Kind of odd to claim to be giving election results without bothering to say who won.

Or to be referring to the gains made by the BNP without indicating at whose expense these gains appeared to be.

The Labour Party have ruled us for decades and are complacent and corrupt.

Your traditional old-Labour voter has no reason to turn out to vote. Blair has seen to that.

There is a vacuum here. A drowning man will grasp at a scorpion.

Labour and the Tories are as bad as each other. There is no electoral road to change. Real change must only come from the working class itself.

Time to promote a spoilt vote campaign? Labour Party is out of the question with war criminals at the head of the party even if Galloway or the like is your candidate If you cant vote for any local candidate, why not write your own message on the ballot paper? I mean I voted Green in the general election because that was the alternative to the 3 main. But in view of green complicity in German policies - not again unless I can be assured that in Britain access to power changes views. So promote your main message on the ballot paper. Sounds democratic to me. Governments are slaves to the global agenda, or part of it. So fuck 'em.

With the Anti-Nazi League discredited and banned, the Socialist Alliance
reduced to building support for a new CND type movement, and the political
establishment in Oldham and wider afield showing signs of panic at the
prospects of BNP councilors in northern towns, Searchlight magazine which
has spent much of the last decade reassuring its audience that the far-right
was more or less genetically pre-programmed to self-destruct, appears to
have undergone a Damascene conversion. In an interview with a left-wing
magazine, editor Nick Lowles discusses what is to be done. Far from
predictions of BNP implosions followed by routine calls for more legislation
(the staple diet of the Searchlight strategy for decades) Lowles, perhaps
recognizing the scale of the disaster unfolding has apparently decided some
re-positioning is required. In so doing, he not only echoes the
long-standing Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) analysis but also perhaps more
interestingly politically endorses the pioneering work being conducted by
the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) within working class
communities.

Along the way, the politics of former allies the ANL and the Socialist
Alliance (SA) come in, rather inevitably, for heavy criticism. The latter
are described as "distant and abstract" while the ANL plan for an
anti-racist march in Oldham which might have brought marchers into conflict
with "hundreds and hundreds of white workers" is condemned as "counter
productive". Equally, going to a town center and getting a " few middle
class shoppers to sign a petition" or going to Asian areas and telling them
the "BNP is bad and racist", Lowles contemptuously dismisses as "easy work".

The harder work, the "key work", in Lowles estimate is the "day to day graft
in white areas." But before such work could even be considered the "left
must accept that the white workers in those areas do have real problems". In
the same way, the fiction that if all else fails the 'labour movement' would
ride to the rescue is also rejected out of hand. "Many of the unions are not
in good enough shape to lead the fight, " Lowles warns.

Instead he stresses the left must take note of the BNP' s adoption of
policy, which in contrast to the left fondness for sloganeering is a
"community politics strategy" to suit their own political ends. "In some
areas they do local bulletins taking up everything from parking and dustbins
to the question of the proposed local hostel for asylum seekers." By
contrast the Socialist Alliance campaign, he attacks for being based on
distant propaganda. "For example, re-nationalise the railways is a fine
demand, as long as we understand that it does not have much purchase on
white workers in some of the most deprived areas who need detailed answers
to their local problems of housing, social services and jobs."

As Lowles makes repeatedly makes clear throughout, "the key thing" for
anti-fascism is being in position "to undercut the racist message by
answering the real problems people face." Undercutting the racist message is
itself undermined by a mindset that still maintains "Asylum seekers welcome
here" remains a vote winner. In an area of disgraceful housing provision,
"where a tower block gets re-developed and "outsiders" are put it, "great
resentment" is according to Lowles "guaranteed".

Responding by telling such people "not to vote BNP because they are racists"
is "plainly inadequate". Particularly as the white working class "vote BNP
for various reasons - yes for racist reasons, but also as a protest against
the mainstream parties which ignore or patronize them, and because they have
been let down by other parties." Though he does not say outright it is
implicit in his criticism: the 'other' parties outside of the mainstream who
have for decades have 'ignored', 'let down' and 'patronized' the working
class, all today play leading roles within the Socialist Alliance.

