from The Spark November 2007
The Workers Party stood 4 mayoral candidates in this year’s local body elections. Nationally we received 4,705 votes. Below is a breakdown of the results for each candidate:
Waitakere City: Rebecca Broad 2,101 votes (4.46%)
Wellington: Nick Kelly 988 votes (1.43%)
Christchurch: Byron Clark 720 votes (0.69%)
Dunedin: Tim Bowron 896 votes (2.23%)
The decision of the Auckland branch to only stand in Waitakere City was opposed by some people within the Workers Party who argued that the Auckland City mayoral race would have got more media publicity. However the decision of the branch to concentrate on Waitakere bore considerable results. Rebecca Broad’s 2101 vote count was by far the most impressive number of votes a Workers’ Party candidate has received in an election. The campaign has also had other positive results, such as Rebecca being offered a regular column in the local paper. Generally this campaign helped put forward socialist politics and drew a number of people, including organised workers, closer to the Workers’ Party.
In Wellington Nick Kelly received 988 votes in the 2007 mayoral election. This is slightly down on the vote that WP’s forerunner the Anti Capitalist Alliance received in 2004. This was because of lower voter turnout, a bigger selection of candidates and because the party put forward a harder left message than it did in the 2004 election in Wellington City. The result also reflects that the fact that the Wellington left including the WP is weaker than in 2004 (some key WP members in Wellington have moved to other branches for example). Another consequence of this weakened position was that the WP did not stand in Upper Hutt or Porirua as it did in 2004. However, despite this, the 2007 campaign was successful, in terms of party building and gaining public presence.
In Christchurch Byron Clark ran a strong campaign and slightly increased the vote number achieved by our party at the last election, gaining 720 votes. The Workers Party also managed to get more votes than Kyle Chapman, who is the former far-right National Front leader. In 2004 Chapman got more than double the vote count of the WP.
In Dunedin Tim Bowron stood as the joint Workers’ Party and International Socialist Organisation candidate. This was the first time that either organisation had contested the mayoralty in Dunedin. This campaign was part of ongoing cooperative work between the two socialist organisations in Dunedin. Tim’s vote was also a good result for Dunedin and an encouraging sign for building of the socialist left in that city.
Nationally, Workers Party votes totaled 4,705. This is about the same vote the party achieved in 2004 when we got 4,700 votes. In 2004 we stood in Auckland City, Manakau, Upper Hutt, Porirua, Wellington and Christchurch. So in 2007 we got about the same vote count from a smaller number of voters.
The Workers’ Party doesn’t stand in elections just to catch votes, and during a downturn in class struggle a strong left vote is usually unlikely. The campaign’s main goal was to put working class politics onto the agenda and argue that to really stop local government serving business at the expense of workers what is needed is a working class party in power. This was raised at all candidates meetings that the Workers Party attended, as well as at union meetings and to workers at Spark sales and campaign stalls throughout the country. The campaign helped get some twenty people signed up as part of the WP campaign to get over 500 members so we can stand as a party in the 2008 general election.
The key message the Workers Party has put forward in this campaign is that to bring about real change in local body politics what’s needed isn’t just a change of mayor or councilors, but rather a fundamental change to the way in which society is run. Currently local government serves the interests of the capitalist class at the expense of working people. What is needed is a workers movement and workers party capable of fundamentally changing this injustice.
