Kmflett's Blog

Batley & Spen. Parliamentary politics & beyond

I was pleased that Labour won the Batley and Spen By-Election since the alternative was a Tory victory. I was particularly pleased, given the context, that the assorted far right and fascist candidates got a derisory vote.

You can read various theories about who did or did not vote for which candidate. However it is a secret ballot and while actual canvassers might have some idea even that cant be certain. As Lenin noted elections are a very crude measure of the popular mood but at least they do offer some view of it.

I wasn’t in anyway involved (although I have been involved in numbers of election and by-election campaigns)and heard only one ‘inside’ report during from the campaign from a socialist historian who is a Labour member and lives in the Constituency.

By-Elections historically are fairly robust affairs and Batley and Spen was no different. One reads of reactionary tactics by supporters of Labour and George Galloway for example. Quite what the specific truth of them was I clearly cant say but they do speak to the logic of electoralism. If your key aim is to get votes and get elected (not a bad thing in itself btw)then saying what some of the electors want to hear, rather than persuading them of your views, may occur.

Disreputable tactics in elections are a bad thing but also reflect a certain no holds barred aspect of democratic politics which is often managed out by the media in terms of views expressed. That doesn’t make many of the views any more acceptable but is a rather a reminder that they need to be addressed and countered.

A look at E P Thompson’s summary of Westminster Elections in 1802 and 1805 between supporters of the Tory Government and radical backers of the French Revolution in the Making of the English Working Class provide a useful context. Tumults, street processions and riots were not unknown.

So too does Ralph Miliband’s 1961 history of Labour’s first 50 years, Parliamentary Socialism. He reflected that Labour is above all a Parliamentary Party. Socialism comes very much second.

I’ve always had the opposite view.

I’m not an anti-Parliamentary socialist but I’m definitely an extra-Parliamentary one. Beating the Tories has its place and on occasion being in Government can achieve modest beneficial changes.

More than that – think the creation of the NHS- is also possible with what the Victorians called pressure from without. That is organisation and campaigns in communities and workplaces.

Winning Batley and Spen was good but Black Lives Matter, and campaigns on climate change and defending the NHS are what is really causing the tectonic plates to shift if anything is.