Vaux Populi

It's election time again

2012-02-01T10:20:00.002Z

On 3 May electors in London will be voting for a new Mayor and also for the members of the Greater London Assembly. We're not standing for Mayor (even if we had the money) because we don't believe in mayors but we will be contesting two GLA constituencies: Lambeth & Southwark (as 4 years ago) and this time also Merton & Wandsworth.

One reason for contesting two constituencies is that, under the Boundary Commission's proposals for the 2015 General Election, 4 wards from Wandsworth will be joined with 4 wards from Lambeth to form a new Battersera & Wandsworth parliamentary constituency which we will probably contest.

The Socialist Party candidate in Lambeth & Southwark will be Danny Lambert and in Merton & Wandsworth Bill Martin

As always, we will be standing on a single platform: the need to establish socialism as a society based on common ownership and democratic control where goods and services are produced to meet people's needs instead of for profit. This has never been tried (and certainly not in Russia or China) and can only come about democratically when a majority want it.

Follow this blog for regular updates on the campaign.

. . . and in Camden

2010-05-08T14:25:00.003Z

In Camden, whereas we only had one candidate in a three-member ward, the result was:

KENTISH TOWN

Georgia Gould (Labour) 2382
Dave Horan (Labour) 2273
Meric Apak (Labour) 2153
Ralph Scott (LibDem) 2052
Nick Russell (LibDem) 1957
Abdiwali Mohamud (LibDem) 1755
Victoria Green (Green) 1198
John Charles Bird (Green) 939
Doreen Bartlett (Con) 812
Alaa Owaineh (Green) 690
Paul Barton (Con) 750
Darryl Davies (Con) 749
Stephen Dorman (BNP) 180
Bill Martin (Soc) 113

Turnout 64.10%

Out for the count

2010-05-08T13:14:00.004Z

The result at Vauxhall wasn't declared till after 8 o'clock on Friday morning and then it was back to the Town Hall for the count for the local elections which lasted till midnight. We got 82, 48 and 45 in Ferndale and 48, 45 and 46 in Larkhall. For the full figures see here and here respectively. Since Vauxhall has 8 wards and we contested two this meant that a quarter of the electorate had a chance to Vote Socialist twice and some obviously did. We only saw a handful who had voted just for all 3 of our candidates, but most of the others were deliberately cast for us (eg one for us and 2 for Labour or 1 for us and 2 for the Greens) and the higher voted for Danny Lambert is to be explained by people knowing what we stood for.

Besides staring at ballot papers the two of us had a chance to talk to Janus Polenceus of the English Democrats. He invited us to send a speaker to a meeting of theirs to explain our attitude to their proposal for an English Parliament (not sure we can say much about that except that it's irrelevant). He also said that the English Democrats wanted a referendum to be held in the old county of Monmouthshire to decide whether the inhabitants wanted to return to England which they had been part of until the 1960s. He got 60 votes in Stockwell ward.

At the general election count two of us spent some time talking to the people from the Animal Protection Party. Apparently they are different from the Animals Count Party we met at the European elections. They see themselves as the "spikey" wing of the Animal Rights movement and are hunt saboteurs. Their candidate told us he had voted for the Greens in his constituency.

We eventually met and talked to the people from Workers Power. At the beginning of the evening they had been hostile, the editor of their paper remarking to Danny that we had decided to "sully our hands" had we? In the end, as the votes for the 5 minor parties were counted together at one table, we had to talk to each other in a more civilised manner. When I said that the last time there had been two candidates calling themselves "socialist" in Vauxhall (in 1997) the other one (Scargill's SLP) had easily got many more votes than us, their candidate said that he had once been a member of the SLP. I'd forgotten that quite a number of Trotskyist groups entered the SLP till Scargill the Stalinist kicked them out.

The local bloggers couldn't get over the fact that, despite his slick campaign of tweets and YouTube clips, Jeremy Drinkall got less votes than us. Our friend the SW8 nationalist in particular, but he'd been hostile to us from the start. Maybe it was the triumph of substance over form. Or maybe that the people on council estates he targetted don't tweet. To tell the truth, from a media point of view, his campaign was better than ours. We never got a mention in the Financial Times, or got a photo in the South London Press or used YouTube. We'll have to do better here next time.

Hang on...

2010-05-07T08:19:00.003Z

Right, didn't attend the count, maybe some who were there will tell if anything fun happened, but here is the Beeb-Beeb-Ceeb's version of the count:

Kate Hoey	Labour	21,498	49.8%
Caroline Pidgeon	Liberal Democrat	10,847	25.1%
Glyn Chambers	Conservative	9,301	21.5%
Joseph Healy	Green	708	1.6%
Jose Navarro	English Democrats	289	0.7%
Lana Martin	Christian Party	200	0.5%
Daniel Lambert	Socialist Party of Great Britain	143	0.3%
Jeremy Drinkall	Anticapitalists - Workers Power	109	0.3%
James Kapetanos	Animal Protection Party, The	96	0.2%
Majority	10,651	24.7%
Turnout	43,191	57.7%	+9.3

That puts us down from 240 last time, and means we've been leapfrogged by the English Democrats (whop we beat last time), but at least we beat the animal rights feller.

Looking at it, if we add our vote and the Workers' Power character's vote together, we get about the vote last time, so maybe those 109 Drinkall got are left reformists who voted for us in 2005.

It will, of course, be interesting to compare with our council election votes.

I voted "Me"!

2010-05-06T08:45:00.003Z

Well, me and a comrade did our last leafletting run round Kentish Town - including the street Old Charlie Marx used to live on (we were firmly convinced that he wouldn't have a 'No Junk Mail' sticker on his letterbox). His house (no demolished) was in what is now gospel Oak ward, but the principle is that he walked those streets we leafletted, probably complaining about his carbuncles.

This morning I voted Me - second time in two years I haven't had to do that through a write-in vote (which I hope all of you out there in constituencies without a Socialist party candidate are going to do today).

My prediction? A landslide for the Capitalist Party. We need to do something about that.

Last Minute Election Quiz

2010-05-06T06:28:00.004Z

The media are saying that many people still haven't yet made up their minds how to vote. If you are one of these and live in Vauxhall go to this site and answer the questions to see who you agree with most. Even if you don't live in Vauxhall you can still see if you agree more with the Socialist Party candidate by typing in "SW4 7UN" when prompted for a postcode. In any event you'll be able to see the Socialist Party's position on the various questions. For the Socialist Party candidate's answers to a questionnaire on war go to here and again type in "SW4 7UN".

The Last Day

2010-05-05T15:24:00.005Z

Two of us went this morning to Lambeth College on Clapham Common to the march of striking members of the University and College Union were organising from there down Clapham High Street (past our premises, with its new opened-up front) to Clapham North. Good luck to them. We talked to a few of the 30 to 40 people present and gave them a leaflet. The other politicos there were from Workers Power and the SWP. The SWP man took the megaphone on behalf of the Wandsworth Stop the War campaign saying "Jobs Not Bombs" and recalling with nostalgia the Callaghan government of the late 1970s when the top rate of income tax was 60p in the pound which, he said, if applied today would raise enough money to stop the education cuts. Speaking to him afterwards he said he was going to vote Labour tomorrow. Which about sums it (and his party) up.

Still waiting for the Town Hall to deliver tickets to attend the count tomorrow. Not certain any of us will stay to the end as the result is not expected till 5am in the morning (because they'll have to separate and verify the general and local election votes first). The votes in the local election won't be counted till 3pm on Friday.

Not the way

2010-05-05T12:58:00.003Z

Three bodies have been found in a burnt out bank in Greece. Petrol bombs have been thrown at police. Rioters have been tear gassed.

Chances are the three dead in the bank are our fellow workers, whose death we will mourn, and who died simply because of where they worked.

There is no need for such protests. Nor, though, is there need for austerity: there are resources and human capacity for labour enough to provide for all. What there is is a class interest that prevents that happening. That can be done away with, peacefully, without slaughter, by democratic action.

To take that action requires, though, conscious understanding. Without the clear knowledge of the need to organise production for use - collectively and democratically - we see the futile attempts to resist that are occurring in Greece.

All of which is to simply say why it is so important that the tiny handful of people who read this blog use their voice at the ballot box to reach out and let others know where they stand. The more of us who blaze the trail for socialism, the more others will join us.

Final push

2010-05-05T10:43:00.002Z

Well, I can't match Cameron's all-nighter, but I will be having a final push in Kentish Town, and will be getting shot of our last leaflets tonight. If anyone is around and wants to meet a Socialist candidate in Kentish Town I'll be at the tube station at about 6:30 tonight, waiting for comrades to come help get the message out.

Come what may, though, tomorrow sees the election of the Capitalist Party to the government of the country. We, though, wopn't give up.

Cheese and chalk

2010-05-04T06:58:00.005Z

Went to the May Day Rally yesterday of the Workers Power candidate at the YMCA in Stockwell Road. Apart from the candidate himself there were speakers from some protest movements, the most interesting of which was Alberto Durango, a victimised trade union activist amongst cleaners in the City of London (good luck to you, brother). Photojournalist Guy Smallman was also interesting on his experiences in Afghanistan. All the contributions from the floor were prepared speeches by Workers Power members. There were about 30 people present, overwhelmingly members of this Trotskyist group, in fact they could well have been nearly the whole British section of the League for the Fifth International.

The South London Press has written of there being a head-to-head in Vauxhall between two "leftie" candidates, but the contrast between us and them could not be greater (not that we are "lefties" of course). I remember a socialist speaker once making the point that in the end there were only two approaches towards trying to tackle social problems: those who want to redistribute money and those who want to abolish it.

Workers Power are in the first group, and how! I forked out 30p to pay for their Anticapitalist Manifesto for Vauxhall. Basically they want to tax the rich to improve the conditions of the poor. Here's a few examples:

The money and wealth stolen by the capitalists could be used to pay for hospitals, schools, colleges, nurseries and childcare. The rich would be forced to pay very high taxes to fund massive improvements in housing, education and healthcare. We could create three millions new jobs, build a million council homes and guarantee decent pensions for all in old age.

Here's some more of their promises of what they think can be done with money raised by taxing the rich:

£9 an hour minimum wage for all.
Six weeks paid holiday as a minimum for all workers.
Scrap council tax -- for a local wealth tax.
Jobs for all, funded by taxing the rich and taking over the banks
Benefits to be at level of mimimum wage.
Stop fare rises -- slash bus and tube prices -- make it free by taxing the rich.
For pensions tied to average male earnings.
Automatic and total payment [for pensioners] of all utility bills - gas, electricity, telephone and internet connection.

If they ever got to be interviewed by Jeremy Paxman, he'd be sure to ask "Has all this been costed?". To which the other Jeremy will no doubt reply: "It will be paid for out of the £1 trillion the government gave to the banks which we will take back". Next question: what happens when this £1 trillion has been used up as it would be fairly quickly to pay for the measures just listed? And you can't keep taxing the rich unless you allow them to go on exploiting workers for profits to be taxed. But, surely, if most of their profits are going to be taxed away, they won't bother re-investing their capital?

They call us utopians but this is just fantasy politics. Of course they don't believe a word of it (and if they did that would only make them fools rather than knaves). It's all part of a cunning plan devised by Baldrick Trotsky to get workers to Follow the Vanguard. But workers aren't stupid. They may not be socialists, but they know what's possible under capitalism and what isn't and, if they want reforms, they're not going to follow the Vanguard but will vote instead for some reformist party that they judge will have a better chance of getting them a few crumbs (or, these days, of taking away less of the crumbs they've got).

We, on the other hand, unlike all the other parties don't think that the solution lies is trying to redistribute money amongst the population. As we say in our manifesto for the local elections:

Most politicians blame our problems on lack of money, but this is not true. Money doesn't build hospitals, schools decent housing and a healthy environment. The things that make a good community can only be created by the work of the people. We have an abundance of skills and energy. If we were free from having to work for the profits of employers we would be able to work for the needs of everyone.

The profit system is oppressive; it dominates our lives. It plagues us with bills. The rent and mortgage payments, the food bills, the rates, gas, electricity, water and telephone bills. Money is used to screw us for the profits of business. If we don't pay, we don't get the goods. Without the capitalist system, a socialist community would easily provide for all of its members..

Daniel in the Lions' Den

2010-05-02T14:13:00.005Z

Yesterday the campaign continued. The Socialist candidate, Danny Lambert, was at this event in Parliament Square and witnessed effigies of Brown, Cameron, Clegg and Griffin being hung, drawn and quartered and danced upon. He commented to a couple of others watching the spectacle that this gave the impression that these individual politicians were personally responsible for the problems capitalism causes whereas it was the system and that, if these individuals really were executed, someone else would take their place. One, a press photographer, said he had covered a number of such events and that this was the first time he'd heard something sensible said about them. After that, Danny talked to the demonstrators and handed out our election leaflets suggesting that those in Vauxhall who agreed with a classless, stateless, moneyless society of common ownership and democratic control (as some of those there would have done -- that's why he was there) to show this by casting a vote for it. He wasn't lynched by the assembled anarchists and anti-parliamentarists, but he would have been the only parliamentary candidate there.

We were also present up the other end of Whitehall at the official London Trades Council Mayday rally where we ran out of leaflets to give out.

Meanwhile, south of the river in Vauxhall, we had stalls in Clapham High Street and in Brixton. In fact, all of our leaflets for the national and local elections in Lambeth have now been distributed. All that remain are for distribution in Kentish Town ward in Camden.

A procession of Hooray Henries and Henriettas down Clapham High Street with a loud hailer and blue balloons was booed and jeered at by passers-by. And a UKIP candidate from a neighbouring constituency was seen emerging from the gay bar next to our premises, but she can't have known unless UKIP has now decided to go after the gay as well as the climate sceptic vote.

Friday's South London Press had an 8-page pull-out election guide. The trouble with this paper is that it covers 3 boroughs (Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham) and 8 parliamentary constituencies and so, as we've found out before, doesn't give detailed reports on the candidates in each. We were simply mentioned as one of the candidates standing in Vauxhall, for the "Socialist Party" (Ian Page standing in Lewisham Deptford for Militant was referred to a "Socialist Alternative", the name they're registered under with the Electoral Commission).

There was a news story on another page headed "Left-wing parties divided over unity" which commented on the fact that in Camberwell and Peckham there were three "far left candidates" (Scargill's SLP, the WRP and the Alliance for Workers Liberty) and that in Vauxhall "two left-wing candidates are also going head to head" (Workers Power and us). I suppose that's how it must appear. After quoting Jeremy Drinkall who said "it's a shame, but it's not decisive for us", the reporter went on:

Vauxhall's other leftie candidate is Daniel Lambert of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. A spokesman said the party had no hope of a seat, but was using the election to spread its message of workers control.

Actually, he said "message of common ownership and democratic control". Of course that wasn't all he said because he also said that it wasn't a problem for us since while we stood for socialism the Workers Power candidate stood for reforms of capitalism. Still, this was probably the best we were going to get. Daniel still hasn't recovered from being called a "leftie".

Spoil sport

2010-05-01T09:48:00.003Z

Couldn't klet this go by, local 'celebrity' Trotskyist Tariq Ali says he isn't going to vote in the forthcoming election:

I won’t be voting – as a protest at how things have become. I may go out and spoil my ballot paper, but I’ll see how I feel in the morning.

As a matter of fact, aside from voting for myself (for a change) in the Camden Borough election, I will be spoiling my ballot paper for the parliamentary election.

Something we advocate in any election where socialist candidates aren't standing - we don't want to vote for a Capitalist Party candidate, but we do want our voices to be heard. Like many of my comrades, I'll be writing 'World Socialism' across my ballot paper - maybe if Tariq Ali reads this blog post, he might care to be bothered to do the same.

It pays to advertise

2010-05-01T09:42:00.002Z

Well, I'm having a busy weekend leafletting. Just as if proof were needed about the value of putting ourselves about - as I was going into a cafe to fuel myself up for a day of climbing stairs, a bloke came up to me and started telling me how he remembred seeing me at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park: five years ago!

Well, I used it as an excuse to give him a leaflet, and to go and get my food.

So, there you go, minor celebrity status abounds.

Capitalism and democracy

2010-04-30T07:55:00.006Z

Last night, after leafletting the area behind Waterloo station, three of us went to see the new "documentary play" Counted? put on in the council chamber of the old LCC/GLC. This couldn't be missed as it's in Vauxhall but also because it is largely based on research done by Stephen Coleman, professor of political communication at Leeds university, who used to be a speaker and writer for us.

The play takes the form of an actor playing Professor Coleman interviewing various different groups of people in Yorkshire about their attitude to voting. This requires some versality on the part of the six actors who have to change not just their clothes but their also their accents and age to perform the interviewees. It's well done and well worth seeing. It's on till 22 May. Sadly, there were only 35 people in the audience, perhaps because some who might have gone were at home watching the Three Stooges debate in what passes for "politics".

The professor opens by saying that his research starts from the premiss that democracy is a good idea but does it work. It doesn't seem to, when there are turn-outs of less, sometimes much less, than 50% in local elections, which are the only elections in which people could have some influence on what is done, such as the provision of community centres, sports facilities and other amenities or the positioning of traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. So, why do people vote -- and not vote?

In the first scene the professor is trying to interview young mothers at a community centre, the day after an election, about why they hadn't voted. They are not interested. It's not something they do. He does manage to extract from them that they are interested in choices (his definition of politics, as opposed to what goes on at Westminster) and that they do make them on an individual basis and also that they do vote, by mobile phone in programmes such as Big Brother and the X-Factor.

The next scene is in a golf club. Everybody interviewed votes and they think it's a good thing, even a duty. Their local concern was to prevent the opening of a Tesco superstore. And they too had voted by telephone, for Strictly rather than Big Brother.

There are interviews with an Independent councillor and an Independent candidate who are concerned about purely local issues. The councillor explains what's involved in being a councillor, dealing with individual cases and pressing for amenities in his locality. That this is what most people see as the role of those they elect is re-inforced by the one interview that doesn't take place in Yorkshire, with MPs assistants in Westminster. They explain that most of the letters MPs get from constituents are about individual cases (and that not too much importance is attached to circular letters about Saving Whales, fox-hunting and the like. So, so much for petitioning by single-issue groups).

