General Election & World Cup Nothing could have been more timely than for Harold Wilson to call the General Election during the World Cup frenzy that is likely to develop up to June 18th. No one knows better than he how to exploit the national obsession, or cast crumbs of camaraderie to the party workers by a mention of last night's match. In politics as in football results, to use an old cliche, there is no such thing as a certainty. But in England victory in the semi-finals on June 17th may not be an unimportant factor in deciding this election, in which the battle between the parties to highlight "issues" is matched only by their determination to suppress them.
The Sawdust Circle Elections are traditionally the occasion for politicians to don their false noses and rush around proclaiming loudly about great British traditions or about the needs of the working class. But in this year's circus the make-up is patchy: Labour seem to have left their noses at home, and the Tories keep swapping theirs, appearing now fiercely behind riot-control gasmasks, now benignly as John Bull, while the snout of the Wild Boar of Wolverhampton, unofficial but indispensable to the act, snuffles in the background. The contest is firmly contained within the sawdust circle, its terms reduced to those of the fight between two corpulent individuals for the post of ringmaster.
For what else is the campaign about? The Tory claim to power is expressed in terms of "sound and honest British traditions" of government and the need for "a new way of running our national affairs". An assault on the "price explosion" is given pride of place in the manifesto, which also puts forward a programme of revamped proposals for placing the costs of "growth" more squarely on the shoulders of the working class, while throwing up a somewhat transparent smokescreen in the form of an attack on the Government's record in the social services.
"The National Interest"
How does Labour reply to this shoddy apology for a policy? "We have got out of the red in our national accounts", their manifesto proudly says; the Government has "given Britain a more credible and realistic position in world affairs than we ever enjoyed under the last Tory administration". The New Britain, we are told, can be built by drawing on "our deeply rooted democracy, our tradition of tolerance and fairness, our confidence in ourselves." The Labour Party is in fact campaigning on the claim that it has created a national government: policies are defended in terms of the national interest, and the Government cannot decisively rebuff Tory attacks because over a long period it has become quite incapable of posing the issues in class terms. The newly-appointed Minister of Housing, for one, is quite frank about his acceptance of the norms of bourgeois politics. "I want," he announced on his first day in office, "to make Britain a great property-owning democracy." So did Disraeli. And it should come as no surprise that it is now possible for top banking peers to say in television interviews that they favour a Labour victory because the present Government is better able to handle labour relations "in the national interest."
The Tory Crisis The contest between the two party leaders has to be seen in the context of this shift on the part of the Labour Government to open campaigning on the middle ground of bourgeois democracy. In the 1970 election the pollsters and pundits are confined to spending happy hours calculating whether the virginal smile of the Tory leader contributes more to the chance of a Labour victory than Wilson's puffing complacency detracts. The crisis in the Conservative Party is indicated by the universally embarrassing presence of Edward Heath and the flight back to industry and finance of more able Tories, who see their interests as safe under any variant of parlia mentary government. (But there must still be some men of talent at Central Office. Who, one wonders, was the tactful soul who managed to dissuade Heath from continuing with the slogan he hit upon in the first throes of election fever? "Under Labour". -squeaked the Tory leader repeatedly-"you've never had it!" Hecklers' comments are not recorded.)
Politics Not In Command The nauseating consensus over the area of conflict in the election gives both parties an interest in damping down the issues, even while they manoeuvre for room to snipe at each other. The discussion on wages reaches its fullest extent when the Prime Minister mutters something in an obscure corner about future controls being "voluntary". And he puts the industrialists' line on productivity better than anyone. Enoch Powell will no doubt continue to make provocations on the race issue during the election period. But both parties want to keep him out of the centre of debate: - Labour so that they don't actually have to do anything about racism, -Conservatives because, while they need him to drum in votes on the Right, they are fighting hard to regain the middle ground of parliamentary politics.
Labour's campaign too is now tied to the middle ground. The party's electioneering tactics show a contempt for the working class: Harold's.West Riding accent is trotted out in a grotesque parody of the Churchillian style of drunken oratory. Tories can learn from Labour's methods; taking a leaf from the book of their opponents, they have now found that they too can produce propaganda in Urdu and abandon the Pakistani workers to the mercy of the militant right for the rest of the year.
