Who needs a City Boss?

A leaflet from the BackBoris campaign came through the door today, a reminder that there is also an election in London on 3 May for Mayor. We don't care about this election as directly-elected mayors are not compatible with a genuine democracy. As we said in our leaflet for the referendum held in 1998 on whether or not there should be an elected mayor of London:

We in the Socialist Party are well aware that in the end whatever arrangements are adopted for local government in London won't make much difference. This is because such arrangements are to be implemented within the context of the profit system, whose economic mechanisms require all levels of government, however structured, to trim their spending so as not to endanger profit levels whatever people may want - or vote for.

Even so, an elected mayor is not a good idea. As the title of the government's Green Paper - New Leadership for London - proclaims, this is a proposal to elect a Leader for London. This Leader will not just have more power than the elected assembly but will be paid a fat cat salary (so as to remove, it is said, the temptation to be corrupt) and have the remit of managing London as if it were a capitalist enterprise. The whole proposal is a travesty of democracy.

Democracy means participating in the running of affairs, not following leaders.

The proposal for an elected mayor is a proposal to endorse what passes for democracy under capitalism: a choice not of alternative social systems or even policies but of rival leaders who are all packaging and no substance. Tony Banks, David Mellor, Chris Patten, who has the best smile? Who cares? But worse, it encourages people to think that some Leader can solve society's problems for them, whereas these problems can only be solved by people refusing to follow leaders and acting for themselves. The only kind of politics that is going to work is a do-it-yourself politics aimed at abolishing the profit-system.

Real democracy is not possible under capitalism where a minority own and control the means of production and are therefore more equal than the rest of us and where the mechanisms of the profit system work to frustrate what people vote for from being carried out. The only way everybody can participate and have a genuinely equal say in how things are run is in a classless society based on common ownership.

This is still our position and the message we would put over to workers in those places outside London - Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield - which will be holding a referendum on 3 May on whether or not to introduce elected City Bosses in their cities too.

More figures from Lambeth and Southwark

Here's how the electors of Lambeth and Southwark voted in the mayor election:

Livingstone LAB 80,172 48.92
Johnson CON 47,754 29.14
Paddick LD 20,530 12.53
Berry GRN 7,190 4.39
Craig CPA 2,838 1.73
Barnbrook BNP 2,448 1.49
German LL 1,199 0.73
Batten UKIP 848 0.52
O'Connor END 506 0.31
McKenzie IND 392 0.24

Figures for the party list votes were posted last night on a screen at Olympia where the count took place but I've not been able to find them anywhere else. All I noted were the percentages of the some of the lists and the votes given to Respect George Galloway and the Left List:

BNP 3.02%
Christian 2.91
Abolish Congestion Charge 2.81
Respect 1.78 (2910 votes)
Left List 1.13 (1846 votes)
"Peace and Socialism" (Old CP) 0.30 (499 votes)

Also perhaps relevant is that the Militant Tendency candidate in nextdoor Greenwich and Lewisham got 1587 votes.

Yellow Tories

aka Booting Brian

Ah, the Liberal Democrats, the cuddly party that is the genuine alternative to the tired old two party system. Put another way, the party for people who can't be honest enough with themselves to admit they're a Tory. See, they're not really Tories, when they cut taxes they do it with Muesli, or something like that.

Having seen what the rapacious Lib-Dems can do in office, in Lambeth and in Camden, with their Tory bed fellows - slashing funding to soft targets (community groups, meals on wheels, day care, advice services) we know whose side they feel their bread is buttered on.

So, when Brian Paddick offers the moon on a stick - lower crime, better policing, better environment - lower taxes we know just how it will be achieved. After all, he wants to end the housing problem, but look, Yellow Tories in Camden have begun selling off council houses to the private sector to pay for rennovations to stock (in Camden, it should be explained, tennants have voted against an Arms Length Management Organisation that is the Red Tories in government's prerequisite to release rennovation funding - we can thank John Prescott for that privatisation scheme).

But, look, they want to build trams - trams everywhere I tell you! as far as the eye can see, from Marble Arch to Stratford (£32 million) from Camden to Sarf London (£Millions and millions) - oh, and all Tram stops with have toilets and electronic information (strangely, the Lib dems in Camden only seem keen to open toilets in wards they control...hmmm), oh, and little green pixies who will grant your every wish...

Of course, the Fib-dems know they aren't winning here, but it doesn't hurt to use the mayoral electiions as an advertising spring board for their reign of cuddles.

Write-in voting

Just to further answer some of our enquirers below. When we call for a write-in vote for socialism (what could be called a spoilt ballot paper) we are not doing so because "electing Johnson will hasten [capitalism's] demise?" That would be a perverse and monstrous policy.

We want a write in vote, or a vote for a socialist candidate precisely because that is the speediest and most direct way of abolishing capitalism. We understand that, however misguided or foolish politicians are, there are limits to what they can do - mostly they can only alter the mood music of what the market demands. Voting for Ken, Boris or Brian won't get you them as mayor, only King Capital with a different sock puppet for a mouthpeice.