What's the conclusion, then? It seems to be that democracy might work at local level if people were consulted more about what they wanted for their locality and could be persuaded to participate by making it easier and more interesting to vote. Maybe, but this ignores the constraints that capitalism places on what people can get even with the most democratic of institutions and practices.

You can have the most democratic structure in the world and people can vote to have decent housing or whatever, but they won't get it as the economic laws of capitalism dictate that priority must be given to making profits and accumulating capital. In short, capitalism prevents democratic decisions to improve things from being implemented. And what local councils can spend on amenities depends on what they get from central government, which is never enough. What local councils can do, even with more popular participation, is limited by what is possible under capitalism.

Capitalism also prevents democracy working properly as under it some, those with more money, are more equal than others and so, as the case of Lord Cashcroft shows (there are many others), have more say and more influence. A real, properly-functioning democracy is only possible in a classless society where the means of production are owned in common by the whole community. Then there'd be no restrictions on the amenities that could be provided at local level. If, after discussion and debate, people voted that they wanted something they could go ahead and implement it.

The audience were invited to fill in a ballot paper asking such questions as "I tend to vote as my parents do", "I regard voting as my duty", "I know the names of my local candidates". We were tempted to write "WORLD SOCIALISM" across the ballot paper but didn't. Even so, one of us inadvertently spoilt his by putting an X for no and a tick for yes. How often has he voted?

We're all in this together?

2010-04-29T11:59:00.003Z

Only just found this blog post but it does say something that's more important to this election than whether Gordon Brown is sorry or truly sorry:

In the 25 years from 1945, the share of the nation’s output going to wages held steady at close to 60% before rising to nearly 65% in 1975. Since that high point, the wage share has been in inexorable decline. Today it stands at a mere 53%. An even steeper fall has occurred in the United States, while continental Europe has experienced a shallower fall.

[...]

...wages have been falling behind productivity growth. Over the last three decades economic potential has been growing by 1.9% per year while real wages have been rising by only 1.6% a year. Since 2000 the gap has widened with real wages rising by around half the productivity gains.

There we have the class war red in tooth and claw, and there, the simple reason why we raise the banner of socialism. In the good times we were exploited, in the bad, we're exploited more.

Star opponents

2010-04-29T07:41:00.003Z

Well, one of my Kentish Town opponents gets a bit of a leg up, by being given a guest posting on Alastair Campbell's blog. Georgia Gould writes of the perfidy of the Lib-Dems in office in Camden, ever since they seized power last election in a coalition with the other Tory party. She makes a telling point: "At the moment the Liberal Democrats are providing a home for the collective frustrations of a country understandably disappointed in politics. However we can't let Nick Clegg get away with playing the role of outsider. The fact remains his party is in power across the country and time and time again his councils don't quite live up to Clegg's shiny rhetoric."

True enough. But we recall the turn around in Lambeth as well, when Labour retook the council last election. The similarities are striking, battles to save local baths, to refurbish council homes, to protect services, to freeze council tax (yes, the strategy of freezing council taxes Labour members oppose in Cmaden is proud policy in Lambeth).

The reality is that local representatives are actors playing their parts on a stage set by central government in a Capitalist Class Production. The Producers pay the piper and call the tune.

Last Night in Kennington

2010-04-28T07:17:00.005Z

Last night 7 of the 9 candidates in Vauxhall spoke at a hustings in St. Mark's Church, Kennington, chaired by the vicar. There were well over 150 people present.

Each candidate was given two minutes to say why people should vote for them and then another two minutes to talk about their "moral compass". Danny Lambert said he didn't want people to vote for him unless they wanted socialism. James Kapetanos, of the Animals party, said he wanted people to vote out Kate Hoey for being chair of the Countryside Alliance and supporting fox-hunting. The others blew their own trumpets. On the second question, the candidates of the 3 main parties (two of them Protestants from the north of Ireland) said their moral compass was christianity. Joseph Healey, the Green candidate, said he was not religious but still "spiritual". Danny said he preferred to have a sextant or a sat-nav than a compass. The Animals candidate said he wanted people to vote out Kate Hoey for being chair of the Countryside Alliance and supporting fox-hunting.

The candidates were then given one minute to answer questions put by members of the audience.

A crusty waving a Class War poster denouncing Blair and Bush as "war criminals" and "wankers" asked the candidates whether they thought that Blair and Jack Straw should be tried as war criminals. The Rev chair changed this to "what did the candidates think of the Iraq War?" The crusty was not pleased and had to be escorted out of the church by the sidesmen. All the candidates said they were opposed to the war, including the Tory who said it was a mistake based on wrong information (omitting to say that most Tory MPs voted for the war). Jeremy Drinkall said there should have been a General Strike to stop it.

In answer to a question on "gay rights" (now called "LGBT") two of the candidates said that they were gay -- as if anyone cared, or should care. All the candidates were against discrimination on grounds of sexuality. It might have been different if the candidate from the nasty Christian Party had been present. Also missing was the English Democrat, Jose Navarro.

The other questions were on local, very local issues. The answers of Jeremy Drinkall and Joseph Healey were so similar that, at one point, the vicar got confused and called on a "Jeremy Healey" to answer a question.

Somebody asked if the candidates thought that capitalism could be run in the interests of the majority. Another blogger has suggested this question was a plant (we can't think who by). The candidates of the three main parties all said that capitalism was the only game in town and that what we should do was try to make it fairer, either through the tax system or (Kate Hoey) through this and trade union action. The Animals party candidate forgot Kate Hoey for a moment and wondered whether we were still living in a capitalist society. The Green candidate said that his Leader, Caroline Lucas, had recently said that the Green Party was "anti-capitalist". He himself was an "eco-socialist" who thought that capitalism couldn't continue. Jeremy Drinkall said "no, capitalism can never been made to work in the interests of the working class" and then went on to advocate the nationalisation of all banks and their amalgamation into a single State Bank. Danny Lambert, too, answered no but went on to advocate socialism where there'd be no banks and no money but the application of the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs".

At least two others bloggers have commented on this hustings. One was OK. The other, who doesn't seem to know -- or care -- much about what happens outside London SW8, refers to us as the "Socialist Workers Party" (and even provides a link to their website instead of ours), despite having been corrected on this point (see first comment here). He also has Danny speaking of a "socialist code of the morality of the market" whereas what he said was that "capitalism's code of morality was the market". He really should leave SW8 more often, perhaps venture as far as SW4 to inform himself more about who we are and what we stand for.

After the meeting, in the Hanover Arms opposite Danny was approached by a female vicar who said that he was a great orator and that if ever he had a conversion there'd be a place for him in the church. Danny took this as a compliment. The rest of us were not so sure.

Stop the War hustings: the aftermath

2010-04-27T06:15:00.004Z

The Stop the War Coalition has asked candidates everywhere to answer certain questions. The answers of our candidate in Vauxhall, together with those of some of the other candidates, can be found here. Just type in SW4 7UN.

Following the hustings in Brixton on 19 April, Simon Hardy, a prominent member of the Trotskyist "Workers Power" group, sent in the following comment to another blog:

Just on the WP candidate in Vauxhall. I think it is wrong to see it simply as two socialists standing against each other - the crucial difference is between a socialist organisation, no matter your criticisms, which can connect the election to the war, the financial crisis, the bank bail outs, the problem of housing and the case for a new party, and a candidate who simply talks about socialism.
The difference was clearly shown in a Lambeth Stop the War hustings earlier this week where Jeremy Drinkall made plenty of points about the current political struggles and campaigns happening and what kind of policies a working class candidate needed to fight for. The SPGB candidate just kept saying "the problem is capitalism, we need socialism". At one point all the candidate were asked to support a solidarity campaign for a man imprisoned in Guantanemo Bay, the SPGB candidate just replied that there was no point with such campaigns as long as there is capitalism.
Say what you will but the choice is between a utopian soap box socialist who was happy to spend 3 minutes of his speaking time reading out Socialist Standard from 1914 and a candidate with policies and a campaigning profile in the constituency.

He was seconded by a one of his less polite colleagues, who didn't give his name:

I was at the Vauxhall Stop the War Hustings. To be honest Drinkall of the Anticapitalists which is Workers Power won hands down. The candidates were asked about palestine and the SPGB guy said the Palestinians should give up. What a wanchor.

To which Danny Lambert replied:

You see what you want to see and you hear what you want hear. The reason I read out The Socialist Party's 1914 EC statement on "The war to end all war", was to take the opportunity to put the Socialist case against all war, What's unreported on this blog is that at the end of the statement I said "Same reasons for carnge , different century".
As for the Guantanamo prisoner, I have every sympathy with him, it's an outrage, but while we run around like blue arsed flies campaigning for the release of this one and that one of capitalism's victims, hundreds of thousands like them are and will be imprisoned and brutalised. If you have a problem be forensic go to the root. that is if you are serious about finding a solution, it's what the SPGB has always held.
A for the question of Palestine, I don't know about you but I recoil in horror when I see children, women,men mutilated by high explosive no matter what side they are supposed to be on.
What are the Palestinians fighting for? I've heard it's for their own state, well if that's the case they have no idea what they're fighting for, someone should tell them what all states are. The state is the monopoly of violence the public power of coercion and is is only necessary in a class divided society. If they do succeed they'll have fought and died just to be exploited, coerced and oppressed by a Palestinian ruling class rather than an Israeli ruling class.
Our advice is to campaign peacefully, if they do the will have an infinitely more powerful weapon than a home made rocket or a thrown stone at their disposal, they will have the power of international public opinion with them, a power they forfeit when they turn to violence.

Meanwhile Jeremy Drinkall has put up a video clip of him defending "Iran's right to nuclear weapons", i.e. of the rulers there to waste resources on developing weapons of mass destruction, and also a call to vote for Labour candidates in all but 40 constituencies, i.e. for the two other Labour candidates standing in the Lambeth constituencies, including Tessa Jowell who notoriously voted for the war (ironically, the Labour candidate in Vauxhall, did to her credit vote against). In other words, he is openly calling for the re-election of the current, discredited and pro-war Labour government.

Rear window

2010-04-26T07:37:00.003Z

Well, I've not been entirely idle. Personal commitments plus a rotten chest cold have kept me off the campaign trail - I managed to go out leafletting last Wednesday, but that merely produced a relapse of lurgi.

I did, though, manage to leaflet a council block that managed to combine the extremes of ugliness with a splandid view over towards Highgate. Yes, from the window of a council house you can see two million (upwards) pound houses on a leafy hill: from an estate with dingy corridors and in which the walkways have no redeeming decoration.

I'll have to get me finger out to make up for lost time.

More news soon.

Activity report

2010-04-25T07:59:00.006Z

Yesterday we were campaigning in the south of the constituency.

Our candidate, Danny Lambert, went to an event in Windrush Square, Brixton, organised by Power2010 where he met the WRP candidate for Streatham who called him a "bourgeois democrat" saying that the way forward was a general strike (so why, you ask, was he standing for parliament) and the UKIP candidate for somewhere who called him a "Stalinist". On the whole not very fruitful, though we did give away some leaflets and maybe something will appear on the Power2010 site.

As last Saturday, there was a stall outside our premises in Clapham High Street. We saw, and heard, a car with a loudspeaker proclaiming "Vote Anti-Capitalist. For the millions, not the millionaires" driving past. We imagine that when they reached the top of the street and entered the Streatham constituency they changed their tune to "Vote Labour, one of the parties representing the millionaires". Quite a few passers-by told us they'd already had our leaflet, which would have been true and not just a polite way of saying "no" since the post office had been delivering them in the last few days (so some people do look at the election leaflets that drop through their letter-box). A passing cyclist from a local internet radio station stopped off to deliver an invitation for Danny to be interviewed (more details later).

Outside Stockwell tube station, we had rivals from the Testimonial Ministries Worldwide handing out leaflets warning of the "ravages of sin". We noticed an individual on a mobile phone with a "Vote Labour" sticker on it. Naturally we offered him a leaflet. He turned out to be Pete Robbins, one of the outgoing Labour councillors for Larkhall ward. He was friendly enough, thanking us for not contesting Clapham Town ward in the local elections (as we did last time) because it was going to be a close fight between them and the Tories there. We explained that this was not a consideration in our decision to contest Larkhall and Ferndale this time instead. Someone else told us they had once been a candidate for the "Socialist Alliance" in the area (it's true, this party did contest the local elections in Lambeth in 2002 local elections, their candidate in Larkhall getting 127 votes). We also met three canvassers for the candidate of the League for a Fifth International. They seemed lost but eventually headed for the nearby Stockwell Gardens Estate. Hope they have better luck than us in getting access to some of the blocks.

Next Saturday we'll hit the north of the constituency which includes the Oval cricket ground, St Thomas's Hospital, the Southbank Centre, Waterloo Station and Lambeth Palace. Some of us will be coming from the North after covering the trade union Mayday rally in Trafalgar Square (next Saturday is 1 May). Proceeding in a southerly direction from there down Whitehall we'll cross Westminister Bridge and enter the constituency that way. You can actually see the Houses of Parliament from Vauxhall constituency. Hadn't realised we were that near to "the seat of power". Or is that the observation of a "bourgeois democrat"?

Activity tomorrow Saturday

2010-04-23T15:24:00.002Z

Our official "election communication" was delivered to the post office on Tuesday and has already been distributed by them in some areas. The trouble is that they only needed 56,000 while the printers had done 58,000 (with no extra charge for us). So we've an extra 2000 to distribute ourselves. The plan is to do this at stalls on Saturdays and at tube stations (Clapham North, Clapham Common, Stockwell, Brixton, Oval, Vauxhall and Kennington) during the rush hour in the evening and even the morning.

Distribution starts tomorrow. Meet at Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, SW4 from 11am to run a stall there and another somewhere else in the constituency (probably outside Stockwell tube station).

The Socialist candidate has also received an invitation to various events in the constituency on Saturday, two in Brixton and one in Stockwell. Details when you get to Head Office.

It's a nine-horse race

2010-04-22T07:43:00.002Z

There have been some surprise last-minute nominations and there will now be 9 not the expected 6 candidates in Vauxhall. Here's the line-up (in the order they'll appear on the ballot paper):

Glyn Chambers (Con)
Jeremy Drinkall (Workers Power)
Joseph Healey (Green)
Catherine Hoey (Labour)
James Kapetanos (Animal Protection Party)
Daniel Lambert (Socialist)
Larna Martin (Christian Party)
Jose Navarro (English Democrats)
Caroline Pidgeon (LibDem)

In fact more or less the same as in the Lambeth & Southwark constituency for the Greater London Assembly in May 2008.

A local blogger describes the candidates' form here.

An appreciation from Germany

2010-04-21T06:55:00.004Z

We have received an election statement from the Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society of Greater London. Yes, but read on. This is the name of the London section of a German political group and their statement can be found here on the site of this group (it's the article beginning with quote from Douglas Adams).

It is a bit of an essay on political philosophy but it makes some good points about the role of state, government and elections under capitalism. For instance, on the populist demands to "Make the Rich Pay" put forward by left-of-Labour groups and others, they make the point that this assumes the continuation of the rich, who are to be allowed to continue exploiting us but whose profits will then be taxed to pay for social reforms:

Even fringe left-wing parties like Respect bow to the dictates of 'realism' and respect private property through their demands of "taxation on the big corporations and the wealthy to fund public services" – a demand which requires big corporations to make the kind of profits which can then be taxed.

They have singled out Respect but it applies equally to the Trotskyists of TUSC in this election and, of course, to our own independent Trotskyist opponent here in Vauxhall who says:

The Government gave £1 trillion to the banks. We want it back! Anticapitalists say take over the banks, who are making giant profits again, and raise taxes on the rich. Spend the money on a massive programme of public works -- creating three million jobs, a million new affordable homes and a national repair and improve programme for council flats and houses.

We think the Wine and Cheese society might be over-estimating the extent to which these leftist groups (or anyone else, for that matter) really believe this to be possible. It's probably more of a cynical ploy to try to win a following. Still, there's a need to analyse what they say as if they really meant it. In this vein the Appreciation Society go on:

Left-wing parties for instance claim that mass poverty was unnecessary and within capitalism the problem could be solved quickly once they were in power and could tax the rich appropriately. Thus poverty was not a necessity of the mode of production which the state fosters for its own sake. Instead poverty was an unnecessary result of the wrong people in management.

Good point. Hence their general conclusion about all political parties that "the common feature of all these political parties is their affirmation of the basic principles of the capitalist economy". However, in a footnote, we are exempted from this:

The Socialist Party of Great Britian is a notable exception to this rule. The SPGB "claims that there can be no state in a socialist society" and "that socialism will, and must, be a wageless, moneyless, worldwide society of common (not state) ownership". The SPGB "seeks election to facilitate the elimination of capitalism by the vast majority of socialists, not to govern capitalism." (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/differences.html) Leaving aside for the moment of whether this is a good strategy or not, it is clear from their party programme that the SPGB does not affirm the basic principles of the capitalist economy.

It's nice to be appreciated.

The Ayatollahs' bomb

2010-04-20T10:14:00.001Z

Yesterday was a busy day.

First, at 11.00 hrs we handed in the nomination papers (and the £500 deposit, in cash) at the Town Hall. Everything was in order.

Then, at 14.30 our candidate spoke at a hustings in the same Town Hall organised by the Lambeth Pensioners Action Group. After speeches by three men in suits but with different coloured ties representing the "main parties" and a contribution full of technical detail by the Green candidate, Danny's, in which he said that the professional politicians on the panel were either fools or knaves for promising to run capitalism in the interests of the working class, was the only one to get a round of applause. The Liberal (Chris Nicholson standing in Streatham) smiled at being called a fool or a knave. The Tory (Rahoul Bhansani also in Streatham) took umbrage. The audience of about 40 or so gave the Labour candidate for Streatham (Chukka Umunna) a hard time, ending up with him heckling them. The pensioners of Lambeth seem a clued-up and bolshie lot.

