The state and local government
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At its 2nd Special National Congress in December 2009 – in its resolution on ‘Local Government and Cooperative Governance’ – the SACP also resolved to engage with its Alliance partners and government to ensure that: While ANC and Alliance structures should provide strategic and policy oversight over councillors and officials, and monitor their performance, they should not micro-manage municipalities, and intervene in narrow or factionalist terms to decide on appointment of officials and decisions about tenders.835 In addition, the latter resolution resolved to:
In South Africa – with its very different history and present political conjuncture – in the 2006 local elections the African National Congress polled 17,466,948 votes (66.34 per of the total votes cast).842 Conversely, the Labour Party in the May 2010 English local elections only obtained an estimated 28 per cent of the total votes cast (see Chapter 11). Yet in South Africa the state has also intervened on behalf of monopoly capital and introduced local government structures and internal management arrangements, which are similar to those in Britain. The SACP with 96,000 members had one member approximately for every 142 adults in 2008.843 Around a third of the ANC’s MPs and ministers, moreover, are now members of the SACP and COSATU – whose key leaders are all also in the SACP; and COSATU’s 1.8 million members and its disciplined core of activists make it the key force in pulling out the ANC vote at election time.844 Indeed, the Secretary-General of South Africa’s mass communist party (Dr. Blade Nzimande) is a Minister in Zuma’s new Ministry of Higher Education and Training.845 Conversely, the British Labour Party in England with an estimated 135,000 members in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (where Labour now organises but does not contest elections) in 2008 only had approximately one Labour Party member for every 369 adults.846 The SACP’s membership density is, therefore, over two and a half times greater than that of the British Labour Party when the difference in the size of the population they both cover is taken into account. Hence, although the left opposition in South Africa is far more hegemonic than in Britain, South Africa still has local government structures and internal management arrangements, which replicate those in Britain. Thus Gramsci’s third stage in the development of hegemony – that is when members of a class, as Trent Brown puts it ‘become aware that their interests need to be extended beyond what they can do within the context of their own particular class’847 – is still an ‘aspiration’. For, as also noted above by the SACP in 2008 ‘notwithstanding important advances, monopoly capital’ in South Africa still ‘has…a relative hegemony over the broad direction’ of the ‘post-apartheid state and society’.848 Moreover, as argued in Chapter 3, revolutionary change only occurs when the historic bloc constructed by the capitalist class disintegrates and is replaced by a new historic bloc built up by the working class. Nevertheless, as Trent Brown also states, like Lenin, Gramsci maintained that the passage of a class ‘from self-interested reformism to national hegemony could occur most effectively via the political party….and through a process of debate and struggle, one ideology, or a unified combination thereof, will emerge representing the allied classes’.849 This is why the SACP in the present South African political conjuncture sees the demands it makes in ‘the struggle for working class hegemony’ as ‘not an alternative to the multiclass character’ of its ‘national democratic struggle’: but as ‘the precondition for its successful advance, consolidation and defence’.850 Chapter Eleven New Labour’s political, ideological, organisational and financial crises The first section of this Chapter analyses the results of the local council elections in England and Wales held on 1 May 2008.851 The second section discusses the results of the last London Mayoral/Assembly elections) also held on 1 May 2008. The third and fourth sections then examine the results of the local elections last held in Scotland on 3 May 2007 and in Wales on 1 May 2008 in more detail. The fifth and sixth sections focus on the results of the local government elections in England on 4 June 2009 and 6 May 2010; and the seventh section considers the overall balance of political power in English, Welsh and Scottish local government. The eighth section shows how New Labour’s political crisis in local government was compounded by its worst ever defeat at the European elections held on 4 June 2009; the ninth section analyses New Labour’s 2010 general election defeat; and the tenth section considers New Labour’s crisis of policy and purpose, falling membership and debt. Table 11.1: Estimated national equivalent share of vote at local elections, 1979/2010: England, Scotland and Wales
Local elections in 1979, 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010 were held on same day as a general election, and in these years general election vote shares are shown in bold. Source: House of Commons Library, 2010b, p. 6 The local elections in England and Wales on 1 May 2008 Under the pre-April 2009 structure and boundaries there were 446 local councils in England, Wales and Scotland (see Table 6.1). However, as Table 11.2 shows, only 159 councils held elections on 1 May 2008. No elections were held for the London boroughs and 32 unitary authorities in Scotland. Whole council elections were held for each of the 22 unitary authorities in Wales. In England only 137 out of 386 councils held elections. Seven were for non-metropolitan district councils, which elect half of the council every two years852; 71 were for non-metropolitan district councils853; 36 were for metropolitan district councils854; 19 were for unitary authorities, which were only electing a third of their members855; and four were for new unitary authorities electing whole shadow executives.856 New Labour, as Table 11.2 shows, won 2,365 seats in the local elections held in England and Wales outside London: but had a net loss of 334 councillors and nine councils – six in Wales mainly in the south Wales valley heartlands (Merthyr Tydfil, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen, Caerphilly, Newport and Flintshire) and three in England (Hartlepool, Reading, Nuneaton and Bedworth). Conversely, the Conservatives won 3,155 seats and had a net