Unsurprisingly the track record of the SA so far offers reasons aplenty for
Searchlight to get off the hook on failing to endorse 'anti-fascist'
candidates put up by the SA when push comes to shove in the wards contested
by BNP in the north. Pragmatic it may be, but in doing so the impotence of
Searchlight's own politics and strategy run the risk of being exposed. Quite
simply Searchlight has relied on the state and the establishment parties
being the solution for too long. Even while dissecting the failures of the
left, Lowles is ultimately forced to return to the mantra of not "splitting
the Labour vote". In the short term, given the myriad weaknesses already
identified this may appear a common sense approach. Yet it entirely ignores
that the electoral appeal of the BNP is as Lowles admits, a symptom of the
systemic weaknesses within the self-same Labour Party.

In 1993 after the 'victory for anti-fascism' on the Isle of Dogs, when the
BNP lost its single councilor, many anti-fascist militants realized that the
'victory' was in fact a confidence trick that would not suffer too many
repeats. From then on, London AFA with leading Red Action members prominent,
took political responsibility for developing a strategy for the long haul.
In 1994 when the BNP publicly abandoned 'the politics of the punch-up', the
project gathered momentum. To say AFA as a whole, was from the beginning
swimming against the tide is something of an understatement. For instance it
would take Trotskyism as a whole, six years before they could come to terms
with confronting Labour, much less the root and branch review necessary
before any sustained orientation to the working class could expect to prove
productive.

That is not somehow to suggest that the Searchlight response to the London
AFA initative was any more enlightened, far from it. As an alternative to
acting like grown-ups, Searchlight saw the attempt to adapt, as an
opportunity to settle some old scores, by deliberately encouraging elements
within AFA to question the authority of the security stewards up and down
the country who recognized the need for and supported the project. As well
as Searchlight moles brazenly challenging the proposals for the development
of 'a political wing' within and without, Searchlight entryists eagerly
cultivated any malcontents, the restless or the adventurers who hungered for
the previously confrontational approach, which as a result of the BNP
withdrawl from the streets was now self-evidently redundant.

Six months out from what promises to be a watershed, for Searchlight to turn
around and publicly try and present the AFA analysis as theirs, without any
reference to its origins is typically devious and underhand. More
importantly it is too little too late, for in the six months remaining until
May, it is a critique they must realize, has a zero chance of being heeded
by a myopic, self-obsessed, and increasingly anachronistic left.

It can be assumed that this belated concession to reality by Lowles is
therefore, no more than a stratagem by Searchlight to cover their own
analytical backs. Ironically, in stretching their remit away from the type
of state friendly cross-class alliances enthusiastically promoted by them
for two decades, the community-orientated strategy they now recommend as an
alternative, is in itself an admission that a class free approach to
anti-fascism, if not already downright counterproductive is certainly
defunct. In truth, the only effective way of combating euro-nationalism has
nothing in common with the traditional posturing and self-serving techniques
that have come to be associated with the type of strident, state-friendly
anti-extremism typified by Searchlight and the ANL. Putting it more bluntly,
fascism as re-packaged by the BNP cannot be defeated by an anti-fascism
presented in the abstract as a single issue particularly when "detailed
answers" to the problems faced by the local working lass community are being
provided by the right rather than the left. (The recent by-elections in
Burnley being a case in point.)

what Red Action have to day about race and class is light years ahead of what most of the left are saying (trots, anarchos and labourites).
also the IWCA initiatives are on the money because they address local issues and don't just pile in talking about national issues.
I don't see what the IWCA's long term (national) strategy will be but it seems that they are starting to get somewhere locally (ran third in one local election).
it's a truly sad situation that RA are about the only people with a genuine "class" perspective on recent events. and in case you missed it it involves listening to what people are pissed off about instead of telling them what they should be pissed of about and boring them away with a theory of why they should be pissed off.
as one of the terrible sell-out labour supporters many people on IMC decry I have to say the IWCA/RA strategy makes a lot of sense to me. it addresses real concerns realistically, something most of the non-labour left is incapable of.
I wish labour would move in this direction, but given that this isn't going to happen I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with the IWCA approach at a local level and supporting labour nationally.

