Not the end of the world

And the winning by the BNP of a seat in the London Assembly has not made the atmosphere any more conducive to optimism among Britain's progressives.

But the doom and gloom should be tempered by a little more common sense than is immediately evident.

Did anyone ever expect City Hall to raise the red flag of revolution over London? Or the local councils to immediately announce the formation of communes and collectives to run local enterprises?

No, of course not. Nobody on the left would, one hopes, be so naive or blindly optimistic.

And does anyone expect the revolution to be called from the Speaker's chair in Parliament? Again, No.

Parliament is occupied by, in the main, two bourgeois-democratic parties vying to run capitalism better than the other and, since the new Labour coup, these two parties have no differences in principle, although a small, if reducing, number in practise.

Those small differences, however, are enormously significant to the poor and the elderly, the unemployed and the disadvantaged, which makes the fight for a Labour government still important.

But that government is never going to produce the qualitative change to socialism all on its lonesome.

So what difference have the elections made for us?

Well they have made the fight against fascism that much harder, because of the election of Richard Barnbrook to the London Assembly.

And they have made the defence of the poor and the fight for workers' rights that much more arduous.

But have they really been the dramatic setback that we are all tempted to see them as?

The priorities remain the same. The fight in the trade union movement for progressive policies will continue and will sharpen.

The battle to commit trade unions to enforcing their will on an intransigent and treacherous new Labour leadership will not reduce in importance but will grow in its obvious significance.

The struggle for social housing remains high on the agenda and the opposition to it will still be the government and the local authorities, as it has been throughout the life of this government.

The lessons of the election debacle, however, are there to be drawn and, as the newly resurgent Tories get into their stride, will be easier to explain and to organise against.

And, particularly in London, we should all learn from the unprincipled and professionally disgraceful gutter-press campaign waged by the Evening Standard against Ken Livingstone, that the power of the media may not alter the realities, but it can warp the perception of them by insinuation, half-truth and simple gutter journalism.

To counter it, we must renew our work at the grass roots, among working people who, while they may be temporarily deceived by weasel words, will experience day by day the problems caused by the election of Tories and the vacillation of right-wing Labour and will, if we are coherent - and voluble enough - in our explanations and analysis, learn to turn a deaf ear to the lies and lead the fight for their own and their class's interests.

And, while Mr Livingstone may be magnanimous enough not to blame new Labour for his defeat, we are not bound by such electoral niceties.