2024 will see an Election in the UK and local and regional elections in England and Wales are a precursor to that. As often the left is between wanting the Tories out (meaning a Labour victory) and looking to challenge a right-wing Labour Party in the terrain it focuses on- the ballot box John Saville, the socialist activist and historian, looked at the issue 65 years ago in the New Reasoner the journal he edited with E P Thompson after their break with the Communist Party in 1956.
Both had been active in the Fife Socialist League which involved future miners leader Lawrence Daly and which for a period managed to establish and electoral presence beyond Labour and the CP who had held the seat with Willie Gallagher
It is unlikely that we shall see repeated in many other places the combination of circumstances that produced this independent socialist candidature in West Fife. But if we develop a really powerful new current of ideas and political activity it is not impossible that a similar situation may be produced elsewhere. If it is, then we shall have to ask ourselves again the central question: is this an action that will push forward the movement for socialism, or will it result in a setback to our ideas and our ideals? The answer will depend on the circumstances of time and place and personalities; it will not rest upon a simple assertion that what is not favoured by the Labour Party organisation is in itself wrong for socialists and the socialist movement. With a Labour Party dominated by Mr. Gaitskell and a world dominated by nuclear weapons, no socialist can give that answer.
New Reasoner, Autumn 1959
https://www.marxists.org/archive/saville/1959/xx/westfife.htm
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