(en) Britain, Anarchist Federation ORGANISE! #84 - A load of
crystal balls: The election and beyond
Will you bother voting this time around? If the answer is ‘No,’ you’re in good company.
---- In the 2010 general election, a third of those registered to vote didn’t vote1. In
some inner city constituencies, turnout was as low as 44%. 2 ---- This is less than half
of the story, however – many people, particularly the young3, don’t register to vote at
all, and aren’t even included in the turnout stats as a result. ---- This is the first
general election where individual voters have been responsible for registering themselves,
rather than relying on the head of household – so we can expect levels of registration to
be even lower. ---- The State’s response to low levels of engagement with the electoral
system has been to launch a big campaign to encourage voter registration. While libraries
and children’s centres are closed or cut, somehow the government found £4.2 million “aimed
at ensuring everyone in the country is signed up to the electoral register and has their
chance to vote”.4
As well as the five lucky organisations who got
their paws on some of the £4.2 million, big unions
like Unite and Unison – with the backing of the Daily
Mirror – are spending their members’ subscription
money on campaigns to encourage voting. Special
mention must go to Unite, who are using an image
of the General Kitchener lifted from First World War
recruitment posters in their “No Vote, No Voice”
campaign – because nothing says ‘democracy’ like
the man who introduced the concentration camp into
modern warfare, and encouraged tens of thousands
of working class Britons to go to their deaths in the
trenches.
We’ll see later why the State, the media and politicians
of all stripes care so much about encouraging people
to vote. But for now, let’s take a look at what they’re
asking us to vote for – starting with the main parties,
and then at the so-called alternatives. It’s time to play...
Bullshit bingo
“Hardworking families”
First on the bingo card is “hardworking families.”
It seems like that’s all politicians care about, as
a simple Google search reveals.5 As of January
this year, David Cameron topped the “hardworking
families” Google league table with a magnificent
22,500 results, followed by Ed Miliband on 9,780
and Nick Clegg on 8,110. Clegg and Miliband’s lower
scores could be because they’ve managed to come
up with their own versions of “hardworking families.”
Miliband talks about “the squeezed middle,” and Nick
Clegg talks about “alarm clock Britain,” for example.
Or it could just be that no-one cares what they say.
The Tories are big on work. And very big
on cracking down on those who don’t
work. Why should hardworking families
who work hard at work pay their taxes to
support those who don’t, they ask? Benefits
shouldn’t be a lifestyle choice, they tell us.
In a speech launching a flagship policy for the
election, David Cameron told us that he wants to
end the “well-worn path from school gate, to the
Job Centre, and on to a life on benefits.”6 He clearly
doesn’t care so much about the equally well-worn
path from Eton College, to Oxford or Cambridge, and
on to a life on MPs’ expenses. Cameron’s proposal is
that “Young people out of work, education or training
for six months will have to do unpaid community
work to get benefits, if the Conservatives win the
election, [and] 50,000 18 to 21-year-olds would
be required to do daily work experience from day
one of their claim, alongside job searching”.7 In
other words, a massive extension of the workfare
schemes that – despite successful legal challenges
– led to more than half a million claimants having
their benefits cut in the year to December 2013.8
It seems like the Tories have abandoned all pretence
that workfare is about helping people into work –
not surprising when the existing Community Work
Placement scheme costs £235 million alone and is
faltering badly with over 500 charities pledging not to
supply placements. It’s all about “order and discipline,”
as Cameron was keen to point out at his policy launch.
Labour are offering the same, but with a crude smiley
face drawn on the baseball bat of benefit sanctions
and forced labour. Their scheme will offer “real
jobs” instead of placements; paid employment not
community work. But even though the carrot might
be a bit bigger, the stick is still there – don’t play
along and it’s no money for you. And meanwhile, Ed
Miliband is returning to the well-worn theme of ending
the “something for nothing” benefits culture and
pledging to end Job Seekers Allowance altogether for
1821- year olds who do not have the “proper skills.”
Since its introduction by John Major’s government in
April 1996, both Labour and Tories have extended
the scope of workfare to the extent that the power
to send a claimant – any claimant – on a scheme
is now within the power of the Secretary of State
for Employment. A novel solution to the problem of
legal challenges – give yourself the power to make the
rules up as you go along. The use of forced labour as
a tool of government policy has been backed up by
more ideological attacks on claimants, to the extent
that the word is almost synonymous with “scrounger”
in the political dictionary.