At 19.30, the Stop the War hustings, in the Brix, St. Matthews Church, opposite the Town Hall started, with Joe Healey (Greens), Chris Nicholson (Liberal, still wearing his suit and tie), Jeremy Drinkall (Workers Power/League for a Fifth International) and Danny Lambert. There were 50 or so in the audience. The Green and Liberal candidates, believing that "politics is the art of the possible", outlined various practical steps that in their view could be taken to lessen tensions by pursuing an ethical foreign policy. Drinkall, supported by a claque of student supporters, played the demagogue calling for the "immediate" this and the "immediate that" (including the immediate dissolution of the state of Israel). But the highlight of his contribution was his defence of the right of the Iranian regime to develop its own nuclear weapons.

Danny read from our 1914 anti-war manifesto and commented "same carnage, different century", pointing out that all the attempts since then to stop wars had failed because they'd left the root cause unchanged. Wars, he said, were caused by conflicts between capitalist interests over markets, sources of raw materials, trade routes, investment outlets and strategic points to protect or acquire these, so the only way to end wars and preparations for war was to get rid of capitalism. This only provoked Drinkall, in a bid to differentiate himself from us, into launching an attack on "the Socialist Party" for not supporting reforms. Danny had to explain that what we were opposed to was not reforms as such, but to the policy of reformism, of pursuing reforms, like he was doing.

After the meeting those leaving were handed a 6-page leaflet by two members of "the International Bolshevik Tendency" denouncing Workers Power as "fake Trotskyists" and reformists for departing from Trotsky's "transitional programme" and for supporting the re-election of the Labour government. Which all goes to show that there are nuttier Trotskyists than those who want to set up a Fifth International. Their paper called -- wait for it -- 1917 proclaimed "Spoil Your Ballot!"

The Green candidate was interviewed about the meeting by a local blogger who more than once refers to us as the "SWP". The blogger is a localist who thinks that national and world issues should not be discussed at a local election. Healey put him right on this, well explaining the impact world events had on the amount of money local councils were given to spend (and that as a result of the present capitalist crisis things were only going to get worse). In fact what we have always said too and why we make no apology for raising the issue of world capitalism or world socialism in the local elections.

The Big Issue

2010-04-16T16:57:00.004Z

Bought a copy of The Big Issue outside Sainsbury's in Clapham High Street and found that it contained an article by David Harvey (in fact an extract from his new book The Enigma of Capital) which says some things we have long said:

Can capitalism survive the present trauma? Yes, of course. But at what cost? This question masks another. Can the capitalist class reproduce its power in the face of the raft of economic, social, political and geopolitical and environmental difficulties? Again, the answer is a resounding 'Yes it can'.
This will, however, require the mass of the people to give generously of the fruits of their labour to those in power, to surrender many of their rights and their hard-won asset values (in everything from housing to pension rights) and to suffer environmental degradations galore, to say nothing of serial reductions in their living standards which will mean starvation for many of those already struggling to survive at rock bottom.

and

Capitalism will never fall on its own. It will have to be pushed. The accumulation of capital will never cease. It will have to be stopped. The capitalist class will never willingly surrender its power. It will have to be dispossessed.

That's why we're contesting this election -- to urge people to organise politically to dispossess the capitalist class and establish a world society of common ownership, democratic control and production solely not profit.

It's not too late to buy this week's Big Issue. But, remember, the real big issue is whether capitalism should be allowed to continue or whether it should be replaced by socialism (not which political non-entity would make the best managing director of UKCapitalism plc).

Down Memory Lane: Clapham Manor Baths

2010-04-16T08:40:00.003Z

On our way to the Manor Arms pub after distributing leaflets three of us noticed that Clapham Baths in Clapham Manor Street had been demolished and was now a mound of rubble. The place has a history. During the General Election in February 1950 it was the venue of a debate between the Socialist Party, represented by Harry Young, and a Mrs Curtis, who was the Liberal candidate for Clapham. Here's a part of the Socialist speaker's opening speech:

The chief characteristic of Capitalism is private ownership of the means of wealth production: Socialism implies common ownership. Therefore there can no penalisation of or discrimination against any person or groups of persons under Socialism. Today we have a class society—a community divided into groups, economically speaking. This division has nothing to do with biological characteristics. It is largely an accident of birth that makes one a capitalist. What determines his place in society is his economic position; and everything follows from that. Our habits, manners, speech, customs, ethics, all follow from this is division. According to a recent statement by Mr. Hall, the Secretary of the Treasury, "of the 550,000 people who die each year only 10% own more than £2,000, but these 10% between them own 90% of the total property."

It means that 10% of the people own 90% of the wealth, of this 10% many own vastly more than £2,000, some own £2 million. Therefore Class society means grinding inescapable poverty for the working class. People can be in a state of poverty without going short a meal or clothes. Therefore my second point is that we live in a class society and cannot escape from poverty.

The worker has only his ability to work to sell — the power of his muscle, sinews and brain. He therefore goes to work for wages, and receives only enough reproduce his labour power. The amount the worker receives is determined by what is required to reproduce his labour power, the surplus beyond which goes to the owner. It follows from this that the political interest of the working class is to overthrow the system which robs them. Everything else is idle nonsense, making no ultimate difference to their class position in society. This, therefore, is the reason we oppose all other political parties. They all stand for the same viewpoint—the Conservatives, Liberals, Labour Party and Communists—for a series of measures which they claim will eass the collar of poverty where it rubs too hard.

This system of society which we propose is entirely different from what we know today. After taking over the means of production the characteristics of Capitalism will disappear. Exchange will cease, for Socialism will replace sale by free distribution. Socialism will put into practice "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Labour Exchanges, Stock Exchanges, Banks, Insurance offices will all disappear. Force will cease. There will be no question of what to do with the man who won't work; most people want to work; most would be only too glad to do a sensible job of work. Socialism will succeed by the enthusiasm and determination of the socialists who have brought it into being to make it successful.

We stand for a system which will be world-wide, democratic, and based on a community of interest of the individual and society.

Neither capitalism nor the case for socialism have changed since then (except that the price level has risen and we wouldn't now refer to the worker as "he" and "his"). Even what the socialist speaker said in his concluding remarks also has a modern ring:

It is our contention that there is no great difference between the other parties. I quote from a news report the statement of Lord Samuel at the Liberal pre-election Conference that, if they polled sufficient votes "they might be called upon to undertake Ministerial responsibility." "We must accept this challenge" he said. When occasion demands the minor sham differences are sunk and they unite as supporters of the capitalist system.

For those interested in such things, the result of the election was: Gibson (Labour) 23,300; Lowndes (Tory) 22,094; Curtis (Liberal) 3,071(6.26%); Draper (Communist Party) 619 (1.26%). The turnout was 80.64%. Those were the days.

This Saturday : our election meeting

2010-04-15T06:36:00.004Z

CAN POLITICIANS SAVE THE PLANET?

Election Forum:

Frank Simpkins covers the inability of politicians to solve any of the serious issues we face due to the constraints of capitalism. Are politicians able to change the economy, or does the economy change politicians?

Vincent Otter talks about the profit system's inevitable cycle of boom and bust and the 'credit crunch's' most recent demonstration of the crisis of capital. How does this affect politician's attempts to save our environment?

Glenn Morris considers the causes and consequences of global warming. Are politicians powerless in the face on impending catastrophe?

Danny Lambert describes the monstrous inefficiency of capitalism and investigates how we are conditioned to accept a false identity that makes us willing wage slaves who think we deserve no better.

Saturday 17 April, 6.00pm

The Socialist Party
52 Clapham High Street
London
SW4 7UN

All Welcome. Free entry. Discussion. Refreshments.

PS. Don't forget to watch the Three Stooges perform on TV this evening, otherwise you'll have nothing to talk about at work or in the pub tomorrow.

Oh dear

2010-04-14T16:05:00.005Z

Somebody has seen our leaflet and by the look of it got it through their letter box. Of course we know it's Larkhall but, agreed, it does look bad that we missed that typo. But we do mention local matters. As you can see even from the crumpled version, we say:

What happens in any local council depends mainly on what happens in the country and even the world.

Our point is that most of the money local authorities have to spent comes from the central government (and has to be spent on what they say). But the amount the central government has to allocate depends on the state of the capitalist economy and that they can't overtax profits. So councils end up as little more than local offices of government ministries, implementing unpopular and anti-social measures. And of course it's going to get worse with all three main parties promising cuts worse than under Thatcher. Which is why it is quite in order to raise the issue of world socialism at a local election.

A HUSTING WE WILL GO

2010-04-13T12:24:00.004Z

We have been invited to attend a hustings meeting on the 19th April , 7:30 at The Brix, St Mathew's Church organised by Lambeth Stop the War Coalition.
Confirmed speakers for the event are:

Rahoul Bansali - Conservative candidate Streatham
Jeremy Drinkall- Anti Capitalist (Workers Power) candidate Vauxhall
Joseph Healy- Green candidate Vauxhall
Chris Nicholson- Liberal Democrate candidate Streatham
Dan Lambert (yours truly) The Socialist Party Vauxhall

The Labour candiates: Kate Hoey, Chuka Umunna, Tessa Jowell have said they are unable to attend.

We have been asked to keep to the theme of British defence policy. That'll do because British defence policy is dedicated to maintaining and developing British capitalism, in a word profit, profit for a tiny parasitic minority.

Runners and riders

2010-04-12T07:54:00.003Z

Camden have finally published the list of accepted nominations for the borough, including Kentish Town - you'll see I'm there now alongside thirteen other candidates - including one from the BNP.

So, I'll just take this opportunity to rehearse our argument against teh BNP.

I'm glad their standing, because it'll be an opportunity for them to expose their idiocy, and for them to be outvoted. As far as we're concerned, however, they are simply another capitalist party - albeit one that elevates stupidity to a point of principle.

The idea that there is some authentic "British" group that have an ancient right to a patch of land (one which only really had its borders settled in 1921, and then they're disputed a touch) is bogus. Our nature as human beings cries out more to us that any tie of nation - or do the BNP really stop and think about a person's nationality before going to help them if they see them collapse in the street?

The BNP are wire happy - they see the bars on the cage that stop us from going where we like with who we like and want to make them into the prettiest bars imaginable. They want BRITISH capitalism, which really isn't so different from any other variety.

Yes, their leaders inspire and prey upon inter-communal violence and persecution, seeing that as a quick way to win followers and gain political power, but they have been pressured by the logic of democracy to mute that game and play by the rules of the ballot box, and if they grew that pressure would grow to simply make them into the stupid wing of the conservative party writ large.

The best way to oppose them is to be for something, we're for socialism, and as the movement for socialism grows so their ideas will be marginalised further.

Activity report

2010-04-11T08:26:00.005Z

Yesterday we had our first stall of the campaign outside our premises in Clapham High Street. There'll be one there every Saturday between now and the election and maybe in other places too (Stockwell, Brixton, the Southbank).

Lambeth Stop the War group had a stall further up the road, outside Sainsburys. We visited them to make sure we get an invitation to the hustings meeting they are organising a week on Monday in Brixton:

Lambeth Stop the War Election Hustings
A chance for you to ask candidates questions about Afghanistan, Civil Liberties, Palestine and the War on Terror generally
Monday 19th April
7:30pm - 9pm
The Brix, St Matthews Church, Brixton Hill, SW2 1JF

Meanwhile other comrades covered the trade union demonstration about defending the welfare state that was going on in Traflgar Square at the same time.

The party of the Rich

2010-04-09T08:25:00.006Z

On our way to leaflet the Springfield estate (where one of us got bitten by a dog) we noticed that the Tories had been leafletting Clapham Town ward. Their leaflet contained a photo of one of their candidates squatting and pointing to a pothole which somebody should sent to glum councillors. Also amusing to see that it contained a version of the Liberals' it's-a-two-horse-race bar chart but with the Liberals trailing in third place.

We also found evidence that the Tories had been leafletting Clapham North tube station on behalf of their parliamentary candidate in Vauxhall, a young whizz-kid. He doesn't stand a chance but it's obligatory for would-be professional politicians to first contest a no-hope seat on behalf of their party in the hope of being given a better chance next time. According to his leaflet:

A Conservative Government will build economic recovery on investment and exports, not consumer borrowing and government debt.

As if governments can control the way capitalism works rather than having to react to what capitalism throws at them. Another empty promise not worth the paper it was printed on that deserved to end up where we found it: in the gutter.

Meanwhile the Tories' shadow chancellor Boy George has been sending personal letters to individuals in marginal constituencies in which he promises to "protect those on modest incomes", including by re-linking the state pension to inceases in average earnings (rather than consumer prices as now which has been rising more slowly). We'll see. Breaking this link was one of the cuts made by Thatcher in 1980 . . . and all three main parties are promising that the cuts they will introduce if elected will be worse than under Thatcher. Or maybe they are anticipating that prices will start rising more than earnings.

The Tories are only professing concern for those on modest incomes because they can't win unless they can gain votes outside their natural constituency of the rich. And they are, and always have been, the party of the rich. As comes through from time to time, as when Cameron calls on BA workers to cross picket lines and with employers currently lining up to support his (and their) party's promise to reduce a modest Labour tax that will hit their profits.

Not only are they the party of the rich. They are rich themselves. As Cameron re-assured a "gathering of top financiers" last December:

"My father was a stockbroker, my grandfather was a stockbroker, my great-grandfather was a stockbroker".

And he's married to an aristocrat. And of course he, like many in his shadow cabinet, is an Old Etonian. What the "new", "modern" Tory Party stands for is not simply government by politicians for the rich but government for the rich by the rich.

Any person on a "modest income", i.e most people, who even thinks of voting Tory is a mug.

What about a society with neither rich nor poor?

2010-04-08T07:11:00.004Z

On Sunday we received an email from the Fairer Tax Campaign which said:

The Fairer Tax Campaign is a not-for-profit and non-partisan project that is in favour of national income tax reform.
We believe that Britain needs to become collectively fairer. The gap between the rich and the poor has continued to grow for decades, which has only served to create a divided society. This is unacceptable for a developed country with one of the largest economies in the world. More needs to be done to tackle the aforementioned disparity. Fairer income tax is part of the solution.
We propose that that the tax free personal allowance threshold be raised to £10,000 for anyone earning less than £18,000 a year. This will be subsidised by reducing the threshold for the 50% tax rate from £150,000 to £100,000. It will ensure that the rich pay more and the poor pay less.
Question 1: Do you agree in principle with the aforementioned policy?
Question 2: In a generic sense, do you believe that the rich should pay more tax and the poor should pay less tax?
Question 3: If you are elected as an MP, do you pledge to campaign for income tax reform at the next parliament?
We look forward to receiving your response.

We replied:

The Socialist Party is standing on a platform of socialism (common ownership, democratic control, production for use not profit, and distribution according to need not money) and nothing but. We are not advocating reform of capitalism. Your reform (trying to permanently redistribute income from the rich to the poor) has been tried many times and has always failed because it is undermined by the way the capitalist system works and has to work, as is explained in this article. It would be more effective to work for a society in which there will be neither rich nor poor.

As our reply was not published along with others on their website we asked why and received the following reply:

We can confirm that we did receive your email. However, as you can tell by our blog, we only upload answers of those politicians who broadly agree in principle, part or whole with the Fairer Tax Campaign (or progressive tax reform in general). So far, politicians from 11 different party affiliations have done so. It was clear from your response that you neither agreed with FTC in principle, part or whole. If we are mistaken, by all means send us a response to our questions that matches the criteria above and we will upload your answer. We can understand if you are unable to do so for ideological reasons. We hope that has been clarified and wish you all the best.

In the end our reply was published as a comment. By the look of those who have signed up this reformist bankwagon is not going anywhere anyway.

Kentish Town update

2010-04-07T07:39:00.004Z

Sorry I've been quiet, I've been up in Kentish Town gathering signatures to contest the election there. I had to do this in between attending the Party's conference.

After knocking on about 300 doors (most of which were simply not answered) often in driving freezing winds, I got the ten signatures required. Most people I talked to simply weren't interested in politics - a good few said "No, sorry, I'm voting Labour" (the ward is a lib-dem/labour marginal in a tight council contest). One feller did start to discuss with me why it would be impossible to organise a complex economy without the market system, but I was so cold I didn't hang around long - I knew I could keep the counter argument going for about half an hour, and didn't reckon that would be fair on either of us.

At least, though, he instantly compared us to the diggers, which made me relatively happy.

I gave away a few copies 0f our Pamphlet 'Socialism as a practical alternative' to those who seemed interested in what we about.

I got my nomination papers in yesterday, and the returning officer asked for an additional coverign letter from our nomionating officer so I could use the party name - this despite the fact that I'd lugged the relevent form all the way down to Clapham to get it signed. Apparently, the form isn't enough, no, but an email that could be from anybody, really, is sufficient. Bureacracy, I tell's ya.

So, now for about 15 hours of leafletting, alongside any helping out I give in Lambeth, and joining in other campaigning events. Fun, fun fun.

The Day the Election was Called

2010-04-06T17:34:00.006Z

This seemed a good day to start distributing the local election manifestos, so went to the westernmost part of Larkhall ward (and of Vauxhall and the borough of Lambeth) on the other side of Wandsworth Road. Went the extra 300 yards up the Wandsworth Road to drop one in at the John Buckle Bookshop at No 170, the headquarters of the "Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)", a Maoist outfit (can't remember whether they supported Albania or Mao's widow -- anyway they stand for state-capitalism not socialism). It wasn't open. It never seems to be. So couldn't find out what their line on the general election is. I think they may be calling for a vote for Kim Il Sung II of North Korea.

Picked up a copy of a paper for Portuguese-speakers in Britain, ie workers from Portugal, Brazil, Angola and Mozambique. When a story concerns one of these countries it is signaled by the country's flag. Noticed that the Angolan flag features the hammer-and-sicke. That should please the RCPB(ML). Or maybe not.

Just heard on the news that the actor Corin Redgrave died today. He stood against us for the Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1978 Lambeth Central by-election. He got 271 votes. We got 91. He didn't like us. The feeling was mutual but we mustn't speak ill of the dead, at least not on the day they died.

The future capitalism offers you

2010-04-02T07:17:00.002Z

Apparently "Gordon" was in Larkhall on Tuesday, but they never told us he was coming. We were there too but at the other end of the ward.

His job is to preside over the running of capitalism in Britain for the benefit of British capitalists. But they have turned out to be an ungrateful lot, lining up behind the Tories to avoid a minor tax on their profits.

