OK, so the results have been in for a while, and it’s a run-off between Sego and Sarko. Nice.
The LCR’s Olivier Besancenot got 4.08%. While this is down from the 4.25% he scored in 2002, it’s worth pointing out that this time, his vote increased by 200k and the decrease in the share of the vote can be pinned down to the increased turn out – around 85%.
Many socialists, who supported Besancenot, Laguiller, Bove or even Schivardi, will now probably instinctively support Royal. If I were in France, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even hold my nose. I’d abstain.
In Britain, I share the AWL’s position in the upcoming devolved bodies and council elections. That is, vote socialist where you can, vote Labour everywhere else – and then fight. So, in Scotland, this means a vote to the SSP. (Though it doesn’t mean a vote for Respect.)
This is for two reasons. Firstly, in England, the resistance to Blairism is at its most principled and lucid inside the Labour Party. There is, literally, nowhere else for serious socialists to go.
In France they don’t have this problem. They have a large, left wing, revolutionary organization – the Revolutionary Communist League. The French Communist Party still exists, and for all of it’s rotten politics, still took a huge part in the defeat of the European Constitution and the progressive, left ‘No’ movement around that.
Royal, as I have said before, is no alternative to Sarkozy. I don’t believe in the lesser evil.
As an aside, I will be taking part in a programme about Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC reporter in Gaza, and the solidarity campaign run by bloggers. You will be able to download my ‘speech’ (for want of a better phase) after the programme has been broadcast. Tune into “Have Your Say” on the BBC World Service, tomorrow (Friday) at 1830 BST. You can get the World Service in Britain via DAB, Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, and online at www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice.
On Respect, surely it’s sensible to vote for those Respect candidates that *are* socialists and *do* have a record of struggle behind them. I’d much rather see those comrades in council chambers than piss poor Labour placemen who will spend the next few years lining their pockets from various council committees.
Chris,
I hope your new job is going well!
I think you are confused on three points.
1. The situation in France IS different from that in the UK, in particular because of the existence of the LCR (and LO too). Which is why, if the AWL was in France, we wouldn’t apply our approach in the same way as we do in the UK: we would be in the LCR not the Socialist Party (at least primarily: in principle I wouldn’t be against having one or two people in the SP) and would put much more emphasis on the need for socialist candidates. On that much, we agree.
However, why does that mean rejecting the basic analysis of the SP as a bourgeois workers’ party - a different sort of bourgeois workers’ party from the Labour Party, and with a different balance of forces as regards the revolutionary left, but still… And doesn’t that imply support for its candidates against the French Tories etc in a situation where the revolutionary left can’t or isn’t standing?
Isn’t what follows from that: vote for the revolutionary left in the first round, then for the SP, despite Segolene Royal, in the second. If the SP is, indeed, a bourgeois workers’ party, then isn’t this a fundamentally different situation from the Chirac-Le Pen run off?
2. I don’t see how the French “No” vote to the EU constitution was progressive, even though the dominant forces in the campaign were certainly left-wing? If the AWL is right to say “Euro nor pound: either way, the fight goes on”, doesn’t that apply to the constitution too?
3. I don’t understand your point about the CP. Firstly, it’s record is, as you say, utterly rotten. Secondly, it did very badly in the election, far worse than the LCR. Lastly, I don’t see how it’s relevant here, since I would be against having comrades inside (even if, in fact, such a thing were possible) and also it wasn’t in the last round of the election so how is that relevant?
Comradely,
Sacha