What to Do?
In spite of the crumbling of the facade, it is unlikely that polling on June 18th will vary very much from the normal class voting patterns. The majority of organised workers will still vote Labour-we don't doubt with reservations!because as yet their discontent has taken no ideological or organisational shape. The marginal variations will be interesting to watch. For Wilson's Government and his bankrupt Labour Party survive and can only continue dangerously near the margin where traditional, false class loyalty threatens to spill over into open class hostility against these supports of capitalism, which have now abandoned even the pretence of a class programme, and closed all avenues to the working class.
Active discouragement of the predicted class vote would at this stage be a mistake for revolutionaries: at best it would cause confusion, and could foster the development of a cynical, a-political attitude in the class. On the other hand it would be quite wrong to help keep the blinkers of social democracy over the eyes of the working class by actively campaigning for the return of the Wilson Government, counterposing to it the Tory threat, or by suggesting that such a Government could solve any of the problems facing workers. Giving spurious credibility to the electoral fraud will not help turn the working class organisations to revolutionary politics. Campaigns on issues of basic interest to the class can only be conducted outside of the electoral farce, in the factories and on the streets. Political mobilisation of this kind clearly endangers the Labour Party's electoral prospects: it was for this reason that the South African tour was called off, for this reason too that Wilson hopes to get the election over before the Irish situation can again explode. But the issues on which revolutionary propaganda and action can begin to mobilise the class span the whole range of its interests: the increased rate of exploitation of large sections of the working class through productivity deals and similar techniques; the deliberate creation of the biggest unemployment since 1940; the preparation of a new formula to curb T.U. power —no less effective than the Tories;support for U.S. imperialism in S.E. Asia; denial of the right of national independence for the Irish; refusal to combat racist violence against black people-the list could be indefinitely extended. And these are all the issues which are blacked in the petty electoral war of the bourgeois party leaders. governments go, but the police and a ors remain". Beside the fact that the the State is a permanent power, the s of democracy is seen in that the bour can at any time "rearrange" the grour it has chosen in the first place to figh its own convenience. (See for instanc gerry-mandering necessary in Ireland because the choice is not just betweer practically identical forces.)
The second major reason which ter parliamentary game is the obliteratior social reality of the electors. Any par (priests, retired colonels, bosses...) ha weight as those of the producers, and not all of them can vote. Very democ we have the "right" to sweat and toil factory or office and create surplus-va the boss) immediately on leaving scho only when we have been well enough in the system are we courteously invit the game.
"Democracy"
In other words, parliamentary electio undemocratic not because those who of them are cunning or evil (gerryman but in essence: because they do not ta account the relationships of productic also because democracy in our society formal (that is, simply written in the tion): freedom of the press?-how? Or of means of production can get togeth funds to set up a press. Freedom of m where? In a council house kitchen?...
When revolutionaries say that the p socialism is not through the ballot-box because they are hungry for violence, because the Marxist analysis of the Sta demonstrated to them that the overth the capitalist system is not possible wi smashing it. Along with theory, histor shown that nowhere in the world then a peacetul overthrow of the capitalist: for instance, decades of social democr government in Scandinavia have streng capitalist property relations.
The Use of the Farce But though the State is an instrument service of the ruling class for the purpo maintaining the domination of that cla does not mean that the workers shoul indifferent to the particular form that takes. Between parliamentary democra military dictatorship or fascist dictator obvious that the workers would find it defend their ideas and organise themse under the former. Therefore the worke defend their democratic rights against every attempt to curtail them or crush We recognise parliamentary election farce, but as millions of workers have i we cannot dismiss it by abstract attack parliamentarianism. We must use the el to develop class consciousness and sho political struggle is part of the class str spread revolutionary ideas, all means m used, even the elections, especially whe situation is not yet ripe for the workin experience directly the domination of ruling class.
Marie-Therese Ligougne *"The state is by no means a power fo society from without ... Rather it is a p of society at a certain stage of develop