"I've never voted in my life but I'm here to support this". This was the comment of a middle aged woman referring to a "Vote Paul Dale" leaflet given to her on her way to vote in an Enniskillen polling station.

It shows the impact the Socialist Party election campaign had in the town in the short space of two months since the Party decided to contest the seat.

The decision was taken shortly after outgoing Independent Socialist councillor, Davy Keyttles announced his decision to stand down. Davy Kettyles not only publicly endorsed Paul, he energetically campaigned for him around the doors and on the streets.

During the campaign, the whole of Enniskillen as well as the villages of Tempo and Lisbellaw were canvassed. Thousands of leaflets and manifestos were distributed on street stalls and around the doors.

The result was a very credible 406 votes, around 5% of the total, an excellent result for a candidate standing for the first time. With another 150 or so votes it is possible that transfers could have meant taking a seat. The result is definitely something to build on.

The key issue in Enniskillen was water charges. There was huge support for the non payment strategy spelt out by our campaigners on the doorstep and on stalls.

Water charges was also the key issue in the other three seats we fought. The decision to stand in Cookstown was taken on the back of the establishment of a local We Won't Pay group and very successful campaigning work on the issue in the town.

The 84 first preference votes achieved by our candidate, Harry Hutchinson, was a credible 1.8% of the total.

It is difficult to persuade people to vote for a candidate outside the main parties who they don't believe is going to win. If we had have stayed in the count for a while, the number of transfers we would have received would give an indication of the underlying support. Before he was eliminated, Harry's vote had gone up to 387.

In Belfast, our campaigners were knocking on doors every night in the three weeks leading up to the election. We canvassed the key working class areas, Protestant and Catholic in both Laganbank and Pottinger, and got a very good response everywhere we went.

On the doorstep the main mood among working class people was of hostility to all the politicians. It was not that people couldn't be bothered voting, they were consciously showing their hostility to them all by staying at home. Our canvass managed to persuade some of these people that there was an alternative to vote for in this election.

We got 163 and 175 votes in the two seats respectively. In the Assembly elections our candidates, Jim Barbour and Tommy Black got similar figures in the much bigger Westminster constituencies of South and East Belfast. This time our percentage vote as much as tripled, admittedly to still modest figures.

The rise in the vote was some reflection of the greater recognition and increased support we got around the doors.

During the campaign around 300 copies of the special election issue of The Socialist were sold around the doors and another 1,000 or so on stalls.

A number of young people have joined Socialist Youth on the back of the Enniskillen election campaign and around 20 people in the two Belfast constituencies expressed an interest in joining the party.

Socialist Party results

Paul Dale
Enniskillen Town 406

Jim Barbour
Belfast Laganbank 175

Tommy Black
Belfast Pottinger 163

Harry Hutchinson
Cookstown Central 84

Unsurprisingly, the Westminster and Local Government elections in Northern Ireland have produced another sectarian headcount and a recipe for ongoing political stalemate.

More than 93% of the Westminster votes went to the four main sectarian parties. Within this, the trend towards one dominant unionist party, the DUP, and one dominant nationalist party, Sinn Fein, has continued.

This has been most clear cut on the unionist side. The UUP, losing all but one of its five Westminster seats including that of party leader, David Trimble, and suffering a similar drubbing in the council poll, now faces a meltdown situation. Trimble has resigned leaving an imploding party as the inheritance for whoever will become his hapless successor.

On the nationalist side the process is the same, only the pace is different. Overall there has been a swing of around 3%, in some places much higher, from the SDLP to Sinn Fein. However the fact that the SDLP held three Westminster seats, the same number they had in the old parliament, has disguised the steady erosion of its base that has taken place since the 2001 election.

They held on in South Down only because sitting MP, Eddie McGrady, decided to put off retirement rather than hand the seat to Sinn Fein. On current trends, the hand over will take place at the next election. The Newry/South Armagh result shows the likely political future of South Down. Sitting SDLP member, Seamus Mallon stood down and Sinn Fein took the seat quite easily.

The SDLP retained its overall tally of three seats only because of the huge swing from the UUP to the DUP in South Belfast. This had been a safe UUP seat, but this time their candidate could only manage a poor third behind the DUP. The split unionist vote allowed the SDLP to take the seat. If there was another election tomorrow, there is little doubt that unionist votes would consolidate behind the DUP and they would take the seat.

