election result shows some demoralisation and loss of self-confidence among the working class; but if this analysis is correct, it was not a positive turn to the Right by the electorate.

The main facts about the voting were as follows. The Tories got 43.4% of the vote, Labour 28.2%, the Alliance 25.9% and others 2.5% (figures for Britain, not including Northern Ireland).

Lost

Compared to 1979, Labour lost about 10% of the electorate, the Alliance gained about 12%.

In absolute terms this shift from Labour to the Alliance was fairly uniform across the country. In the North-West, Labour lost 7%, the Alliance gained 11%. In the South East, Labour lost 11%, the Alliance gained 11%. Most other areas were somewhere in between.

If Labour lost roughly the same proportion of the electorate, i.e. roughly the same «The existence of the Alliance meant that the anti-Tory vote did not automatically go to Labour...

UNDOUBNEDLY the Liberal/ SDP Alliance did well in the election. But what are their prospects?

Not good. The SDP is now down to six MPs. But it is the sort of party that can only exist as a Parliamentary force. It does not have dedicated, ideologically committed activists, not even to the . extent that the Liberal Party has. - The careerists who streamed into the SDP when it was founded will now stream out again. And the process may be accelerated by new tensions between the Liberals and SDP.

Thus the Liberals will be left with nothing but a good one-off election result _ better, but only just better, than their February 1974 success.

number of voters, everywhere, we did not of course lose the same proportion of the Labour vote. We lost 40% of the (small) Labour vote in the South-East outside London, and 14% of the (relatively big) Labour vote in the North-West.

Of those who voted Labour in 1979, 63% voted Labour this time, 7% voted Tory, 7% did not vote and 22% voted Alliance. These figures for Labour voters going Tory or abstaining are not vastly different from the numbers of Tory or Liberal voters switching or abstaining.

Working-class Labour voters went Alliance just as much as middle-class ones. Among semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers, Labour lost 11% of the vote and the Alliance gained 14%; among trade unionists, Labour lost 14% and the Alliance gained 12%.

Abstentions

Although abstentions cannot be identified as a major overall reason for the decline in the Labour vote, they were very important among first-time voters. 32% of these abstained.

A whole string of factors can whole period up to the election essentially thanks to the support of the trade union bureaucracies. The fight for accountability and democracy has to be taken into the unions. At the same time the policy debates have to be reopened.

Our prospects are not bleak. Despite everything, in terms of activism at grass roots the Labour campaign was good. Many new recruits have been or can soon be brought into the Labour Party. In the unions, serious left advances have recently been scored in the NUR, UCW, and POEU.

There is an active minority which can lead the way for mobilising against the Tories now on the streets and on the picket lines. Objective pressures will be lending weight to that minority's arguments. Trade unions and Labour councils can no longer go for the line of to 32% of first-time voters abstained 'hanging on until there is a Labour government'. They have to fight or go under.

The struggle for this mobilisation can be taken up immediately with a campaign for the labour movement to break collaboration with the Tories -withdrawing from the NEDC and nationalised industry boards and obstructing the Tories' work in Parliament.

The Left must be organised for a fight for democracy in the trade unions, as it was organised before to win the victories in the Labour Party. Labour Party workplace branches will be central in linking political and industrial concerns.

Inside both wings of tbe labour movement, a left wing must be developed that can pursue the necessary fight for new policies. That is the crucial role of the Socialist Organiser Alliance.

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Peoples march for jobs

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