Furthermore, this assault on claimants and the
worship of work has enabled further attacks on the
social wage.9 For example, many local authorities
used to provide after-school clubs at children’s
centres which provided affordable childcare and
allowed people – most often women – to go out to
work. These clubs were part of the social wage. Now
in cities like Bristol, every single after-school club
is facing closure. The conditions for launching this
kind of attack on the social wage are twofold. First, to
refuse or leave a job because of a lack of affordable
childcare now means loss of benefits. And second,
because if you don’t work, well – that makes you into
one of those scrounging bastards we read so much
about in the papers.
From Labour and Tory alike, the message is clear
– working class people are here to do exactly and
only that: work. There are now over 300 fewer public
libraries in the UKthan there were in2010, many of them
closed by Labour councils. Because why do working
class people need access to books when education is
all about getting the skills you need to work? Cuts
made by Labour councils, you say? That brings us
onto the next item on our bullshit bingo card...
Tough choices
No politician really wants to make cuts, or so they
claim. No, they have to make “tough choices,” or
“difficult decisions,” all because of “the mess we
inherited from our predecessors,” or the big bad
“global economy”. Politicians of all shades are
engaged in a kind of Houdini act, all claiming that their
hands are tied – councils have to make cuts because
of central government. National governments have
to impose austerity because of the global banking
crisis – and because of what the Opposition did the
last time they were in power, whoever they were and
whatever it is that they did.
Annoying as it is, there’s an element of truth to this
“tough choices” rhetoric – although we should still
always ask ourselves, “Tough for who?” whenever
we hear a politician use it, and not hesitate to hold
them accountable for their actions.
The fact is that politicians couldn’t
really change anything even if they
wanted to, because of the way the
political system is set up.
The main aim of parliament is to keep things going
the way they always have, so that a rich few at
the top have all the power and the vast majority of
us have none. Voting to pick an imaginary side in
this pantomime just props the whole system up by
making it look democratic.
Yet there are parties who claim to be different. Eyes
down for more bullshit bingo....
Vote for the real alternative
The LibDems
“We’re not like them, honest, vote for us,” sums up
every LibDem manifesto pledge we’ve ever seen.
Sadly, their encounter with government has made this
claim slightly harder to sustain. The photograph of
Nick Clegg pledging not to increase university tuition
fees weeks before doing precisely that probably did
more to convince people of the futility of parliamentary
politics than a lot of anarchist propaganda. We put
them in this section for old time’s sake, and also as
an introduction to talking about....
The Green Party
Now that the LibDem’s solitary sniff of power has put
paid to any claim they might once have had to being
different, the Greens are presenting themselves as
some kind of radical alternative party to the left of
Labour. However, threatening paycuts of up to £4,000
for low-paid refuse workers and closing services, the
Greens in power in Brighton have been described –
by one of the refuse workers – as “Tories on bikes”.
Another description could be “low rent LibDems.” Up
until the current Tory-LibDem coalition, the LibDems
could say pretty much what they wanted, secure – or
so they thought – in the knowledge that they’d never
get the chance to put it into practice.
The Greens in Brighton have done a Clegg, but on a
much smaller scale. No doubt the Greens in Brighton
have made “tough choices,” with their “hands tied” by
central government. Nevertheless, they might keep
their solitary MP, Caroline Lucas – and maybe even
pick up another one in Bristol’s muesli belt. However,
the key thing about the Greens, and parties like
them, isn’t how many votes they win. It isn’t even the
possibility that they might be able to use a couple of
MPs to “put pressure on Labour,”10 as Caroline Lucas
claims.
As commentator Noam Chomsky points
out, “The smart way to keep people
passive and obedient is to strictly limit the
spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow
very lively debate within that spectrum
- even encourage the more critical and
dissident views. That gives people the
sense that there’s free thinking going on,
while all the time the presuppositions of
the system are being reinforced by the
limits put on the range of the debate.”11
The Greens might be on the fringes of that spectrum,
but they’re still part of the exclusive debating club,
designed to keep us quiet. And this is why everyone
who wants to run our lives for us is so keen that we
register, get out there, and vote – so that we place
ourselves somewhere on that spectrum of acceptable
opinion, and rely on leaders to run our lives for us.
