THE COLOUR OF LONDON
Guest Post by Noah Tucker
We have been here, or somewhere quite like it, before. Britain’s modernising Labour government presiding over a financial crisis; people’s incomes squeezed by a rise in the cost of living; the government afflicted by its close links to an American administration fighting an unpopular foreign war; and many people worried about the effects of immigration. The voters used the opportunity of the local government elections to humiliate the national government. Labour even lost its London stronghold. This would be the precursor to a Conservative victory in the next general election.
Of course, the specifics were different forty years ago. Harold Wilson had a more engaging personality and was closer to the common man than is Gordon Brown. Nevertheless, when Prime Minister Wilson declared in November 1967, following the devaluation of the Pound Sterling: “It does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket, in your purse or bank has been devalued”, his credibility crumbled. The people’s mistrust was vindicated when inflation rose from about 3% to over 6%.
There followed, in April 1968, the infamous speech by the Conservative Shadow Defence Minister Enoch Powell, in which he quoted Virgil, a poet of the ancient Roman Empire:
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’.
Powell appealed to the white-skinned plebians in the home island of the defunct British Empire. He identified the dark-skinned migrants from the other lands of the ex-empire as the cause of the troubles of the native workers:
…they found themselves made strangers in their own country. They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker…
In case anybody should fail to get the message, Enoch Powell quoted from an alleged conversation with a working class man living in his Wolverhampton constituency:
…In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.
The other leaders of the Conservative Party could not be seen to sanction such inflammatory statements. They did not want rivers of blood to flow, and they did want the additional and relatively inexpensive labour which immigration brought to the British economy. In fact Powell himself, during his period as Conservative Health Minister, had encouraged black workers from the Caribbean to come to Britain in order to fill the low-paid positions in Britain’s National Health Service.
Picture: Enoch Powell delivering his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech
Powell was dismissed from his post. But through this speech, Powell had snatched the political whip from the faltering hand of the Labour Party and put it into the hand of the Conservative Party. As the chronology in the ‘1968 in Europe’ Teaching and Research project recalls:
09.05.1968: Local elections in Britain include race as an unofficial, yet important issue. In polls 74 % claim agreement with Powell while 15 % claim they disagree with him and 11 % are undecided.
The Labour vote collapsed, the Conservative Party was triumphant. The Conservatives went on to win the general election of 1971. While the Labour Party’s fortunes would recover, it would always remain vulnerable, especially during periods of economic hardship, to the loss of a significant number of poor and working class voters who are influenced by racist ideas.
And Enoch Powell had inflicted severe damage, not just to the Labour Party, but to community relations in Britain. One of the main figures in the task of re-constructing ethnic relationships was a London-based Labour politician, Ken Livingstone. In 1981, during the dark days of Thatcherism, Livingstone unexpectedly emerged as the leader of the Greater London Council (GLC). Unable to persuade voters in the capital city to remove Ken Livingstone from his post, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher abolished the GLC in 1986. However, Livingstone’s successes in his position, which included reducing the price of using public transport, and community development through a multi-cultural approach, left a powerful and positive memory.
In 2000, a locally elected political leadership for Britain’s capital city was re-constituted, in the dual form of the Greater London Assembly and the position of Mayor of London. In defiance of Labour Party leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who saw him as too left wing, Livingstone stood for the post of mayor, and won overwhelmingly.
Vindicated in defeat
We have moved on. Nowadays, most people in Britain would not claim agreement with the divisive racist rhetoric of Enoch Powell, and fortunately, there is currently no figure equivalent to Powell within the mainstream political establishment. But, no less than in May 1968, the outcome of the May 2008 election in London hinged largely on the intersection of ethnicity and class, with the scene for failure set by the inability of the UK government to deal with global economic and political problems.
Ken Livingstone, the incumbent Mayor, graced his defeat after eight years in office with a noble untruth:
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get an extra few points that would take us to victory and the fault for that is solely my own. You can’t be mayor for eight years and then if you don’t at third term say it was somebody else’s fault. I accept that responsibility and I regret that I couldn’t take you to victory.”
Other politicians were right to disagree. The BBC reported:
…Justice Secretary Jack Straw said Labour as a whole should shoulder the blame for Mr Livingstone’s loss.
He told BBC News: “I disagree with Ken in one particular only, that we all share the responsibility for the defeat that he suffered yesterday.”
