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.

Prince's by-election result

This can be seen here.

Labour 3452 (44.5%)
LibDem 1748 (22.5%)
Tory 1519 (19.5%)
Green 901 (11.6%)
Left Unity/Trade Unionists and Socialists (Kinglsey Abrams) 99 (1.3%)
The Socialist Party (Danny Lambert) 42 (0.5%)

Par for the course for us but a poor result for LU/TUSC considering who their candidate was (ex-Labour councillor and ex-Labour parliamentary candidate).

Prince's ward hustings

This now confirmed but for Thursday 30 April (not Friday 1 May as originally enisaged).

Danny Lambert, the Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate for the Prince's Ward by-election will be attending the election hustings that will take place at St Anselm's Church, Kennington Cross, 286 Kennington Road, Lambeth SE11 5DU at 6pm on Thursday 30th April 2015

The running order will be drawn by a lot. All candidates will be given 2 minutes for opening statements. Questions will then be taken and at the end and all will have 2 minutes for a closing statement.

Chair: The Revd Angus Aagaard, Team Rector of North Lambeth Parish

Online socialist statement for Brixton

The Brixtonblog has published statements from the various parties contesting wards in Brixton. You can see them here.

Scroll down to see Danny Lambert's (our candidate in Ferndale} on our behalf (also the UKIP candidate there dancing with Nigel Farage). Anyway, here's what it says:

These borough elections are an opportunity for people to register their rejection of austerity, capitalism and the whole profit system.

The Socialist Party makes no apology for raising the issue of socialism in local elections. Things are not produced today to meet people’s needs, they are produced to make a profit and that’s the cause of the problems people in Lambeth as everywhere else face.

It’s not what local councils or even national governments do that shapes how we live. It’s the economic system which requires that profits be put before people. That’s what has to be changed to make things better.

Lambeth Council are under economic pressure, transmitted via the government, to balance their books both by cutting spending and increasing their income through selling off assets such as sheltered accommodation.

This year the Council plans to cut £4 million from helping disabled, vulnerable and older residents, also £3.9 million from children and young people services. They are evicting tenants from the short-life housing co-operatives where they have lived for 30 years. Some residents have even had to seek charity handouts from Food Banks.

It’s profits before people. That’s how capitalism works.

The only alternative is socialism, to replace the profit system with one based on common ownership and democratic control so that there can be production to satisfy people’s needs instead of for profit. Socialism, as a society of common ownership, will apply the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

People in Clapham Town and Larkhall wards as well as Ferndale ward can register their rejection of the profit system and the need for a socialist alternative by putting an X next to the name of the Socialist Party candidate there.

We are standing

It's been decided. We will be standing a candidate in this by-election. The Socialist candidate will be Danny Lambert.

The 10 signatories to nominate were obtained this afternoon and the nomination papers will be handed in tomorrow morning.

Two of those we asked mentioned if we had anything to do with Russell Brand who in a BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman last week called for a revolution to establish an "egalitarian socialist society". We replied not exactly, but we will be contesting this time under the slogan "Revolution the only solution". One of the signatories revealed that he had voted for us in a previous election.

The manifestos are already at the printers and the 5000 will be delivered later this week or early next week. Then we start distributing them with the aim of delivering them all by 13 November when the postal ballot papers will be sent out.

Nomination papers

Collected the nomination papers from the Town Hall in the morning. There is no deposit to stand in local elections but the candidate needs to have a proposer, seconder and 8 assentors, all 10 on the electoral roll for the ward. Danny Lambert (our candidate)and me got the 8 assentors to the nomination in the afternoon in one street in less than two hours. We explained that we weren't asking them to support us but only to allow us to stand. Those who signed understood the difference and were prepared to let us exercise our democratic right to stand. One knew of us and had seen and liked the Marx "I told you so" poster in our Head Office window. Fixed 12.30 on Thursday as the time to formally hand them in.

The last day

Yep. Today is the last day. After today, there are no more. Tomorrow is the apocalypse. Or is that election? I've tramped up so many stairs,. spiralled down so many 20-storey tower blocks, caught my fingers so many times in letter boxes, been so cold and wet that I quite forget the difference between the two. Tomorrow I may rest.

But, not until after I've been down to the polling station to cast my write-in vote for World Socialism (SPGB)! And you, faithful reader, especially if you live in Lambeth and Southwark where you can actually cast a ballot for the Socialist Party's candidate Danny Lambert.

Remember, we are the party that makes no promises - it's you that makes the promise when you cast your vote to say "I am a socialist, I will work for common and democratic ownership and control of the wealth of the world between me and my fellow workers."

