Pre-election Tosh

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 Labor. What Wirral has shown is that Labor have gained the votes of “Middle England”. In the working class, things are a little different. There is increasing cynicism and disillusionment with the Labor Party, especially among young people. Many unemployed people are conscious that Labor, 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 Labor thinks about topics like “young offenders” and drugs. Some Trot groups, realizing the levels of lack of enthusiasm for Labor, are distancing themselves from Labor, whilst long-time cheerleaders for a Labor vote like the Socialist Workers Party have to increasingly qualify their support.

The old tosh about “voting Labor without illusions” looks pretty threadbare these days. Many of the working class no longer have any illusions in Labor, in fact it seems to be the left that do!

People don’t have to be led through (yet another) term of Labor 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 organization and against any form of dissent. If anything, Labor rule will herald a period of increasing authoritarianism, judging by the actions and pronouncements of the Labor 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.

(Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from web.archive.org.)