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Title: Pre-election tosh Date: 1997 Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from [[https://web.archive.org/web/20130513164140/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue45/edit.html][web.archive.org]] Notes: Published in <em>Organise!</em> Issue 45 — Spring 1997. Authors: Anarchist Federation, Anarchist Communist Federation Topics: Organise!, United Kingdom, Elections, the Labour Party, 1990s Published: 2021-10-13 11:09:17Z
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 1st). 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.