Another letter.

Another letter has been published today:

Dear Friend,

an election must be coming. Jeremy Corbyn has been appearing in print around the shop calling for rent controls as a means of curbing the housing crisis. Rent controls, though, have never worked, and never will. They are an attempt to fix the market, and market rates will out, with landlords either letting their stock go to wreck or withdrawing from the market to protect their profit rates.

The only solution to the housing crisis is to build enough homes for all; but the market is patently failing to do this, and never will. If there were enough homes for all, how could a landlord collect rent?

No one can help taking up space, or needing shelter, and no-one should have it denied them because of market whims. Just as no-one can help falling ill, and should not have health care denied them because of market whims. We need housing free at the point of use.

The only way we can get this is through the common ownership of the wealth of the world. Anything less will always see profit (and rents) put before people's need.

Bill Martin Socialist Party Parliamentary Candidate for Islington North.

In the Islington Gazette no online letters page, but there is an e-edition here.

A flurry of letters

So, I promised letters (I think). Here goes

In the Islington Tribune I also sent one to the Morning Star, that appears not to have been published. Text below:

Dear Friend, the current debate about "splitting the vote" in Croydon is missing the point. If people are in organisations so similar that they are robbing each other's votes, then they should become one party. The fact that they are not one party suggests they are putting forward different policies and different choices for the electorate, and should have no shame in standing their ground. As Eugene Debbs said: "It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it." The Socialist Party will be standing in ten seats, to put forward the case for the abolition of the wages system, and will stand irrespective of whoever else puts themselves forward in those seats.

I wonder why they didn't publish that one?

Anyway, another letter has been sent, this morning, to Islington Gazette, this time attacking Jeremy Corbyn, on rent controls. Updates when/if it appears.

So, while other parties gear up for the long campaign, we chug to the starting line. Activity so far this week: two letters to the press (I'll put them up here once I know whether they've been published or not). At the end of last week I got some interview practice with a student journalist (who was very good at lobbing soft open questions my way). I explained how often we get stitched up by the media. The debacle of the leaders debates shows what a mess it is, rather than being a tool to assist candidates putting their case forward, the media is a tool of power that shapes the debate, and gets to select who speaks. There's not a shortage of air time, over the next hundred days press national and local will not be short of parties to give ten minutes to, surely? We'll have to find a way to reach as many people as we can. Interestingly the student found out about us from the wikipedia article on Islington North (where I'm contesting my first Parliamentary seat). I know Wikipedia isn't for advertising, but, still. But still.

Hang on...

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"!

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.

2010 Vauxhall Manifesto

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.