Leafletting and leaflets

Five of us went leafletting yesterday, 3 in the north and 2 in the south of the ward. Pending the arrival of the manifesto on Wednesday, we were distributing a general leaflet about Socialism and the Socialist Party. As a couple of thousand of these had already been distributed we must have distributed another thousand or so. So that's the ward leafletted twice.

As yesterday was rubbish collection day, we were able to recover leaflets issued by the other parties: Labour, Tories, Greens and TUSC (yes, we know, some of our leaflets are going to end up like this too).

Ok, this is a local election but the leaflets were pathetic. Labour's was about a "Back Our Bobbies campaign to keep police on the streets". The Tory's about the Council's licencing policy encouraging "booze-fuelled idiots". The Green man concentrated on stopping Tesco converting a closed pub into a supermarket. Only the TUSC leaflet raised wider issues.

The Tory leaflet criticised "the Loony-Left Council" (only a loony could describe New Labour as this) for taking out "a poster campaign claiming that the government was 'forcing' them to make cuts". As it happens, this is the case. But, according to the TUSC leaflet:

But Councillors have a choice! They don't have to make these cuts. In the 1980s, Lambeth and Liverpool Councils made a stand against Tory Thatcher's demands for cuts.

But neither Derek Hatton nor Ted Knight stopped the cuts, did they? Councillors could in theory do what TUSC asks them to do, but they would have to pay for it -- literally, by being surcharged. And the cuts would go through anyway.

As our manifesto points out, while the government has forced councils to make cuts it's because they have themselves been forced by the workings of capitalism to do this. That's the way capitalism works and a good reason to get rid of it. TUSC, however, think there is a solution within capitalism:

People before Profit. Make the bosses pay for their crisis. Tax the rich.

So, they envisage the continued existence of profit, bosses and the rich ! And think that this system can be reformed to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants. This, despite the weight of evidence and experience which disproves this.

Meanwhile the Brixtonblog has started publishing the statements of the candidates. So far they've only done the Labour and Greens ones. Our turn should come towards the end of the week.