Mr Straw admitted that the row over the 10p tax rate had left some voters “understandably very upset”.
Brian Paddick, the unsuccessful Liberal challenger for the post of London mayor, put it more personally: “Labour suffered because of the failure of Gordon Brown.”
These statements are undeniably correct. In the rest of England and Wales, where the record of Gordon Brown was the matter on which the voters delivered their verdict, the Labour vote fell catastrophically, putting the party into third place, behind the Liberals. In London, where the records of both Prime Minister Brown and Mayor Livingstone were put to the test, it was a much closer contest, and one in which the Labour vote actually increased from its level in the previous contest in 2004.
An examination of the election results in London shows that in every constituency, the vote for Ken Livingstone as mayor was much higher than the vote for the Labour Party candidates for membership of the Greater London Assembly; also, although he lost, the actual number of votes cast for Mr Livingstone was significantly higher than in 2004.
The London election was preceded by a long and intense smear campaign against Livingstone, in which he was accused of having links to Islamic terrorism; making anti-semitic remarks; employing a cabal composed of Trotskyists and financially corrupt individuals; being drunk on duty; and of being an apologist for the murder, by Metropolitan Police officers, of an innocent Brazilian immigrant.
This campaign, led by the capital’s only non-freesheet daily newspaper, the London Evening Standard, rose to a crescendo after the Conservatives adopted a celebrity candidate, the affable Boris Johnson.
As the results demonstrate, the anti-Ken campaign made little dent in Livingstone’s main base of support. Rather, correctly fearing that he would be defeated in a close contest, the social groups to whom Ken Livingstone most appeals turned out in very high numbers; and when they got to the polling stations, most of them also voted for the Labour Party candidates for the Greater London Assembly (GLA). So, although in the rest of the country the Labour vote collapsed, in London it increased. Labour held all its existing GLA seats, and in one London constituency, Brent and Harrow, the Labour Party candidate for the GLA position unseated the incumbent Conservative. Even in defeat, Livingstone proved to be an asset to the Labour Party.
But those who would vote for Boris Johnson, the celebrity candidate of the Conservative Party, turned out in even higher numbers.
Class, race and city
The outcome of the contest between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson illustrates the enduring relevance of some hugely important political factors. Firstly, those of class and ethnicity; it shows also how closely class and ethnicity are related. The people who surged into the polling stations to support Livingstone included the black and other ethnic minorities, most of whom are working class and / or poor; and also the majority among the poor and working class whites who do not hold racist opinions. These groups, who mainly although not exclusively inhabit the inner-city areas, were not put off by the virulent anti-Ken smear campaign- because not only does Ken speak for them, he has also delivered to them.
Surrounding the class and ethnic aspects was an emotional issue: that of identification with London - not merely as the capital of ones country- but London as as ones home city, wherever one was born or ones parents were born; and furthermore as a multicultural city and an international city. Livingstone’s promotion of multiculturalism, during and since his period as leader of the Greater London Council in the 1980s, and his promotion of London on the world stage since becoming Mayor, has helped to transform, and to strengthen among many people, the feeling of identity with the city. This has been assisted by a material factor also- the rising global importance of London as a hub of world finance.
Of course, the social groups which comprised Ken Livingstone’s core base are the same groups which have traditionally been the core base of Labour Party support not just in London but throughout Great Britain. As Gordon Brown is discovering, if a party or a leader becomes perceived by their core base of support as no longer articulating their interests or delivering to them, he, she or it will begin to fail.
Picture: Mayor Livingstone, speaking at a reception for Hindu community activists
Livingstone did deliver. His success in delivering, within the limited range of powers available to the Mayor of London, has involved some byzantine compromises; indeed, as mayor for eight years, he demonstrated in practice his mastery of the mixed success: difficult compromises, ensuring that the deals he made had positive effects outweighing the negatives. But, due to the nature of these covert agreements, he could never ask to be judged on this great ability; neither could he escape responsibility for the negative aspects.