They say the government's proposed increase in National Insurance contributions from next year will be a "tax on jobs". But they are not concerned about jobs. And what hypocrites to pretend they are. They are in business not to provide jobs but to make profits, and if the two clash then jobs will be sacrificed to protect profits, as they've been doing since the autumn of 2008 with more to come. The proposed increase in NI contributions will increase their labour costs and so cut into profits. That's why they are squealing, allowing the Tories to present themselves as a better party of the rich than Labour. And Labour had been trying so hard.

But what about the rest of us, the non-rich? In the boring TV debate last Monday between the main parties' economics spokesmen

all three agreed the future cuts would be worse than those under Margaret Thatcher. (see here, for instance)

Sorry. but we have to ask this: Are you going to be one of the mugs that's going to vote for them?

Local manifesto arrives

2010-04-01T07:30:00.005Z

12,000 copies of our manifesto for the London borough elections on 6 May arrived yesterday. Distribution will begin this Sunday -- by delegates down for our Annual Conference this Friday and Saturday at 52 Clapham High Street (all welcome -- there are no secret sessions). Here's what the leaflet says:

Socialists are working for a different and better world

This is a message to those who are fed up –

• Fed up with the failures of this dreary system
• Fed up with leaders and the false promises of career politicians
• Fed up with poor hospitals, poor schools, poor housing and an unhealthy environment
• Fed up with having to live on a wage that struggles to pay the endless bills
• Fed up with serving the profit system and seeing poverty amidst luxury

What happens in any local council depends mainly on what happens in the country and even in the world. That is why socialists are working for a different world. But it can't happen unless you join us. The job of making a better world must be the work of all of us.

The world we want is a one where we all work together. We can all do this. Co-operation is in our own interests and this is how a socialist community would be organised – through democracy and through working with each other.

To co-operate we need democratic control not only in our own area but by people everywhere. This means that all places of industry and manufacture, all the land, transport, the shops and means of distribution, should be owned in common by the whole community. With common ownership we would not produce goods for profit. The profit system exploits us. Without it we could easily produce enough quality things for everyone. We could all enjoy free access to what we need without the barriers of buying and selling.

Most politicians blame our problems on lack of money, but this is not true. Money doesn't build hospitals, schools decent housing and a healthy environment. The things that make a good community can only be created by the work of the people. We have an abundance of skills and energy. If we were free from having to work for the profits of employers we would be able to work for the needs of everyone.

The profit system is oppressive; it dominates our lives. It plagues us with bills. The rent and mortgage payments, the food bills, the rates, gas, electricity, water and telephone bills. Money is used to screw us for the profits of business. If we don't pay, we don't get the goods. Without the capitalist system, a socialist community would easily provide for all of its members..

The challenge now is to build a world-wide movement whose job will be to break with the failures of the past. It won't be for power or money or careers. It will work for the things that matter to people everywhere – peace, material security and the enjoyment of life through cooperation.

This is the challenge that could link all people in a common cause without distinction of nationality, race or culture.

We in the Socialist Party reject the view that things will always stay the same. We can change the world. Nothing could stop a majority of socialists building a new society run for the benefit of everyone. We all have the ability to work together in each other's interests. All it takes is the right ideas and a willingness to make it happen.

If you agree with this you can show it by voting for our candidates in this ward.

The socialist candidates are:
Ferndale ward (Lambeth): Daniel Lambert, John Lee, Jacqueline Shodeke
Larkhill ward (Lambeth): Oliver Bond, Adam Buick, Stanley Parker
Kentish Town ward (Camden): William Martin

GENERAL ELECTION: The Socialist Party is also contesting the Vauxhall constituency (Lambeth) in this election. The candidate is: Daniel Lambert.

Follow our election campaign at: http://spgb.blogspot.com/

More information and offers of help: contact our offices at 52 Clapham High St, SW4 7UN or by email to socialistparty@btconnect.com or by phone to 0207 622 3811. Website: www.worldsocialism.org/spgb

Local election nomination papers handed in

2010-03-30T16:00:00.006Z

This morning handed in the nomination papers for our 6 candidates in the local elections in Lambeth. They've been accepted. So our candidates (Bond, Buick and Parker for Larkhall and Lambert, Lee and Shodeke for Ferndale) are now officially candidates and are no longer allowed to buy drinks for electors. Apparently the Greens are expected to stand a full list so there could be at least 15 candidates for the 3 seats in both wards.

On the way back from Brixton Town Hall noticed the offices of the local government workers' union UNISON so dropped a leaflet through their letter box and looked at their noticeboard. There were three notices.

One was a call for volunteers to go canvassing for the Labour Party in Barking to stop the BNP. Apparently there's a chance they might win control of the council there. As if it wasn't the inevitable failure of the mainstream reformist parties to make capitalism work for the workers that hadn't created conditions for the rise of the BNP.

The other was from the Union's LGBT section (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender, for the uninitiated). Not quite sure what that's got to do with trade unionism which is about what unites workers not what divides them but maybe it's just concerned with combatting prejudices.

The third was from Youth Fight for Jobs, which is a front for Militant. The leaders of UNISON don't like Militant and have recently taken over a branch in Greenwich which Militant had captured. Don't know what this was all about but in general it's a bad thing for union branches to be hi-jacked by vanguardist parties (which specialise in this) or any political party for that matter. They ought to be controlled democratically by their members irrespective of their political views.

BNP bullshit

2010-03-27T08:12:00.003Z

Last Monday Nick Griffin of the far-right BNP debated the "Reverend" George Hargreaves of the far-right Christian Party on a Christian TV station. According to a report in Surrey Comet this is what he argued:

"We believe that nations are ordained by God and that they will be there at the end of times, so logically from that all nations have the right to ensure they survive and are not simply swamped by an endless flood from elsewhere."

If this is the sort of nonsense he is spouting just put him on TV every night and he'll soon be a laughing stock.

When, at what point in history, for instance, did God ordain the "nations" of the world and which was to live where? The so-called "British nation" of which Griffin seeks to be the champion is a product of history, not the creation of some god. If you go back only 2000 or so years most of the inhabitants of this island off the north-west coast of Europe were Celts, speaking a language akin to modern Welsh. They were eventually conquered by the Romans who came from Italy (but whose troops and settlers came from all round the Mediterranean and beyond). When the Romans left there was a "endless flood" of Angles and other Germanic-speakers into "Britain" (a word of Celtic origin) who eventually drove the Celtic-speakers to the Celtic fringe of Cornwall, Wales and Cumberland. Then came the Danes from Norway and Denmark. Then England (or Angle-land, as it was now called) was conquered by the French-speaking Normans. And the English-language evolved, a basically Germanic language with a large French vocabulary. It didn't stop there, with later migrations of Flemings and Hugenots.

Daniel Defoe wrote a poem about this which is still a good reply to nationalist myth-makers like Griffin.

As we have always said, the best way to deal with Griffin and his followers is not to ban them or kick their heads in but to put them on a platform and expose the nonsense they spout for what it is. Easy.

A bit of gossip

2010-03-26T17:21:00.006Z

The Workers' Power group supports TUSC and is running a candidate in Vauxhall. Jeremy Drinkall, the candidate, told me that he has asked for TUSC support, and been told officially that TUSC will not support him because the Labour MP he is challenging, Kate Hoey, is in the RMT parliamentary group. (This although RMT is not in TUSC).

Martin Thomas on the site of another Trotskyist group who are also standing alone, without TUSC endorsement, in Camberwell & Peckham, and also saying Vote Labour elsewhere.

Taxi Rank

2010-03-26T10:32:00.004Z

OK, things are ticking over - I've been to Camden council and I've got hold of the nomination papers for standing in Kentish Town: I'll pick up the electoral roll on the 29th and so will be hitting the streets looking for nominations pretty much straight away.

Until then - the thing overlooked by the media. Polly Toynbee comes close regarding the Byers/Despatches affair:

If a fish rots from the head, Labour's contamination with money was smelled from those earliest days of being "intensely relaxed about the filthy rich". But Tony Blair's behaviour since 2007 defies the ravings of his worst enemies. No conspiracy theorist guessed he would take money for Iraqi oil from a South Korean company – to add to £1m from the Kuwaiti royal family, an estimated £20m from anyone anywhere, £4m for his book, plus properties fit for a Brunei prince. That all this mammon is collected in the name of God is worthy of the faith-based business school of L Ron Hubbard: God can make you very rich indeed. Did Blair go to war in Iraq to get rich quick? Almost certainly not, but the cashflow from American adulation ever since will leave the slur on his tombstone.

This is nearly there, the point is that the desperate, petty, piddling corruption of the type Byers has been engaged in isn't the end of it. There are lucrative and legal and "honourable" ways to get rich post politics. Those in the loop know that there is always the way out into business. The capitalists aren't offering bribes, directly, but capitalism and the prospect of riches does offer an incentive to tow the capital line.

The point the media have missed is this: you cannot have democracy in an unequal society. End of. The lure of riches and reward will always draw power and decision making towards the owners of the world. You can regulate, adjudicate and officiate to buggery and back, and you still won't stop the allure of lucre. Beat that home: in a world where money talks louder than votes, you cannot have democracy.

What "mass immigration"?

2010-03-25T17:40:00.006Z

Came across a UKIP hoarding poster which read "5000 people settle here every week. Stop mass immigration -- vote UKIP".

Of course what UKIP is doing is playing on some people's dislike of already settled immigrants. But most immigrants are just workers who've moved here in search of work and finding it. In fact many of what the BNP, UKIP's cruder rival for the anti-immigrant vote, call the "indigenous" population will be the descendants of one-time immigrants. Everybody with an Irish name for instance, and that's a lot.

The Socialist attitude is that all workers, irrespective of their first language or where they were born, share a common interest in uniting, as long as capitalism lasts, to get the best terms they can for the sale of their working skills and, more importantly, in getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with a world community without frontiers based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth's resources so that these can be usd for the benefit of the whole world population.

It's not clear whether UKIP will be standing in Vauxhall -- the poster was in neighbouring Battersea. Just checked who it is and it says:

From a military family, Christopher was brought up in this country and the middle east.

Hold on a minute. Middle East? So it's alright from his family to have settled there in connection with their work but not for families from other parts of the world to settle here.

The baby and the bathwater

2010-03-23T19:26:00.006Z

We have received by email a leaflet about the election from Past Tense Publications who have published some interesting short pamphlets about labour and popular history in South London. Headed "ALL ELECTIONS ARE A JOKE. LET'S TREAT THEM WITH THE CONTEMPT THEY DESERVE" it argues that "all elections are a waste of time". It starts off well enough:

Politicians of all parties fill their pockets, you couldn’t tell their policies apart without a microscope, the power of the rich, the global corporations and financiers continues merrily whoever is elected; well-meaning do-gooders get elected, then become sucked in or ground down by he weight of the system. While the meaningless circus at Westminster rattles on, our lives are at the mercy of their economic upturns and downturns, grinding away at work just to survive. While the rich and their parliamentary puppets wine and dine, whoever gets in next time will slash the NHS and other services many of us need to get by, to balance the national debt – at our expense, again.

They recall what they see as a historical precedent:

"How things don’t change…
In the 18th century, the vast majority of the population were excluded from power by a corrupt political elite, who had the parliamentary processes all sown up in the interests of the rich, ie themselves and their mates (sound familiar?). The poor could see the electoral circus meant nothing to them.
In response some set out to take the piss out of the whole charade. In the South London village of Garratt (in modern Wandsworth), from the 1740s to the 1790s, mock elections were held for the fictional office of “Mayor of Garratt”. Huge crowds flocked to a rowdy and fantastic parade and drinking spree, centred on a fake contest, featuring ridiculous candidates making grandiose speeches, promising the mpossible if elected, and swearing oaths filled with sexual innuendo…"

And conclude with practical proposals to "Turn the joke back on them":

It may not change the world: but why don’t we revive the Garratt tradition, with a vengeance this time, everywhere? We could hold mock elections, in the streets, parks, or even inside the polling stations on election day (till they chuck us out!), at work, school or on the bus, we could stir up a huge non-stop mickey-take of the meaningless parliamentary smokescreen, disrupting, engaging with others, having a laugh, but showing we aren’t taken in? Why not elect your ranty mates, or whoever; maybe they could all turn up at the House of Commons on opening day and claim to be an Honourable Member too? Would your pet gerbil make a good MP?
We could also revive other fun practices from our history: like the Suffragettes’ were fond of following candidates they opposed around and disrupting all their elections speeches; which would be a laugh too, especially with megaphones or sound systems.
These are just two ideas – there’s a million more ways to trash the dash for cash. Let’s use our imaginations, go for it, and not get nicked!
Having fun together is more real than parliamentary puppet shows… The more chaos and disorder, the more disruption, the more open rejection of the empty lie of democracy, the more fun we’ll have the more potential for real change.

Clearly anarchist influence is strong amongst some of those associated with Past Tense publications. The full text can in fact already be found on anarchist websites, for instance, here.

Mildly amusing perhaps (though, to tell the truth, the members at our offices who read it thought it pathetic) but theoretically and practically wrong. Mocking politicians is alright to a certain extent (we do it ourselves) but it can give rise to the mistaken idea that is because of corrupt and self-seeking politicians that we suffer from the social problems we do. It's not. It's the fault of capitalism. Even if all politicians were saints they still couldn't make capitalism work in our interest.

Nor is it true that "All elections are a joke". While what the professional politics who currently dominate politics get up to at Westminister and the antics they engage in to get votes do deserve to be mocked, especially as the media give them so much publicity, there is a serious side to elections.

Elections are ultimately about who controls the government and who gets to make the laws. Ever since most electors have been wage and salary workers the capitalist class has needed to persuade workers into voting for politicians who will support their system. This is what elections are about: tricking workers into voting for pro-capitalist politicians. Past Tense are right to expose this, but wrong to conclude that this means we should never have anything to do with elections. The response should be, as Marx once put it, to transform universal suffrage "from the instrument of fraud that it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation". Which is one of the points we are trying to make in contesting this and other elections.

Universal suffrage came into being partly as a result of pressure from below. Past Tense recognise this when they note that "from the 1760s the [Garratt] elections were associated with radical politics: demands for reform of the political system band protests against the economic hardships and lack of liberty for the labouring classes began to appear in the speeches". But what was "reform of the political system" if not the extension of the suffrage and its use to gain access to political power to try to improve the situation of "the labouring classes", such as the Chartists later campaigned for? And what did the Suffragettes want if not to extend the suffrage? Was this wrong? We say No, the extension of the vote to workers is a gain and is a crucial difference between today and the situation in 1700s. Certainly, at present the vote is not used wisely -- in fact it is used very unwisely -- but that doesn't mean that it can't be used when once workers have woken up to the fact that capitalism can never be made to work in their interests. To try to speed up this awareness is another reason why we contest elections.

The suggestion to take over "polling stations on election day", i.e. to try to disrupt the elections, is completely irresponsible but is probably just anarchist bombast. Our advice to them (since the Past Tense people seem a decent lot) is: don't be stupid, don't do it. If they really tried it, they'd be in dead trouble and would get nicked, ending up in prison to reflect on the refrain from the Crickets 1959 song "I fought the Law" ... "And the Law Won".

Another Vauxhall election blog

2010-03-21T09:59:00.005Z

So that electors can be fully informed of the choice before them (and so they can see the difference between a real socialist and a Trotskyist reform-monger and would-be leader) here's the site of the candidate of the League for the Fifth International.

We were also out leafleting, for the local elections, yesterday but in the Stockwell Park area so didn't come across them (Oval is not one of the two wards we are contesting). Incindentally, if you take the wrong turning when you exit from the Oval tube station you end up in the nextdoor constituency of Bermondsey and Old Southwark.

Hope none of them did this and handed out their leaflets there as they are supposed to be telling people that side of Kennington Park Road to Vote Labour. In other words, their message to those living near the Oval tube would have been: if you live on one side of road Vote Labour, if you live on the other Don't Vote Labour. We'll try and get hold of one of their leaflets to see if this clears up the confusion.

Nul point

2010-03-18T17:35:00.004Z

Our candidate for Vauxhall has been solicited for his views by yet another organisation. This time, not a single issue group but group which has 21 issues.

"Election candidates challenge!" read the email we got, "Endorse our pledges and we'll vote for you":

"The Instute of Ideas has published a list of '21 Pledges for Progress' ahead of the general election, and is challenging candidates of all parties to endorse them. The Institute of Ideas suggests voting for any candidate willing to back at least 15 of the pledges, whichever party they represent".

The 21 pledges can be found here. As can be seen, they are reform measures to be achieved within capitalism. Despite the fact that we could sympathise with some of the measures such as those concerning freedom of speech and association and the call for a more rational approach to nuclear power and GM crops (though we wouldn't trust them to be implemented properly under capitalism), and although feudal relics like the monarchy and the house of lords will diappear in socialism, we had to reply saying we couldn't endorse any of the "pledges" to gain votes.

This is because we are standing on a straight programme of socialism (the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, with production solely for use, not sale and profit and distribution on the principle of "from each their ability to each their needs") as the only framework within which existing social problems can be lastingly tackled and only want the votes of those who want socialism rather than just particular reforms of capitalism.

So, we had to report that our score was 0 out of 21.

We know the Institute of Ideas of old. This has been formed by ex-leading "cadres" of the now defunct Leninist organisation, the "Revolutionary Communist Party". In fact, in the 1989 by-election in Vauxhall (which we gave a miss) they put up a candidate who got 177 votes. That candidate, Don Milligan, who has now abandoned Leninism, has written a recent piece about what life was like for the members of the RCP and the illusions they held. It can be found here. We imagine that this is still what life is still like inside the extant Leninist/Trotskyist organisation, the League for the Fifth International, which is planning to stand here. Which confirms why we ourselves have always opposed Leninism and said that those who want socialism should organise as an open, democratic party without leaders or leadership pretensions.

Solidarity

2010-03-17T09:32:00.007Z

The world we live in. The Tories attack Unite for seeking solidarity from the American Teamsters Union (according to the BBC). Now, the international solidarity of the workers is a principle of trade unionism, so it is in fact a good thing that workers are seeking one anothers' support. Just look, though, at the vitriol being poured on the BA workers for daring to stand up for themselves. Compare with the flood of stories about government cuts being needed to restore 'confidence' in the economy (e.g. here). What they mean by confidence is giving in to the overall policy demands of financiers, who will withhold their economic resources until their demands are met.

