working class movement supported the Liberals against the Tories throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. When the Labour Party rose to become a mass party around World War I the labour movement found the Tory Party as its enemy. For 30 years after World War II an apparently stable two-party system pitted Labour against the Tories. The labour movement finds itself locked in a struggle with the Thatcher government today. In short anti-Toryism is built into the bones of the working class and the majority of the working class, by 200 years of struggle.
The consequences of such massive, inbuilt anti-Toryism can be seen over the short term since 1966 - the year of Labour's last real electoral triumph, and the year from which Labour's decline in support is clear. Labour's vote has collapsed drastically since 1966 - falling from 48.0 per cent of the poll in that year to 27.6 per cent in 1983. But none of that loss of votes has gone to Vote The Conservative vote in 1966. when they lost badly, was 41.9 per cent. In 1983, when hatcher won by a landslide, the Constervative vote was 42.2 per cent. Of the 20 per cent of the vote lost by Labour since 1966 half a per cent has gone to the Tories, one per cent to the nationalists, and almost 17 per cent to the Alliance. The division of the fall in the Labour vote can be seen in Figure 1. Figure 1 Tory percentage of the vote since 1931 The pattern is obvious — and contirms the historical again made. The Tories are incapable of gaindirect ing support from Labour even in a period of the most drastic decline of Labour support. It is only a non-Tory party that has been capable of cutting into the Labour vote.
Anti-Tory But if the British working class is extremely anti-Tory it is not extremely socialst or comparably strongly prodespite the myths Labour Party and the illusions of those who believed in labourism as a powerful and progressive political tradition. Every single fact confirms that antiToryism is a far more powerful force in the working class than pro-socialism or even support for Labour.
The 27.6 per cent of the vote recieved by Labour in 1983 meant that Britain had the lowest vote for an independent working class perialist country in Western Europe. It is only necessary to compare the 28 per cent of the vote tor a partv of the working class in Britain to the 40-50 per cent of the vote cast for parties of the working class in West Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Sweden or any other major West European country to less than see the relative historical weakness of elementary political consciousness in the British labour movement.
While 1983 was an extreme case, it was only a particularly graphic ilpoints we have in the world, dependent working pean country.
an expression of the same process.
of the which ment historically but extremely historically strong party of any imLate historical strength perialism.
Level
vantage compared to the ruling class politics lustraton of the general trend. Even prior to 1983, despite the fact that Britain is the most proletarianised society the percentage of the British working class voting for an inlower than in any major West WaThe extremely late for- tremendously mation of the Labour Party, its exhistorical backwardness even among social democratic parties, was Furthermore Britain is one of the Tory party few countries in the world (the United States and Canada being the others), in working class parties actually receive less votes than the trade unions have members. The British labor moveorganisationally strong, with one of the most powerful trade union movements in the world, politically weak. The long as organisation masked an extremely low popular. level of political consciousness — certainly the lowest of any major country in western Hurope. lus was naturaly not a product of genetic peculiarities of imperialism, British working class but of the of British imvotes.
This extremely low level of political consciousness placed the British work- What ing class at an extreme strategic disadwill always win organisation in the end. Since 1979 the Tories have been able to mount an increasing political assault on the labour movement and are progressively grinding down its organisational strength.
The role of the Alliance in that assault is clear. While the lores can mount a denieve assaull working class they cannot, because of the anti-Tory history of the working class, pick up positive support from doing so. That can only be done by a non namely the Alliance.
The basic features of the situation and the extreme political weakness of the labour movement were concealed, and the left could imagine the labour movement to be politically strong, as the itself was • While the Tories historically could not gain any serious support ir the working class movement they could substantial minority vote in the working class by bypassing the labour movement. Until the 1970s this working class Tory vote amounted to around one-third of working class Furthermore the Tories had strong support among higher and lower paid white collar workers, and also has helped precipitate the crisis of British politics, and made so central the tactical role played by the Alliance, is the fact that the decline of British imperialism means that ¡ores are progressively losing th traditional bases of support. Myth The myth, peddled by Marxism Te day and the media - that Thatcher's a tremendously popular governmes and that the Tories enjoy mass popular support — is not even remote near the truth. On the contrary Tories are a party whose popular suj port has been declining since the 193 and whose vote in 1983 was very low in Taking simply the post-World Wa II period, even in elections which th Tories have won their vote has pr gressively fallen from 1955 to 49 per cent in 1959; 46 per in 1970, 44 per cent in 1979, and 42 pe cent in 1983 (see figure 2). Thatchei vote in 1983 was actually lower than S Alec Douglas Hume's when he lost. 1964 There is no evidence whatever ti Thatcher's vote in the next election w be anything except lower than the per cent which was already the secon lowest vote ever received by a par with a safe majority in parliament in pist restore storical deare par in progressive historical decline.
continue. Left to rest on its ow positive support a Tory governme could not continue.
It is the continuing decline in th Tory vote that makes the Alliance
nce threat won't fight it GET ME Others (12%)
Nationalists (4%). -Tories (2%) - Where Labour's vote went 1966-83 Socialist Action 6 March 1987 laconne cept unions. many others.
advocated by Ror piccabinet voted for Hattersiey, , and not even for Kinnock, in the 1983 leadership contest. The Labour right and the all pro-Bomb, propolicy, PrO-E Ce acrestrictions Secondly a whole section of the party, and its bourgeois backers, are actively committed to a coalition between Labour and the Alliance. Within the Parliamentary Party this is openly advocated by Frank Field and Austen Mitchell — and supported in private by Tactical voting for the Alliance at the last general election was Grantham, genera secretary of APEX, and Frank Chapthen general secretary of the EETPU. There is an SDP member, John Lyons, on the TUC general coun-