Norway's red vote the media strongly approved his changes, including his resurrection of Mandelson-a key architect of New Labour, and Blair's closest confidantes.
The situation for the left in the Labour Party will get worse for the left. Under Blair's new rules, the party's National Executive approves or rejects all the party's parliamentary candidates. They will use political criteria-loyalty Worse is to come...
The left-wing Campaign Group of Labour MPs, who have kept their heads down for most of the time Blair has been in office. But their key members are reportedly on a hit-list, and will not be reselected as parliamentary candidates. (Though this will provoke resistance from deselected MPs and their local supporters, who traditionally controlled the selection of parliamentary candidates.
In 2000, the party will be reorganised at the constituency level, where the left, and the link with the unions, has been strongest. Local trade unions have had the right to send delegates to local general management committees of the Labour Party. The left in the party called this the open valve" between the party and the unions. But it is to be severely neutered. Local committees will meet every three months instead of every month, and their decision making powers will be severely limited. Meetings will be open to all members, rather than delegate based. This means the end representative democracy inside the Labour Party.
This is probably Blair's biggest single "reform" since he started to transform the Labour Party, certainly as far as its effects on the rank and file members is concerned. There could be significant opposition. Unfortunately, by the time the proposals get to next years conference they are likely to have been agreed by some form of referendum and the conference will have little choice in the matter.
Blair's end-game is to reshape the 18 International Viewpoint #316 November 1999
On September 13th Norwegians voted for 425 municipal councils and 19 regions. The result was characterised by a particularly low turnout rate and a slight polarisation. Bjarke Friborg One third of voters preferred the Conservatives and the populist Progressive Party. The Social Democrats scored only 28% — their worst result since the 1920's. The Centre parties maintained their overall vote, as the third largest
The radical left had a particularly good result. The reformist Socialist Left Party (SV) won 8% of votes, and
Red Electoral Alliance (RV) attracted 2.1% of voters. Five years after EU referendum
Norway's political landscape has changed a lot since mass mobilisations narrowly defeated a referendum on EU membership in November 1994. The movement against EU membership blossomed into the country's largest political grassroots' organisation in the country-rivalling the Social Democrats-with 140,000 members and a large number of activists.
The "No!" campaign was an inspiration for the RV and the Red Youth organisation, both undergoing a generational change and recruiting new revolutionaries with experience in mass work. The campaign overlapped with a period of student mobilisation on other
The Social Democrats were kept in a firm grip by Gro Harlem Brundtland. She is internationally known for her environmental work in UN structures. But at home she was a staunch believer in an unhindered market economy and very often at odds with the Norwegian environmentalists. Nevertheless, she managed to keep the Social Democrats at 40% of popular support, despite massive criticism of her pro-EU campaign. Even the main confederation of trade unions opposed her-reflecting an uplifting left wing victory over the labour bureaucrats.
struggle also radicalised the small farmers' Centre Party, which took an uncompromising stand against membership (which attracted some left reformists to the Forces for change?
The Social Democrats and the Centre Party are the main losers of the 1999 elections. The Social Democrats are losing their traditional core voters. Many Social Democrats are frustrated with Gro Harlem Brundtland's weak successor, Thorbjørn Jagland. The party has lost votes to the left, but also to the Conservatives. Some working class voters switched to the racist, right-populist Progressive Party.
The Centre Party have lost almost all their newfound supporters from the referendum period. The party has lost credibility because of its poor performance in the three party coalition government. The Centre Party is supposedly highly critical of the EU, but in reality they have given up presenting their own views,to the point of even recommending Norwegian membership in the EU's Schengen agreement on police cooperation.
Even the Socialist Left Party (SV) has forgotten that it was popular anti-EU mobilisation which put them where
The party leadership is determined to enter a new government with the Social Democrats. Life in parliament is everything, while struggles in local communities and on the workplaces seem to be unimportant: When a group of young people in Oslo occupied a house to draw attention to the housing
problems, the SV candidates distanced themselves from the action "because politicians do not use that kind of method".