There are a number of reasons why the decline of the SDLP is along a gentler incline than that of the UUP. The revulsion caused by the murder of Robert McCartney and the subsequent attempts by republicans to mask what had happened did not cut across the rise of Sinn Fein. But it did have some impact. The loss of Sinn Fein's council seat in East Belfast while they were gaining seats elsewhere is almost certainly a direct result of the McCartney killing. Even senior Sinn Fein spokespersons have admitted that their vote was affected in the sense that some voters who would otherwise have deserted the SDLP did not do so.

The swing from the UUP reflected the angry contempt with which a growing section of unionists regard this party following the deal that brought Sinn Fein into government. Among Catholics there is not the same anger at the SDLP. Rather it is seen as ineffective and increasingly irrelevant on the ground.

Whereas the UUP is facing political oblivion with a bang, political decline for the SDLP comes more in the form of whimper.

The British and Irish governments had pinned their hopes of a political breakthrough on the Northern Bank robbery and McCartney killing leading to political reversals for Sinn Fein. A more contrite republican leadership would then deliver on IRA disbandment. Instead, they now have a strengthened DUP facing a strengthened Sinn Fein. Another round of discussions will open again, probably in the Autumn, but with very little hope of any breakthrough and with absolutely no hope of coming up with anything that will last for any length of time.

Sectarian politics represents an absolute dead end for working class people. The four main parties may be at loggerheads over the national question, but when it comes to social and economic issues there is little that divides them. When they were in office, they all embraced the Blairite economic agenda of privatisation and cuts in services.

The real question that is posed by these results is whether and how this hardening sectarian monopoly of political life can be broken? The smaller parties that emerged during the 1990s have now all but disappeared. The Women's Coalition had only one candidate in the whole election - a sitting councillor who lost her North Down seat. The PUP stood a handful and lost ground holding only two seats.

Still, the basis for a challenge to the sectarian parties was demonstrated even in this election. It was shown in West Tyrone where Dr. Deeny running on a "save the Omagh hospital" ticket came second with 11,905 votes, 27% of the total. Dr. Deeny's vote could have been higher if he had built on his success in the Assembly elections to put together an organisation to challenge the local parties in both the Westminster and local elections. As it was, he withdrew his slate of local election candidates as part of a deal worked out behind the scenes with local SDLP representatives. Nonetheless his huge vote shows how a candidate standing on a class issue can successfully take on the right wing and sectarian parties.

No choice elections show need for a new working class party

The need for an alternative was also shown negatively - in the huge numbers who did not vote. Around 90,000 fewer people voted this time than in the 2001 General Election. In part this is because of a fall in the numbers who have bothered to register; in part it is due to the large numbers who did not bother to vote. The turnout was lowest in working class areas, especially in Protestant working class areas.
This is down to more than apathy - it reflects a total disillusionment with all the political parties and a sense that there is no point in voting as the end result will just be a continuation of the sectarian stalemate.

In the overall context of this sectarian headcount, the four Socialist Party candidates did well. As the reports elsewhere in this paper show, we received a very warm response on the doorstep and, in terms of votes, greatly improved on what we achieved in the Assembly election. Albeit on a small scale, given our limited resources we have shown that it is possible to take socialist ideas into every working class area, Catholic and Protestant and get a positive response.

It is possible that there could now be a space of a few years before another election. In this time it is possible that there will be massive campaigns on issues like water charges and against cuts in expenditure that will unite the working class communities despite the attempts by the politicians to keep people divided. We need to use this time and such campaigns to build a new working class party, based on the trade unions and genuine community organisations, that is able to offer a viable socialist alternative.

The results of the general election in England, Scotland and Wales have delivered a severe blow to the "New Labour project". Labour's overall majority fell by 100 seats to 66.

Blair is now much more vulnerable to backbench revolts and is seen as a liability by many of his MP's. He has stated his intention to see out this term but his ambitions may yet come to nought.

This government will be far weaker than the last. Blair and Brown have made it clear that privatisation and attacks on the working class will continue. The threat of strike action by over one million public sector workers before the election to defend their pensions was an indication that workers will not be prepared to accept these attacks without a fight.

Blair and Brown promise economic tranquility but they will find it harder to deliver. A number of economic commentators sounded warning bells during the election campaign. Roger Bootle wrote in the Observer (1 May) "I think Tony Blair's choice of 5 May was apposite. If he had delayed it until the autumn, he could have been in serious trouble".

Paul Volker, chairman of the American Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987, stated "Circumstances seem to me as dangerous as any I can remember and I can remember quite a lot".