gain of 257 councillors and 12 councils – one in Wales (Vale of Glamorgan) and 11 in England (Basingstoke and Dean, Bury, Harlow, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Elmbridge, Maidstone, North Tyneside, Solihull, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Redditch, Rossendale and Southampton). The Liberal Democrats won 1,804 seats and had a net gain of 33 councillors and one council (Sheffield). Plaid Cymru won 205 seats and had a net gain of 31 councillors but lost overall control of Gwynedd council. The Greens won 47 seats and had a net gain of five councillors. The fascist BNP gained 13 new councillors (two in Nuneaton and Bedworth, two in Rotherham, two in Amber Valley, three in Stoke-on-Trent, one in Thurrock, one in Three Rivers, one in Pendle and one in Calderdale): but – as they lost three seats (two in Epping Forest and one in Kirklees) – their net gain was 10.857 Respect Renewal gained one new councillor in the Birmingham City Council Sparkbrook ward; one Socialist Alternative councillor was re-elected to Coventry City Council’s St Michael’s ward; and the Wales Communist Party’s Hirwaun and Penderyn Community Council candidate was elected unopposed. The total vote for the non-Green Party Left’s 67 candidates, as Appendix 9 shows, was 22,300. Respect/Left List candidates stood in 26 wards (including Millwall in Tower Hamlets London where there was a by-election) and received a total of 6,198 votes. The average Left List vote was 238 – though none were elected – ranging from 1089 in the Sheffield Burngreave ward to 27 in the Newcastle Elswick ward: and they had substantial votes in the Preston Town Centre ward (777) and Birmingham Handsworth ward (711). Respect Renewal stood in 12 wards (including Millwall and Weavers in Tower Hamlets where there were by-elections) and received a total of 9,849 votes. Their average vote – 821 – was much higher than for the Left List: ranging from 3,032 in the Birmingham Sparkbrook ward, where their candidate was elected, to 153 in the Manchester Moss Side ward. Respect Renewal’s votes in the Birmingham Springfield (1920), Aston (1406) and Nechells (781) wards were also impressive, as was their vote in the Tower Hamlets Weavers ward (637). Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Party stood in 15 wards and received a total of 5,300 votes. Their average vote of 553 ranged from 1,643 – for their re-elected candidate in Coventry St Michael’s ward – to 88 in the Nuneaton and Bedworth Camphill ward where the BNP was elected. In the Kirklees Crossland Moor and Netherton ward their candidate standing for the Save Huddersfield NHS Party received 936 votes. The Communist Party of Britain contested 14 wards and got a total of 953 votes, of which 817 were received by the Wales Communist Party’s 11 candidates. Their average vote – though the one successful candidate was elected unopposed to Hirwaun and Penderyn Community Council – was only 73: ranging from 157 in the Cardiff Splott ward to 24 in the Rhondda Cynon Taf Graig ward. Only three wards (Sefton Church, Sefton Linacre and Newcastle Walker) in England were contested. In Wales the Wales CP stood in eight local authority wards (Cardiff Splott, Grangetown and Adamstown; Rhondda Cynon Taf Hirwaun and Graig; Caerphilly Morgan Jones, Swansea Castle; and Merthyr Tydfil Vaynor) and three community councils (Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Hirwaun and Penderyn).858 Community/parish councils are a neglected arena for the Left: but not for the fascist BNP.859 Table 11.2: Local election results 1 May 2008
Source: BBC News (2008); Respect, 7 May 2008, http://www.respectrenewal.org/index.php; Coventry City Council, ‘Local election results – 2008’ The Greater London Assembly and mayoral elections on 1 May 2008 Overall turnout in the 2008 and 2009 local government elections was 36 and 35 per cent respectively, whereas in the 2008 London Mayoral, Assembly constituency and Assembly list elections it was 45 per cent, which was eight and nine per cent higher respectively than in the local elections. The turnout for the GLA and mayoral elections was also eight per cent higher than the 37 per cent in 2004 and 11 per cent higher than the 34 per cent in 2000.860 Labour’s mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone, as Table 11.3 shows, received 893,877 first choice votes (208,329 more than in 2004, as Table 11.4 shows, and 36.4 per cent of the total votes cast). Ken Livingstone’s share of the first choice votes was therefore 12.4 per cent more than Labour’s 24 per cent share of the local government elections vote. He also received 1,028,966 votes (261,818 more than in 2004) and 46.8 per cent (5.7 per cent more than in 2004) of the vote after second choice votes were included. The winning Conservative candidate Boris Johnson received 1,168,738 votes (53.2 per cent, which was 6.9 per cent more than Ken Livingstone and 20.3 per cent more than the Conservative candidate Steve Norris in 2004). The Conservatives had 36.7 per cent of the Assembly Constituency vote and New Labour candidates took a 27.5 per cent share up from 24.7 per cent in 2004, which was 3.5 per cent higher than Labour’s 24 per cent share of the local government elections vote. In the Assembly London-wide election, the Conservatives gained the highest share of the vote in the list election with almost 35 per cent of the total, an increase from 28.5 per cent in 2004. New Labour came second with 28 per cent, up from 25 per cent in 2004 – which was four per cent higher than Labour’s 24 per cent share of the local government elections vote – followed by Liberal Democrats with 11 per cent down from 17 per cent in 2004. The list elections, as Table 11.5 shows, added three more Conservative and two additional New Labour members to the Assembly as well as three Liberal Democrats, two Greens and one fascist British National Party (BNP). Thus despite the campaigning by Hope not Hate and Searchlight, the fascist BNP secured 5.4 per cent of the vote, up from 4.8 per cent in 2004. The decline in the share of the Liberal Democrat vote (11.4 per cent down from 17 per cent in 2004) and UK Independence Party vote (1.9 per cent down from 8.4 per cent in 2004) – and the Socialist Workers Party’s Respect/Left List standing in the mayoral election – also contributed to both the defeat of Ken Livingstone and the election of the fascist BNP Assembly member. Yüklə 5,87 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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