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Rise and fall of the New Zealand Alliance Party
JULY’S ELECTION saw New Zealand’s Labour Party returned
to power in a new coalition government. Their partners this time include the
populist right-wing United Future Party (UFP). The National Party, the
traditional big business party, polled just 21%, its worst ever election result.
The clear hostility to the establishment parties, however,
means that no party has a solid base, with all having experienced sharp
fluctuations in support. Abstention rates reached 22% while 38% of the
electorate voted for an array of smaller parties. To the ‘left’ of Labour,
the Green Party scored 6%. The Alliance Party though, for many years presented
as a left alternative to Labour, failed to win a seat.
Ten years ago, many on the left internationally looked to
the Alliance as a model for the development of new left formations. So how did
it come to suffer such a significant defeat?
The origins of the Alliance lie in the profound shift to the
right by the Labour Party leadership in the 1980s. Following a deep economic
recession, Labour won office in 1984. Rather than introducing policies to better
the conditions of the working class, however, the Labour administration followed
the Thatcher and Reagan ‘free market revolution’. State-owned resources were
sold off and unemployment and poverty rose. After six years in power the party
was decimated in the October 1990 elections, holding only 28 of its 97 seats,
with the National Party victorious.
If 1990 saw the bitter harvest of Labour’s betrayals, it
also witnessed the rise of ‘left alternative’ protest parties and
formations. New Labour, which had split from Labour eighteen months earlier,
polled 5.2%. The new party, led by veteran left Labour MP Jim Anderton and
claiming over 4,000 members, called for public ownership, progressive taxation
and full employment. The Greens won 6.3%, the Democrats (supported by small
farmers, small businessmen and some workers) 1.7%, and the radical Maori-based
party, Manu Motuhake, 5.2%.
These relatively modest but important results acted as a
powerful impetus towards creating some larger coalition. A post-election
multi-party conference took place in 1991 and later that year the Alliance Party
was established, with five constituent parties: the Democrats, Manu Motuhake,
New Labour, the Green Party, and the Liberals, a splinter from the Nationals.
This "new movement was unprecedented", the Alliance founders
proclaimed. "Nowhere in the English-speaking Western world had such a
significant force arisen on the left of the political spectrum".
From the start, however, the Alliance was not a clearly
defined socialist party. Its component parts represented a variety of class and
sectional interests. Its three ‘general principles’ – more government
intervention in opposition to extreme neo-liberalism, disillusionment with the
‘political system and culture’ created by the big capitalist parties, and
the need to get rid of the first-past-the-post (FFP) electoral system – for a
time could generally unite the disparate groups and even mean electoral
breakthroughs. But they did not prepare the Alliance for the events to come.
Early electoral success for the Alliance arrived in 1992,
when it came within a few hundred votes of victory over the Nationals in the
Tamaki parliamentary by-election. Eight months later, the Alliance gained 42%
support and control of the regional government in Auckland. Then, in the 1993
general election, it scored an impressive 18.7%, when the very unpopular
National Party barely retained power. The FFP electoral system, however, meant
that it won only two seats in parliament.
The Alliance played a central role in the referendum
contests that saw over half the population vote for a new mixed-member
proportional representation system (MMP), despite opposition from big business
and the two main parties. But the subsequent election fought under the new
system in 1996 proved to be a turning point.
The new system allowed the Alliance to increase its seats
from two to 13 in 1996, but its overall vote dropped sharply to 10.3%. The
Alliance leaders blamed this on the populist, racist appeal of the New Zealand
First party, led by Winston Peters. The right-wing opportunism of NZ First,
however, could only be contested with a clear socialist programme that put the
blame for social and economic crisis where it belongs – at the feet of the
capitalists – to cut across the appeal of the right’s demagogy. The reality
was that the Alliance was beginning to lose momentum because its limited
policies and programme were revealing themselves to working-class people and
middle layers in society as being incapable of solving their problems.
Moreover, the idea of sharing power with the still
neo-liberal Labour Party, which the Alliance leaders proposed, added to this
perception. Instead of offering itself as a prop to the Labour leaders, the
Alliance should have struck out independently with socialist ideas. By the
mid-1990s the Labour Party was in a state of virtual collapse, having lost
thousands of members in disgust over its pro-capitalist policies and polling
only slightly above the Alliance. With an appeal to ex-Labour and Labour
supporters to join the Alliance on a fighting programme that maintained all the
best traditions of the Labour Party, a mass workers’ party could have come
into existence. Given the more advantageous MMP system, the Alliance could have
become a serious challenger to the two main bosses’ parties. Unfortunately,
however, a brilliant opportunity to build a serious socialist force was lost.