One of Mayor Livingstone’s successes was the tackling of racist behaviour and attitudes within the Metropolitan Police Force. To achieve this, Livingstone needed to win over and shore up the faction among the senior police officers who would get on board with his anti-racist agenda. To simplify, one aspect of the de-facto deal was that the police would receive a rise in funding, allowing a generous increase in the number of policemen and women; this- so long as they were not racist police officers- was no bad thing, and it allowed the mayor to claim credit for the overall reduction in crime which has occurred in the capital. But there was another necessary aspect of the tacit compromise- the mayor had to give his unstinting political support to the police, and particularly to the leader of the fragile faction within the force which was with Livingstone’s agenda- Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
Fortunately for the Conservatives, disaster struck in the aftermath of the 7/7 terrorist bombing in London. Suspected as a potential bomber merely because he was a man who was in the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong colour skin, the Brazilian electrical worker Jean Charles de Menezes was lynched at Stockwell tube station in South London by an armed unit of the Metropolitan Police on the 22nd of July 2005. There then followed a campaign, opportunistically supported by the Conservative Party, to dismiss Sir Ian Blair from his post. The logic of his position required the mayor to excuse the shocking murder and to defend the Commissioner. For this, Ken Livingstone became the subject of hypocritical outrage.
Manufacturing dissent
Another of Livingstone’s mixed successes was his management of the public transport system. Defeated in the struggle to prevent the part-privatisation of the London Underground rail network (known as the tube), he was left with the responsibility of managing the dire consequence- to get to work using the tube, it costs the equivalent of about ten US dollars a day, thus either excluding or exacting a punitive tribute from lower-paid workers. Those who can afford, or have no choice but to use the tube, face their entry to the tunnels with little hope of a comfortable journey and no certainty of punctual arrival.
However, on the buses- used for short journeys by most people, and even for long journeys by the poor, the lower-paid workers, the nightworkers and also the night revellers- it was a different story. Bus services in England as a whole have been declining since their disastrous privatisation and de-regulation by Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1980s, thus forcing people into their cars or into isolation; in the English shires and metropolitan areas excluding London, this dismal process has continued under New Labour. But, in an unacknowledged concession for Ken Livingstone’s acceptance of defeat on the issue of tube privatisation, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair permitted the London Mayor to aquire sufficient powers and funds to roll hundreds of new and improved buses out onto the roads. As transport pundit Christian Wolmar wrote:
Livingstone… concentrated on a deliberate and systematic policy of improving bus services.
New routes have been introduced, the bus fleet has been modernised, notably through the introduction of 300 bendy-buses that are easier to board and leave than the old double deckers, and frequencies have been increased. This has reaped major benefits in terms of passenger numbers.
The buses were cheap for anyone to use, free for children and pensioners; and thanks to a deal with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, half-price for the very poorest Londoners. Under Mayor Livingstone’s reign, bus passenger numbers in the capital increased by 45%.
Livingstone could not be allowed to get away with this achievement. Ken had produced buses, but the media and the Conservatives could manufacture dissent. The unruly behaviour of some of the children who rode to school by bus was blamed on the mayor. Boris Johnson took up cycling- a means of transport for which Ken Livingstone has been the acknowledged champion; Boris rode out as an enthusiastic exponent of the ‘health and safety culture’, hitherto denigrated by the Conservatives. His foppish blond hair flying in the polluted wind of London’s West End, Mr Johnson declared that the ‘bendy-buses’- a key component of the new public transport fleet- were dangerous, their articulated rear-ends a fearful menace to the bicycling fraternity. He proposed to replace them with an updated version of the obsolete but fondly remembered double-decker ‘routemaster’ bus.
Picture: Boris Johnson rides out
Of course, there was an anti-Boris campaign which sought to match the anti-Ken campaign; pointing out that Boris Johnson is a posh ‘hooray Henry’, an Eton educated buffoon, prone to making remarks that insult poor and black people: a man with not a care in the world and unfit to hold a responsible job. And when pressed, Mr Johnson had no idea what it would cost to phase out the bendy-buses and replace them with his proposed new routemasters.
Paradoxically, the negative campaigning led not to a decrease but to an increase in both the number of votes and the share of the vote for both the main candidates. The attacks on Boris Johnson did not deter the kind of people whose votes a Conservative candidate was likely to attract; and these were in any case people who were unlikely to consider voting for Livingstone: mainly the better off white people, who live in the suburbs and therefore identify less with London as a city, who are more likely to travel in a four-wheel-drive car than a bendy-bus, and who would not be affected by a revival of racist policing. Another group also voted for Johnson: a minority among the poor and working class whites who, believing that they are in competition with immigrants for jobs and social resources, are influenced by racist ideas.