Lets see, come Friday, just how many promises we can collect, eh?

More Unions

Last night I gopt a leaflet through the mail from my union - Unison - urging me to vote Labour. Unison is a registered third party, and so it can spend money on election campaigns that, unless I'm mistaken, don't count towards a candidate's campaign costs.

Given they have the names and addresses of about 150,000 (they claim) electors, this is a highly effective campaigning tool for the institutionalised labour party.

They are quite right that Labour has achieved many goals, and espouses many values consonant with those of the trade union. But, then, the trade union's demands and values are about a defence of market interests for workers within capitalism - seeing, particularly, its own interest wrapt up in the old conditions of public sector bargaining from nationalised and municipalised industries.

Of course, we could batter on at the union that the real interest of their members is socialism - but until the members of the union are socialists and are able to use their weight to move the lethargic democratic machinery of the union that just won't happen.

So, that makes it all the more important that trade unionists make this clear by voting for the socialist party, either by voting for Danny Lambert if they can, or joining the write-in if they're outside Lambeth & Southwark. And more than that, we need you to join the Socialist Party and stand up in your workplaces and unions to be counted.

A little try at my branch recently failed, we sent a motion to conference affirming that Unison has no leaders, and asking the NEC to make that clear, the standing orders ruled it out of order, because they can, but I'll keep on about it, and if thousands of socialists in the union started to camnpaign for that instead of saving the pittance and stopping the thing, we'd start to see real movement, and a real movement.

Another mystery

On 13 April we reported that we had been contacted by the London Regional Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union and invited to reply to three questions, with the promise that the replies would be published on the PCS website prior to the election on 1 May so that their members could make up their minds on how to vote.

It is now 29 April but a look at the PCS site (see here) shows that our replies have not yet been posted; in fact that we are not even mentioned as standing.

We have emailed the Regional Secretary to find out what is happening and will keep you posted.

By way of contrast, our candidate's (and the others') interview with the Southwark News is published today (Danny knows how to spell "root" even if the interviewer doesn't!).

The Big Issue in Southwark

This week's Southwark News (out on Thursday) has an 8-page supplement on the mayor and assembly elections. The same set of questions was put to all the candidates. Here they are together with the replies of "Daniel Lambert - The Socialist Party".

What can you do to alleviate the rise of gun and gang crime amongst the youth in Southwark?

Condemnation of gun crime is all very well but you have to go to the root of the problem, which is that young people are alienated. To change that we need to change the nature of society we live in.

How hard will you be fighting for the Cross River Tram and what more can be done to improve connections within the borough?

We are a single issue party and try to put information out to convince people of the merits of socialism. London is a business venture, and is a centre for processing information, with this workers have to be got here there and everywhere, in and around Southwark and London.

Are you aware of any regeneration schemes in the area? How effectively will they solve the issues in that area?

No I am not. We are so busy taking care of business we just don’t take care of ourselves, get rid of the profit system and we will have more time to take care of ourselves.

What is the big Southwark issue at this time?

Capitalism, because without this we the human species have the potential at our fingertips to create a really good human life.

What one thing can you promise to bring to Southwark if you are voted in on May 1?

Well I am not going to get voted in. We want to put our proposition to have a society where there is no money or trade, and no market. The thing we have to get across is all the time that capitalism is about working people getting screwed.

Husting in Southwark

Yesterday morning the Socialist candidate ventured into Southwark to speak at a hustings meeting organised by the Southwark Pensioners Action Group at their offices in Camberwell Road. On approaching the office we could see someone handing out leaflets. We were surprised to find that it was someone from the Left List since we hadn't come across them before in the constituency. We were even more surprised on entering to see that their representative was their mayoral candidate herself, Lindsey German.

Also present were the outgoing Assembly member for Lambeth and Southwark (Val Shawcross), Southwark Councillor Caroline Pidgeon (the Liberal candidate), Southwark Councillor Kim Humphries (standing in for the Tory candidate) and Shane Collins for the Greens. Apologies were received from the animal rights candidate, the Eng-dems and the Respect George Galloway party.

The Socialist candidate, because he was sitting at one end, spoke first. Danny explained that the problems discussed at these and other elections were caused by the existing system of the private ownership of the means of production by rich people and their use to produce things for profit. There was no use tinkering about with this system as, despite the promises and pledges of the politicians, it could never work, or be made to work, in the interest of the vast majority of people, who depended on having to work for a wage or salary to live. The alternative was socialism, a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production where things would no longer be produced for profit but directly to satisfy people's needs and where the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" would apply. Danny's 2 minutes were up while he was in the middle of explaining the waste capitalism's need for a money system involved.