We are in the grip of a sustained capital strike, and yet the press turn vicious on any attempt by workers to mount a strike to defend their own interests.

As a note, the Tories are attacking the link between Labour and Unite, because Unite as the biggest union in the country is basically shouldering the cost of the Labour Party now. Labour loyalist Luke Akehurst rebuts the allegations.

The point, though, is that the link is hurting both parties, the interests of political parties and trade unions are not the same. Further, by linking themselves to a party that will form government under capitalism, the unions are signing a paycheque to those who will have to implement capitalism's attacks against the workers.

We support, fully and utterly, the BA workers and Unite and the Teamsters in their efforts to stand up to their employer, a struggle we all share an interest in. We share, though, an even greater interest in getting rid of the wages system all together, and Unite the Union would do better to try and raise their aims to Unite the Workers, for socialism. Unite members in Lambeth and Camden can do this by voting for our candidates.

Green austerity

2010-03-16T09:47:00.004Z

In his blog on Saturday the Green Party candidate for Vauxhall, Joseph Healey, inadvertently reminded people that in Ireland the Green Party is part of the coalition government and so is responible for imposing the increased austerity on the workers there demanded by the current world economic crisis. Green parties have assumed responsibility for governing capitalism not just in Ireland but also, though not at the moment, in Germany, France, Belgium and Italy.

As we have always said, the Green Party is just as much a party of capitalism as Labour, the Tories and the Liberals. They only want to try to give it a green tinge. Not that this can work except on a miniscule scale since capitalism's priority of priorities always must be allowing profits to be made.

This means that any party which takes on responsibility for running capitalism must sooner or later end up acting against the interests of the majority wage and salary working class, as Healey's counterparts in Ireland have found out (and accepted).

More Conservative than Thou

2010-03-14T08:59:00.003Z

Out yesterday to get the last two signatories for the nomination papers for the local elections we came across a Labourite distributing leaflets door to door. She wasn't very friendly quizzing us as to why we were contesting and where. We told her we were contesting to put over the case of for a socialist society of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use not profit and added that, as far as we're concerned, Labour, Liberals and the Tories were all the same. We could almost see her mind ticking thinking "they might take votes from us and let the Lib Dems in". She seemed relieved when we told her we were only standing in two wards.

Her leaflet was revealing as it was using all the arguments against the Lib Dems that the Tories use against Labour. One item headed "Labour costs you less -- the Lib Dems cost you more!" denounced the "tax-addicted Lib Dems". The claim was that the Labour council had been able to freeze council tax (as if all councils don't in election years) by eliminating waste while "at the same time, frontline services have been protected". By coincidence the front page headline of the March 11 issue of the local free paper, the Post, lying in people's recycling bins, was "SOLICITOR TO FIGHT HOUSING WARDEN CUTS":

Lambeth council could face a legal fight after slashing its number of sheltered housing wardens by almost 25 per cent to save money. The Labour-run council cut the number of wardens who look after more than 1,000 elderly and vulnerable people living in sheltered housing schemes from 28 to 22 late last year.

Apparently Labour doesn't regard wardens for people in sheltered housing as a "front line service". Having said this, this sort of thing is par for the course under capitalism whichever party runs the council. And, by all accounts, it's going to get worse as whatever government emerges from the general election starves councils of funds and gives priority to repaying those capitalists who have recently lent the government money.

Another item "Lib Dems soft on crime" said of the Lib Dems:

They voted against Labour's Safer Neighbourhood Police Teams, tried to legalise hard drugs, and launched a bid to decriminalise kerb crawling putting women at risk from abusers.

Time was when the Labour Party used to support such liberal reforms. Not any more. They're more Conservative these days.

Blood sports and the old ruling class

2010-03-13T07:51:00.005Z

It's started. Single-issue campaigning groups contacting candidates about their single issue. Yesterday the League Against Cruel Sports asked us to reply to this question:

If elected to Parliament and the opportunity arose, would you vote in favour of repeal of the Hunting Act?

We sent the following reply:

The good old English sport of sending hungry hunting hounds to chase aristocrats through the woods, catch them and rip them to pieces, has been slow to take off as a popular pastime. Despite claims that these predatory parasites are a foul rural presence, serving only to infect the countryside with their conceited greed and indolence, it has been hard to find dogs with sufficient brutality to enjoy the so-called sport. Those who favour such hunts claim that it is nothing more than a healthy rural tradition, misunderstood by town dwellers, and that ripping duchesses and viscounts to shreds is the most human way to rid nature of those who have only survived historically by plundering and murdering others. The Royal Society for the Protection of Useless Aristocrats has been long split on the issue, with one section accepting that such blood sport is "just a bit of harmless fun", while others prefer the idea of culling – or permanent quarantine in the House of Lords.

This laboured account would be funnier were it not for the harsh reality that rich, privileged, barbaric bullies, most of whom are brutalised at birth by hereditary right and public-school conditioning, do indeed defend their right to chase around the countryside with packs of hounds in order to savage and tear apart defenceless animals. Their callous defence is mounted in the name of sport. And because it is traditional for these parasitical killers to dress up in the costumes of their class and indulge their pleasure in watching deer, foxes and other animals being ripped apart, they respond with well-rehearsed cries of arrogant immunity to human behaviour when their ritualised sadism is opposed.

Their protest for the right to hunt and murder animals for fun is no more worthy of support than a campaign to reintroduce slavery or to bring back the deportation of criminals.

Daniel Lambert, Socialist Party candidate, Vauxhall

We understand that the MP for Vauxhall, Kate Hoey, takes a rather different attitude. But a word of caution: we are standing on a straight socialist programme and nothing else and only want people to vote for us if they want a world of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use not sale and profit. So, if (like any decent human being) you are against killing animals for pleasure but don't want socialism, please don't vote for us.

Why we contest elections

2010-03-12T14:00:00.003Z

For those, particularly anarchists, who say we should have nothing to with elections, the new pamphlet What's Wrong with Using Parliament? we are bringing out explains why we disagree.

Anti (some) capitalists but not anti-capitalism

2010-03-10T08:08:00.002Z

It seems that the League for the Fifth International have not received the endorsement of Bob Crow, Militant and the SWP who run the "Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition" and so will not be standing in Vauxhall in the coming General Election under that title. They now say will they be standing as "the Anticapitalists".

Their manifesto, however, suggests that they are only against some capitalists (the bankers) and are not against the wages-prices-profits system that is capitalism but think that if you soak the rich (especially the bankers) it can be made to serve the interests of the majority.

This is what they say:

The Government gave £1 trillion to the banks. We want it back! Anticapitalists say take over the banks, who are making giant profits again, and raise taxes on the rich . . . Spend the money on a massive programme of public works -- creating three million jobs, a million affordable homes and a national repair and improve programme for council flats and houses.

So, the rich are still going to exist -- which means of course that capitalism is still going to exist -- but are to be taxed to pay for a massive public works programme. Either they believe that this is possible -- in which case they are not living on this planet. Or they know it's not possible but are just making promises they think will attract a following -- in which case they are no better than the career politicians in the main parties.

Their manifesto also says:

Labour has let ordinary people down, spending all our money on bankers and unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now Labour wants to make us pay the price with cuts to jobs, pay and services.

Calling the money the government spends "our money" when we never had it in the first place is bit fanciful, but presiding over cuts is what Labour, being the current managers of British capitalism PLC, are obliged to do more or less helplessly (as would any party that takes on the job of running capitalism). But then we are told elsewhere:

In constituencies where there are no anticapitalist, socialist or trade unionist candidates, Workers Power is calling for a Labour vote.

Since this will apply to the vast majority of constituencies this is in effect a call to re-elect the outgoing Labour government . . . "which now wants to make us pay the price with cuts to jobs, pay and services". Their only argument is that Labour is "the lesser evil" as the Tories would be worse. An argument that is music to the ears of the professional politicians in the Labour Party anxious to continue enjoying the fruits of power and who don't care why people vote Labour as long as they do.

It's not a valid argument since the problems we face are not caused by which party is in office but by the capitalist system whose operation they have to preside over and go along with. That's why changing governments changes nothing. It's capitalism that's the "evil" not which group of professional politicians forms the government.

What’s wrong with politics?

2010-03-08T15:24:00.002Z

With a general election coming up soon what exactly will be on offer from the main contenders? No doubt more of the same but couched in terms intended to give us confidence that this time promises will be kept, regulations will be tightened and adhered to, unemployment will be tackled and reduced (figures can be manipulated). A minor change here, a cosmetic tweak there, but the status quo will endure regardless.

When reading or listening to the pre-election promises and then thinking back rationally to other, similar pledges by previous candidates and recalling the reality of U-turns, excuses and failure to deliver over the years, how could anyone doubt the absolute imperative of addressing the question of what’s gone wrong with politics with the utmost seriousness? If we simply moan and complain from our armchairs what will change? A compliant, too passive electorate is repeatedly defrauded.

At this time of impending election madness if you think you've been cheated over the years, you're right; capitalism is nothing but a racket. The proof of the failure of the world capitalist system to meet the needs and aspirations of the majority of the population of every country of the world is there for all to see, clear and manifest, if only they will open their eyes wide and acknowledge the overwhelming evidence.

Politics, the activities associated with how a country or an area is run, is something which should engage the interest and activity of every citizen worldwide as it bears directly on all aspects of life. The reason for contempt or indifference towards politics comes from a history of being excluded, the expectation of being excluded and the acceptance of being excluded. To be heard, to be considered, to be represented honestly we need to be involved in the decision-making processes, not to be told what is in our best interest by self-serving professional politicians. We need a system that works for us all, of which we're all an integral part, a system we're prepared to work to attain. What we need is socialism.

-- one of the articles in a socialist newsletter currently being delivered door-to-door in the Larkhill and Ferndale wards.

Our candidates

2010-03-07T08:25:00.002Z

For Vauxhall, at the General Election, the Socialist candidate will be Danny Lambert.

In the local elections, in Lambeth, the candidates will be:
Ferndale ward: Danny Lambert, John Lee and Jacqueline Shodeke.
Larkhill ward: Oliver Bond, Adam Buick, Stan Parker.

The Socialist Party will also be contesting Kentish Town ward of Camden council, where the candidate will be Bill Martin.

Las Falklands

2010-03-04T16:15:00.003Z

The recent drilling for oil near the Falklands has re-ignited the dispute between British capitalism and Argentine capitalism over which has legitimate sovereignty over the islands, a dispute which led to war in 1982.

At that time Michael Foot was the Leader of the Labour Party. He wholeheartedly support the war. This was how the May 1982 Socialist Standard reported the pro-war speech he delivered in the House of Commons on 30 March:

Of course the real star of the Labour benches was Michael Foot. Belying his reputation as a doddering, ineffectual bungler, the Labour leader lashed the government for their "betrayal of those who looked to it for protection" (he was not talking about workers struggling to live on social security). "We should not," he raged, "see foul, brutal aggression successful in our world." (He was not attacking the record of past Labour governments on Korea, Malaysia, Biafra, Vietnam . ..) Foot's speech was applauded by the MPs as a flag-waving, drum banging demand for war in which, of course, he would not personally be in the front line. It was, we remember, only a few months ago that he won an affectionate ovation at a Labour Party gathering by describing himself as "as inveterate peacemonger".

The League for the Fifth International (along with the other Trotskyist groups) also supported the war, but the other side. They, as they recall in a press statement issued today, supported General Galtieri sending thousands of Argentine conscripts to their death:

In 1982 Workers Power opposed Thatcher’s bloody war, and on the streets of London took a clear and unequivocal position for the defeat of Britain and the victory of Argentina.

They weren't personally going to be in the front line either.

We in the Socialist Party adopted the traditional socialist position:

THE FALKLANDS CRISIS
In face of the imminent threat of war over the potential wealth of the Falkland Islands the Socialist Party of Great Britain affirms:
1 That despite the wave of jingoistic hysteria in the press and its endorsement by Labour and Tory politicians alike, no working class interests in Britain, Argentina or the Falklands themselves can be served by war.
2 That neither the military junta in Buenos Aires nor the elected representatives of British capitalism, least of all the business interests of Coalite-Charringtons, can justify the shedding of a single drop of working class blood.
3 That the new-found outrage at the undemocratic and oppressive nature of the Argentine regime rings false coming from a government which was arming that regime until the eve of hostilities.
4 That the crucial role of Argentine capitalism in profitably making-up the notorious shortfall of agricultural production within the Russian Empire goes far to explain the support given to the junta by the local "Communist Party" and the muted criticism of it by the same circles who so vociferously denounce the similar dictatorship in Chile and its parallel suppression of trade unionism anc free speech.
We therefore reiterate that having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow-workers of all lands the expression of goodwill and socialist fraternity and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism in all its guises and the establishment of socialism throughout the world, the only way to end war.
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 13 April 1982

We don't like inequality...

2010-03-03T10:57:00.004Z

...and by we, I mean all of us, according to researchers: "In the experiment, people who started out rich had a stronger reaction to other people getting money than to themselves getting money," Camerer explains. "In other words, their brains liked it when others got money more than they liked it when they themselves got money." that is, we appear to be 'hardwired' for equality and fairness. Of course, the next lot of researchers might cotnradict this, but it does show a trend in research that suggests that inequality is injurious to all, not jut those on the sharp end of the stick.

So, how about working towards an equal society? Start with helping our election campaigns - it's in your own interest.

Standing alone

2010-03-03T07:47:00.003Z

For the record, here's a letter we had published in last week's Weekly Worker (25 February):

The Socialist Party will be standing a candidate in Vauxhall, London, in the coming general election, just as we did in 2005. We are standing on a straight socialist ticket, opposed to all the other candidates, including 'Workers Power' (or the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, if they get the endorsement).

We do not support the idea of a 'new workers' party' - ie, a Labour Party mark two. That's been tried in the last century and failed, and would fail again because it is built not on support for socialism, but on leadership and reforms of capitalism.

Further information is available at http://spgb.blogspot.com.

It seems that the Fifth Internationalites are having difficulty getting endorsement from Bob Crow and the others in TUSC. At least this is what this passage in an article about a more recent breakaway from the SWP suggests:

In the coming general election, let’s break resolutely with the Respect tradition of cross-class politics and mount an independent working class challenge. Workers Power is standing Jeremy Drinkall in Vauxhall on a clear and uncompromising Anticapitalist ticket. The Left Platform could do the same in other areas, and fight to get the endorsement of the Trade Unionist and Socialist coalition, without agreeing to limit your programme to what Bob Crow is prepared to allow.

Potholes and socialism

2010-03-02T09:35:00.004Z

OK, lo and behold, I talk about potholes, and they become a national issue: from today's Today programme, '£8.5bn needed for road resurfacing.'

See, the problem is that big infrastructural budgets are the first casualty of any budget cutting - the accountability scale is longer than most politicians terms of office. Underfunding of roads will only begin revealing defects ten years down the line, and persistent underfunding, will simply lead to a long slow decline. This decline will be very expensive to reverse, so the relative underfunding will continue because the political rewards of such repairs will be slow in coming. It’s hard to point to something not being broken.

Depreciation, or amortisation, of capital stock is dealt with separately from current accounts. Essentially, the roads are paid for up front, normally through public debts. Local authorities take out 60 year mortgages to pay for infrastructure, so over that period, they have to pay the initial capital back plus interest. So, while it's depreciating, it's still being paid for in the first place.

Of course, if the debt lives longer than the time scale required to completely replace/renew the roads, then more debt will have to be piled on to carry out that work.

Socialism can't promise infinite riches, or that choices of priorities won't have to be made, but we can say that socialism would end the requirement to turn loans back into money - essentially ending the distinction between the current and capital accounts. All activity would have to be accounted for out of real currently available resources, rather than notional capitalisations.

Further, there won't be the option for externalities - at present councils are not required to take account of the cost of the damage poorly maintained roads do to vehicle stock, but in a system of common ownership, we would have to balance the impact on inventories of vehicle repair versus road maintenance.

Saocialism isn't a magic wand, but it does offer the prospect of accountability and the mechanisms by which we can take proper control of our own communities and our social environment.

Capitalism: A Dirty Word

2010-02-27T08:18:00.005Z

Three of us went last night to see Michael Moore's latest film Capitalism: A Love Story at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton. It was less than half full with only 30 others there.

The film does contribute to helping make "capitalism" a dirty word, but that's about it. Capitalism is defined, as by its supporters, are "free enterprise", "profit" and "competition" and the worst excesses of the unregulated competitive pursuit of profits by private corporations are exposed. But the analysis is weak : that things weren't going too badly -- workers had steady jobs and were able to adopt a "middle class" lifestyle -- until Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980 and financial deregulation was introduced and started a feeding frenzy by financial institutions that eventually led to the crash of 2008. It's basically an attack on Wall Street and the New York banks on behalf of blue-collar workers. Moore denounces "capitalism" as being against both the "American value" of democracy and the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. As a solution he offers worker-run co-operatives and a Europe-style "Welfare State" (which the film naively claims would have been introduced in America if Roosevelt hadn't died in 1945).

Still we mustn't be too churlish and it can't be a bad thing that capitalism is becoming a dirty word even in America. It deserves to be. Let's hope that the film encourages people to look further into what capitalism is and find out how it can never work, or be made to work, in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers. And that socialism, not welfare capitalism, is the way out. Hopefully the leaflet we handed out and left lying around will help towards this.

Glum Councillors

2010-02-24T08:27:00.004Z

One of my favourite blogs is Glum Councillors a collection of stock photos of local councillors posed, pointing at graffitti, vandalism or potholes in the road. Much like the one here.

Now, this phenomena relates to a style of boss politics - vote for me and "I'll get things done for you." A kind of gift relation, we give our votes, they give us public service. Of course, really, fixing the roads is a technical matter for the highways officers, councillors are there to be political - to decide priorities, direction and style of a council. Most of the time they are simply there to oversee moneybeing handed down to them from Whitehall to spend on non-discretionary matters.

Once, I'm sure I've written about it here, when out campaigning, someone asked us 'What are you going to do about the potholes in the roads?' the comrade who was with me suggested giving the guy a shovel. That's not far off our attitude, not necessarilly dig it yourself, but you can organise yourselves, and if you have a problem, get it sorted, without asking the boss man to do it for you.

