Just before the election I drew readers attention to the promise of a the wonderfully named young man Imotep in Ealing who predicted a "big vote" for the Workers Revolutionary Party. In the event their candidate polled a mere 73.
The WRP, or what remains of it failed to make any headway in the seven seats in which they stood. No surprise really. The only thing that amazes me is that they manage to publish their "penny dreadful" the News Line daily. No money from Libya these days!
Still they were just one of a number of groups proclaiming the banner of Marxism who dipped their toes into the world of electoral politics.
The Socialist Party backed Trade Unionists & Socialist Coalition tried to claim they were the sixth largest party on the basis of the number of candidates they stood, some 135 in all. The TUSC even managed to get a albeit dire, party political broadcast. So how did they do?
Despite a promise that they would publish a partial bulletin on their website on Friday that has now been put back to sometime this weekend as the comrades attempt to spin their poor performance. TUSC candidates polled low figures as expected and failed to stir revolutionary fervour amongst the downtrodden masses they falsely claim to represent.
Other than former MP and local councillor Dave Nellist in Coventry and Jenny Sutton in Tottenham, none of their othercandidates reached four figures. The average vote appears to hover around 200 or so, which would seem average for most fringe candidates.
The TUSC polled just over 36,000 votes, a mere 0.1% of the vote.
How much longer the RMT will continue to waste their money on this pointless project (which their own members are seemingly oblivious of) remains to be seen.
Some people include Respect as part of the far-left. I do not subscribe to that position and place this ego-centric outfit led by George Galloway on the far right of British politics due to it's pandering to both communalism and religiosity.
Galloway went as far to organise a "victory" parade around his constituency only to find he lost to the Labour candidate by over 2 to 1 in votes. He looked visibly shocked at the count, a video of which I have taken great pleasure in watching several times.
Meanwhile the TUSC and the Republican Socialists fought over the workers vote in the Inner city constituency of Bermondsey which was held by Simon Hughes of the hated Liberal Democrats. Surely they would gain a foothold here.
Nah! More to the point Steve Freeman appears to garnered the lowest vote obtained by any candidate in the general election. A mere 20. The TUSC who were backed by Left Unity to which Comrade Freeman also belongs managed a magnificent 142 votes (O.3%).
Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party managed to reappear out of the ether and ran seven candidates, all in Wales. They didn't figure highly either and will probably disappear back into the woodwork until the next general election if their leader is still around then.
Talking of old Stalinists, the Communist Party of Britain (the Morning Star lot) also intervened with nine candidates polling between them just 1,229 votes. So much for the British Road to Socialism eh comrades.
While all this effort was wasted the Tories and backward nationalists won the day.
A full table of results for the far-left can be found on Phil BC's website: here.
Meanwhile my attention was drawn to this short and interesting comparison of two of the three extremes in politics.
Food for thought.
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