The micro-left
While the bigger parties are making their tough
choices, there are others who attempt to take a
principled stand within the game of electoral politics.
They’re easy to spot
– they’re often selling
papers and usually
shouting about
Betrayal!, although
the placards that
they wave seem to
get rebranded quite
regularly – where
once they might
have said Socialist Alliance, now they say TUSC
or Left Unity. Welcome to the micro-left, a land of
perpetual disappointment and simultaneous triumph
of hope over experience.
It must be an emotional rollercoaster on the left
– you go on marches, you sign petitions, you
place pressure on the politicians from below, you
vote for them (with or without illusions), you call
on your union branch to call on your union to call
on the TUC to call on the Labour party to call on
someone else to actually do something. And then
they (whoever they are) don’t turn your country (or
town) into a workers’ paradise, or even deliver on
their manifesto promises. Gutted. Another betrayal.
Sometimes parts of the micro-left, such as TUSC12,
venture onto the ballot paper in their own right
where two things are certain. First, a lost deposit.
And second, that they’ll console themselves with the
words, “That’s 93 votes for socialism, comrades.”
UKIP
If there’s one thing that everyone seems to agree on
about UKIP, it’s that they’re different from the other
parties. Anti-racists will tell you that UKIP’s different
and worse, UKIP will say that they’re different and
better, but they all agree that they’re different. It’s
a lot rarer to see anyone point out that, in a lot of
important ways, UKIP actually stand for keeping
things the same. They may talk big about scaring the
political elite and empowering ordinary people, but
their promises are just as hollow as the ones you hear
from the other politicians – even if their leader Nigel
Farage can hold a pint and look as if he’s done it before.
UKIP managed to come out of the parliamentary
expenses scandal of 2010 unscathed, helping
them to present themselves as anti-establishment
outsiders – it helped that they didn’t have any MPs at
the time. However, as soon as they have access to
the trough, UKIP representatives don’t hesitate to get
their snouts in there. For example, Nigel Farage took
time off from his ordinary bloke act to claim £205,000
for an office that was already being bankrolled by a
UKIP supporter.13 There’s also the case of UKIPer
Tom Wise, an ex-copper and the first Member of the
European Parliament to be jailed for expenses fraud.14
Success at the European elections
aside, UKIP’s greatest achievement has
been to make Nigel Farage look like an
ordinary bloke – not hard when you’re
up against Cameron and Miliband. But
this blokey exterior doesn’t stand up to
much scrutiny. Educated at public school
Dulwich College (which, with fees of
£12,000 per term is currently pricier than
Eton), Farage went into the City to work as
a trader. Hardly a man of the people, eh?
A lot of the time, anyone who’d even consider voting
for UKIP is dismissed as a racist or unhinged. The
public proclamations of their members, blaming
immigrants for racism or saying they don’t trust
“negroes” certainly don’t help. However, we don’t
think that everyone who votes UKIP is a racist. The
people who vote UKIP because they’re scared or
angry about issues like jobs and housing are right to
be angry.
Although they’re wrong to blame these
problems on immigrants – and when
UKIP say that mainstream politicians
have abandoned ordinary people they’re
telling the truth. What they don’t say
is that UKIP is as mainstream as all the
other parties. Where they’re different and
dangerous is creating a political mood
where racist and anti-immigrant views
are more acceptable
but, as with the National Front and the BNP before
them, racism and racists will be beaten on the streets,
not by the ballot box.
Never mind the ballots
Many people will agree with some of our arguments,
but still say you should vote anyway, because it’s
the «practical» or «realistic» thing to do. But we’re
convinced that voting is not a realistic way to solve
anyone›s problems. Most of the time, voting comes
down to picking a politician because you like some
of the things they promise to do – or maybe just
dislike them a bit less than the other candidates –
and then hoping that they’ll live up to their promises,
even though you have no way of forcing them to,
and they’re often unable to do so even if they want
to. When it comes to solving your problems, voting
is about as effective as wishing on a star. In some
ways, it’s even less effective than wishing on a star,
as stars tend not to cut the benefits people need
to survive, use the police to beat up protesters, or
throw people in prison for stealing a bottle of water.
