THE ELECTION for the six places in the Constituency Section of Labour’s National Executive Committee is one of the very few opportunities which Labour’s rank and file have to exert some influence. This year’s election result shows continued advance of candidates supported by the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance (GA). Their share of the vote rose by 4.5%, with a corresponding decline in the vote for the Right-of-Centre candidates. For the first time the vote received by the Centre-Left and Centre-Right was about the same. Hitherto the Centre-Left had lagged behind.

This improvement was not reflected in NEC seats gained. In 2001 the Center-Right vote was split: eight Centre-Right candidates competed against each other – not just against the GA – for six places. Their advantage in votes (54.5% as against 45.5% cast for the Centre-Left) was not translated into seats.

Absolute and relative
If one looks at the absolute figures for each candidate the gain by the Centre-Left is not apparent. This is because (1) membership participation in this year’s ballot was higher than in 2001, and (2) the total vote was shared by 12 instead of 14 candidates. All candidates who stood again this year won more votes and increased their share in the total vote. Thus both Tony Robinson who once again topped the poll and Kumar Murshid who came bottom of the poll this year "did better" than last year – Robinson received 5,545 and Murshid 4,426 more votes than in 2002. Such comparisons shroud the fact that Robinson’s share of the total poll went up only by only 0.18% whilst Murshid’s rose by more than three times as much (see table below).

All candidates improved their share of the vote, even though Shahid Malik did so only slightly. For the extent of the overall shift to the Centre-Left was insufficient to reduce the share of any of the individual Centre-Right candidates. In addition the less well placed candidates, of both Centre-Right and Centre Left, benefited more from the redistribution of the total vote. The present advancef the GA can therefore be seen only in the relative improvement in each candidate’s position.

Uneven increases
Had the increase in the share of the vote resulting from there being only 12 candidates this year been distributed equally between candidates on each of the slates, each Centre-Right candidate would have gained 0.95% and each Centre-Left candidate 0.75% on the average. As it is, among the successful candidates only Ruth Turner’s and Mark Seddon’s exceeded these increases (by 0.19% and 0.14% respectively). All the other successful candidates received less than the average increase, Tony Robinson’s increase was 0.77% below average, Ann Black’s 0.09%, Christine Shawcroft’s 0.37% and Shahid Malik’s 0.92%.

The unsuccessful candidates, on the other hand, did rather better. Val Price "scored" 1% above average, Pete Willsman 0.29%, Rozanne Foyer 0.14%, and Peter Wheeler 0.47%, whilst Kumar Murshid was just 0.18% below the average increase.

These figures show that the gap between the candidate who got most votes and the one least successful has narrowed. Whilst it is not possible to be absolutely certain where all the extra votes came from, the greater density between the highest and the lowest vote as well as relatively small increases in the share of the votes for the successful candidates indicate that more members have voted the full slate than previously, rather than that there was a major influx of new voters. This is also the more likely reason because the total membership has continued to decline. In 2001 it fell by 29,000.

Women lead the charge
The analysis of this year’s pattern of voting reveals another significant feature. Last year, as in previous years, more votes were cast for male candidates than women ones. In 2002, for the first time, the members’ preference for male candidates ended: women got 157,006 votes and men 154.990. Interestingly it was the votes for the GA women which closed the gap between the Centre-Left and Centre-Right. The GA women’s share of the poll was 26.60% (24.66% in 2001) while Centre-Right women’s share was 23.72% (24.75% in 2001), Centre-Right men’s share was 26.36% (29.86% in 2001) whilst GA men continued to lag behind with 23.29% (20.72% in 2001). The shift to the Centre-Left suggests that the dissatisfaction with the leadership is more pronounced among Labour women members. This may reflect a change in the national mood, as indicated in recent opinion polls. Detailed results are given below.

Lessons for the Left
With policy differences between the main parties narrowing, the official opposition lacks credibility. There seems therefore no immediate danger of the Tories or Lib-Dems increasing their popularity. If, however, the dissatisfaction with "New Labour’s" performance is not to benefit them eventually, New Labour’s policies must be challenged from within the Labour Party from the Left. The leadership knows this, and that is why it is for ever trying to stifle criticism by threatening critics with a Tory comeback – a tactic reminiscent of Orwell’s pigs in Animal Farm who kept raising the spectre of farmer Jones’s return to keep the other animals in servitude.

The shift to the left of union and even among constituency members are signs that opposition to the party’s present direction is mounting. This process, however, is being retarded or obstructed by Left activists who have either dropped out of the party or opted for membership of "radical" sects (or their motley alliances) posturing as parties that represent an alternative to Labour. Many of these are self-proclaimed Marxists who have conveniently forgotten what Marx had to say about the relationship of socialist sects to the real workers’ movement, namely that these always stand in inverse ratio to each other and that so long as the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement, there is some justification for the existence of socialist sects. However, as soon as labour movement has attained maturity "all sects are essentially reactionary" (Marx to Bolte, 23 November 1871).

If we adopt Marx’s criterion, it is possible credibly to argue that the organised mass labour movement in this country, let alone its political wing, has yet to attain maturity.* What cannot be credibly maintained, is that after a nearly two centuries-long growth of the labour movement the continued existence of sects is historically justified. Of course, sectarians will always claim that they are not sectarians but building genuine working class parties, or at least laying foundations for them. Having taken some 70 years, or if we start from the "Communist" party some 85 years, to do this, and their practice having produced no results, we are compelled to ask whether there isn’t something the matter with their practice, and consequently their theory. For inability to learn from experience turns theory into a dogma and leads to a voluntary isolation of socialists from the living labour movement.

* Strangely enough, those who deny that the Labour Party in Britain retains its working class roots have no difficulty in asserting that the "Soviet Union" was a "workers’ state" – albeit a degenerated one – and that the regimes it foisted upon Eastern Europe were "deformed workers’ states".