Assemblywoman Shawcross spoke next. She outlined what the GLA under Ken had done. She also appeared to say that CCTV cameras on buses allowed bus drivers who behaved badly to be disciplined. Maybe this was a slip of the tongue but it's the sort of thing Labour politicians say these days.

Councillor Pidgeon said that one of the advantages of extending the tram system into Southwark and across the Thames would be that there would be public toilets at the stations.

Councillor Humphries was surprisingly honest. He was against having a quota of "affordable housing" in all new housing developments as this could sabotage such schemes. In other words, would reduce the profits of the developers who would take their money and invest it somewhere else where they could make a bigger profit.

SWP Central Committee member German was pathetic. She talked just like the other three, tacitly accepting the present system and proposing minor changes to it.

Green candidate Shane Collins introduced the big picture again saying that with global warming the site of the 2012 Olympics would be flooded (not then but a decade or so later). He was not afraid to offer unpopular reforms such as a 20 mph speed limit on side roads and the legalisation of heroin. (He is a legalise cannabis campaigner and was once caught with 19 plants in his house. It turned out that Danny and him had in fact met each other a few years back at Glastonbury.)

Question time proved interesting. We noticed that Councillor Pidgeon (Liberal) and Councillor Humphries (Tory) refrained from criticising each other and in fact put on a double act when Southwark Council was criticised. This struck us as strange but then the penny dropped. As in Bill's Camden Southwark Council is run by a Liberal-Tory coalition. The shape of things to come perhaps after the next election? Though the Liberals would also be prepared to do a deal with Labour if they get a better offer. Not that it would make a difference either way.

You wouldn't know that Lindsey German is a leading theoretician of the SWP, the author of articles and pamphlets on feminism, war, etc including one entitled Why We Need a Revolutionary Party. There was nothing revolutionary about what she said. Even on reforms she came across as less radical than the Green candidate. The one thing she got really passionate about was bendy buses. They should be taken out of service and replaced by new Routemaster buses (the ones you can fall off) with a conductor; that, she said, would stop the fare-dodging that now goes on on the overcrowded bendy buses. The Tory representative immediately jumped up to say "yes, that's what Boris wants too". That about sums it up.

Actually, the clue to her behaviour is to be found in that pamphlet of hers. It's pure Leninism. The workers are so thick that they can't understand the case for socialism if put to them directly (as we do and as Danny was doing at the meeting). They are only capable of developing a trade union consciousness:

"That is why building a principled revolutionary party is important today. It is also why the Socialist Workers Party takes so much of its theory of the party from the experience of Lenin and the Bolsheviks".
"That is why all those who want fundamental change in society have to be part of a Leninist organisation".
"Socialism in the 1990s means rebuilding the real Leninist tradition".

So it's all a front. She's only pretending that reforms of capitalism are possible, offering them as bait to get workers to follow her and the rest of the vanguard in the SWP. She doesn't really believe that bendy buses should be replaced by Routemasters. That's just a ploy to get a working class following. Or is it? We got the impression that opposition to bendy buses was really what got her going. In any event, it was the only thing she spoke about with passion at the meeting.

Sorry about this digression. Back to the surprisingly honest Tory representative. He made it clear that the problem for local councillors was money. What they were doing was allocating a finite amount of money which was never enough to allow them to do what they'd like to. Danny jumped in to explain why: under capitalism the priority is profit and any money given to local councillors to spend on the public services for which they have responsibilty (most comes from the central government which also regulates how much they can raise through the rates) has to come in the end from profits. There's no way out. That's the way the system works and must work and why the politicians can never deliver on their promises. Profits must come first and always will as long as capitalism lasts.

Danny's exposition of the case for socialism brought him two direct questions from the 20 or so assembled pensioners. "Why do you want to go back to barter?" and "What about human nature?" And the basement of the Southwark Pensioners Action Group was transformed for a few minutes into Hyde Park Speakers Corner.

In closing the meeting the chairman said that he too was a socialist but felt that something could be done now. He was probably an old CPer.

We had planned to leaflet the surrounding area in Southwark after the meeting but the place was full of high-rise flats you can't get into. So we got a 35 (non bendy) bus back to Clapham. On the way who should we pass going the other way down Brixton Road but George Galloway atop his campaign bus. It was festooned with red and green balloons -- green for Islam not the environment. We couldn't hear what he was saying through his loadspeaker but it sounded like "Vote for Me".