Because it was clear that only Johnson or Livingstone could win, and also because the nature of the ballot allowed voters to spread their crosses between different candidates and parties, a good deal of tactical voting took place. From the results it can be reliably surmised that a large number of Liberal Party supporters voted for Johnson in order to get rid of Ken Livingstone and to inflict a defeat on the Labour government of Gordon Brown. This added at least 5% to Johnson’s vote. Of equal significance, the fascist British National Party (BNP) told its racially-motivated supporters to vote for Johnson, and nearly all of them followed this instruction. The BNP’s support was just over 5%. Livingstone lost by 6%. In the end, it was this tactical convergence by the fascists and many of the Liberals which gave Johnson the edge over Livingstone.
The collapsing compromise
Still, as Jack Straw and Brian Paddick observed, the main political factor in the defeat of Ken Livingstone was the perceived failure of the Labour government and specifically Gordon Brown at national level. Reasons mooted for Brown’s failure include his dour personality and his poor tactical judgement; without doubt, he lacks the ruthlessness and the hypnotic charm of his predecessor Tony Blair.
But Prime Minister Brown has a deeper problem. Like Livingstone, Brown is a man who pursues his agenda through compromise, and the main compromise which worked for Gordon Brown during his years as Chancellor of the Exchequer has come unstuck. During the first two terms following the stunning ‘New Labour’ victory in 1997, Chancellor Brown was able to deliver, to nearly everybody, something of what they wanted. Big business, the City of London and the very rich got their privatisation, their de-regulation and their tax cuts, and this attracted huge amounts of international money into the UK. Brown used much of this money to invest in public services, thereby not only improving those services but boosting employment and pay levels; some of the money was also channelled through the state benefits system to raise the incomes of low-paid workers and other poor people. Thus resistance to privatisation and de-regulation was blunted and concern about rising inequality was allayed.
For nearly a decade, the British economy rode high on the back of globalisation and the increasing role of financial services. This was put down to competence, Gordon Brown took political credit for this, and most groups in society drew a dividend, even though the gains were not equally shared. But now the forces of globalisation are delivering higher prices for petrol and food, and the financial services are in crisis.
Perhaps Brown saw this coming. He has certainly sought to create a refuge for himself by advancing the concept of Britishness. But while Ken Livingstone made himself into ‘Mr London’ by bringing the ethnic communities together through multiculturalism, Gordon Brown has been trying to become ‘Mr Britain’ at a time when the components of Britain- England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland- are drawing further and further apart; and while also, Britain’s image as perceived by the people who live in it is badly damaged by the UK’s foreign policy, including the subservient relationship to the USA and the Iraq war.
Can the Labour Party recover? Following the debacle of 1968, Labour had recovered enough by 1974 to be winning general elections. One of the main reasons for this was that the Conservative government of Edward Heath decided to take on the powerful trade unions, and in response the unions used their power to smash the Conservative government.
But, with the complicity of Gordon Brown, most of the industries in which the unions were powerful no longer exist; the remaining trade union members are hamstrung by legislation which, with the complicity of Gordon Brown, makes it very difficult to go on strike effectively; and, with the complicity of Gordon Brown, an ideological atmosphere has developed in which it is impossible for the Labour Party to be associated with strike action.
Nevertheless, even in the darkest days, opportunities emerge, and leaders emerge to make use of those opportunities; as when, in 1981, Ken Livingstone unexpectedly emerged as the leader of the Greater London Council.
sorry louise but there is simply no comparison between the situations in 68 and 08, and imagining that the period in the next few years wil mirror the years after 68 i fear is living in a political cloud cuckoo land.
The labour party of 68 bears no resemblance to the party that exists presently. In 68 the labour party advocated public ownership, it refused to support the US war in vietnam, it was willing to impose high levels of taxation for the rich, the unions continued to enjoy a strong relationship with the party even to the extent they could actually influence labour policies believe it or not (yes unthinkable now i know!) None of this is the case now, and in truth never will be again! (at least not as far as labour is concerned)
Similarly the forces that existed in the early 70s and which witnessed huge battles with the initially at first very right wing heath govt - and which almost culminated in a general strike in 72 - alas also no longer exist! Doubtles there will be resistance from what im sure will be savage attacks from a cameron govt but such resistance wont come from the free market loving labour party that we can be sure of!
Comment by leigh — 7 May, 2008 @ 4:39 am
Ken Livingstone did not “unexpectedly” emerge as the Leader of the GLC in 1981 - apart from those unaware of what was going on.
