Two birds with one stone

Went to a meeting at “Come to the Revolution” café in New Cross yesterday. This is not actually in the area we are contesting, but is only a mile or so away from the boundary with Southwark. So this was an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Go to the meeting organised by “People before Profit” and distribute some leaflets in Southwark.

I thought the meeting was going to be on the group’s political programme but it was a planning meeting to discuss the details of the campaign of their candidate for the Greenwich and Lewisham GLA constituency. It was still interesting to see how another small group deals with the questions that arise: raising the deposit, agreeing on leaflets and posters, how many to order and where and how to distribute them.

Of course, as a local group campaigning on local issues, mainly in Lewisham, they have a different aim and approach to us. We are contesting to spread the idea of socialism and make contacts and are not particularly concerned with the number of votes we get. They want to get as many votes as they can (they expect to save their deposit by getting at least 5%). They did have some ideas we could use, such as giving out leaflets at railway stations rather than through letter-boxes (in our area it would mainly be tube stations since all these south of the Thames are in the area we’re contesting). They also plan to leaflet schools (presumably primary schools when parents come to pick up their kids) and churches (not for us).

The area of Southwark leafletted was a part of Peckham. I hadn’t realised it was so near to Millwall football ground until I saw a platoon of mounted police trotting by. Unfortunately, in view of our lack of resources, these could be the only leaflets distributed in Southwark where we’ll have to rely on the local newspaper (the Southwark News, which is not bad) and any hustings, unless, that is, we leaflet Kennington (probably), Borough and Elephant & Castle tube stations (not priorities).