UK: an election everyone lost

No party has an absolute majority: Conservatives gained 306 seats: Labour 258 and the Liberals 57. Never has hatred of politicians as a 'class' been so strong. It has been a 13-year government of perpetual warmongering, attacks on trade union rights, civil liberties and pensions, of hospital cuts and surreptitious privatisations ending up with unparalleled economic disaster. None of the parliamentary opposition parties [the future coalition government] had any alternative. On the contrary, they would have gone further. Despite New Labour's gross obsequiousness to big business, the capitalists used their control over the press and television to plug individual conservatives with interviews and chat shows etc. and to taunt and abuse Brown and the party they had backed. You can buy joke postcards with Brown's picture - a sarcastic tribute previously only granted to Saddam Hussein. Scandals over MPs' fraudulent expenses [which cost the taxpayer perhaps £2 per person] were used to deflect attention from the banking and corporate scandal which has landed every man, woman and child with a debt of some £14,500. Bailouts intended to get the financial sector to lend have instead been spent on individual bonuses [some of them greater than the combined cost of the MPs' expenses]. Underlying the financial crisis is a near-collapse in the 'real' economy - an inevitable consequence of the tendency for the general rate of profit to fall. For generations GDP growth was much slower than elsewhere. By the 1980s it was actually falling. This is what lay behind Thatcher's shock -and-awe destruction of industry and the deregulation of banking and services [which now account for 80% of British jobs]: a policy enthusiastically continued by Blair and Brown. At this moment markets are fluctuating dangerously at the prospect of a coalition which will not pay off the budget deficit quickly enough.

In times propitious to growth (e.g. 1820- 1947) government debt has been 4 times as high as now, but, today, a debt of 60% of GDP means looming catastrophe. The Governor of the Bank of England had already warned: "whoever wins this election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be."

Ten percent of new MPs, Liberal and Tory, come directly from 'financial services'. Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lloyds, Deutsche Bank now have their own direct representatives in the future government. The Conservatives propose an immediate emergency £6billion cuts budget. This was, of course, vigorously opposed by Labour and the Liberals as they "would destroy any chance we would have of having a sustainable recovery." During the election campaign, the Liberals' opinion-poll ratings took them temporarily above the Tories after Liberal speeches pointing out how the "banks have lurched from the irresponsible, binge-lending which caused the crisis, to the equally senseless hoarding of capital, which is now destroying jobs and suffocating enterprise".

Such 'irresponsible' talk caused dangerous fluctuations in international markets and talk of downgrading the UK sovereign credit rating in the event of a Lib/Lab pact. For this reason as well as the sheer parliamentary mathematics, it is now apparent that they have chosen to join the Tories. Their tone soon changed once the real prospect of their joining a government came into view. Indeed they have boasted with indecent fervour - in a democracy - of the 'unpopular decisions' local councils run jointly by Tories and Liberal Democrats have made, initiating mass redundancies and 'savage cuts'. Indeed so vehement were their calls for cuts - on other occasions - that the Tories themselves called their would-be chancellor, Vince Cable "the mad axeman" - a role he has now said he is glad to play. In secret negotiations they were able to bargain away this hypothetical delay for the sake of a referendum on a new voting system - which , when it comes, the conservatives have sworn to oppose (Under present arrangements, they achieved 23% of the popular vote for 9% of the seats).

In the UK, the winner-gets-all voting system has always favoured 'adversarial' politics: a clear division into a governing party and an 'official' opposition. Actual class-struggle came first; the formation of political parties followed. The Civil War Cavaliers vs. Roundheads were the basis of the later Tories/Conservatives vs. Whigs/Liberals. And it has been class-struggle which mark their end. It is just 100 years since the 1910 election produced a (Tory/Liberal) 'hung parliament' which marked the beginning of what became known as the "Strange Death of Liberal England" as the old Liberal party disintegrated in face of violent demonstrations for votes for women, the open threat of statist military insurrection against home-rule for Ireland, and especially enormous working class unrest and call-to-arms and the rise of the Labour Party. During the 20th century, and especially under the influence of the Russian revolution, the new balance of class-forces effectively reduced political representation to a simple formula: the capitalists had their party and the workers theirs. For socialists this meant that the problem was reduced to how to enable the working class to gain control of its own party and out of the hands of the traitors, careerists and class enemies who always succeeded in smothering it.

For a century the agents of big business and foreign governments remained nevertheless unable to remove the party's deep link with the trade unions or its sole political aim [Clause 4] to bring about socialism.