Doubtless I could (and probably will) write about roads, road transport and its condition, but the point I want to make here is anyone can go around saying 'I'll do my best for you' and promise to nag officials to do their jobs (Fib-Dems are very good at that) but we're not contesting elections for that reason - we think there is a political decision to be made about the type of society we are living in, and that is the platform we stand on.

Lies, Damned Lies and Lib Dems

2010-02-23T22:39:00.004Z

Went down to Brixton Town Hall today to pick up the nomination papers and electoral registers for the two wards we'll be contesting in the local elections. Somebody gave me a leaflet. As it was in blue I assumed it was a Tory one but when you opened it it turned out to be a from the Liberals. Obviously aimed at Tories, it proclaimed "The Conservatives can't beat Labour here. Only the Lib Dems can".

What, the Liberals think they can win Vauxhall? If they did then the Cameron clone who is their Leader would be Prime Minister and Vince Cable (the only Liberal politician anyone knows) would be Chancellor and have to put his money were his mouth is. Vauxhall is one of the safest Labour seats in London where the Alternative Vote isn't needed as the Labour candidate got nearly 53% of the vote at the last general election. Then I realised that I'd strayed over the border into the neighbouring constituency of Streatham.

The Liberal leaflet contained the claim they use everywhere -- it's a two-horse race and we're in it with a good chance of winning. Here in central London they're appealing to Tories to vote Liberal to keep Labour out. Further out, to the South West, where there are three Liberal MPs (including Vince Cable) they're appealing to Labour supporters to vote Liberal to keep the Tories out. The leaflet had a bar graph showing Labour and Liberal neck and neck with the Tories trailing in third place with well under half the Liberal support. The caption said "The results from the last elections here, in 2009". The last elections, in 2009, were those for the European Parliament. Here are the actual figures for the whole of Lambeth (not just Streatham): Labour 15990 Liberal 11340 Tory 10537 Green 10394 Others 9339.

The lesson of this? Don't believe any statistics you read on Liberal leaflets. The chances are they are falsified.

There was a political point on the leaflet that needs taking up. It claimed "Everyone knows someone who's lost their job because of the way Labour have run the country". We hold no brief for Labour (obviously not) but this is not true. The government is not to blame. Everybody will know someone who's lost their job but it's because of the way capitalism works and would have worked whichever party was in power. Rival politicians would have us believe that if only their party had been in power things would have been different. Not true. What is responsible for the social ills we face is not which party is in office but the profit system we live under. The way out is not to change the politicians who form the government but to replace capitalism with socialism. To make this point is why we are contesting the elections.

Weapons of class war

2010-02-19T09:27:00.004Z

My attention has just be drawn to this: Commander's Guide to Money as a Weapons System Handbook seemingly a genuine US military guide that says what we have been saying for years - money is a weapon.

At home and abroad it is a weapon in warfare, particularly class warfare by the rich against the poor. Looking through, some of the funds are for 'entertainment' and raising the prestige of the military.

So, as the strapline goes "Money is my most important ammunition in this war."
-MG David Petraeus, 101st Airborne Division Air Assault.

Focus on Vauxhall

2010-02-19T08:53:00.004Z

OK, so that was the national stats, lets throw in what we know about London:

For October to December 2009:
The employment rate was 68.7 per cent and there were 3.71 million employed people.
The unemployment rate was 9.1 per cent and there were 373,000 unemployed people.
The inactivity rate was 24.2 per cent and there were 1,253,000 working age inactive people.

According to this constituency profile (which I will add to the sidebar) back in June 2009 Vauxhall had a nearly 4% greater unemployment rate than London (which was about 2% over the national average), so we could reasonably infer that Vauxhall will have greater than 12% unemployment, around 9 to 10 thousand unemployed.

What emerges from even these scant glances through the official statistics is the shocking normality of these conditions, that such widespread unemployment (and as we have seen from previous posts) poverty should nt be a burning priority, but an after thought to servicing the wishes of the insanely wealthy.

The Tories like to beat Labour with the "class war" stick. We, though, are calling for class war, for a struggle for the thousands and millions abused and held down by the wages working to organise themselves to abolish that condition.

The statistics speak

2010-02-18T09:19:00.005Z

According to National Statistics' Labour Market Statistics Statistical Bulletin - February 2010 (PDF) there is an interesting employment picture in the UK.

The number of people in full-time employment fell by 37,000 on the quarter to reach 21.22 million, the smallest quarterly fall since the three months to July 2008. The number of people in part-time employment increased by 25,000 on the quarter to reach 7.67 million. There were 1.04 million employees and self-employed people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job. This is the highest figure since records for this series began in 1992 and it is up 37,000 on the quarter.

That is, on top of the 2.46 million actually without jobs, 663,000 of whom have been out of work for over a year. they are included in

The inactivity rate for October to December 2009 was 21.3 per cent, up 0.2 on the quarter but below the record high of 23.3 per cent recorded in 1983. The number of inactive people of working age increased by 72,000 over the quarter to reach a record high of 8.08 million. This increase in inactivity was largely driven by the number of students not in the labour market which has increased by 62,000 on the quarter to reach 2.26 million, the highest since comparable records began in 1993.

3.5 million people comprise the make-up of the reserve army of labour that is essential to capitalism, our system of society could not exist without thse 3.5 million. A great many more re hunkering down and taking themselves out of the jobs market as long as they can until things clear over.

Of course, these figures are dwrfed by the 21.22 million who are actually in full-time employment. But for every seven people who have a proper job, one person is un-or-underemployed. That would be true, if unemployment were scattered around, but we all know it concentrates, in communities like Lambeth, which have high levels of unemployment and low pay generally.

Last time

2010-02-16T09:38:00.002Z

Here's a reminder of how we did last time we stood candidates for Lambeth Council, four years ago in May 2006.

The results for the two wards we are planning to contest this time can be found here for Ferndale and here for Larkhall.

Mute inglorious Milton.

2010-02-15T09:41:00.005Z

According to the BBC, poverty is linked to poor language acquisitiion among poor children.

Children from the poorest homes are almost a year behind middle class pupils in language skills by the time they start school, research suggests.

Now, as of 2008, according to the Lambeth State of the Borough report:

The proportion of children and young people living in poverty is higher than average, as is infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, childhood obesity, primary and secondary school permanent exclusion levels and the proportion of 16-18 year olds who are not in education, employment or training.

Lets put this into perspective with some detail

Two in five (41%) London children live in poverty compared to 28% nationwide. This rises to 51% in Inner London. Borough level figures are not available, but Lambeth can be expected to exceed the Inner London figure. Just over a third (33.8%) of children in Lambeth live in families on key benefits compared to 24% in London; Lambeth ranks as the 11th highest in Great Britain and more children live ‘in care’ in Lambeth than across the capital and the rest of the country (110 per 10,000 children under 18 were looked after, compared to 70 in London and 55 in England).

Over half of children in Lambeth are living in poverty. That's half who will be robbed of their potential to achive by the cumulative drag on life chances created by poverty. So much for Labour's pledge to end child poverty. They've barely dented it.

Local elections too

2010-02-13T12:24:00.002Z

Even if the general election isn't on Thursday 6 May, there will be elections that day. In London all the borough councils will be elected, including Lambeth. The Socialist Party will be contesting two wards here: Ferndale ward and Larkhill ward. We have already leafleted the wards twice and will be doing so again in the near future.

Here is an article from one of our leaflets:

The Brixton Pound – What for?

In September a group of enthusiasts, supported by the Council, launched the Brixton Pound. These are vouchers that can be used, instead of pound coins and £5 and £10 notes, to buy from shops in Brixton – provided, that is, that the shop is prepared to accept them.

But what's the point (apart from helping local shopkeepers)? What difference does it make what coloured pieces of paper we have to use to get the things we need to live? The real problem is that in present-day, capitalist society we have to use money at all to obtain these, and that the amount of money we have will always be rationed by what we get as wages or as benefits. That restricts and distorts our lives.

But it doesn't have to be like this. If the waste and artificial shortages of capitalism were eliminated we could easily produce enough to go over to getting what we need on the basis of the principle from each according to our abilities to each according to our needs. In other words, free access to what we need without having to hand over coloured pieces of paper or to use cards or vouchers of any kind.

Maybe you think that this wouldn't work because (other) people would take too much. Soledad Brother George Jackson answered that one in one of his prison letters:

"Consider the people's store, after full automation, the implementation of the theory of economic advantage. You dig, no waste makers, no harnesses on production. There is no intermediary, no money. The store, it stocks everything that the body or home could possibly use. Why won't the people hoard, how is an operation like that possible, how could the storing place keep its stores if its stock (merchandise) is free?
Men hoard against want, need, don't they? Aren’t they taught that tomorrow holds terror, pile up a surplus against this terror, be greedy and possessive if you want to succeed in this insecure world? Nuts hidden away for tomorrow's winter.
Change the environment, educate the man, he'll change. The people's store will work as long as people know that it will be there, and have in abundance the things they need and want (really want); when they are positive that the common effort has and will always produce an abundance, they won’t bother to take home more than they need.
Water is free, do people drink more than they need?"

The person whose face appears on the Brixton ten-pound note – CLR James – also saw free access and "from each according to ability, to each according to need" as the ultimate goal. We see it as the immediate goal if we are ever going to get off the treadmill of having to work for money to buy the things we need to be able to go on working for money.

All Socialists Now?

2010-02-11T21:06:00.004Z

It looks as if there will be two other candidates in Vauxhall claiming to be socialist.
1. Joseph Healey, "Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Vauxhall at the next general election - the green, socialist alternative". We met at hustings for last year's European Parliament elections when he was on the Green Party's list. The Green Party as a party stands for small-scale capitalism.

2. Jeremy Drinkall, of Workers Power, "the British section of the League for the Fifth International", a Trotskyist grouping (what else with a name like that?). They are trying to get the endorsement of the "Trade Unionists and Socialists Coalition" set up by Militant (falsely calling themselves us) and the SWP, but are by no means certain to get it. What this ridiculously named Trotskyist sect stands for is of course state capitalism under a vanguard party (them)

Naturally we've challenged the both of them to debate.

Watch this space for the outcome.

Murder by poverty

2010-02-11T08:36:00.002Z

Well, lefty blogs are awash with rumours today. But let's leave them to one side, and look at somethign much more improtant.

Something, noticeably, the BBC doesn't seem to find all that important, as they report on a study by Sir Michael Marmot. This report isn't on their websites front page (as write), nor on their politics page.

Look at the headline: "Poorest in England live 7 years less on average" It says it all, really. We are being robbed of years on Earth. Simple as that. The poor, and there are many of them in Lambeth, simply do not get the basic right to live as long as the wealthy. Look back on your last seven years, all that happened in it, all that happened to your familly. That is what they are robbing from you.

In typically capitalist money concern way, we get: "Professor Mike Kelly, of the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) said: "Public health interventions are extremely good value when compared with the costs of clinical interventions." It would be cheaper, it seems to pay us better.

The BBC won't bang the drum, so we have to. Get out there, blog about this. This is the story of the year. The story of last year. The story of all years to come until we get rid of this unequal society.

Your vote counts

2010-02-10T08:39:00.003Z

Well, electoral reform is back on the agenda.

Our view? In a nutshell: so long as the mechanics are in place so that a majority of workers can organise to effect socialism, then it doesn't matter precisely how you count the votes. So far as we're concerned, it is the movement of the vast majority in the interest of the vast majority that matters. Getting a technical victory by counting one more nose than the rest isn't what we're about.

What we remain more concerned about is the rights of minorities to try and become majorities, which are hampered by the mainstream media focusing on the existing parties and making it difficult for candidates to be heard on the stages where they need to be in order to make their case.

Where we stand

2010-02-09T08:20:00.005Z

Well, I was going to kick off our campaign by, well, kicking off and giving some of our opponents a good slagging off. That is to come, though. Instead, let me try and tell you about Lambeth.

In the sidebar, you can see a link to Lambeth Statistics.

Here are some interesting facts about Lambeth (the borough where the Vauxhall Parliamentary Constituency lies).

Only 67% of Lambeth's working age residents were classified as employed in 2006/2007, compared with 69% across London and 74% nationally and in May 2007 17% were benefit claimants.

In 2007, there were around 10,000 businesses in Lambeth; but more than three-quarters of these had fewer than five employees (ABI 2007). In fact according to the 2007 Lambeth Economic Digest 99.65% of businesses in the borough are Small or Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Conversely, in the north of the borough there is a cluster of large firms, 48 of which employ more than 200 employees; among these are the national headquarters of IBM, Shell, and the ITV network. Nearly all employees employed in the borough work in the service industry (94%), with roles in public sector, education and health particularly prevalent.

There are around 270,000 people who live in Lambeth. There are 117,000 jobs (obviously, not everyone employed in the borough lives in the borough, and vice versa). Of the residents, 122,000 are in employment. 19,000 are self employed. 7% are retired. 13,000 are unemployed.

Median gross annual income is £32,000 - and they calculate that added value across the borough is £25,000. So, in this overwhelmingly working class borough, if (in an imaginary land) the workers secured the fruits of their labours by hand or by brain, they'd be living on an income of about £50K each. Of course, such a thing couldn't be achieved within the market system, but it is that base inequality of all that hardwork, and the massive gap between the efforts and the fruits that forms the ground we stand on. We hope the workers of Vauxhall will look at their situation, and decide enough is enough, and signal to their fellow workers the world over that they are prepared to do a something about it.

2010 Vauxhall Manifesto

2010-02-08T08:17:00.004Z

Here we go again, kids, another year, another election. Our Executive Committee (which is directly elected from our membership), are charged by our rules to agree our election addresses.

They did this on Saturday just gone. Below is the platform on which we will be contesting the General Election:

Capitalism Must Go

These elections are taking place in the middle of the biggest economic and financial crisis since the 1930s. In a world that has the potential to produce enough food, clothes, housing and the other amenities of life for all, factories are closing down, workers are being laid off, unemployment is growing, houses are being repossessed and people are having to tighten their belts. And for once the main parties are being honest in offering more of the same, competing with each other as to which of them is going to impose the most “savage cuts”.

Capitalism in relatively "good" times is bad enough, but capitalism in an economic crisis makes it plain for all to see that it is not a system geared to meeting people's needs. It’s a system based on the pursuit of profits, where the harsh economic law of "no profit, no production" prevails. The headlong pursuit of profits has led to a situation where the owners can't make profits at the same rate as before. The class who own and control the places where wealth is produced have gone on strike – refusing to allow these workplaces to be used to produce what people need, some desperately. So, as in the 1930s, it’s poverty in the midst of potential plenty again. Cutbacks in production and services alongside unmet needs. Why should we put up with this? There is an alternative.

But that's the way capitalism works, and must work. The politicians in charge of the governments don't really know what to do, not that they can do much to change the situation anyway. They are just hoping that the panic measures they have taken will work. But the slump won’t end until conditions for profitable production have come about again, and that requires real wages to fall and unprofitable firms to go out of business. So, there's no way that bankruptcies, cut-backs and lay-offs are going to be avoided, whatever governments do or whichever party is in power.

What can be done? Nothing within the profit system. It can‘t be mended, so it must be ended. But this is something we must do ourselves.

The career politicians, with their empty promises and futile measures, can do nothing for us. We need to organise to bring in a new system where goods and services are produced to meet people's needs. But we can only produce what we need if we own and control the places where this is carried out. So these must be taken out of the hands of the rich individuals, private companies and states that now control them and become the common heritage of all, under our democratic control. In short, socialism in its original sense. This has nothing to do with the failed state capitalism that used to exist in Russia or with what still exists in China and Cuba.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY is putting up a candidate, here in Vauxhall, to give you a chance to show that you don't want capitalism but want instead a society of common ownership, democratic control and production just for use not profit, with goods and services available on the basis of "from each according to ability, to each according to needs".

If you agree, you can show this by voting for us. But more importantly get in touch with us to help working towards such a society after the election is over.

Stay tuned, as ever, for incisive comment and discussion of the ins and outs of an election campaign.

Alter Egos

2009-06-21T09:30:00.000Z

Yesterday at a book fair in Oxford got chatting with someone on the Communist Party of Britain/Morning Star stall who explained that the Scargill Labour Party had been prepared to join the petty nationalist No2EU list but that there was a last minute hitch. Scargill demanded that he be No 1 on the list in London. Unfortunately, this had already been reserved for his Alter Ego, Bob Crow. They offered King Arthur the No 1 place on the list in Yorkshire (where presumably he could be expected to be better known and more popular) but he refused -- perhaps he had got wind of the fact that a number of ex-miners were planning to switch to the BNP. So the deal fell through. Don't know if there's any truth in this bit of gossip but here seemed the best place to record it for posterity.

In the event Crow beat Scargill in London, but Scargill's list beat Crow's in 7 of the 9 other regions. At least they settled the argument through elections. Which wouldn't have been the case in the state-capitalist ex-USSR the both of them so admired.

What's Left?

2009-06-15T07:48:00.003Z

Bought a copy of Socialist Worker on Saturday as they happened to have a stall (or rather their front organisation Stop the War did) at the same Peace Fair in West London that we did. It was interesting to read the following in a piece headed "What about the radical left?":

Five years ago Respect polled 4.84 percent across London, beating the BNP. The combined left vote in London was down this year to 2.1 percent.

The No2EU (Communist Party/Militant list) got 17,758, or 1.02%. The Scargill Labour Party got 15,036, or 0.88%. That only makes 1.9%. So where does the other 0.2% come from. You've guessed. It must be our 4050, or 0.23%.

We should be flattered I suppose but because of the association of the "Left" with what went on in Russia and with Labour-style reformism we don't like to be classified as part of the Left (though we know what people mean when they do this). We certainly don't like being classified with these two lists, both led by ex-members of the Communist Party who still haven't broken with its ideology and still think the former USSR was socialist (and Militant too thought that the USSR was some sort of "Workers State"). In any event, we're no part of this State Capitalist Left.

