ArbetarInitiativets vänner om resultatet i Europa

Francois Sabado från NPA och Fjärde Internationalens ledning har skrivit följande om det europeiska valet:

The right won in the big countries where it governs, in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Poland, Austria, and Hungary. In Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, and Cyprus, the parties of the right also came first.

This right wing surge is accompanied in a series of countries by the rise of populist right and far right forces, in particular in Holland, where the far right Islamophobic and anti-European party of the deputy Geert Wilders obtained 16. 4% of the vote and 4 MEPs. In Austria, Finland and Hungary, the forces of the far right which have been involved in anti-immigrant campaigns also gained support. In the United Kingdom, the BNP obtained 2 MEPs, with 6.7% of the vote. Greece also saw a breakthrough for the far right, with 7.2% for the LAOS organization.

och om vänstern:

The Danish organization “Folkebevægelsen mod EU” (People’s movement against the EU), by centring its campaign against the European Union, indeed against Europe, had an MEP re-elected, Søren Søndergaard, also a member of the Red-Green Alliance and the Fourth International.

Parties like Die Linke in Germany, the SP in the Netherlands or the Front de Gauche in France maintained or increased their electoral positions without making new breakthroughs.

The Party of Communist Refoundation in Italy won 3.23% and will not have any representatives in the European Parliament.

In Britain the results of the radical left were disappointing, with the NO2EU list scoring 1%, as did the SLP of Arthur Scargill.

Syriza in Greece won 4. 7% of the votes and one MEP, and thus did not achieve its goal of electing 3 MEPs.

The NPA in France consolidated its electorate. It progressed compared to the results of the LCR-LO lists in the last European elections of 2004 (+2. 3%) without gaining any MEPs.

For a number of organizations of the anti-capitalist left, this was their electoral baptism of fire: the Polish Party of Labour, Izquierda Anticapitalista in the Spanish State, Workers initiative in Sweden, the LCR-PSL in Belgium, the SSP in Scotland, campaigned well but their results did not exceed 1%.

On the anti-capitalist left, we should highlight the result of the SP in Ireland which elected one MEP, following the No campaign against the Lisbon treaty, and especially the excellent results of the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal which made a real breakthrough, in fact the only breakthrough of the radical or anti-capitalist left, with 10.73% of the votes and 3 MEPs.

Om sitt eget resultat skriver NPA också. I England kan man konstatera att den splittrade vänstern misslyckas i valet, något som gynnat extremhögern och nationalismen. Läs vad Phil Hearse från Socialist Resistance och Respect skriver:

The outcome of the county council and Euro elections means that the British left – the left to the left of New Labour – has to wake up and break out of its dire sectarian, bureaucratic and factional mindsets. Nothing is more shameful than the lack of of united left slate, around a minimal set of demands in the interests of the working class, in these elections. The near-absence of the Left from the electoral field was one important reason – though far from the only one – that such a large number of the protest votes against the main parties went to the hard right UKIP and the fascist BNP. It is shameful that the Left abandons so much of the electoral field to the far right because of nothing more than hardened, bone headed, factional idiocy – topped off by bureaucratic exclusions and anathemas.

There was of course the No2EU slate, supported by the CPB and Socialist Party and promoted by Bob Crow and the RMT. This made some impact, but not much – around about 1% in most places. It’s very unfortunate name gave rise to wrong impressions and in its headline – although not of course its policies – seemed indistinguishable from UKIP. But more than this, the No2EU was a temporary lash-up, a new name, and not something easily recognisable and established, as a real political party or long-term electoral front has to be.

In London the Socialist Labour Party (sole proprietor A. Scargill) got 17,000 votes, nearly as many as the No2EU. Scargill is playing the role of a spoiler and disrupter of real Left progress in elections by using big money at his disposition to continually stand a party that does not in reality exist. But why did the ‘SLP’ get this vote – because of the name, Socialist Labour Party.

In the absence of a credible united left slate, the field is not just open to the right, but many of the Left’s core voters vote for the Greens as the least bad credible alternative. Everyone but the Left and the working class benefits from what Sheumas Milne described last week in his Guardian column as ‘a prostrate left’.

In his recent article replying to Francois Sabado and Panos Garganas, Alex Callinicos strikes a realistic note:

” I also express my disagreements in some humility: the disastrous recent experiences of the radical left in Britain do not exactly set up any of the participants in these catastrophes to preach to their comrades elsewhere in Europe “.

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