Stepping into the vacuum, NZ First emerged from the 1996 elections with 17 MPs
and holding the balance of power.
As the smaller parties support stagnated or fell Labour
began a makeover to re-win popularity, adopting slightly more ‘left’
rhetoric. The failure to capitalise on its early promise led to increased
disputes within the Alliance. Two Alliance MPs defected and in 1999 the Green
Party decided to go it alone.
The coalition of distinct political parties that had
characterised the Alliance really came to a formal end a little later when New
Labour dissolved itself. The urge for a new accommodation with the Labour
leaders, as the only ‘viable’ route to government, meant in practice the
dropping of all meaningful opposition to neo-liberal policies. A ‘truce on the
left’ was declared. In 1998, the Labour leader, Helen Clarke, addressed the
Alliance conference and delegates voted unanimously to enter a ‘loose’
coalition with Labour in government. By 1999, the relationship with Labour was
described by the Alliance leaders as being ‘thoroughly repaired’. During
this time, Labour support steadily rose, as many workers saw it as the only hope
to end the National Party government. This success did not rub off on the
Alliance, however, whose support fell away as quickly as the party leaders shed
their former radical image.
In the 1999 general election the Labour Party won 38.7%,
boosted by Clarke’s limited pledges to increase spending on health and
education and to reverse some of the Nationals worst neo-liberal policies. The
Alliance, on the other hand, won only 7.7%, with ten seats. The Greens also
managed to get over the 5% threshold and won seven seats. Labour and the
Alliance formed a coalition government with Green support which the Alliance
leaders claimed represented ‘the first leftwing government in NZ since 1972’.
The Labour/Alliance coalition government, however, was
anything but a ‘leftwing’ or progressive administration. Initially, some
small reforms were made, for example, re-nationalising accident compensation,
lifting the minimum wage and making state-controlled rents based more on means.
Even these modest measures alarmed the boardrooms, however, and soon the
government was put in its place by big business.
In the Alliance a split developed over the government
decision to offer NZ troops to back up Bush’s war on terror in Afghanistan,
with Jim Anderton leading the majority of Alliance MPs into a new group called
the Progressive Coalition. Yet this dispute did not reach the level of
principles or ideology. Both the Alliance and the Progressive Coalition promised
to be ‘responsible’ partners in a future Labour government on entering the
July general election race. In the event, the Progressive Coalition won two
seats (with 1.8% of the vote), including Anderton, while the Alliance proper won
only 1.2% of the vote and is not represented in parliament. The smaller
right-wing parties successfully exploited the vacuum created with a populist
rhetoric that appeared to many electors to address the pressing social and
economic issues.
Within ten years, the promise of a new left party in New
Zealand with a mass following making its way to power has been turned to dust.
Responsibility lies not with the working class and radical youth, who indicated
in poll after poll in the mid-1990s that they were prepared to back a credible
left alternative to the ‘New Right’ and Labour, but with the Alliance
leaders, who failed to put forward a socialist programme. They wanted to square
the circle by attending to the interests of workers and at the same time those
of big business. When this inevitably failed, they drew the completely wrong
lessons and stampeded towards the crowded ‘centre ground’ of politics.
For new left formations to succeed they must first and
foremost put forward a socialist programme attractive to the poor, to those in
work, to women, to youth and to the most oppressed, and also to the small
business people and farmers who face ruin under capitalism. They must build an
independent position, without relying on parties representing big business, and
offer an open, democratic structure if they are to win over the active
participation of youth and trade unionists.
The polarisation between the right and left in New Zealand
society and the big loss of support for traditional pro-capitalist establishment
parties signifies profound changes. An opposition mood will develop to the
Clarke government, which at a certain point can mean the creation of a new left
opposition. Providing the lessons of the Alliance experience are fully
assimilated, it can become an alternative to both the big parties of the bosses
and the right-wing demagogues.
Labour & the Alliance: general election results
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Percentage |
Seats |
November 1993* |
Labour |
34.7% |
45 |
|
Alliance |
18.7% |
2 |
October 1996 |
Labour |
28% |
37 |
|
Alliance |
10.3% |
13 |
November 1999 |
Labour |
38.7% |
49 |
|
Alliance |
7.7% |
10 |
July 2002 |
Labour |
41% |
52 |
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Alliance |
1.2% |
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* Held under the first-past-the-post system.
Niall Mulholland
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