In the past, radical movements, such as in Argentina, have managed to use a spoilt ballot - effectively a political strike - to overthrow entrenched corruption and political malaise. We do not consider it to be a passive or ineffectual option (as Londonsocialist has just written, write-in votes will appear on a big screen, and be viewed by candidates and agents, imagine them wading through a million spoilt votes...)

I'm not lucky enough to live in Lambeth & Southwark any more, so I won't be able to cast my vote for a socialist candidate, but I most certainly will go to the polling station and cast my vote for world socialism, and nought but.

The mechanics (and electronics) of voting

There was a meeting of election agents last night at Lambeth (formerly Brixton) Town Hall to learn about the mechanics of the election. Each voter will get 3 ballot papers: a yellow one for the mayor, a peach one for the party lists, and a pink one for the constituency vote. So we'll be on the pink 'un. The organisers are anxious to avoid the fiasco of the last Scottish Parliament elections where voters were also faced with three ballot papers and when there were tens of thousands of rejected votes (and there are more electors in London than in Scotland). Whether they will succeed remains to be seen, especially as for the mayor you can vote 1, 2 whereas for the other two you just put one X.
Party tellers at polling stations are now entitled to harrass you for your electoral number before you go in to vote (rather than only after you come out, as up to now). They are being asked to be polite but there's nothing in the rules banning voters from being rude to them.
The count (for Lambeth and Southwark and 5 other constituencies) will take place in Olympia in West London on Friday 2 May. It is going to be done electronically (which means that, if it breaks down, the count could last as long as it has in Zimbabwe). The ballot papers will go into a scanner and then be shown on a screen. Spoiled and unclear votes will show up and be set aside for adjudication, as now, by the Returning Officer after discussion amongst the candidates' election agents.
If we come within 500 votes of 5 percent of the votes cast we will be entitled to demand a recount to try to get our £1000 deposit back. Which would delay the result by another 8 hours.

Don't vote for what you don't want

Two people commented on our election manifesto we posted yesterday, asking in effect what do we think they should do where there is no socialist candidate standing, as in Lewisham (sorry, Anomymous, we're not standing there or anywhere else in London, we just don't have the resources) and in the mayoral election. Basically, we never tell people how to vote but let them decide for themselves. We just say what we'll be doing: either abstaining or (better) writing "WORLD SOCIALISM" across our ballot paper.

The logic of this position is explained in the editorial in this month's Socialist Standard (see http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/standardonline/index.html ):

Don't vote for what you don't want

We don't have to accept the self-fulfilling prophecy that "capitalism is the only game in town".

Imagine that all the people in the world made a set of informed, collective and democratic decisions about what kind of system would best meet their needs and solve global problems. Would they choose a money and property system that forced nearly half their total number to try to survive on a dollar a day? Or would they prefer to organise production and distribution of goods and services on the basis of what they need, without the profit system?

Would they, if and when given the chance to vote, do so overwhelmingly for candidates who -- whatever labels they attached to themselves or their parties -- stood for the continuation of some form of capitalism? Or would they elect delegates, from among their own number, to initiate the process of setting up and running a fundamentally new form of world society, a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution?

Would they embrace nationalism, involving armed forces paid to kill and injure other groups ("the enemy") with whom they have no quarrel? Or would they regard themselves and behave as citizens of the world, regardless of any geographical, cultural or philosophical attachments they may feel?

Would they divide themselves into classes, rich and poor, leaders and led, privileged and unprivileged, dominant and submissive, superordinate and subordinate, master and servant, powerful and powerless? Or would they, despite individual differences in abilities, personalities, interests, tastes, likes and dislikes, think and behave as members of the one human race, not perfect, sometimes fallible or irrational, but never deliberately cruel or anti-social?

Whatever words they use to explain or sloganise their ideologies, all parties except the Socialist Party stand for the continuation of some form of capitalism. From their point of view, a vote for their own candidate is best; a vote for one of their competitors is second best. Not voting could be a worrying sign of alienation from the system. Worst of all, a vote for the Socialist Party candidate -- or, where none stands, writing "Socialism" across the ballot paper -- would indicate the beginning of a resolution to replace capitalism with socialism.

Don't forget:

Before the first Labour government came into power, and when some members and supporters used to profess socialism as their eventual goal, there was some justification for the argument that: "The Labour hell is one degree cooler than the Tory hell." So "Choose the lesser of two evils."

Today, after successive administrations of the same system, the difference in temperature is too small to get excited about. The same applies to others lining up to be our government -- the Lib Dems, etc. We don't want them and we don't need them.

Support for socialism isn't a matter of campaigning to make the poor rich in today's terms of material consumption. That wouldn't be environmentally sustainable. The socialist aim isn’t even equality in the sense of sameness, like amounts of work contributed or goods and services consumed. Socialism is essentially about social equality, encouraging and enabling every human being to realise their full potential as giver and taker, not buyer and seller, in the context of society itself moving towards reaching its full potential.