Those of us on the Labour Left who, whilst committed to Labour’s success, also wish to realign Labour in a more radical direction and to draw into Labour many of those who are currently outside it, must tread a careful path. It is right that Left Futures gives space to others on the Left outside Labour to present their views and contribute to our debate about policy and the future of the Left. But we must be careful to get the balance right and on this occasion we did not but, just as we have carried articles by Kate Hudson and members of other parties before, so we will do so again.

Kate Hudson, as I said in my previous report about the Manchester Central by-election, is a formidable campaigner and a comrade in the campaigns for peace and in solidarity with the people of Greece in their opposition to austerity. Nevertheless, in Manchester Central, we want to see Lucy Powell winning the by-election by running a bold and radical campaign which will bring back Labour’s lost voters rather than see them turning towards Respect.

As it happens, today I was supposed to be on holiday and did not see Kate’s article prior to publication though as Editor it is right that I take full responsibility for everything that is published. When I did see it, I saw no alternative to withdrawing it from publication, and I apologise both to Lucy Powell, Labour’s candidate, for any wrong impression we may have caused and to Kate Hudson who wrote the article for us in good faith.”

The text of Kate’s original article

The unrepresented working class: a space Respect can fill

Why have I decided to stand as Respect candidate in Manchester Central? There is no doubt that the Labour Party has a fine past track record in the service of ordinary people, liberating millions – through the foundation of the welfare state – from poverty and from the denial of basic rights and opportunities. But sadly, the emphasis here is on ‘past’ record. Labour has ceased to advance, or even adequately defend, the great achievements it made for working people. For decades now it has bought into the pro-market, neo-liberal framework which has thrown Britainand much of the rest of the world into an economic crisis of mammoth proportions. The fundamental problem with neo-liberal economics is that it is all about rebalancing the economy, away from the modest redistribution of the Keynesian welfare state and back into the hands of the wealthy. That is not an appropriate economic approach for a social democratic party, especially one founded by the trade union movement – the organised working class.

This turn away from defending and advancing the interests of the working class is a source of great sadness and frustration for many on the left and within the Labour Party itself. And as Labour has moved to the right, this has opened up a political space to its left. People have reacted in different ways to this. Some persist within Labour, wanting to reclaim the party for the policies and values it used to represent. Others grudgingly settle for New Labour-lite, especially in the run up to a general election, hoping that perhaps this time, Labour will fulfil our hopes. Still others have concluded that a different political option must be pursued: the articulation of popular pro-working class policies which Labour – to a considerable extent – used to represent. And that many people, who feel their interests no longer have political representation, require – and will choose to support – a party which stands for their interests. The Respect Party can be such a party and it is my intention – as it is of many others – to work to make it so.

This political space – and the emergence of new parties to fill it – is not just a British phenomenon. It is something that is happening across Europe and has even hit the media radar here in Britain, as a result of the recent Greek elections. Labour’s Greek sister party PASOK was decimated in this year’s elections, as it implemented vast cuts programmes, driving millions into poverty and disaster. Syriza, a new pluralistic party of the left, emerging from radical and eurocommunist traditions in Greece from the early 1990s, won massive popular support, narrowly missing victory over the conservative New Democracy. PASOK had failed to represent the interests of its electorate and so was eclipsed. In France too, this new left current has hit the headlines: Front de Gauche and its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon have made waves in French politics, reconsolidating the left beyond the Parti Socialiste.

Of course what is happening in Greece or France is specific to those countries and is not exactly reproducible elsewhere, but the fact is that parties like Syriza and Front de Gauche are eating into the votes of previously ‘socialist’ parties across Europe, and they will continue to do so because an objective political space exists. In fact what George Galloway did in Bradford was comparable to the stunning rise of Syriza and resulted in the eclipse of Labour, because Labour signally failed to work for ordinary people in that city. And Respect, in the same political stable as Syriza, will continue to advance the alternatives which Labour should itself represent.

That is why I am standing for Respect in Manchester Central. It’s a ‘safe’ Labour seat, with 52% of the votes cast for Labour in 2010. But that figure hides a sorry tale. It also has the lowest turn out in the country at 44.5%. Labour, which has run Manchesterfor a long time, has not addressed the deep problems of the city or the constituency. Manchester is the fourth most deprived local authority in the country and its two most deprived wards are in Central constituency. Clearly, Labour is not working for Manchester Central. The people are making their judgment by voting with their feet, by turning away from the electoral process altogether.