So what alternatives do anarchists suggest? Most of
what we propose can be described as direct action.
This is exactly what it sounds like: people acting
together to solve their problems directly, without
relying on anyone else to do it for them. And it’s not
only anarchists who take this approach – we can see
it happening across the UK.
Recent months have seen an upsurge in the number
and intensity of struggles around housing. In London
alone, tenants and campaigners are fighting evictions
and social cleansing – whether in Newham, Tower
Hamlets, West Hendon or Elephant & Castle.15 Just
as important, these groups are coming together
– not to form one big housing campaign, but in a
federal way, working from below to make links with
other groups and individuals looking to fight back.
Most recently, a Radical Housing Network has been
formed of these groups.16 Unlike the traditional micro-
left approach of declaring an empty organisation into
being and waiting for people to get involved (People’s
Assembly, we’re looking at you), this more organic
approach is an example of federalism in action.
Meanwhile, while the big unions like Unison and
Unite put their energy and resources into funding
the Labour Party and urge us to register to vote,
people are getting together to fight the bosses at
work, too. Groups like the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW) and the Solidarity Federation (SolFed)
are winning small but important victories over
wage thefts and discrimination. Equally important,
workers are learning that we don’t need leaders to
take on the bosses and win. Likewise in some of
the mainstream unions like BECTU and the RMT, we
are seeing groups of workers like those involved in
the Ritzy Living Wage struggle make direct links with
other workers and the community, without relying on
the full-time officers to do it for them.
As Labour and the Tories build their election
promises around forced labour, and vie with UKIP
to see who can be the most anti-immigrant, it’s clear
that more resistance is needed. Even though the
task looks huge, people are already fighting back –
and not only in organised groups. The class struggle
is being fought everywhere, all the time. Whenever
we resist work, either by skiving or organising with
our workmates; whenever women stand up to the
everyday sexism they encounter; wherever anyone
experiencing oppression for who they are or how they
look stands up and says, “Enough!”. As anarchists,
we don’t want to bring all these struggles under a
single banner, and we certainly don’t claim to lead
them. Instead, we work with others to spread direct
action and direct democracy using the power of
argument and example to build the kind of solidarity
that can and does make the bosses tremble.
It’s not how or whether you vote on
7 May that will help you take control
over your life and end the years of
attacks from politicians of all stripes,
it’s what you do the day after. And the
day after that.
And the day after that.
1 http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm
2 http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout10.htm
3 The lowest percentage of registrations is recorded for the 17–18 and 19–24 age groups
(55% and 56% complete respectively). In contrast, 94% of the 65+ age group were registered
4 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-for-new-ways-to-encourage-voter-registration
5 Searches carried out on 152015/01/
6
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21644163-governments-flagship-welfare-reform-trouble-no-credit-where-
its-due
7 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31500763
8
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/14/more-jobseekers-allowance-claimants-subject-benefit-sanctions
9 “When we talk about a social wage we›re talking about all the different ways that
working class people receive servicesand social housing, transport and utilities like
water and electricity, libraries and social services, benefits and many otheroften the
result of previous rounds of struggle, victories won by the working class in the past.
They are also, just like the benefitsintroduction-to-anarchist-communism.html from the
state and the ruling class that are in effect part of their share of the profits of
industry. Healthcare, subsidised
things can be seen as part of the social wage. Like wage increases and shorter working
days these services are we receive at work, often used to control us.”
http://www.afed.org.uk/publications/pamphlets-booklets/163-
10
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/02/green-role-pressure-labour--caroline-lucas-small
11 Noam Chomsky, “The common good,” p. 43
12 Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, dominated by SPEW (Socialist Party of England &
Wales, the former Militant Tendency)
13 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/12/nigel-farage-europe-expenses-ukip
14 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8008994.stm
15 he Focus E15, Balfron Towers, Fred John Towers groups in East London, West Hendon in
North London, the Aylesbury Estate in South London, and West Heathrow and Earls Court in
West London. These groups are often skint, so don’t look for websites, try Facebook &
Twitter instead.
16 http://radicalhousingnetwork.org/