But let's run with this for a moment. The total "radical Left" vote was 37,114. Our "contribution" was 4050, or 10.9%. So one in 10 of the "radical left" would be people prepared to vote for the SPGB, ie real socialism as opposed to the state capitalism favoured by most of the rest. Though this is probably more a reflection of their weakness rather than our strength. Still.

The same issue of Socialist Worker commits the SWP to convening a "conference of all those committed to presenting candidates representing working class interests at the next election". Be interesting to see if they send us an invitation as that's what we'll be doing. If they did, we could tell the gathering that the only way to pursue working class interests is to advocate a worldwide society of common ownership, democratic control, production solely for use not profit, and distribution on the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs", and nothing but. But, being realistic, we don't think they'd accept this.

More statistics

2009-06-10T19:00:00.001Z

All the London boroughs have now published the results of the election in their area (to see them in full, type in the name of the borough followed by .gov.uk). These allow us to calculate the percentage of the vote obtained by the Socialist list, more significant than the actual number. Here they are, divided into above and below the overall average vote of 0.23% (4050 votes):

0.45 219 Haringey
0.43 227 Lewisham
0.32 149 Islington
0.31 164 Waltham Forest
0.30 150 Hounslow
0.30 146 Newham
0.29 135 Camden (*)
0.28 127 Tower Hamlets (*)
0.28 103 Westminster
0.28 99 Barking and Dagenham
0.27 158 Lambeth (*)
0.27 120 Hackney
0.26 138 Southwark
0.24 160 Enfield
0.24 114 Greenwich
0.23 163 Ealing (*)
0.23 93 Hammersmith and Fulham

BELOW AVERAGE
0.22 137 Harrow
0.22 137 Havering
0.20 136 Wandsworth
0.19 151 Barnet
0.19 113 Brent
0.18 111 Bexley
0.18 111 Redbridge
0.17 149 Bromley
0.16 138 Croydon
0.16 98 Hillingdon
0.15 81 Richmond
0.15 74 Merton
0.14 66 Sutton
0.14 3 City of London
0.12 52 Kingston
0.11 32 Kensington and Chelsea

(*) = borough where the post office delivered our manifesto to parts.

These confirms that, as could have been anticipated, we did better in the inner London area than in the outer suburbs to the South. For those who don't know London, Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Merton, Sutton, Kingston and Richmond form a continuous swathe of territory that has more in common with neigbouring Kent and Surrey than with the rest of London.

Why Haringey should be our best result is unclear though a lot of work has been put in there over the years including contesting the parliamentary seat of Hornsey on a number of occasions. With regard to Lewisham, it is tempting to speculate again that this is due to Militant, which has a couple of councillors there who say they are from the "Socialist Party" (though not on the ballot paper), being hoist by their own petard for usurping our name.

Kensington and Chelsea is where the knobs live.

The Lambeth Talk

2009-06-09T13:42:00.001Z

On Sunday 6 members went to the count in the Assembly Hall next to Lambeth (ex-Brixton) Town Hall, before 2 of us moved on to the count at Southwark. We were met by the Deputy Returning Officer who knows us from previous elections we've contested in the area over the years.

The election agent was allowed to see the rejected ballot papers. Most had voted for more than one candidate, though the combination was not always comprehensible like the voter who voted UKIP and Yes to Europe. A number of others voted Labour or Liberal and Yes to Europe, presumably thinking that the Yes to Europe box near the bottom of the ballot paper was some sort of referendum on the issue. Others wrote rude things or drew rude drawings on the paper. Others wrote None of the Above. Somebody cast a write-in vote for Kylie Minogue. Curiously all these went into a pile marked "Uncertain" despite the intention of all of them being quite certain.

When the two of us went on to the Southwark count we, as candidates, were greeted as honoured guests by the Returning Officer who had not expected any candidates to turn up. However, Simon soon disagraced us by touching a ballot paper, which is absolutely banned. Also present was a tall young man with a beard and a badge saying "agent". I asked him for who and he replied, apologetically as if I might hit him, "BNP". I quipped you can't be as you've got a beard. It obviously takes all sorts.

Anyway, back to Lambeth. Here's the result:

Labour 15,990
Lib Dems 11,340
Con 10,537
Green.10,394
UKIP 3,111
Christian 2,154
BNP 1,174 (2.04%)
SLP 653 (1.13%)
Eng Dem 488
No2EU 478 (0.83%)
Libertas 281
Jury Team 194 4%
Cheung (Ind) 187
Jananayagam (Ind) 176
Socialist Party 158 (0.27%)
Yes 2 Europe 155
Saad (Ind) 48
Alcanatara (Ind) 46
Rahman (Ind)36

There were 558 rejected ballot papers.

We have to confess that this was a bit of a disappointment as, in the same area last year, there'd been 917 votes cast for the Socialist candidate. So what happened to the "missing" 759 votes? The poll was lower by about a quarter this time, so that might account for 200 or so of them. And the rest? One possible explanation is that some of them were people who considered themselves socialists and who are prepared to vote for any party or candidate calling themselves "socialist" and who voted for Arthur Scargill's SLP, either because it appeared on the ballot paper before us or because they thought him or his party better than us.

Having said this, we have received a number of interesting replies to the manifesto which the post office delivered to two-fifths of the households in the borough which we'll be following up individually. Plans to contest the general election in Vauxhall, and two wards in the borough elections next May, are going ahead.

Breakdown by borough

2009-06-08T16:56:00.000Z

Here it is, but the absolute figures can be misleading in that some boroughs are larger than others and there was a higher turnout in some. Not all the boroughs have yet produced full results so the percentages are only given for those who have.

Barking & Dagenham 99
Barnet 151 (0.19%)
Bexley 111
Brent 113
Bromley 149 (0.17%)
Camden 135 (0.29%)
City of London 3
Croydon 138
Ealing 163 (0.23%)
Enfield 160 (0.24%)
Greenwich 114 (0.24%)
Hackney 120 (0.27%)
Hammersmith & Fulham 93
Haringey 219 (0.45%)
Harrow 137
Havering 133
Hillingdon 98
Hounslow 150 (0.30%)
Islington 149
Kensington & Clelsea 32 (0.11%)
Kingston 52
Lambeth 158
Lewisham 227
Merton 74 (0.15%)
Newham 146 (0.30%)
Redbridge 111
Richmond 81 (0.15%)
Southwark 138 (0.26%)
Sutton 66
Tower Hamlets 127 (0.28%)
Waltham Forest 164
Wandsworth 136
Westminster 103
TOTAL 4,050 (0.23%)

This is more or less what you'd expect. We were above our average in the inner London boroughs and traditional Labour areas and below our average in the leafy suburbs.

It's a pity we've not got the full results yet for Lambeth. And it's tempting to speculate that our highest absolute number (227 in Lewisham) may have been due to some Militant supporters thinking we were them, but Lewisham is the sort of area where we'd have been expected to get a higher than average vote.

The best result was in Haringey. Which was also rather untypical for the rest of London and the country. What with the Tories and UKIP in 4th and 5th place and the BNP in 7th. And us beating the Jury Team and Libertas.

Elections for the European Parliament 2009

Votes cast in Haringey were as follows:

The Labour Party 14,093
Liberal Democrats 11,550
The Green Party 8,528
Conservative Party 7,396
United Kingdom Independence Party 2,164
Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship” 1,408
British National Party 981
Socialist Labour Party (Leader Arthur Scargill) 683
No2EUYestoDemocracy 618
English Democrats Party 339
Jan Jananayagam – Independent 297
The Socialist Party of Great Britain 219
Jury Team 202
Steven Cheung – Independent 131
Yes 2 Europe 111
Pro-Democracy:Libertas.eu 96
Gene Alcantara – Independent 69
Sohale Rahman – Independent 51
Haroon Saad 23

Rejected ballot papers
Voting for more than one candidate 255
Writing or mark by which the voter could be identified 6
Being unmarked or wholly void for uncertainty 129
Total 390

Turnout: 32.35 %

The result

2009-06-08T07:09:00.003Z

Party	Total vote	% votes
Conservative	479,037	27.4
Labour	372,590	21.3
Liberal Democrats	240,156	13.7
Green Party	190,589	10.9
UK Independence Party	188,440	10.8
British National Party	86,420	4.9
Christian Party-Christian Peoples Alliance	51,336	2.9
Independent - Jan Jananayagam	50,014	2.9
English Democrat	24,477	1.4
No2EU	17,758	1.0
Socialist Labour Party	15,306	0.9
Libertas	8,444	0.5
Jury Team	7,284	0.4
Independent - Steven Cheung	4,918	0.3
Socialist Party of Great Britain	4,050	0.2
Yes 2 Europe	3,384	0.2
Independent - Sohale Rahman	3,248	0.2
Independent - Gene Alcantara	1,972	0.1
Independent - Haroon Saad	1,603	0.1

From The BBC

Discussion of the counts and various ruminations to follow.

The turnout

2009-06-07T08:35:00.000Z

It's 33.53%, with 1,763,025 votes out of an electorate of 5,257,624. See here. Just under 4 percentage points lower than last time (2004) but over 10 percentage points higher than in 1999.

8 of us are off to various counts this afternoon and evening (the counting is being done in each of the 32 London boroughs).

As a quick guide to our and other minority party candidates (well, more minority parties than others since, with 66.5% abstaining all parties are minority parties), and in case anyone wants to organise a sweepstake on how many votes we'll get, here's some figures:

2,5% 44,076 (to save deposit)
1% 17,630
0.9% 15,867
0.8% 14,104
0.7% 12,341
0.6% 10,578
0.5% 8,815
0.4% 7,052
0.3% 5,289
0.2% 3,526
0.1% 1,763

The only forecast I'm prepared to risk is that we'll get more than the 846 obtained by the candidate of the Weekly Worker in 1999. This time, incidentally, they are saying Vote Labour. I'm sure Labour will be grateful for any extra votes on offer.

Less low turnout?

2009-06-06T05:28:00.001Z

We've received the following email from the person in charge of the count in Camden:

Following advice from the Regional Returning Officer in the light of the higher than anticipated turnout and also taking account of the ballot paper size, the Local Returning Officer has decided that the start time for the count of votes for Camden is to be put back to 4.30 pm on Sunday 7th June at the Camden Centre.

Higher than anticipated turnout? What does he know that the media speculators don't? Presumably a lot, as they started to "verify" the votes (ie check the number of ballot papers against the number issued) yesterday.

It is not clear whether this applies just to Camden or to the whole of London.

Waiting

2009-06-05T16:26:00.001Z

Because the last countries to vote in this EU-wide election will not be doing so till Sunday, the votes in the UK won't be counted till then. The votes in London are being counted by London borough, so we'll get an interesting and maybe useful breakdown of our votes. We'll have representatives at the counts in Camden, Lambeth, Tower Hamlets and Southwark and also at City Hall where the votes from the boroughs will be collated and the complicated D’Hondt Rule applied to decide who’s elected.

As we only had a blanket distribution by the post office of all households of our election manifesto in 4 Westminster parliament seats, we will be able to see if this makes any difference to the number of those who register a vote for socialism in the boroughts concerned. These are:

Camden 75,000
Lambeth 55,000
Ealing 51,000
Tower Hamlets 56,000

Members and sympathisers delivered a further 29,000 by hand in the other boroughs but these will probably have been in such small numbers as to make little difference to the overall outcome, except perhaps in Wandsworth and Kingston where 9000 and 5000 respectively were distributed.

Only in 5 of the 32 borough were no leaflets distributed (Brent, Barking & Dagenham, Havering, Redbridge, and Kensington & Chelsea).

We'll see. The turnout should be available later today.

Just Voted

2009-06-04T07:19:00.000Z

Just voted for myself for a change. You're not supposed to canvass within a certain distance of the polling station but the Lib Dums (as Danny calls them) get round this by sticking their posters in the windows of nearby houses. But the Christian Party was better served. The polling station is a Christian centre and above the polling booths is a banner proclaiming "Christ is King" which fits in nicely with their slogan on the ballot paper about "Proclaiming Christ's Lordship". It's as if the polling station was in the Miners Institute in Barnsley with a banner proclaiming "Leader Arthur Scargill" which is the SLP's ballot paper slogan. This has happened before, though this time they've at least taken down the banner proclaiming their economic policy: "Jesus Saves". Naturally, I complained again about this but the staff said they couldn't do anything about it. Maybe an official complaint from a candidate and election agent will carry more weight. Watch this space. On my way back came across a Lib Dum canvaser delivering leaflets on polling day. They must be desperate.

The day before yesterday in Parliament

2009-06-04T05:36:00.002Z

Danny Lambert reports:

The Party was invited to have a candidate attend a hustings meeting organised by the Public and Commercial Services Union on Tuesday evening at the Houses of Parliament and delegated me to attend. I turned up in good time, found my way to the entrance passing half a dozen well tooled up members of London’s finest, where I was asked to stand on the foot marks, had my photo taken, given a pass with it on to hang round my neck, then through airport like security and I was in.

What struck me immediately as I entered the Great Hall, which is huge, was the amazing level of craftsmanship embodied in the walls and floor and in the oak roof. All that skill was employed solely to aggrandise rulers and to intimidate the ruled.

The meeting was held in one of the many committee rooms that line the corridors. I counted 45 in the cheap seats, the panel of candidates represented No2 EU, Libertas, the Green Party, the Jury team, the Tories and some Baroness who wasn’t a candidate but was standing in for the Lib Dum. The UKIP and the Labour candidates didn’t turn up and I assume the BNP weren’t invited.

We were all given three minuets to give an outline of what we proposed and then it was questions from the floor which could be directed at a specific candidate but we were all able to comment. Most of the assembled were members of the PCS and their questions were all about whether we supported this reform or that one? What we would do about the corruption in the EU? What was our opinion on the Lisbon Treaty? And so on.

During the meeting which was very poorly chaired, members of the audience were allowed to ramble on and repeat themselves, The NO2EU lefty and the Baroness had a long pointless argument with no intervention from the Chair. I thought I gave a decent précis of the Party Case in my three minuets, however no one asked me to expand on or explain what I had put forward, so when it was my turn on a question I gave variations on the stock socialist position on reform and then threw in some of what they should acknowledge about capitalism and what real socialism was all about, and although the applause wasn’t as thunderous as I was anticipating, I did notice some nodding and smiling of recognition. The star of the show was the NO2EU lefty who gave them exactly what they wanted to hear.

The meeting lasted a little over two hours, and at the end I handed out leaflets and every one approached took one.

Just one regret. It's a pity other that some Party members didn't turn up and attend this meeting and put some difficult questions to the various representatives of the Capitalist Party sitting beside me.

The local press

2009-06-03T12:48:00.000Z

We have to confess that coverage of our list in the local press has been disappointing. We had counted on them to help get across, in areas where the post office wasn't distributing our leaflets, the fact that we were standing and something of what we stood for.

Unfortunately, most of the local papers did not go much beyond giving a "public service" announcement of the list of all the parties and individuals standing. Some did not even do this.

Particularly disappointing were the two independent (of the big chains) papers, the Camden New Journal and Southwark News. In the first, we put in a paid ad putting our case but there was no editorial coverage. In the second (which had given us equal time in last year's GLA elections), we were only mentioned amongst the "also standing" while Labour, Tory, Liberals, Greens, UKIP and BNP got interviewed. We had understood that if we answered the same questions this would be in the following week's issue along with the replies of the other left-out parties. But nothing was published. So as not to waste the work that went into drafting the replies to their questions, here they are.

1. Should further enlargement of the EU be supported for countries such as Turkey and Croatia?

What intergovernmental arrangements those in charge of trying to manage capitalism make is irrelevant as far as the majority of us, who work for a wage or salary or exist on benefits, are concerned. What the Socialist Party advocates is a world without frontiers where the resources of the whole world will have become the common heritage of all humanity.

2. As the pound is currently weak, should the UK consider joining the Euro?
It makes no difference what the money we are paid in is called. As long as the capitalist system of production for profit exists there will always be economic crises, whether we are governed from London or from Brussels, or whether we are paid in pounds or euros. In socialism, the principle “from each their ability, to each their needs” would apply, making money redundant.

3. Is it fair that the UK pays more into Europe than it gets back, with funds being redistributed to eastern Europe countries?
It’s up to the big capitalist corporations and their political representatives to judge whether or not they get value for money out of their membership of the EU. These funds, like profits, originally come from the difference between the value of what we produce and what we are paid as wages and salaries. That’s what’s not fair.

4. What would you do for London as an MEP?
If elected I would be the mandated delegate of those in London who wanted to replace capitalism with socialism. Pending the emergence of the majority desire for socialism required to establish it democratically, I would use the European Parliament as a platform from which to broadcast the need for a society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit.

The dying embers

2009-06-02T07:55:00.003Z

Last night I went out on the leaflet run. I tried handing one to a dustman:

"Is it voting? Coz I don't vote." - he refused the leaflet.

Ringing a buzzer on a council block (see my rants about this passim) I said:
"I'm delivery European election leaflets."
"I'm not interested." *click* was the reply - one persons uninterest denying an entire block of people from receiving leaflets.

One woman refused the leaflet because she'd already voted by post. She hadn't voted for us.

People stormed out of their Islington homes to demand "what're you putting through my door", but I had already moved away, and was only just in ear shiot.

Uninterest rules the roost. So, I'll try and end with a bit more baiting of the Christian party.

Apparently, well, OK, let me let them tell their own story, from the last Welsh Assembly elections:
The [Welsh Christian Party's] leader, the Rev George Hargreaves, said, "We will not allow this evil symbol of the devil to reign over Wales for another moment.

"Wales is the only country in history to have a red dragon on its national flag.

"This is the very symbol of the devil described in The Book of Revelation 12:3.

"This is nothing less than the sign of Satan, the devil, Lucifer that ancient serpent who deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

"No other nation has had this red dragon as its ruling symbol.

"Wales has been under demonic oppression and under many curses because of this unwise choice.

This is what we're up against.

