Getting from here to there

French election day. I was talking to a friend about France and they said the retreat from traditional politics and voting is seen across the west, not just Britain and that's true. (Although there are still exceptions. The French turn out in the first round of the presidential elections may well be one of them.) Working class life has been remodeled across the west and the social democratic and mass communist parties, in the latter case linked to the failure of the Soviet Union, have had less role to play keeping the poor inside the system.

This is an uneven process. The trends combine in unique ways in any given nation. Every great movement in history takes on its local flavours.

See what Saturday night discussion can do for you?

But what to do? What to do? In Britain let's start with two no-brainers. No brainers because we can already see they work.

What remains of the trade union movement is the cornerstone of any possible anti-capitalist opposition. (Seems simple enough, but a lot of people who want to fight austerity don't see it.) If you are in a trade union today, let alone active, you have made a stand. Trade unions are not an automatic 'given' any more.

Further; unions need to reorganise their relations with political parties. In Britain it is true that Unite pays for the Labour Party. How much better would it be for all unions to follow the model that has been developed by the RMT where they have a bloc of individual MPs who overtly and actively support and work for the RMT's policies.

And what about elections? Again, the anti-austerity left has been shown some new facts. Hoping that the  anti-capitalist fairy will wave her wand and produce proportional representation - associated as it is in England with public schoolboy Clegg - is a fantasy. Political representation of those in Britain opposed to austerity and war has, for the time being, to be conquered constituency by constituency. And more wishful thinking about parachuting candidates into constituencies from planet socialism and expecting anything other than a completely marginal response is a waste of time and effort - because it takes people for fools.

Such candidates (with the odd honourable exception) have been brewed up in a sectarian laboratory and are offered as a patent cure to a rightly cynical population. Most people opposed to austerity and war are disgusted with mainstream politics and politicians. The first questions they ask in an election inevitably are ; do I know of this person? Can I trust them to do what they say? (Not, note, do I like them.) The problem is posed differently in a general election. Most vote then to keep out someone from government. In the last election the people voted to keep out all three big parties. Voters do not weigh up programmes, abstractly deciding between this idea and that. They have learned painfully that programmes are torn up or are written in weasel words. They do not trust them.  They have been forced back into searching for people that they believe in.

That's why George Galloway can win Bradford West and various left front campaigns will average 1% or less in the coming May elections.

When do hundreds of thousand and millions of people move beyond belief in particular people? When they go into battle and discover that the whole system is against them.

The best basis for new political representation is a mass movement against austerity.