There was a carefully targeted campaign by the left wing of the Greater London Labour Party in the selection contests for GLC candidates, to get the right candidates selected in the right seats to achieve a left majority in the GLC Labour Group. Livingstone himself moved seats to a less secure one, in order to ensure that his election would mean the turning point to a left majority in the group election and an opportunity for the left to win the leadership. The left calculations were accurate and this duly happened. IIRC too large a swing to Labour and the right would have maintained control.
Comment by Prinkipo Exile — 7 May, 2008 @ 5:50 am
“The London election was preceded by a long and intense smear campaign against Livingstone, in which he was accused of having links to Islamic terrorism; making anti-semitic remarks; employing a cabal composed of Trotskyists and financially corrupt individuals; being drunk on duty; and of being an apologist for the murder, by Metropolitan Police officers, of an innocent Brazilian immigrant.”
which of these is a SMEAR? as far as I can see they are all correct and true. To them can be added the privatisation of the underground, the promotion of scabbing, the destruction of large parts of london and their handing over to the private sector, in the criminal farce that is the 2012 olympics and the enthusiastic embracing of a surveillance and control culture in which the right to protest and free speech no longer exist.
Comment by darren — 7 May, 2008 @ 7:58 am
Not - the way forward.
Norma Turner
The one conclusion we must not make from local elections or the election of Boris Johnson as Mayor of London is that Labour is Better.
Labour is not better. It is Labour’s right-wing policies that have created the space and the taste for the even more reactionary or absurd.
It is Labour who have created a collective fear and hatred of difference. Rather than uniting the working class against the ruling class they have thrown their lot in with the ruling class, with big business and anyone rich. They spend their time convincing us that by feeding the rich pennies will drop from heaven onto the poor. So of course it is logical to get rid of Ken Livingstone who is “common” and put a true blue ruling class snob in power who will really make sure the working class get the pennies. Plus throw in the BNP for good measure, adding violence and hatred to arrogance and stupidity.
Let us not forget that it is Labour that has created more unaccountable structures to bypass the elected representatives in all public services, including the most unaccountable fiefdom of all, Mayor of London. Instead of supporting Ken Livingstone we should have been campaigning against having a Mayor.
Questions are being asked such as “Is Italy returning to fascism?” My question is the same about England - and as far as I am concerned the fault lies with Labour. Rather than participating in the electoral process, which is totally discredited for workers, we should be debating how to re-engage the class in a political process, developing participatory democracy rather than so-called representative democracy, and developing a left alternative to Labour.
Norma Turner
Manchester
Comment by John Nicholson — 7 May, 2008 @ 8:33 am
Leigh @ 1
You seem not to have read the article, in particular the final three paragraphs where the autor explicitly pointed out the differences between 1968 and 2008.
Comment by Calvin — 7 May, 2008 @ 11:23 am
The logic of his position required the mayor to excuse the shocking murder and to defend the Commissioner. For this, Ken Livingstone became the subject of hypocritical outrage. Well, no - Ken Livingstone became the subject of absolutely genuine outrage. This may have been hypocritically echoed by Tories and the Evening Standard, but the left were absolutely correct to attack Livingstone for his shocking defence of extra-judicial murder.
Oh, and it’s ludicrous to speak of ‘manufacturing dissent’ about the bus service. Some bus services have improved, but they’re still too infrequent and consequently over-crowded on many routes, not just in the morning and evening rush-hours but also at weekends. And the bendy-buses make this worse not better, not least because of the ‘cattle-truck’ assumption that most of us should have to stand up built into their design. People liked the Routemasters because they had conducters and they had seats.
Comment by chjh — 7 May, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
A very interesting article. As regards what the left does next, understanding this point is critical: ‘An examination of the election results in London shows that in every constituency, the vote for Ken Livingstone as mayor was much higher than the vote for the Labour Party candidates for membership of the Greater London Assembly; also, although he lost, the actual number of votes cast for Mr Livingstone was significantly higher than in 2004.’
In short, while the left in London has been defeated, it has not, by any stretch of the imagination, been routed. The challenge now is how best to relate to and try influence what is a very large broad left constituency. There are legitimate criticisms to be made of Livingstone, but ultra left dismissal of him misunderstands the significance of his vote and hinders relating to those Labour voters who came out in very large numbers to support him.
Comment by Ger Francis — 7 May, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
Or came out in very large numbers to stop Johnson, which isn’t the same thing.