20 seconds of fame

2009-06-02T07:54:00.000Z

BBC London phoned yesterday to say that extracts of the radio interview would also be broadcast on their breakfast programme this morning between 6am and 9am, but said that two minutes would be devoted to comments from 6 parties, ie 20 seconds a party. I just spent over two hours listening to two non-entities twittering about nothing (the CIA should consider forcing people to listen to this programme as a substitute for water boarding) while waiting for this. It didn't come till ten minutes from the end, at 8.50. We were included with Libertas, No2EU, the Greens, the Christians and the BNP. The subject chosen was whether the minor parties would benefit from the sleaze allegations against the parliamentary parties. They just quoted me as saying that we'd been contacted by a couple of ex-Labour voters to say they were going to vote socialist, nothing from the rest of the interview about socialism, the economic crises, etc. After the 2 minutes were up some other non-entity called Vanessa came on to talk for well over 2 minutes about how she was going to interview the Liberal Democratic leader (called Clegg, I think, or some name like that) for a whole hour. The BBC's idea of equal time for all parties, it appears.

Asked to leave

2009-06-01T08:50:00.003Z

A comrade who attended this event in Haringey on Saturday was asked to leave for handing out "political" literature. Another example of anarchist intolerance and inconsistency (see the list of stallholders there, propaganda, eg, for the Chavez government in Venezuela is apparently not political). Meanwhile on Dave Osler's blog we're accused of being anarchists. We're not of course but it seems we're damned if we are and damned if we're not.

The trade union front

2009-06-01T04:11:00.003Z

This evening we will be present at two hustings meetings, organised by local trade unions:

(1) Council Chamber, Stratford Town Hall, 29 The Broadway, E15 at 6.30 pm.

(2) Phoenix Cinema, 52 High Road, East Finchley, N2 at 6.30.

These are public meetings if anyone wants to come.

The first has been organised by the Public and Commercial Services union, the second by Barnet Trades Union Council.

The PCS has also organised a Make Your Vote Count campaign amongst its members. Its London region has put a series of questions to candidates. The answers have been published on their website. Ours can be found here.

One PCS member has emailed us that he will be voting Socialist. Not sure that the PCS President, Janice Godrich, will be too pleased with this as she's also speaking this evening -- at a rally in central London in support of Bob Crow's narrow nationalist, petty reformist list. In any event we're not too pleased that posters have been stuck up round Euston claiming that the "Socialist Party" is supporting this rally. So this blog can serve as an official disclaimer that we are not.

Ban the Bomb (and all weapons)

2009-05-31T07:22:00.005Z

Three members supported our candidate, Danny Lambert, (one out of the list of eight the Socialist Party is fielding in London) at a meeting organised by CND at Friends Meeting House, Euston, on Friday night.

Seven other candidates were also present, notable exceptions being representatives of the Tory Party and UKIP who were "too busy" engaging in electoral activities. The BNP were also absent having been denied an invitation by the "democrats" of CND.

Each candidate had three minutes to introduce their party's case -- in seven cases out of eight how they were going to make capitalism work in the interests of us all and to convince those present that nuclear weapons should be scrapped (with the exception of the Labour Party candidate who considered they had kept the peace for sixty years and the Lib Dem candidate who merely considered that Trident should not be replaced).

Our candidate argued that wars arose out of the competition built into capitalism over markets, trade routes, raw material sources, investment outlets and strategic points to protect or secure these. Banning nuclear weapons, even if it was possible under capitalism which he doubted, wouldn't make any difference to this as all the wars since 1945 and those still going on with their terrible carnage and destruction had been non-nuclear. Socialists were opposed to all wars and all weapons of war and only socialism could make wars impossible and end the waste of armaments, nuclear and non-nuclear.

The audience, mainly composed of members and sympathisers of CND, then had an opportunity to ask questions of the candidates, who had a further three minutes each to reply. A second session of questions were allowed and then the candidates had four minutes to wind up their arguments; Danny having the final word as, alphabetically, the Party was the last out of those present, UKIP having missed this chance.

Radio interviewed

2009-05-30T06:45:00.004Z

Yesterday afternoon BBC Radio London phoned to say they wanted to do a telephone interview with a candidate in ten minutes. I happened to be there helping to stuff the June Socialist Standard into envelopes. I'm not quite sure what the interviewer made of the answers to her questions.

What is your party? The Socialist Party is an independent political party that has been going since 1904. We stand for socialism as a society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit. Socialism has never been established anywhere and certainly not in Russia.
What will you do for Londoners? We're not standing just for Londoners, but for working people everywhere.
What will you do if elected? We're not going to be elected but if we were, we wouldn't be able to do much more than use the European Parliament as a platform from which to broadcast socialist ideas.
What can Europe do to help Londoners in the economic crisis? Nothing. Nobody can. Capitalism goes through economic crises every now and again as part of its normal functioning. There will always be crises as long as there is capitalism and production for profit. When unemployment has risen enough and driven wages down enough, then the recovery will begin. That's the way the system works.
How would socialism stop economic crises? Because there would be production directly for use and not for sale on a market for profit. It would be impossible, inconceivable, that production would stop while people still needed things.
Do you think your party will benefit from the MP's expenses scandal? Maybe a few people who used to vote Labour will vote for us.
What reaction have you had while canvassing? We get the impression that people are not very interested in these elections. And they're right. Whether Britain is in or out of Europe, or whether we use the £ or the euro, doesn't make any difference to their daily lives. Europe is remote, just like the Westminster parliament, and people know they have no control of what happens.
Why do you think this is? Because they really haven't any control over what happens. Neither have the politicians. Nobody controls or can control the way capitalism works.
When you are out canvassing what do you say you will do for people? We tell them we can't do anything for them. We don't promise them anything. We say that if they want socialism they've got to act for themselves. We can't establish it for them.

Obviously, all this won't be broadcast. We'll see what gets left when an edited version is broadcast by BBC Radio London on Wednesday (3 June)on its Drivetime programme between 5pm and 7pm on 94.9FM.

I'll Hust and I'll hust, and hust again...

2009-05-29T07:41:00.003Z

Well, me and three others went along to the Hustings in Crouch End last night. It was in a Methodist church, so, I said, it meant the Christian Party's logo was on prominent display.

The audience amounted to about 20 people, including two journalists, three of our members, and companions of the other seven candidates present, and possibly four members of the public.

The format was the chair spoke for 10 minutes at the begining, we each had two minutes to introduce ourselves, in turn, followed by questions from the audience, which we had one minute each to answer.

The chair wasn't very strict on the questioners, so two of our members managed to make mini speeches out of their questions - almost what other organisations would call an "intervention" in the meeting.

I pointed out that although there were eight candidates present (all parties by BNP - who weren't invited - Tories and UKIP) there were only two parties - various factions of the capitalist party, and the socialist party (yay us!).

The most interestign thing was the Labour candidate. She was an effective politician, putting a clear Labour case, and getting the knife in to her rivals (as she should, elections are about accentuating the choices available). Interestingly, though, she also put in a spirited defence of capitalism, as the only system we've got. I kindly reminded her that that is a Conservative idea (l'espirit d'escalier later made me realise I should have said Tory).

There was what I can only describe as a fool from the Jury Team, promising to simply convey the opinion of Londoners to Europe, as if the point of elections isn't to find out what the opnions of the electorate are and to sort majority from minority.

Given that the Christian Party candidate announced how that now he had bathed in the blood of the Lord to overcome his gay urges, he could now love the gays and lesbians but hate gayness and lesbianism; and that everyone else said, that, to quote myself, who chooses to agitate genitals with you is irrelevent, then it's unclear which view the Jury team would transmit to Europe.

As as been mentioned here before, Jury Team are an anti-Party Party funded by a Tory - parties clarify positions, give accountability and choice to the electoral system. Non-partyism is usually a breed of conservatism. Why bother turning up to say you have no policies?

A No-No

2009-05-28T07:40:00.000Z

Last night's PPB by the No2EU party was as bad as expected. A litany in which various people (mainly known Stalinists but also including Tony Benn and ex-Militant Labour MP Dave Nellist) chanted "No to the EU". As to positive policies, I think I heard Bob Crow echo UKIP and call for the "return of our sovereignity" and for "more investment in public services". Someone else called for the renationalisation of the railways and for "restoring Britain's fishing rights". If you missed it, you can see it here . Fortunately, the word "socialism" was never mentioned so at least there should be no confusion between this and the nationalist and timid reformist programme advocated.

28 seconds of fame

2009-05-27T17:47:00.005Z

Today's substitute for a Party Political Broadcast (which we've never had) can be seen and heard here if you watch it today or tomorrow morning (it will be moved elsewhere later).

Select top report 'BBC London' - 'see the latest programme in full' and it opens up in a separate window. It comes after an item about car-sharing and another item about a proposal to use the site of the former Ford factory in Dagenham to build (another kind of) prison.

Parting shot

2009-05-27T15:12:00.004Z

Well, the unfortunate necessity of having to work means I've not had much keyboard time of late.

Although, I did get round to penning a guest post at Labourite and former Trotskyist Dave Osler's blog - plugging our stump speech. Check it out. Interesting debate follows.

Tomorrow I'll be at:

Thursday 28 May from 7.30 at the Methodist Church, Middle Lane, N8 (ie
Crouch End). Each candidate will have 2 mins to introduce themselves
but that all candidates will get a chance to answer all the questions,
then 2 mins at the end to sum up.

Saying much the same thing again.

Publicity

2009-05-27T05:38:00.001Z

Out leafletting yesterday with another comrade in the Shepherd's Bush area, we came across a rare thing -- election leaflets put out by one of the 5 independent candidates standing in this election (actually, this one is a "no description" candidate), Haroon Saad. It looked as if someone had driven down the street throwing them out of the car window. On closer inspection though, what they done was to put them under car windscreens. Unfortunately, it had rained heavily overnight and the next morning the car owners had simply thrown the leaflets on the street. What does he stand for? Don't ask me. He gives a website address. Which is actually quite well done, with music and all (so better than us), but tells us a lot about him but not much about what he stands for. Himself, by the looks of it.

Today at 11.30 in the morning BBC London Region TV are coming to film some of our candidates canvassing outside our offices in Clapham High Street. If you want a walk-on part come along. Otherwise you can see the outcome on the regional news at 1.30 and 6.30. If it's also broadcast after the 10 o'clock news, you can stay tuned to watch the No2EU or No²EU (No squared to Europe) Party Political Broadcast at 10.35 and see how far they (the Communist Party and Militant electoral coalition) go in their bid to steal votes from UKIP and the BNP.

Candi-dating

2009-05-23T16:21:00.004Z

This morning, I caught the 393 up to Stoke Newington, to join in an unusual hustings. The format was meant to be like speed dating - electors would spend three minutes with each candidate, and ask a uniform set of questions to score them against. The trick was, we weren't to say which party we were from, they had to guess from our policies.

Let's just say it wouldn't have been hard for them to work it out from what I said.

Below are the "stock" questions they suggested (people could make up their own), and the replies I sort of had in my head.

Q1:What can you do as an MEP that can make a difference to pour lives?
A: Nothing. We're not making any promises, if you vote for us, you're the one making the promise to work towards abolishing capitalism and the wages system.

Q2:If you had the power what one EU law would you change and why?
A: None. We're going to parliament as rebels and not reformers, changing one law here or there is ineffectual, especially and until we have a mass movement for the abolition of capitalism and the wages system.

Q3:Given the current distrust of politicians what will you do to restore public confidence?
A: Mothing. We don't want to be ruled, and we don't want leaders. Only you know how to run your life properly, and so we seek a truly democratic society in which you don't have to place faith in leaders.

Q4:Would you be happy to publish you wages and expenses?
A: Yes. Our party is an open party, all our meetings are open to the public, and our delegates in the European Parliament would be fully answerable to our members, and would only take workers' wages.

Q5:What would you do as an MEP that would have an impact on climate change?
a: Nothing. You'll need to join the worldwide movement for socialism that will turn our environment into common property so that we can all look after it, instead of seeing it degraded in the tragedy of the commons that is capitalism.

Of course, the conceit never worked. I only talked to about seven people, onhe insisted that capitalism was a set of rules, and we need a set of rules to deal with immigrants coming to Hackney and depriving the locals of homes. Bizarrely, he had a strong West Indian accent... An old lady asked my marital status and if I had a maths qualification. Another lady talked about her freind's diabetes prescription problem 9I said all socialism can do is get us access to doctors and provide them with quality drugs and information, I'm not a medical expert, so I steered clear).

Anoteh feller turned out to be a journalist, with a blog of his own and we just chatted.

The theme of this election seems to be that there tend to be more candidates than electors at hustings, by the end this one did reach about ten electors, but still...

The ballot paper

2009-05-23T09:25:00.003Z

Someone, no doubt entitled to a postal vote, has put up a picture of the ballot paper for London. Don't know if this is supposed to be allowed but anyway it can be seen here. (Click to enlarge).
Those who like to follow leaders have a choice between "Christ's Lordship" and "LEADER: ARTHUR SCARGILL".
Those who want socialism can see clearly where they need to put their X.

New Cross Hustings Report

2009-05-22T08:46:00.001Z

In the end Simon represented the Party. We got the time wrong and arrived half-an-hour early and were surprised to find that a bottle of beer (as opposed to lager) cost £4 in the bar of the students union. It would seem that Goldsmiths College doesn't have a very effective student union.

The other participants were Joseph Healey (No 4 on the Green Party list), Onay Kasab (No 6 on the No2EU list), Sherif Malak (No 6 on the Jury Team list who explained that it was a coalition of independents, financed by ex-Tory Sir Paul Judge) and a young woman called Jemma from the Tory party (their prospective parliamentary candidate for Deptford : career politicians have to start fighting a hopeless seat for their party before being offered a winnable one).

There was virtually nobody in the audience except those who came with the speakers, some idiot having decided to organise a meeting for students in the middle of the exam period. The idiots turned out to be the local branch of Militant, to promote their member who was candidate on the No2EU list cobbled together by Bob Crow, the RMT leader.

As they miscall themselves "The Socialist Party", there were leaflets handed out saying that the Socialist Party supported the No2EU list. We of course made clear that this was not the case and that we were presenting a list in these elections opposed to Bob Crow's. Better, before the meeting we leafletted the nearby local council ward which has two Militant councillors. Now, they're going to have to re-leaflet it themselves to explain that they are not the Socialist Party.

The Green candidate claimed to be a socialist too (an "ecosocialist" one) but at least he stood firm and insisted that the free movement of people throughout Europe was a good thing. Simon also denounced the restrictions imposed by capitalist States on where we can go. The No2EU candidate was in a difficult position here as his list, as supporters of the "British Jobs for British Workers" strikes, is implicitly against this. In fact, one person in the audience took him to task for his nationalist approach. He had to admit that No2EU was not the best choice of name if you're claiming not to be a nationalist.

Afterwards in discussion with the Militants we were accused of being "utopians" for not demanding "something now" (something other than socialism, that is). Where have we heard that before?

The Scargill Labour Party broadcast

2009-05-21T02:05:00.005Z

Did you see this on BBC1 TV at 6.55? If not, you can see it here.
What a laugh, with Ricky Tomlinson blaming all the problems of capitalism on membership of the EU as if non-EU countries haven't been affected by the same problems. Withdraw from the EU and everything will be rosy in the garden! The good news is that there is no danger of their message being confused with ours. The bad news is that because they misuse the word "socialist" some people might confuse what we stand for -- a world of common ownership, democratic control, and production for use not profit -- with the petty Little England nationalism they spew out.
People like these calling themselves "socialists" is a cross we have to bear.

First hustings meeting

2009-05-20T14:19:00.001Z

We've been invited to a hustings tomorrow, Thursday 21 May, at 6.30 pm in the Stretch Bar, of the Students Union of Goldsmiths University, in Dixon Road, New Cross (near the mainline station). Hopefully, our anomymous friend from Catford will be able to get there easier than to Clapham. Anyone else is welcome too, I imagine. It's organised by the Public and Commercial Services Union, Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Council, and the South West London Anti-Fascist Group.

The message sent to get people to attend says:

Join us to put election candidates on the spot.
Vote for fair pay, quality public services and decent jobs and free education for young people.
Make your vote count and keep the fascist BNP out of Europe.
London EU candidates will be in the student's union Stretch bar at 6:30pm next Thursday 21st May to answer YOUR questions.
Your opportunity to ask the candidates questions about what they would do for you in Europe.
Find out which party to vote for to keep the fascist BNP out of Europe.

Our candidate is going to have to explain that the main issue in this election is not, as this suggests, how to keep the BNP out, but capitalism and its failure to meet human needs properly.

If people really think that the priority is to keep the BNP out then they should vote tactically for one of the parties likely to get an MEP, ie Tory, Labour, Liberal, Green or UKIP. Voting for anyone else (and there are 13 other lists or individual candidates) will increase the BNP's chances. This will include us insofar as we get votes from people who might otherwise have voted, say, Labour or Green. I hope I don't have to explain to the meeting why this is so under the D'Hondt (a famous Belgian) Rule used to apportion the seats. But of course the priority isn't to keep the BNP out, it's to get rid of capitalism.

Anyway, tactical voting is stupid. As Eugene Debs once said, it's better to vote for something you want and not get it rather than voting for something you don't want and get it.

Leaflets, good and bad

2009-05-19T16:05:00.004Z

The election leaflets that the post office are going to distribute for free have been delivered safely to the 3 mail centres concerned, even if they arrived an hour out of time due to, apparently, delays on the M3 on their way from the printers in Dorset. The post office say they'll still be distributed within 7 days, probably from tomorrow.

The areas (actually parliamentary constituencies) which will be getting them are: Ealing Central and Acton, Holborn and St Pancras, Bethnal Green and Bow, and Vauxhall. In all 240,000 will be delivered.

Meanwhile outside these areas members and sympathisers are distributing a further 30,000 by hand.

I've only had the Greens and Liberals leaflets put through my letter box so far. As you'd expect, they're pretty wishy-washy, not to say pathetic. But at least the Liberals are not beating the anti-EU drum like all the others. The Greens are promising "warm homes and new jobs" as if these had never been promised before or saying where the money's going to come from (the printing press, no doubt).

While distributing our leaflets I've come across those of UKIP and the BNP. Their John Bull nationalism is just laughable. The UKIP has a photo on the front of Churchill giving a V sign while the BNP's gives a list of famous British military victories: Trafalgar, the Somme, Dunkirk (a victory?), D-Day, the Falklands.

I've also had to do the sort of election agent's work we don't normally do. A sympathiser said he wanted to get on the electoral register (today was the last day) and a member wanted a postal vote. That's two more votes -- from socialists of course.