Hustings meetings

We have been invited by Denise Nichols of the Southwark Pensioners Action Group to attend their hustings meeting at 305-307 Camberwell Rd, London SE5 0HQ on Wednesday 23 April at 10.30 am.
Also an invite to debate from an organisation called Animals Count at Kennington Park on Saturday 26th April 3 to 3.30, the event itself is from 2 to 5pm.
We will of course be attending both, hope to see you there.

Vote early

Just on the off chance, this is our only means of chasing up, but word on the street is that folks can start casting their postal ballots soon - so if you are going to postal vote in Lambeth & Southwark and (and only if) you agree with the sorts of things set out here - then vote for Danny Lambert The Socialist Party candidate.

And, hell, let us know you have in the comments boxes below, you know you can do so anonymously - or email and let us know - your early support can carry our campaign forward.

And if you don't live in Lambeth & Southwark, and you're going to cast a postal write-in vote, let us know as well.

Danny's election address

Well, our election leaflets are on their way from the printer, if you live in Lambeth & Suothwark you might well see them in the flesh (they look good) - and of course, if you want to distribute any, just drop in and we'll be glad to give you a bundle.

Anyway, without further ado - here it is...


What’s the alternative to the profit system?

That's the issue in this election, says THE SOCIALIST PARTY candidate in Lambeth and Southwark Danny Lambert

On 1 May, you will have your occasional ration of democracy with the opportunity to vote for the Mayor of London and the Greater London Assembly.

It's all very well having a vote but are you normally given any real choice? Let's face it, if it wasn't mentioned on the front of the election leaflet, could you tell which party was which?

It's tempting – in the absence of any real alternative – to get drawn into the phoney war that is political debate today. Whether Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Greens or the others, they all spout empty promises. And it all amounts to the same thing – vote, vote for us and we’ll do this, this or this for you. As if they could.

None of them offer any alternative to the present way of running society. That’s why they always fail to deliver. The profit system requires them to put profits before people, to put saving money above meeting people’s needs.

Do you really think who wins an election makes any difference to how you live?

And do politicians actually have much real power anyway? Can they control world market and financial forces or do they have to adjust and trim their policies to fit in with these?

Reality Check

Do any of the political parties address any of the real issues:

 Why can money always been found to fight a war while hospitals, schools and local services are always strapped for cash?
 Why do some people get stressed working long hours while others get stressed from the boredom of unemployment?
 Why are there homeless people in the streets and empty houses with "for sale" signs?
 Why is there still child poverty even in Britain?
 Why is there no world agreement to limit carbon emissions when scientists say this must be done to avert the threat of global warming?
 Why is there world hunger in a world that can grow enough for all?

So what's the alternative?

This time, in this constituency, you have a real choice. We in THE SOCIALIST PARTY are standing to put forward an alternative to capitalism and the madness of the market – a society of common ownership and democratic control. We call it socialism.

But real socialism. Not the elite-run dictatorships that collapsed some years ago in Russia and East Europe. And not the various schemes for state control put forward by the old Labour Party. For us socialism means something better than that. We're talking about:

 A world community without any frontiers where the Earth’s resources would be the common heritage of all.
 Wealth being produced to meet people's needs and not for sale on a market or for profit
 Everyone having access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money.
 A society where people freely contribute their skills and experience to produce what is needed, without the compulsion of a wage or salary.

If you agree

If you don't like present-day society ... if you are fed up with the way you are forced to live ... if you think the root cause of most social problems is the profit system, then your ideas echo closely with ours.

We are not promising to deliver socialism to you. We are not putting ourselves forward as leaders. This new society can only be achieved if you join together to strive for it. If you want it, then it is something you have to bring about yourselves. Nobody can do it for you.If you agree with what we say, you can show this by voting for THE SOCIALIST PARTY candidate, DANNY LAMBERT.

And if you want to know more about us, call in at our election office at 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 or return the reply coupon on the last page (no stamp required). You can also.phone or email us or visit our website at www.worldsocialism.org/spgb.

Back on the campaign trail

OK, we're back again, here is the list of official candidates for the Lambeth and Southwark constituency in the GLA elections:

Lambeth and Southwark

Candidate name	Party name
Shane Collins	Green Party
Jasmijn De Boo	Animals Count
Shirley Houghton	Conservative Party
Daniel Lambert	The Socialist Party
Geoffrey Macharia	Christian Peoples Alliance
Caroline Pidgeon	Liberal Democrats
Janus Polenceus	The English Democrats Party
Valerie Shawcross	The Labour Party
Jens Winton	UK Independence Party
Katt Young	Left List

London Elects for the full listings.

It'll be interesting to see where we come. Be nice to beat Polenceus again. It would also be good to come in above the Left List. 1,000 votes? Why not.