The above is actually the latest analysis from Red Action, a small but active left group focussing on anti-fascism. Link to their website below if interested; be aware that their discussion pages get lots of traffic from BNP/NF so tread carefully.

I think they make interesting points about the need to refine anti-fascist strategy, and about the downplaying of class by some lefties. Their apparent total confidence in their alternative strategy is a bit startling; has their IWCA really set the world on fire any more than the Socialist Alliance? Still, worth checking out.

don't get me wrong, I'm no RA supporter. I think they go totally overboard in their support for the Irish republican movement for example, something which interestingly rarely gets a look-in in the IWCA stuff (no doubt because most working class people in the UK don't support it!). i also think the IWCA is a crap name and almost points in the opposite direction of the strategy (making politics relevant again rather than jumping in with the theory).
BUT as a local strategy I think it will work precisely because no-one else wants to deal with stuff like anti-social neighbours or junkies on estates or crap housing or street lighting. (and I mean DEAL WITH, not just talk about like groups like Class War did.)
the left by and large wants to go to people locally just to get support for their national projects. the result is that locally people see the left doing fuck all to improve the quality of their lives (which is terrible, because hopefully that's why we are all in this game).
I think lefty labourites like me and you anarchos out there should embrace this kind of approach - is it a million miles away from Murray Bookchin's idea of libertarian municipalism? I don't think the trots will ever get it because there is no sniff of the "labour movement" being involved.
also I think it is actually to RA's credit that they get traffic from BNP and NF supporters on their site. and I bet that traffic is much more "working class" than the traffic on Indymedia. we don't like hearing this but the far right groups have more working class support than the far left at the moment. compare the BNP results that kicked this thread off to the result for the Socialist Alliance in the Ipswich by election.
so to recap (!) I think it is worthwhile supporting the IWCA locally (if only to convince them to change the name!) and developing a similar approach across the left. RA won't like this (they are already getting sniffy about Searchlight "nicking" their analysis) but it is to their immense credit that they are the only ones on the left at the moment with a good perspective.
it is as simple as working locally with genuine local issues. read it as socialism fron the bottom up if you want to. but it will be far more effective in rebuilding a really popular left in this country than a million anti-capitalist rallies.

don't get me wrong, I'm no RA supporter. I think they go totally overboard in their support for the Irish republican movement for example, something which interestingly rarely gets a look-in in the IWCA stuff (no doubt because most working class people in the UK don't support it!). i also think the IWCA is a crap name and almost points in the opposite direction of the strategy (making politics relevant again rather than jumping in with the theory).
BUT as a local strategy I think it will work precisely because no-one else wants to deal with stuff like anti-social neighbours or junkies on estates or crap housing or street lighting. (and I mean DEAL WITH, not just talk about like groups like Class War did.)
the left by and large wants to go to people locally just to get support for their national projects. the result is that locally people see the left doing fuck all to improve the quality of their lives (which is terrible, because hopefully that's why we are all in this game).
I think lefty labourites like me and you anarchos out there should embrace this kind of approach - is it a million miles away from Murray Bookchin's idea of libertarian municipalism? I don't think the trots will ever get it because there is no sniff of the "labour movement" being involved.
also I think it is actually to RA's credit that they get traffic from BNP and NF supporters on their site. and I bet that traffic is much more "working class" than the traffic on Indymedia. we don't like hearing this but the far right groups have more working class support than the far left at the moment. compare the BNP results that kicked this thread off to the result for the Socialist Alliance in the Ipswich by election.
so to recap (!) I think it is worthwhile supporting the IWCA locally (if only to convince them to change the name!) and developing a similar approach across the left. RA won't like this (they are already getting sniffy about Searchlight "nicking" their analysis) but it is to their immense credit that they are the only ones on the left at the moment with a good perspective.
it is as simple as working locally with genuine local issues. read it as socialism fron the bottom up if you want to. but it will be far more effective in rebuilding a really popular left in this country than a million anti-capitalist rallies.

Rather than do my usual three successive postings, this time I'll just give the ANL links page which includes links to AFA and No Platform among others:

this one should work: