The outcome of the British elections
The June 9 General election in Britain resulted in an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats for the Conservative Party.
The regional variation of the results showed the Conservative Party dominant in the South and Midlands with the Labour Party reduced to holding its base in the industrial heartlands of Northern England, Scotland and South Wales.
Mrs Thatcher has taken the results as an 'overwhelming mandate' to continue with her anti-working class, union-bashing policies.
Cabinet indicates that the Tory 'wets', those who do not got all the way with Mrs
Thatcher, will not play much of a role in the new government.
The outcome of the election has intensified the inner-party battle in the Labour
This fight is taking shape around the election of the new leader of the Party, which will take place at Party Conference in October. Michael Foot has already announced his resignation and the fight is on between representatives of the right
The composition of the new
Michael Foot
The potential for such a struggle exists.
Those Labour Party members who worked for the campaign were more enthusiastic, active and militant than in previous
The best-known leader of the left, Tony Benn, was not re-elected to parliament, and thus the left's most plausible candidate cannot stand.
The new third force in British mainland politics, the alliance between the traditional Liberal Party and the new Social Democratic Party, the Alliance, came close in terms of votes to the Labour Party (see table).
voting system they have only one tenth of the number of seats representatives in Britain are elected in single member constituencies with the candidate gaining the highest number of votes being elected
This outcome undoubtedly represents a political defeat for the working class — only a minority of whom had the confidence in the Labour Party to cast their votes for it. It also represents a break from the traditional British two-party system where the decisive political forces were the Conservatives and Labour.
of votes for the Alliance indicate that it is not a fleeting phenomenon but constitutes an important factor in the British political scene from Socialist Action No 14, June 17, 1983
The article we publish below, looks at the significance of the election results.
Viewpoint will assess the outcome of the election in Northern Ireland where an important victory was won with the election of Sinn Fein member Gerry Adams
The press say that in June 1983 the
Conservative Party won a massive electoral victory. The facts are rather different.
Margaret Thatcher has received the lowest real proportion of the vote of any government with a secure parliamentary majority in British history. She has not gained a popular mandate for her policies.
The second decisive result of the general election is Labour's disastrous defeat.
This defeat was ably assisted by the wrecking of Callaghan and Healey.
the decisive blow was struck by the SDP,
Liberal Alliance. The result is that while the Tories have no mandate to push through their secret agenda, (1) the labour movement must now completely rebuild itself for struggle.
The British working class movement has been educated by its history to be
The 1983 elecprofoundly anti-Tory.
tion results confirm this.
Thatcher showed herself incapable of increasing her vote from the debacle of Labour's campaign.
In fact Thatcher's vote actually fell by. almost 700,000 between 1979 and
6 because of the British - parliamentary A future article in International 1983 — a fall from 44 per cent to 42 per cent. That 42 per cent is the lowest real proportion of the vote received by a government with a clear majority in British
These election results are part of a decline of the Tory vote which has now been going on for fifty years.
This is why all comparisons with the 1930s Conservative governments succeeded in gaining real mass support and mass votes - 55 per cent of the vote in 1931, 53 per cent of the votes in 1935.
The great majority of those who voted for the Alliance, no matter what the goals of their leaders, do not support the demolition of the health service, do not support the attacks on democratic rights which this government is going to carry
A decisive majority of voters, 58 per cent, did not vote for Thatcher. why Ken Livingstone and Arthur Scargill are absolutely right to say that the labour movement must now turn to struggling outside Parliament to defend working class rights.
years. Those who voted for a manifesto denounced by the media as left wing did so more consciously than ever before.
THE TORY ATTACK ON THE LABOUR MOVEMENT
The Tories realise the obstacles facing them in carrying through their secret agenda. They know their popularity will decline even more rapidly in power. That is why they are seeking to strengthen themselves and destroy their opponents.
They have to:
- break the finances of the Labour Party by preventing the trade unions political funds
— abolish the closed shop in order to protect scabs in the workplace use Tebbit's employment laws to intimidate militants, crush struggle and attempt to destroy unions, particularly those in the public sector.
The attack on the Labour Party and the unions are tied together. The trade unions created the Labour Party to defend the unions through political strug gle. Weakening and debilitating the Labour Party for the employers is removing the most essential of all weapons with which the unions can defend themselves.
The very scale of the Tories' assault on basic rights is a result of Thatcher's lack of authentic mass support.
She proposes to abolish the Greater London Council because she is not sure the Tories could win an election against Labour in London. Police and other 1. During the election campaign a number of documents from inner committees of the gor ernment were leaked in the press that revealed plans were being prepared to dismantle National Health Service, further weaken the
Source: The Guardian Saturday June 11, 1983.
powers will be increased Tories cannot gain popular support for their policies.
Coupled with this organisational offensive against the Labour movement will be a political attack on Labour by the SDP/ Liberal Alliance. Confronted with a working class movement which is profoundly anti-Tory but not educated by its leadership to be pro-socialist, then the solution for the capitalist class was ob-
Sponsor two political parties: one to carry through the attack on working class rights and living standards, the other to pose as an 'anti-Thatcher' and 'anti-Tory' alliance which could slice into the Labour vote in a way that the Conservative Party
The result is a major success for the capitalist class. It was the Alliance not the Tories who cut into the Labour vote and imposed a huge defeat. It was the Alliance and not the Tories who were
Every by-election will be turned into a gigantic contest in which the entire press, and every other weapon, will be mobilised to ensure that the Alliance defeats Labour. Above all the Alliance wants to claim, it is the alternative to Thatcher. Grinding down and smashing the Labour Party is the goal of both capitalist parties today.
As for the politics of the Alliance it will huff and puff about 'opposition to Thatcher' and in practice put the knife into the Labour Party. The Alliance will 'regretfully' go along with the policies to try to destroy the power of the labour
Those who call for votes for the Alliance - the Chapples, the Granthams -should be hounded out of their postions of leadership in the labour movement. The Labour conference must declare itself completely and totally against any coalition or pact with the Alliance.
The struggles which lie ahead under open for the Alliance to try to destroy the Labour Party.
BUILD THE LEFT WING
The labour movement and Labour Party are only going to be defended if a massive organised left wing is built inside it. Those who believe that this is divisive' should look at the election campaign.
It was the fact that Healey and Callaghan were held up as honoured figures of the Labour movement and still had positions in the Labour Party apparatus that allowed them to sabotage the campaign.
Building up the Broad Lefts in the unions and building the lefts in the constituencies is absolutely central to defending and rebuilding the Labour Party and
The left wing can win the support of whole new sections of the
It is out of the activists in the anti-nuclear movement, in the fight to defend the welfare state, in fighting for jobs, in able to pick up the votes driven into this government are going to be extremetheir hands by Callaghan and Healey.
Millions of voters reasoned that if the point was to be anti-Tory, but not in support of polices like unilateral disarmament or withdrawal from the Common Market, then why not vote for a liberal anti-Tory capitalist party.
The failure to build up a real socialist Labour Party plays into the hands of the leaders of the Liberals and the SDP, Steel, Owen, and Jenkins. The Alliance do not even pretend to replace the Tories. They aim to replace and smash the Labour Party - they say so openly.
Someone like quivers with hatred every time he even mentions the Labour Party. The triple assault of the brutal club of the Tories, the stiletto in the ribs from the Alliance, and internal sabotage by the Labour right is the assault the Labour Party faced and will
But it is not impossible to win. As the economic crisis deepens, as people find out the real intentions of the Thatcher government, anger is going to rise.
It is precisely because Thatcher does not have mass support for attacking the welfare state, or for assaulting democratic rights, or for creating unemployment, that the Labour Party can rebuild its pop-
But that means the organisaof the labour movement must defend their members' jobs, wages, the welfare state and democratic rights.
If the Labour movement does not defend its members, then millions of its members are not going to defend it.
The orientation of the Labour right, to make the Labour Party go even further back to its old openly right wing policies and structures, will leave even more space the defence of democratic rights that the forces to rebuild Labour Party are going to come.
Finally, the labour movement should have one clear goal - even if it seems a little remote a few days aften an election. Thatcher has won a landslide of seats with a small vote for a government. The Tory Party will rapidly become dramatically unpopular. necessity for the labour movement to wait for another five years to get rid of this government.
As Thatcher's popularity falls, as it becomes clear she has no mandate for the policies she will follow, the aim must be to get this government out and to force a new general election in which the Tories are crushed. No matter how tough the first months of the struggle, that is a goal which can be achieved.
face in the future.
1983 ELECTIONS - THE FINAL SCORE THE ALTERNATIVE TO THATCHER
There should also be no illusions that the struggle with the Alliance is only just
The more serious representatives of the capitalist class understand perfectly well that this second Thatcher government is going to become unpopular extremely rapidly. The building societies carefully stage-managed their announcement on increases in mortgage rate interest so it came out only after the
There will be another round of public sector spending cuts in the autumn.
of the deteriorating balance of payments, and the need for austerity to curb it, is constantly eating
% of all
Total vote votes
1983
Conservate
12,991,377
43.5
8,437,120
28.3
Labour
7,775,048
Alliance
26.0
331,975
Scottish Nationalist
Party
Plaid Bymru
125,309
Others (Ulster)
electorate gained lost total
1979
10
397
43.9
31.6
46
48
36.9
20.6
4
209
0
18.9
23
13.8
2
2
17
Estimated swing to Con since 1979 equals 3.8 per cent. Turnout 72.7 per cent.
away at the Tory support. Within a year
Figures based on ITN calculations. Tory overall majority equals 144.
even Thatcher's low 42 per cent vote will have fallen drastically.
The fraud of 'landslide support' will be increasingly obvious for all to see and the Tories run the risk of being crushed in by-election after by-election.
seats, SDP 6 seats.