Comment by Doug — 7 May, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
I agree with Ger Francis on the progressive agenda pursued by Ken and that his vote was up by 200,000 and Labour would not have been humiliated had the votes elsewhere was as good for Labour as it was in London. The non-Labour vote was however not to the left, so any suggestion that there is a mass constituency to the left of Labour outside of East London is simply not true.
The obvious problem Labour faces and this hits us all whether we admit it or not is that the tories managed to gain 500,000 more votes. To reduce this to a subjective problem of Livingstone betrayals is an easy option, but the objective reality is something else. Had there had been a left protest vote that then transferred to Livingstone as a warning, the arguments made by some would hold water. I haven’t seen the transfer figures, but at a guess, I’d say the bulk of Livingstone’s transfers would have come from the Lib Dems and the Greens. Without figures, it is easy to state as Lindsey German’s vote was less than 17,000.
How much did the Standard play? Directly,probably not as much as we’d think. There were those who raised the Standard allegations, but apart from the trivial disagreements on fare dodging, children not being quiet on buses, most of the opposition was to Brown and Labour. (There were others who simply said apolitically we need a change, Livingstone’s been in the job too long). This is not just my own experience.
Noah’s account of lLivingstone’s policies are probably the most accurate that I’ve seen posted here. Including on the police. The Tories, the Mail, the Telegraph all wished to get rid of Ian Blair because he was prepared to tackle racism in the police force. Given that we do not have workers’ militias yet, presumably we do want to see the police reformed. The changes were such that the majority of recruits in 2006 to the Met were from the black community. I don’t think this would have been possible when Ken headed the GLC. When Jean Charles Menenez was shot, Livingstone clearly handled it badly. Were there security questions that justified silence? I doubt it. Whatever the left said, the Tories wanted to get rid of Ian Blair because they didn’t want to challenge the racism of some senior officers. Doesn’t mean Ken handled it correctly and it came back to haunt him. Didn’t mean the Standard told the truth, either. They stated that the Mayor’s office knew on the samr Friday afternoon that Jean Charles was killed that he was an innocent man. It was subsequently shown to be a lie and the Standard had no evidence(after all the Standard seem to have access to any email they want at City Hall). Ken did nothing operationally wrong himself - he didn’t run the police, but he could have dealt with that better.
Another question raised is: can the Labour Party recover? A straight comparison with 1968 is pointless. In the short term, it is best to compare the Tories in 1995 under Major and their demise in 1997. Brown is in that position without the luxury of a stable economy. Whether Labour can recover in London is another matter, even in the short term. The London labour party wards are moribund. MPs and councillors turned up to help Ken and found themselves surrounded by ex-Labour members supporting Ken, in many cases.The active membership is at a low level. However, the parallel with 1968 is true to some extent here as by 1970 Labour membership also hit rock bottom to rise again in the years following (until it fell away when Labour was in government and so on). It is false to uggest Labour cannot win back the working class, the point is how? It has lost the support of both the working class and the middle class because of its failings on services. The working class because they are getting a crap service. The middle class because if they can afford to apy for a private service, why not support the party committed to tax cuts which will make that choice easier? Whether the Compass group increase their support in Labour thinking remains to be seen, but it would be foolish to simply say that the Blair effect on the Labour Party has rendered it terminal or beleive that the working class will move uniformly to the left following this defeat - it won’t happen. The question is whether social democracy can recover traditional support or whether the Tories will retain the constituency they have started to build under Cameron.
Comment by Howard T — 7 May, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
#8 - Doug If they came out in large numbers to stop Johnson, why did they also vote Labour in larger numbers than last time?
Comment by sarah hart — 7 May, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
An interesting article and some equally interesting comments.Much is made by some comments that the GLC Labour vote was lower than the vote for Livingstone. That doesn’t automatically equate to Labour voters or Left voters supporting Livingstone but not Labour, it says quite clearly that in some areas there was a clear anti-Johnson vote just as there was a clear anti-Livingstone vote in the leafy suburbs. This shows quite clearly that London is not an homogenous whole but an amalgam of very different interests that have widened considerably as Labour has moved to the right.
I am no lover of Gordon Brown but his stewardship of the Labour leadership cannot be held totally responsible for the failures of Labour in London and nationally. It is the massive shift to right wing policies under Blair that has built the searing discontent amongst Labour supporters - lets not forget that one of the first signs of this massive rightward shift came in 1997 soon after a fantastic election success. First Blair, with Brown’s support yes, said that New Labour would stick to Tory spending policies and then very soon afterwards cut allowances to single parents. It was less than full year after the ‘97 election that many resignations and expulsions from the party began. Blair and Brown soldiered on regardless of critcism from thir own supporters to bring in policies that even Thatcher had stepped back from.
