Tilting the political scales

Someone has emailed us (at spgb@worldsocialism.org) asking us to comment on an item on the BBC site on "balancing the political scales" It's by Andrew Marr, their political editor, who, to give him his due, is making a better job of this than he did as editor of the Independent. He's got the difficult job of trying to find a difference between Tweedledee, Tweedledum and Tweedledoh (or the Labour, Tory and Liberal parties as they are more generally known) so that the BBC can give each of them a fair crack of the whip. Since they all stand for keeping the present system of minority class ownership and production for profit (and only seem to differ on whether asylum seekers should be sterilised or simply put in concentration camps -- well, OK, it hasn't actually come to that yet but it's heading that way), the easiest thing is to give them equal time, with a few minutes for the Scots and Welsh Nats, UKIP, George Galloway's RESPECT and Kilroy-Silk's VANITAS which also all stand for capitalism in one form or another. And that's what the BBC does, but that's not "balancing the political scales". It's tilting them massively in favour of the capitalist status quo. What about those who are opposed to capitalism and want to see it replaced by a system of common ownership, democratic control and production fot use not profit? In all our hundred years of existence we in the Socialist Party, despite contesting nearly every general election since 1945, have never once had a party political broadcast. We've been interviewed and mentioned on rare occasions, but that's not the same as having access to the airwaves with the presentation and format entirely under our control. As a political party, we're even banned from buying time on radio and TV, as is permitted in some other countries like America. But they can't stop us using the internet . . .