Where we are standing

The three wards we are contesting are Junction ward in Islington, Barnes ward in Richmond, and Borough & Bankside ward in Southwark. The candidates are, respectively, Bill Martin, Adam Buick and Kevin Parkin.

Nominations have to be in by noon next Friday, 6 April, and members of the branches running the campaigns (North, West and South London) are in the process of gathering the 10 signatures of those on the electoral register required to stand.

Here we go again

No sooner are the local elections over and a general election is on us. In London, we'll be contesting Islington North, as last time, where Jeremy Corbyn is also standing, and Battersea, south of the river. We have chosen Battersea rather than our usual Vauxhall as there are plans, for the next election (now postponed till 2022), to merge half of Vauxhall and half of Battersea into a single constituency into which our Head Office on the north side of Clapham High Street will fall. So, we want to introduce ourselves to the electors there, though we have already stood in the area in the 2012 Greater London elections but there's no free postal distribution for those. We also stood in the council elections there in 1906.

The candidates are, respectively, Bill Martin and Danny Lambert.

The nominations papers (and the £500 deposit) for Battersea were handed in at Wandsworth Town Hall this afternoon. It appears there will only be 6 candidates, the usual suspects (Tories, Labourites, Liberals, Greens and UKippers) and us. So a straight fight with them.

Acting globally

Received a request for an organisation calling itself Simpol (Simultaneous Policy) asking to sign a pledge of theirs. Here's our reply:

Thank you for your email, and request to sign up to your Simpol principles. I'm afraid I cannot.

Whilst the Socialist Party shares your general principles of democracy, co-operation and worldwide action, we see the problems facing the world as stemming from the ownership of the wealth of the world by a privileged class. We do not think the world's problems can be solved until the wealth of the world is taken into the common and direct democratic ownership of the whole of humanity.

Specifically, we think this requires a self-conscious and active movement of people working together, worldwide, and we cannot allow this movement to be divided into nation states or rely on Governments to help us.

If you would like to know more about the World Socialist Movement, please do take a look at our website at www.worldsocialism.org

Your for World Socialism,

Bill Martin (Socialist Party Candidate, Islington North).

What they printed

Here's what they printed:

In contrast, Bill Martin, the Socialist party candidate in Junction, highlighted their lack of focus on his election. “My colleagues out and about have run into someone from the Labour party, but it has been a very low key,” he said.

“I haven’t had any leaflets through my door, put it that way. I haven’t seen anything that looks overtly Liberal or Labour in the area, which you do get in other campaigns. I think it’s treading water. I’ve only seen one or two election posters in windows; one was Green and was I think the other was maybe Labour, but that could have been from five years ago.”

The grammar is all wrong as Bill was talking about the Labour campaign not ours. At least people will know we're standing.