After several bleak years, the left opposition inside the SV has been encouraged by the radicalisation of the Socialist Youth organisation.
Like Sweden's Young Left (Ung Vänstern) the Socialist Youth are noticeably to the left of their mother party. The outcome of the present confrontation is still unclear. Yes to NATO?
The April SV congress faced total when chairperson Kristin Halvorsen threatened to resign if she did not win majority support for the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia. Like Germany's Green Party, the SV has its roots in the anti NATO movement in the 1960s.
Luckily for Halvorsen the war was over before the electoral campaigning reached the decisive phase.
Voter concerns were concentrated on education —a traditional SV strong point. So while core SV voters moved to the more radical RV, the party attracted a number of frustrated Social Democrats.
The increasingly radical Socialist Youth were the spearhead of a campaign which has made the SV the most popular party among 16-19 year olds. In parallel school elections, 19% of this age group voted for SV. The more radical RV maintained its traditional 6% score. The Red Electoral Alliance
This was the best ever result for the revolutionary Red Electoral Alliance (RV), which won 42,000 votes (2.1%). Support for the party has been slowly relatively important presence in the trade unions and women's movement.
Of course, RV is not nearly as strong as the AKP was in the more radical 1970s. But the daily revolutionary
Klassekampen important asset - and something most radical left groups in Europe don't
Both the newspaper and RV played a crucial role in the protests against the NATO operation against Yugoslavia. The rest of the lett was more disappointing — the SV leadership supported NATO and the old "Muscovites" in the NKP did not want
In the elections on September 13th RV won more votes than SV in several places, and in some municipalities the party won 7-13.5%. RV now has 6.5% in Bergen, 4.1% in Trondheim, 4.2% in the capital, Oslo, and 4.4% in Lillehammer, seat of the Winter Olympic
The party's main theme was the struggle against the strangulation of local economies.
RV refused to take responsibility for cutbacks, and encouraged people to protest against the growing centralisation and concentration of wealth. RV also protested against the crisis in the offshore oil industry.
Only a week before the elections 10,000 shipyard workers went into strike against the government's lack of a coherent industrial policy-the shadow side of deregularisation and market liberalisation hitting countries and workers all over the world. *
Portugal
→ The right-populist Progressive Party continues to gain votes with its dangerous cocktail of racism and social populism. Their main candidate in Oslo accepted the comparison between the Nazi occupation in 1940 with the present "immigrant wave", , while another local candidate said he was in favour of centralising asylum seekers in camps —which they could only leave if accompanied by a Norwegian.
But their racist rhetoric is provoking increasing alarm. The editor of the Journalists' professional magazine poured his beer over one of the most prominent anti-immigrant politicians, and encouraged others to do the same
The chairperson of the main Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) suggested that people turn their back whenever a "Progressive" spoke at an electoral meeting-this tactic was used with great success in the early 90s, against the extremist Movement Against Immigration.
Demonstrators protested at almost all the Progressive Party's electoral meetings. Although the party still attained their best score ever (13.5%), they were overtaken by the Conservatives (in 1997 the Progressives had overtaken the Conservatives to become the largest right-wing party)
The Progressives lost almost 6% of their votes in working class districts in Oslo-where they had previously been increasing their support.
Extreme right parties scored record high votes in recent elections in Austria and Switzerland. [BF/JD] *
Left Bloc wins two MPs increasing since its foundation in 1975.
Back then, the RV was a pure electoral front for the Maoist AKP/ML (Workers' Communist Party/MarxistLeninist). At that time AKP was Europe's biggest Maoist party with a daily newspaper, Klassekampen and several thousand members (in a country of only 4.5 million).
After a decade of relative stagnation, RV was transformed into an independent party with about 1,400 members and full freedom of tendencies and factions.
Today RV contains Maoist and Trotskyist currents. But the great majority of members just describe themselves as revolutionary Marxists.
This Red Electoral Alliance is turning into a real party, with activities and interventions all year, and a