Tory defeat strengthens
BRITAIN suffered vicious racist attacks after his defence of a local Black uprising last autumn. Here Labour increased its vote, with Bernie Grant securing a major personal victory. In Lambeth Labour also increased its majority, in a situation where 31 Labour councillors coalition threat have been disqualified from holding public office by the courts for their defiance of Tory laws on local government public spending.
The impact of the crisis in educa tion and of the teachers' strikes which took place during the last year was
THE OUTCOME of the recent local government elections in Britain was a big setback for Margaret Thatcher's Tory Party, who lost 705 seats to both the Labour Party (LP) and to the Social Democratic
Party (SP)/Liberal Alliance. [See the last issue of International
Viewpoint, No. 100, June 2, 1986, for full details of the results].
In the second of two articles, Peter Green assesses the impact of these results and their implications for the future.
The May local election results leave
British politics more clearly on course for a hung parliament at the next general election, which has to be
The SDP/ held before June 1988.
Liberal Alliance has failed in its goal of smashing the
Labour
Party and creating a two capitalist party system in Britain.
The Labour Party's strength in the
Scotland and the north of England, big cities was confirmed by these and by the Fulham parliresults, by-election last month.
amentary
Two of the three councils won by the
Alliance, Sutton in London and Adur in Sussex, were taken from the Tories.
In the third, the Alliance won Tower
Hamlets in London from
Labour the rotten old-guard because only
Labour right wing split the Labour vote by running candidates against the official LP nominees. In general the Alliance has begun to seriously undermine the Tory vote.
Other key results of the elections were the victories of the Labour left in Liverpool and in the London constituencies of IY Lambeth and Haringey. In Liverpool, where the Militant-led council (1) has been under vicious attack by Labour leader Neil Kinnock and the media, Labour gained a seat. One of 11 members of the council who have been threatened the LP for their support for Militant, Felicity Dowling, gained 71 per cent of the
In London there were also victories the Labour left. Haringey, Black council leader Bernie Grant also felt. Labour did even better in the elections for the Inner London Education Authority than in the council elections in the same area.
The election results were interpreted by bourgeois commentators as a severe setback for the Thatcher government. John Biffen, Tory leader of the House of Commons, called for
"balanced ticket" for the Tories for the next general election, and stated that while Thatcher would continue to lead the Conservatives until then, "no-one seriously supposed" that she would continue to lead it throughout the next parliament.
An editorial in the Financial Times noted: "If the government has in the end got many of the big things right -such as coming to terms with Europe and the conquest of inflation, or daring to tackle the Irish question -it has made a lamentable mess of some of the smaller ones.
*It spent an inordinate amount of parliamentary time on the relatively unimportant business of the abolition of the metropolitan [large urban] authorities and the Greater London Council. During the Westland affair, which led to the resignation of two cabinet ministers, the government all but ceased to function (2). It then backed down from its plans to dispose
The May election results
Party control of local councils in Britain
After 1986
Change of British Leyland to the Americans because of pressure from its own backbenchers" [non-government Tory members of parliament].
The conclusion of this analysis is that a government is needed which
Prior to 1986 elections
Labour control
No overall majority
Conservative control
Alliance control
Source: Socialist Action elections
91
+17
74
+11
42
53
75
46
-29
6
+ 3
3 maintains the "big things" of Thatcherism but allows some adjustment of the "small things". . This is the perspective outlined by the SDP and the Alliance. David Owen, leader of the SDP, has been increas-
'Militant is a newspaper whose supporters dominate the youth section of the LP, the Young Socialists, and who are
Gains and losses of seats in local government elections 1983-86.
1983
Tories
+128
Labour
+37
Alliance
+110
Source: Socialist Action
International Viewpoint 16 June 1986
1986
1983-86
1984
1985
—763
-131
-55
-705
-32
+484
+535
+46
+270
+652
+143
+129 also a majority of the Liverpool coun cillors.
2. A public and very heated dispute broke out in the Tory Cabinet at the end of 1985 over whether the Westland helicopter company should be bought out by
US or European consortium. This ended in the resignation of the two main protagonists, Michael Heseltine (Secretary of State for Defence) and Leon Brittan (Secretary of State for Trade and Industry).
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