General Elections

Raffarin snubbed at the ballot box: la lutte continue!

By Joan Trevor The French regional elections delivered a big snub to right-wing UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) prime minster Jean-Pierre Raffarin. His coalition now control only two - Alsace and Corsica - of the 22 metropolitan regions. The victors in the second round of voting on 28 March were coalitions led by the Socialist Party and including variously the Greens, the Communist Party and other smaller parties of this "plural left". They went from controlling eight regions previously to controlling 20. The share of the vote was roughly 50% to the plural left, 38% to the government...

French Trotskyists got 13% of age 25-34 vote

According to a Louis Harris poll published by the paper Liberation , the joint lists of the Trotskyist organisations Lutte Ouvriere and Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire in France's regional elections on 21 March got 13% of the vote in the 25-34 age group. Overall, the LO-LCR lists got a bit less than 5% - more than the LO-LCR total in the last regional elections, of 1998, and much more than in the legislative assembly elections of 2002, but less than their 10% in the presidential election of 2002. Oddly, the Harris poll shows LO and LCR got only 3% among 18-24 year olds, an age group among...

LO-LCR win 4.6%

The joint lists of the French Trotskyist organisations Lutte Ouvriere and LCR won 4.58% of the first-round vote in France's regional elections on 21 March. This was a lower score than they hoped, but still sizeable. A joint statement by LO and LCR declared: The Raffarin government and the brutal anti-social offensive of the last two years have been condemned. The growth of unemployment, privatisations, the suppression of unemployment benefits, the demolition of the pensions system, and the attacks against the state education system, have been massively rejected. Whether this means that...

Liberté, égalité, fraternité: Elections only a part of the story

By Joan Trevor Elections matter. Since they romped home in the parliamentary elections in 2002 on the coat-tails of Jacques Chirac's freak presidential win, France's UMP government with their massive majority have been punching holes in the French welfare state. They have made massive cuts in pension and unemployment entitlement. They are looking at ways to cut healthcare. They have embarked on a programme of "decentralisation" in education as a way to soften it up for more local pay bargaining, and cuts in the standard of provision. They are creating new job schemes, especially for young...

MSP election change proposed

BBC News A committee has called for changes to the way MSPs are elected to the Scottish Parliament - once proposed boundary changes come into effect. The Scottish Affairs Committee said there should be an 80% reduction in the number of MSPs elected by PR. The number of Scottish MPs is to be reduced from 72 to 59 - while the number of MSPs will remain at 129. Opposition parties, with the exception of the Tories, warned Westminster against enforcing change at Holyrood. The committee wants the 129 MSPs to be retained but in a new electoral landscape which would scrap most list MSP seats. Instead...

French leftists predict poor result

Opinion polls in France have shown strong support for the revolutionary left lists for the June 2004 Euro-elections there, organised by Lutte Ouvriere and the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire. Nine per cent of voters say they are "certain" to vote for the revolutionary left, and another 22% say they might consider it. LO's magazine Lutte de Classe of December 2003/ January 2004, however, predicts a much lower score. LO reckons that their result "could even be of the order of 3% for our common lists (the same as our total score in the legislative elections of 2002)". They expect the following...

IWCA candidate for London mayor

The Independent Working Class Association has announced a candidate for the London Mayoral election on 10 June 2004. The IWCA was launched by a small left group, Red Action, but has won some good election results by a dogged focus on local campaigning on council estates. Its results show that the message of "giving a political voice to the concerns of millions of ordinary working class people" strikes a chord. Some of us see some problems with their approach. 1) They tend to define the working class almost exclusively as council tenants, and to counterpose it not to the capitalist class but to...

Minority must take the fight forward

Martin Thomas looks at the history of the Socialist Alliance and of far-left electoral campaigns The Socialist Alliance in its present form emerged in the run-up to the May 2001 general election. It united almost all the activist left groups in England, and drew in some hundreds of unaffiliated socialists, to stand 98 candidates. A small "Socialist Alliance" - mostly local groups of the Socialist Party and some unaffiliated activists - had existed since 1992, but the immediate jump-off point for 2001 was 1998. In July 1994 Tony Blair had been elected leader of the Labour Party and quickly...

"Respect" and the working class

By Dave Parks Socialists should ask ourselves when we engage in activity whether it helps the working class prepare for its historic mission in the slightest. If it doesn't then what on earth are we doing it for? I see two important reasons for standing in elections, although elections should be only the tip of the iceberg of our activity. To build class consciousness within the working class. To help build organisations which can be used to further the class struggle and fight for the independent political interests of the working class. Instead of looking to how we raise class consciousness...

LCR-LO to fight on working-class demands

By Rhodri Evans In an opinion poll taken during the first two days of the congress of the LCR, fully 31% of French voters said they might vote for a revolutionary socialist candidate in next year's regional elections. The LCR - Revolutionary Communist League - decided at the congress to endorse joint lists for the regional and Euro-elections with Lutte Ouvrière (LO), the other main Marxist group in France. In 2002's presidential election, the LCR and LO stood separately, the LCR's Olivier Besancenot getting 4.2% and LO's Arlette Laguiller 5.7%. In the 1999 Euro-elections they stood a joint...

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