Left Unity
There is an argument that, under our undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system, the new leftwing party, Left Unity, could split the Labour vote and let the Tories in again. This is what happened in the early 1980s when the SDP broke away from Labour, split the vote and let Maggie Thatcher in again.
If this happens it is a reflection of our unfair electoral system, which only favors the main political parties, and in effect, only gives voters in marginal seats any power at all to change the government of the day.
This is no reason to keep voting for the three main political parties whose policies now are almost identical. All follow a policy of cutting public spending, selling of council housing, cutting benefits and continuing the privatization of industries and services in order to fleece the public.
If anything is going to change we need to build a mass political party of the Left with links to Europe, because that is where the future lies. Left Unity is affiliated to the European Left party, which is fighting for a new Socialist EU.
Rome was not built in a day, and until our electoral system can be changed to Proportional Representation then it will be difficult for smaller political parties to get any seats at all in Parliament.
However without a new party of the Left, nothing will ever change. The party is too small at present to have much effect on the Labour vote anyway, and most constituencies will probably not even have a Left Unity candidate at the next election.
However if the Left Unity party gets bigger, puts up more candidates, and poses a real threat to Labour in marginal constituencies, then hopefully it might push Labour to the Left. lt might also encourage Socialists in the Labour Party to leave and join Left Unity.
Big oak trees from little acorns grow, but if you don’t plant the acorn nothing will happen.
Sadly Labour has been irretrievably lost to the trade union movement and the working-classes. It abandoned all links with Socialism some time ago.
It is high time Britain again had a real Socialist political party, instead of a load of tiny, quarreling splinter groups.
Time for all the Leftwing Trotskyist, Maoist and Communist groupings, and for Socialists and Marxists in the Labour Party, to join Left Unity and join the struggle for a Socialist Britain and a Socialist European Union!