Hamish McRae in The Independent (20 April) argued that "... you could say that - on economic grounds - this is one [election] you want to lose."

And Digby Jones, head of the CBI, challenged New Labour over the "black hole" in government finances and called on them "to look voters in the eye and say 'you pay'" (Financial Times, 6 April).

In June 1992 John Major was returned to power against expectations. Within just three months Britain was forced out of the European exchange-rate mechanism and he presided over a government of crisis until his overwhelming defeat in 1997. The same fate could face Blair, or his chosen successor, Gordon Brown.

Despite the viciously anti-working class nature of the out-going government, and despite the war in Iraq New Labour did win. The question is why?

Working people faced the dilemma of who to vote for when the three main parties are competing over who can best manage capitalism. As a result Labour were returned with the lowest proportion of the vote achieved by any winning party in 150 years.

Though the turnout in this election was slightly up on 2001, mainly because of a huge increase in postal voting, this was still one of the lowest turnouts since the First World War. Many voters, particularly in workingclass areas simply stayed at home. The turnout in David Blunkett's Sheffield constituency for example was only 38%.

The anti-Labour vote was fragmented with no one party benefiting. Posing as the anti-war party the Liberal Democrats benefited most from the discontent with Blair over Iraq. There were major swings from Labour to the Liberals in some traditional Labour seats. The Liberals did less well in seats they were expecting to take from the Tories, tying themselves up in knots as they attempted to face in two directions at the same time.

The Liberals have failed in their aim of replacing the Tories as the second party of big business, though the Tories were not seen as a credible alternative government even by their natural supporters and are feared and despised by working class people. They lost votes to their right wing populist rivals, UKIP and Kilroy-Silk's Veritas.

The BNP gained over 4% of the vote in the areas where they stood. This vote is a warning to the labour movement, demonstrating how, in the absence of an alternative, discontent can be reflected in an increase in the vote of the far-right.

Had there been a more coherent, viable and nation-wide alternative for working-class people this government would have been finished.

The many credible votes for anti-establishment and anti-war candidates who gained a higher media profile, such as Reg Keys in particular, whose son was killed in Iraq and who stood against Blair, shows how the Iraq factor could have had a wider impact.

The high-profile victory of George Galloway, standing for Respect in Bethnal Green and Bow, will be welcomed by many around the country.

George Galloway's campaign undoubtedly tapped into the mood of radicalisation and anger at New Labour - in particular amongst the Muslim community (around 40% of the electorate in the constituency).

The Socialist Party welcomed this victory and called for a vote for Respect - a party that stands to the left of the big three.

Unfortunately Respect did not stand on a clearly socialist ticket. Respect hoped that, by not being explicitly socialist, they would broaden their appeal. However, in areas without large Muslim communities their votes appear comparable to those previously achieved by the explicitly socialist Socialist Alliance and to those achieved the Socialist Party in this election.

A new workers' party will not be built by appealing overwhelmingly to one section of the working class. In addition George Galloway has not, at this stage, clearly drawn the conclusion that a new party is needed to replace New Labour and has mistakenly raised the prospect of Respect possibly playing a part in a process of "reclaiming" the Labour Party.

Whether George Galloway and Respect play a positive role in the process towards forming such a new mass workers party will depend on the approach they adopt in coming struggles.

In Scotland there was an alternative party standing in every area-the Scottish Socialist Party. Unfortunately its vote went down on recent elections. This is partly because of the first past the post nature of the general election and the recent disarray in the SSP after Tommy Sheridan's resignation as party leader. It also reflects the SSP's turn away from a clear socialist profile towards left nationalism.

The Socialist Party in England and Wales achieved some creditable results. In Coventry North East, Dave Nellist received 1,874 (5%), in Lewisham Deptford, Socialist Party councillor Ian Page received 742 votes (2.4%), in Coventry South Rob Windsor received 1,097 votes(2.7%). In Newcastle East, standing for the first time, Bill Hopwood gained 582 votes (1.8%) and in Walthamstow Nancy Taaffe received 727 (2.4%).

A new party of the working class will be built primarily as result of important sections of the working class entering struggle and seeing the necessity of building a political alternative to the capitalist parties. It was the experience of privatisation and strike action over pay, combined with socialists and trade unionists raising the issue, that led to the RMT and FBU severing their link with New Labour. Under the impact of future struggles, workers will conclude not only that they need to make that break but that they need political representation.