Several left initiatives started probably the soundest of which being the Socialist Alliance, until its usefulness to some appeared to run out. Later from the anti-war movement up springs Respect only to split ignominously. I just hope that left in general will be able to get back to an element of harmony from the initiative in Manchester later this year - although I do not support the SP Dave Nellist’s description of the 70/30 split in ideas and policies had more mileage than it was given, there is around 70% of issues that the left, from the social democrats to the revolutionaries probably agree on lets get back to fighting for those and leave the other 30% on the shelf for later discussion.
Otherwise we lose totally the younger element who are turning away from politics or worse, being led along a dangerous road by the right and the fascists.
Comment by Pete Brown — 7 May, 2008 @ 5:16 pm
#10 - “#8 - Doug If they came out in large numbers to stop Johnson, why did they also vote Labour in larger numbers than last time?”
Because Johnson was the Tory candidate. To stop him people decided to vote Labour, which they saw as the best way to keep the toff out. Not rocket science.
Comment by Jim — 7 May, 2008 @ 8:18 pm
#12 Jim I am sorry for lacking your clear understanding, but if Londoners voted for Ken Livingstone as opposed to Boris, why did they then also vote Labour for the GLA candidates rather than Left List or Green? As I see it, the GLA candidate vote had nothing to do with Boris. Or is it that they got to the polling station, voted for Ken and looked at their other paper and thought ‘I’m here now, I might as well vote for someone - I know - the Labour Candidate looks good’ I mean I manged to vote Ken and vary my vote on the other papers without understanding any form of science.
Comment by Sarah Hart — 7 May, 2008 @ 8:31 pm
It’s good to see an analysis that recognises that Livingstone’s vote increased compared to 2000 and 2004 - a fact that mainstream journalists seem unaware of.
Jim @12, sorry, your comment doesn’t make sense. The Labour vote in London also increased (unlike any so called “left” alternative). The GLA vote wouldn’t have any connection to a “stop Boris” sentiment, IMHO.
Comment by Graham Day — 8 May, 2008 @ 2:22 am
Thanks Graham - you’re understanding of rocket science seems better than Jim’s
Comment by Sarah Hart — 8 May, 2008 @ 8:13 am
The self-delusions of the remaining socialists left in the Labour Party know no bounds. Who were the Labour candidates who got increased votes and seats on the GLA? Name one who stood on a principled platform that wasn’t New Labour - show me their election material. If not, then more London workers must have seen something positive in New Labour that workers everywhere else in the country didn’t on May 1st.
The GLA vote increased because of the Boris effect - it brought back all the old working class fear/hatred of a resurgent Toryism, voting with traditional pragmatism for the Party/candidate most likely to stop the Tories. Labour Party socialists accuse those of us outside the Labour Party of wasting our time which is hilarious really. Variations on the theme of how to win back the Labour Party from New Labour and the working class back to the Labour Party show a degree of naivity behond comprehension. The Labour Party has existed since the early 1900s - how far has it actually come now we’re in 2008. It - and millions of working class people - are in a worse state than they have been for decades. After 11 years of this and the internal changes in the Labour Party enshrining the neoliberal agenda and closing the door on even raising issues at national conference (let alone the fantasy that a policy passed at conference has actually any significance in the real world), you still have to clutch at the straws that Livingstone’s vote means something. The Labour Party is moribund across huge areas of the country and I could hazard a guess about the average age of most of the remaining activists. To people under 30 New Labour has no reputation for being for workers, young or old - the exact opposite in fact, it’s the party of the rich and the warmongerers. it really is time to leave, comrades, before you embarrass yuorselves.
Comment by Doug — 8 May, 2008 @ 10:51 am
Doug #16 Just a minute
The Labour vote went up in 14 out of the 15 GLA seats.
If you are saying this is due only to Boris, then at the very least you have to admit that traditional Labour supporters recognised that by losing Livingstone, they were losing some real gains - they definitley weren’t voting in defiant support for the removal of 10p tax band.
