The Residents Action Movement began as an electoral front group in Auckland, formed largely by members of the Socialist Worker organisation. It originally ran only in the Auckland local body elections, and ran eight candidates in 2004. One of it’s candidates, Robyn Hughes, was elected to the Auckland Regional Council.

RAM did not fare so well in the 2007 local body elections, with it’s vote count for the Auckland Regional Council dropping to 76,000. It’s only councilor also lost her seat.

RAM has now made the decision to register for the general elections, and is trying to make the transition to becoming a nationwide political party. It has had limited success with this - while it has recruited a great number of people on the basis of it’s centre-left, liberal politics (it currently claims to have 2,400 paper members), it has yet to expand outside of Auckland in terms of an activist base, barring a handful of supporters in and around Wellington.

RAM’s policies are a mixture of social liberalism, New Zealand nationalism and bourgeois environmentalism, which RAM mashes together under the label “broad left”.

It is calling for the removal of GST from food, while retaining this anti-worker ad anti-poor flat tax on everything else, including other necessities such as petrol, clothes and electricity! So far, no explanation has been given as to why it will not abolish GST in it’s entirety, despite it’s claims to ” Put human beings and our planet before the almighty dollar”.

It is also calling for free and frequent public transport, reducing household rates, and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour (the same level that reactionary parties such as New Zealand First are calling for).

RAM can be viewed essentially as a slightly more vocal version of the Greens. It does not claim to represent any particular class in New Zealand, and as a result inevitably ends up representing the interests of the wealthy, ruling class, as can be seen through it’s centreist policies.

It is surprising (and for radical leftists, saddening) that the once proud Socialist Worker organisation, successor to the Communist Party of New Zealand, has now reduced itself to the point where it openly endorses and has effectively dissolved itself into an electoral vehicle that describes itself as “a broad left coalition, stretching from social liberals, community activists and former National Party members to social democrats, democratic socialists and left-wing radicals.” Any organisation containing former National Party members cannot be especially left wing!

RAM may well receive a reasonable vote in the elections. It has watered down and moderated it’s politics to the extent that it has for just that reason. But the important thing to keep in mind is that these votes are not the votes of working-class people voting for the destruction of the capitalist system and the establishment of a socialist society - they are not even votes for anything radically different to the status quo! No, any votes that RAM recieves will be liberal votes, and any candidates it has elected will be operating within the restraints of a liberal platform.

It is clear that RAM does not represent anything radically different in New Zealand politics, and that it does not intend to make any substantial changes to New Zealand society and the system we live under.