The stages of the decline and degeneration of the Labour Party were set by its inability to measure up to the successive failures of an ailing capitalism to meet the rising aspirations of the population, which ended up with the expulsion of the Militant and other socialists [It was at that time that some of the rightwing broke off to form a new party which later merged with the rump of Liberals to form the Liberal-Democrats - the party now moving into coalition with the Conservatives].

My own branch was a 'moderate' 'middle-of-the-road' party in a labour constituency. We still declared for a 'United Socialist States of Europe' as opposed to the capitalist European Common Market or British Chauvinism. We hosted and looked after miners during their year-long strike. Candidates for the council were called for: to stand as substitutes for councillors who were removed and sometimes jailed - and asked to swear they would uphold the policy of setting a budget to meet the needs of the citizens of our borough - even if this meant breaking the law. Even during its most rightwing phases, strikers, victims of racial discrimination etc. were invited to our meetings to state their case, and a collection was made on their behalf.

As this movement subsided, councillors would still take no personal responsibility for drawing up an unfair budget and sent the branches 100+ page budget documents demanding that the members decide which old peoples' homes or pre-school play group etc. to cut. It came close to physical fights between blue-collar and white-collar workers as to which one of them our branch should agree to sack first!

In its time of need, capitalism - especially in a democracy - requires good liars who can work well with the trained liars of the advertising business, TV people and newspaper Moguls. It needs a nominally workers' party controlled by its [ultimately dispensable] spokesmen for just such a time until they are found out. Tony Blair was their perfect choice. He was kept for just so long as he could keep up the lies and then ditched. If he could be said to have successfully destroyed the Labour Party - its aims and constitution [and whistled up an undeclared 'New Labour' party] - then Brown could be said to have finished the job - and even to have threatened to undermine the very concept of political parties - with his misbegotten attempt to form a "government of all the talents" together with generals, business chiefs and even Tories. Among his qualities as a political leader, Brown's gifts as a liar were always minimal. It is significant that his opinion-poll ratings rose for a time as soon as he hinted at the class issues which his position as New labour leader prevented him from pursuing. By the end of the campaign, it was obvious he could stand the strain no longer. New Labour could muster no volunteers. Labour canvassers at my door could not utter a word. They whispered anembarrassed apology, left a leaflet and literally ran off.

Our rulers regard the political game much as Walpole in the 18th century looked at religion: strictly "for the servants". The labour ex-ministers who were recently caught on film boasting that they were "like a cab for hire", who could influence government policy on behalf of clients - for £5000 a day, also made great play of their intimate relationships with conservative ministers. Big business has had money in both camps, of course - but the big money is with the Lib/Tories. The Labour Party may actually be technically bankrupt by now.

It is the temporary helplessness of the situation for the working class: their lack of a political voice: the momentary decline in class-consciousness which has allowed the Liberals to haunt the stage. There was not one single party putting forward any meaningful alternative programme. The various manifestos of the tiny socialist groups standing amounted to demands for a series of reforms, without any end-purpose or means of carrying them out or any end-goal, except - sometimes - a distant hoped-for prospect - but no suggestions of the steps required to get there: any clear role for the working class they were hoping to reach. In any case, the overwhelming instinct of class-conscious workers was to 'close your eyes, hold your nose and vote Labour'. The tiny proportion of votes for the left dropped even below the 7% or so maximum from the last election.

Now, as I write, Brown looks relieved as he has gone to see the Queen to resign and hand over government. In a flash his deputy, John Preecott is rediscovering his old self as a permanent protester. He declares he's going to fight and fight.

Meanwhile Cameron struts to the microphone with repeated phrases about "...difficult decisions....Real change is not what government can do......a more responsible society here in Britain. One where we don't just ask whatare my entitlements, but what are my responsibilities...."

Here in the Tory borough where I now live, these words will send a shiver down the spines of thousands of the old, the sick, the jobless and those on the housing waiting list. Services are already being removed and the helpless left to their own devices in a deliberate strategy to take advantage of the crisis to cut social expenditure. The Labour Party may now begin to recover some of its life and links to the real struggle. The labour movement is in any case due for a reawakening. The mood right now is one of accident-trauma turning to helpless anger - as if a war had just been declared. It has. The struggle goes on as before, but with added bitterness and determination to win - particularly in face of the coming attacks.

Julian Silverman is teacher, musician and political activist, currently involved in the campaign to protect council services in Barnet.