💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anarchist-communist-federation-pre-election-tosh.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:39:40. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Pre-election tosh Author: Anarchist Communist Federation Date: 1997 Language: en Topics: Elections, United Kingdom, 1990s, Organise!, the Labour Party Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130513164140/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue45/edit.html Notes: Published in Organise! Issue 45 — Spring 1997.
This latest edition comes out in what is the run-up to a General
Election (if Major hasn’t gone for an earlier date than May 1^(st)). On
the basis of the Wirral by-election results we can assume a majority for
Labour. What Wirral has shown is that Labour have gained the votes of
“Middle England”. In the working class, things are a little different.
There is increasing cynicism and disillusionment with the Labour Party,
especially among young people. Many unemployed people are conscious that
Labour, if elected, will be just as vicious, if not more so , than the
Tories, forcing them into ill-paid workfare and training schemes. Young
people, never in work or in shitty jobs, know what Labour thinks about
topics like “young offenders” and drugs. Some Trot groups, realising the
levels of lack of enthusiasm for Labour, are distancing themselves from
Labour, whilst long-time cheerleaders for a Labour vote like the
Socialist Workers Party have to increasingly qualify their support.
The old tosh about “voting Labour without illusions” looks pretty
threadbare these days. Many of the working class no longer have any
illusions in Labour, in fact it seems to be the left that do!
People don’t have to be led through (yet another) term of Labour
government to make them see what many already know. Blair and his chums
“mean business” as they themselves say. This means that they will carry
on where the Tories left off — with further attacks on the unemployed,
on workplace organisation and against any form of dissent. If anything,
Labour rule will herald a period of increasing authoritarianism, judging
by the actions and pronouncements of the Labour leadership.
What we as Anarchist Communists must do is help prepare the working
class in the factories and offices, estates and dole queues, on the
industrial, social and environmental fronts, to resist these coming
attractions.