LABOUR suffered a net loss of 331 seats in local elections in England and Wales on 1 May. It also lost out to Tory right winger Boris Johnson in the ballot for London Mayor and to the Tories in the London Assembly elections.
The basic fact about these elections is that the working class rose up against the Labour Party, and refused to vote for it. In the local elections the turnout was 35 per cent, with 65 per cent refusing to vote, while in the Mayoral and Assembly elections the turnout was 45 per cent.
In fact, this rebellion, a revolutionary development, was long overdue, after eleven years of Blair- Brown rule, made up of five imperialist wars, and a concerted effort to smash the NHS and state education and privatise everything.
State aid for the banks and the abolition of the 10p lower rate of income tax for the poorest workers was the last straw!
The Tories, therefore, won these elections by default. This is why the Tory party is not calling for an immediate general election.
They are prepared to allow Brown to stay in office for another two years, because they want him to take all of the nasty, wage-cutting, pension-busting and job-smashing decisions that will be required as the world crisis of the capitalist system deepens.
If the Tories were to be returned to office tomorrow they would be swept away almost at once.
The plan is to let Brown do the dirty work for the bankers and the bosses, until the Tories feel the time is right to step back into government.
Meanwhile, Brown is set to continue with his present strategy, that everything must be subordinated to the survival of the banks and the bosses, which means providing billions for the banks and raising the cash by speeding up the privatisation of the NHS and education, and slashing wages and pensions as the cost of living rockets.
The trade unions will not be able to go along with this policy, and will be forced to fight it, meaning that these irreconcilable class forces will split the Labour Party, paving the way for millions of workers to take strike action to remove the Brown government.
The WRP and the News Line urges workers to demand that the trade unions take action to bring down the Brown government, so that it falls to the left, creating the conditions to go forward to a workers government that will bring in socialism, and does not fall to the right, to a Tory or national government.
We urge all workers to join the WRP and build the revolutionary leadership that the working class must have to defend its historic gains and basic rights, and to go forward to workers’ power and socialism, getting rid of the bankrupt and backward capitalist system.
Revisionists will say that this is a risky business seeking to change horses in mid-stream.
Trotsky answered them in 1926 during the general strike, when the issue of leadership came to the fore as the Labour leaders got ready to betray the struggle.
He said of the general strike and its prospects for success: ‘But it must be clearly recognised that such success is possible only to the extent that the British working class, in the process of the development and the sharpening of the general strike, realises the need to change its leadership, and measures up to that task.
‘There is an American proverb which says that you cannot change horses in mid-stream. But this practical wisdom is true only within certain limits. The stream of revolution has never been crossed on the horse of reformism, and the class that has entered the struggle under opportunist leadership will be compelled to change it under enemy fire.’ (Trotsky’s Writings on Britain Vol 2 Problems of the British Labour Movement, page 145)
The British workers are going into a revolutionary struggle, led by reformist trade union leaders, against a Labour government that is seeking to impose the whole burden of the crisis of capitalism onto their backs, on behalf of the bankers and the bosses.
To win this struggle the working class must cast aside its reformist misleaders and replace them with the revolutionary leadership of the WRP.
