With the farmers in Barnes

Two members at the stall in Barnes yesterday. We started early as the Tories and LibDem/Greens (with a joint stall) were already there when we arrived at 11.30. Finished early too, at 1pm, when the Farmers Market ended and they went.

Some passers-by told us they had already received our leaflet through their letterbox. A Tory backwoodsman told us to "go back to Russia". We suggested that they did as Russia was now capitalist even by their standards as opposed to the state capitalism it was with the USSR. Another, a rather more up-to-date, Tory remembered an active SPGB group at UCL in the 1980s. Met a couple of Labourites. They are standing here but are not running any sort of campaign and will only have put up candidates to give their supporters a chance to vote for what they want -- a quite legitimate reason, one of the reasons we are standing too. As Eugene Debs put it, it is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.

Afterwards, we distributed some of the surplus leaflets in another part of Barnes not in the ward.