If the response in London was to counter the fears of Tory resurgence, why didn’t the Labour vote go up in Birmingham, Manchester? To be honest, I wouldn’t discount the anti-Boris vote as part of the explanation, but it is too simplistic to say that was the only reason. By your reckoning, Labour should do well at the next general election becuase people hate the Tories. Well they will do better than last week (probably) but do you seriously believe that Brown offers more progressive policies to the working class than Ken?
On the Labour Party membership and activity - it is the worst ever, and I have left the Labour Party along with many socialists. I also am not going to turn my back on those still in the Labour Party who believe it can be transformed, won back etc. If anyone ever beleieved that the labour Party could be won for the working class - even in 1945 - they would have been deluded. It would also be false to suggest that Labour will never recover. Or that the left couldn’t be influential again inside.
Those outside the Labour Party - and I include myself here - have to address the question as to why every attempt to found a mass party to the left of Labour has failed in its infancy. This is always reduced to being a question of subjectivity (programme, propaganda etc.) If that were the case, someone, somewhere would have broken through with one of the left varieties. Perhaps more objective analysis is needed based on the ability of the ruling class being able to use the Labour Party as an instrument of rule whilst perpetuating the concept of social democracy.
OK the Green Party are a serious alternative, but if we look at the vote to the left of Labour in London (with the notable exception of East London) the vote was tiny.
Comment by Howard T — 8 May, 2008 @ 11:23 am
All commentators seem to have missed the collapse of the UKIP vote from 2004 to 2008.
All commentators on this thread do not seem to be making much comparison with the 2004 resuults, which saw Ken Livingstone win in some GLA seats where conservatives were elected to the Assembly. Not quite like that this time.
Some people need to be reminded that London is the most right-wing of the big cities by a long way. There are about 20 Tory MPs in London. Look around the country, for places with more than 2 MPs; you won’t find 5 Tories in the 2005 Parliament.
Comment by Alan Ji — 8 May, 2008 @ 10:22 pm
While Ken’s Guardian article is very much a restatement of the strategic thinking that guided his administration, and would have benefited from some critical reflection on the causes for his defeat, his declaration that he intends to stay active in politics is good news.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/09/livingstone.boris
Comment by Ger Francis — 9 May, 2008 @ 8:59 am
Livingstone’s article boasts about his having the support from most of big business and goes on to bemoan the fact that the Lib Dems shunned this ‘progressive alliance’. He hopes to see them on board soon.
This is not looking good for those who refused to cricise ‘Ken’.
Comment by stuart — 9 May, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
I am not aware of anybody involved in Respect who adopted a position of ‘refusing’ to criticise Ken. GG made our stance very clear on the Respect NC way before the split when the debate on the Mayoral contest first opened up: while there are legitimate criticisms to be made of Ken, it is ultra left nonsense to describe him as some New Labour clone. Therefore in this election it was essential to place ourselves as unconditionally, but not uncritically, with him against Johnson. We enacted that position. The SWP/Left List played lip service to it. In the process they isolated themselves even further from relating to that progressive constituency which tuned out in very large numbers to back someone they regarded as a left wing candidate.
There is a need to build on the alliances that came together in the Mayoral campaign and create a new pole of attraction for those who want to oppose the Tory administration. If this happens it is inevitable there will be different political pressures at work. Respect should be part of any such regrouping and apply its pressure firmly from the left.
I think Ken Livingstone has an important role to play in forging a broad left opposition in London and I hope he takes up that challenge. Stuart obviously thinks he has no progressive role to play. Fine. With that view you will get a sympathetic hearing from John Rees, Lindsey German, and the rest of them, but in terms of developing a strategy that can reach out beyond a very small far left ghetto, not much else.
Comment by Ger Francis — 9 May, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
The fight back is beginning
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=40256255076
Comment by Tinnus Bummus — 10 May, 2008 @ 9:23 am
There is a by-election in Forest ward Waltham Forest in the near future, as a LibDem councillor has resigned. The ward is 50% white, 50% others, 20%+ muslim.
Respect got 20% (yes, 20%!) here in 2004, but did not contest it in 2006 due to focussing on Newham and Tower Hamlets.
We do not know the voting last week, but we do know that Respect got 3.2%, double the vote of Left List.
Who will be contesting it?
Comment by Prinkipo Exile — 10 May, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
sorry meant to say
Respect got 3.2%, double the vote of Left List … in the constituency which this is part of in the London wide list vote.
Comment by Prinkipo Exile — 10 May, 2008 @ 2:27 pm