It’s time for a political alternative, articulating the interests of working people. Respect stands for that alternative.

•Name recognition
“George Galloway” wasn’t just a name people recognised. Voters knew the basic political planks he stood on and knew that he had caused an election upset before. Kate Hudson is no new girl on the block. She hasn’t just swanned into CND to get a job: she was part of the women’s protests against Cruise Missiles at Greenham Common in the early 1980s. When she became Chair of CND in 2003, the organisation adopted a more positive campaigning attitude and it kept up with developing protest tactics (non-violent direct action, imaginative protests as well as marches). Although her public role for CND probably held Kate back from speaking out on as many party political issues as she would have liked, she brought CND firmly into the anti-war activist fold and has also associated herself with organisations opposed to government austerity measures. On the other hand, whereas Galloway was a Labour MP, and won some sympathy for being kicked out of the Party, Kate is a former member of the Communist Party, which will make her appear more of a marginal political figure than Galloway. She is also, despite her campaigning credentials, more reserved and rather shorter on charisma thanGalloway, which is disproportionately important in a by-election.

•Demography
Manchester Central has very high unemployment, a large number of single parent households and large numbers of residents living in social housing. This should be fertile ground for Respect: but though the Party has strong arguments against what the Government is doing, it is short on plausibility when it comes to how its criticisms will have an effect.  In the 2001 census, just under one fifth of the population was recorded as being from an ethnic minority. This is much lower than Bradford West, and the ethnic minority population is spread between different ethnic groups. The strong extended family networks which spread support for Galloway, and ensured votes were cast, will not be a factor to the same extent in Manchester Central.

•Labour complacency
The constituency has always returned a Labour MP to Westminster, with Tony Lloyd (whose departure to stand in the election for police commissioner caused the by-election) securing just over half the votes in the 2010 general election (but the 46.7% turnout suggests a certain inner city disenchantment with Labour lies behind his victory).
Two Branch Labour Parties (Crumpsall and Cheetham) were suspended in May 2012 after 30 and 120 membership applications were respectively received from people living in the wards. Neither is in Manchester Central constituency, but as one is represented by Council leader Sir Richard Leese and the other by a former Lord Mayor, Afzal Kahn, the suspensions will have had an unsettling effect throughout the city.
The city’s Labour Party is doing a reasonable job of complaining about central government cuts, but it hasn’t galvanised the population into an anti-cuts campaign which can boost confidence in Labour.  This is the dilemma for Labour nationally: how to fight the Con-Dems’ cuts, given that its own strategy was to make deep cuts in public spending, and how to fight Con-Dem policies, given that many of them build on unpopular measures which Labour introduced (anti-social housing, anti-immigration, anti-union, pro-war). The local Labour Party has promised to keep listening to the people ofManchester, but seems to be short on information about what the people ofManchesterare saying and what it is going to do about what it hears.

•Labour candidate
Labour’s candidate, Lucy Powell, is no stranger to Westminster elections: she came second to the Lib-Dems in the 2010 General Election in the Manchester Withington seat (so though she has experience, she may be seen as an out of touch careerist politician). She is rather a mixed bag politically: having been supported when she stood in the internal Labour Party election for its National Policy Forum by of the shadowy, Blairite, “Progress” group inside the Labour Party, she also organised Ed Miliband’s party leadership election campaign and then served as his Deputy Chief of Staff. Her pronouncements in the by-election campaign so far have been more orthodox Labour criticisms of the Government rather than inspirational.

•Public mood
By the time the voters of Manchester Central go to the polls, it will have been just over seven months since Galloway’s breakthrough inBradford. Since his victory,Galloway has been almost absent from the national scene. Although the media has moved on to other interests, it must be partly from want of trying: that’s a strange way to keep up the momentum of a national political movement. Whereas Bradford was able to galvanise general discontent behind a known “troublemaker” figure, that is far from saying that Respect has established itself as the home of the anti-cuts protest vote – or that voters, who have deserted Labour in their millions, have entirely given up on seeing Labour as the alternative party to the Tories.

Respect has had “Arab springs” before, only to fall back at the next electoral hurdle. To date, no small left of centre party has brought a lasting change to the political scene. It is unlikely that CND will be advertising for a new General Secretary before Christmas.

•Judge for yourself: watch Kate Hudson on the video on our home page. Click this link to view video http://www.eastlondonnews.com/