'The desire for a real alternative did shine through in the election. A larger proportion of people voted for alternative candidates than ever before. Above all a space has opened for a radical new party.'
That was Socialist Worker on the election in May . 2005.
Five years later the picture was a little different. 'Candidates to the left of Labour generally suffered'' reported Socialist Worker. (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=21188) 'It was 'a bad night for progressive forces in Britain', according to the Respect spokesman. (http://www.therespectparty.net/breakingnews.php?id=867)The results for TUSC are modest' said the Socialist Party. (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/9499)
Left blogger Richard Seymour was a bit more honest: 'the results for almost all left-of-Labour candidates were either disappointing or appalling' he wrote, adding 'most of the votes are at an appalling fraction of 1%'. (http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/05/election-summary.html) The Scottish Socialist Party was reduced to calling for divine intervention 'heaven help us!' (12 May 2010 http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/new_stories/election2010/scotland-is-a-different-country.html)
Back in 1995 the far left was backing the new Respect Coalition, led by renegade Labour MP George Galloway, who beat Labour's candidate in the Bethnal Green constituency. They were heady times for the far left, that had been trying out a variety of left-of-labour tickets since 1997, from Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, through to the Left Unity and Socialist Alliance campaigns.
With Respect, the left thought they had the 'one force capable of challenging the established parties'. Labour had 'dismissed the concerns and needs of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people', and Socialist Worker thought that Respect would 'become a mass membership party' to rival 'a mighty force for the radical change people are crying out for.' (May 2005, http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=6453)
Over the next five years, though, the far left's fantasies came to nothing. The Respect Coalition proved to be unstable. Galloway had played on the disaffection of Bangladeshi and Pakistani Labour supporters, but used them in much the same way as voting fodder, as he used the far left to knock on white voters' doors.
With little to show for their efforts, the Socialist Workers' Party withdrew and stood their own Left List candidates in local council and mayoral elections with disastrous results. Internecine rows split the party, with the activists in Respect and in the Left List, like Lindsey German peeling off to form their own 'Counterfire' group.
Still, in 2009, the left was out again canvassing for the Royal Maritime and Transport Union leader Bob Crow's No2EU campaign. Though No2EU's votes were a fraction of those that the official anti-EU candidates of UKIP got (and that despite Crow's promise to crack down on immigrant labour), the campaign did seem to promise a trade union breakaway from Labour.
In 2010, Respect was for the most part reduced to its Asian support in Birmingham and Tower Hamlets, while the far left teamed up with Bob Crow in the Trade Union Socialist Coalition, 'a new, trade union-backed socialist coalition that can provide the alternative that people crave.' (2 Feb 2010)
So what went wrong? Curiously, the Socialist Worker blamed . the Unions: 'The unions deployed money and personnel to target key seats' complained Charlie Kimber 'to beat off . challenges from the left' But didn't he say that it was the TUSC's union backing that made it viable? Stranger still, Kimber thought that the election, in which Labour's support collapsed 'showed the enduring strength of Labourism.' (Socialist Worker, 11 May 2010 http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=21185)
Over at Counterfire, the site run by the veterans of the left's electoral strategy, Lindsey German and John Rees, there is no comment at all, apart from a desultory election night blog that asks, ironically 'You have to wonder why all these independents do it: the continued lack of success should be reminder enough that, without either a party machine, or splitting an existing party machine, you're not going to get elected.' (http://counterfire.org/index.php/news/110-parliament/4934-election-night-live-blog)
The left cannot understand its failure in 2010, because it misunderstood its success in 2005. The growth of the anti-war campaign and the Respect coalition were not signs of a new movement, but the break-up of an old one, Labourism. Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair made it clear that there would be no return to the old Labour coalition of trade unions and state socialism, and set about demobilising Labour's social base.
It was the remnants of Labour's support that rallied briefly against the war, and then voted George Galloway into power. But their protest was just one part of the wider disaffection of the mass of people from the mainstream political parties. More important, as a protest vote, it was unlikely to move in a positive direction, since it was driven by a profoundly anti-political mood.
The far left constantly misread that political mood investing its angry denunciations of greedy bankers and corrupt politicians with a more positive content than it actually carried.
A little late in the day, anti-war blogger Richard Seymour has recognised the point: 'The only realistic conclusion is that the window for left-of-Labour electoral challenges has been gradually shutting since 2005, and will not dramatically widen short of the emergence of a social movement on which to base it.' (http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/05/election-summary.html 7 May 2010)
Seymour's identification of 2005 as the turning point is interesting. Back then he was cheering on Respect candidate China Mieville in a debate over who the left should vote for now at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Seymour was particularly scandalised when Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill said that he would refuse to join in the left's belated embrace of electoralism, and that 'there are other ways of conducting political struggle'.
Unable to answer the point Seymour ranted against 'Spiked's anti-voting fatwa' and, pathetically, pleaded that 'it only takes five minutes and a pencil stroke to go and vote'. And 'why not do so, just with tactics in mind?' (24 January 2005 http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/01/report-from-hari-v-mieville-debate.html)
Of course there is nothing wrong with voting as a tactic, but it was the left's strategy that was wrong. What did the cross in the box represent? Was it a positive call for an alternative, or just building illusions in a largely negative movement?
The left were trying to turn an anti-political movement into a political one. The 'left alternative' was no alternative at all. What the left was calling for was a resurrection of the old Labour politics of state socialism and a restoration of the authority of trade union officials. Reviving 'parliamentary cretinism' at just the point that working people were turning away from parliament was a strange thing to do.
What the radical left's revived social democratic programme would have meant would be greater state control over working people's lives. The left called for more social services, just as those social services were taking record numbers of children away from their families. They called for council houses when what people wanted were their own homes. The left had no idea that their alternative was uniquely unappealing, and that the protest vote they gathered was in spite of, not because of their policies.
Just as they have no idea why it happened, the left has little idea of what they should do about the collapse of their electoral intervention. Respect 'will be discussing over the next days how we can continue our mission to give a voice to the voiceless' and 'holding a one-day conference, open to all members, to discuss the future strategy for our organisation.' (http://www.therespectparty.net/breakingnews.php?id=867) It seems that George Galloway will not be there, since he is pursuing a career in Hollywood - which seems about as likely as a career in parliament. Socialist Worker has nothing to say but that 'we must redouble our efforts to organise the resistance which can defend our class interest.' ('Cameron takes over: don't mourn, organise' Socialist Worker 11 May 2010 http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=21225)
For the rank and file Trotskyist, worn out with fruitless canvassing, Richard Seymour warns that the movement faces 'objective limitations which can't be overcome with a command economy of movement-building in which the grassroots is badgered and cajoled into hyperactivism' - proving the point that it was not just five minutes with a pencil that the left gave up, but five years pounding the streets with little to show for it.
All that the left can point to is that it might have a role to play in what it imagines will be a replay of the anti-cuts campaign of the 1980s. Given the failure of their Nostradamus-powers to date, you have to guess that no such thing will happen.