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).

Leafletting begins

Leafletting has begun in the Prince's ward by-election (up to now we've been concentrating on the general election: there's another stall in Clapham High Stteet tomorrow from 12 noon). The Tories have produced a glossy A3 leaflet for the by-election despite not having a chance. The other discarded leaflets found were general election ones for Labour, the Tories and Left Unity as well as one of ours (for our archives). There's going to be a local by-election hustings on Friday 1 May, in St Anselm's Church in Kennington,but what a few for the general election?

Prince's ward by-election: the runners

Nominations closed yesterday at 12 noon. There are 6 candidates: Labour, Green, LibDem, Tory, us and "Left Unity -- Trade Unionists and Socialists". No UKIP (no Elizabeth Jones, presumably she's busy trying to get elected MP for Dartford). It's a bit surprising that the Electoral Commission have allowed a candidate to stand as "Trade Unionists and Socialists" as they have refused to allow us to register "The Socialist Party" as a variant of our name on the grounds that this could cause confusion with "other socialist parties". In that case, so should "Trade Unionists and Socialists" but I suppose "Left Unity" in the name is the let-out. In order words, Kingsley Abrams is basically standing for Left Unity.

Since the result of the general election in Vauxhall is a foregone conclusion -- a walk- over for the outgoing MP Kate Hoey -- this by-election could be the centre of political interest in constituency: ex-Labour councillor trying to get back on the council, splitting the Labour vote and letting in the Greens or even, though hardly a realistic possibility, the LibDems (who once held the ward), etc, etc.

More on Prince's ward by-election

We will be standing a candidate, Danny Lambert, who is also standing in the General Election for Vauxhall. Our nomination papers have already been handed in and accepted.

Left Unity and TUSC are putting forward a formidable joint candidate in ex-Labour councillor, Kingsley Abrams, who is also standing for Parliament in the next-door constituency of Bermondsey & Old Southwark. See here.

And now the ex(?)-Trots

One of the handful of Left Unity candidates in the general election will be standing in Vauxhall. Their candidate here is Simon Hardy, formerly of Workers Power, the Trotskyist group who stood in Vauxhall in the last general election in 2010 (and got less votes than us). He has moved on from orthodox Trotskyism but still seems to have a soft spot for Lenin.

Meanwhile the Green Party candidate in Vauxhall in 2010, Joseph Healy ,has also joined Left Unity and is calling on people to vote for Simon Hardy rather than for his successor as Green Party candidate, Gulnar Hasnain.

TUSC is not standing as the sitting Labour MP, Kate Hoey, is a member of the RMT Parliamentary Group and TUSC don't want to alienate RMT. Steve Nally, who we've come across in various local by-elections in Lambeth, has been shunted to the other side of Brixton High Road to contest Dulwich and West Norwood for TUSC.

What happened at the Brixton hustings

60 Lambeth residents or political activists attended the Brixton Blog hustings in a room upstair of the pub 'Prince of Wales' in Brixton on tuesday evening. The most surprising thing of the evening was the appearance as the Labour Party repesentative, of Lib Peck, the Leader of Lambeth Council. The Lib Dem rep was also a councillor from Streatham.

The increasingly 'notorious' Elizabeth Jones was there representing UKIP. Her appearance there and her statements drew lots of boos, hisses, haranguing and cries of racism from the assorted Trotskyites (SWP, SPEW) and Leftists (Left Unity were there but not standing candidates in the elections) in the room. She mentioned Alan Bennett but there were no protests... but when she mentioned 'Saint' Bob Crow and the 'No2EU' campaign that was too much for TUSC/RMT/SPEW activists!

The venom in the room was directed mainly at Lib Peck and Lambeth Labour Council with UKIP coming in second. The questions were about cuts to libraries, the poor performance of Lambeth Council's 'arms length' housing organisation 'Lambeth Living', pavements, car pollution in Brixton, social exclusion, immigration, Lambeth College lecturers strike. It was dealing with the symptoms and not the cause which is capitalism. The hustings saw the debut of the Pirate Party who advocated libertarianism and also transparency of council meetings.

All the speakers apart from Danny Lambert, our party representative, were clearly mesmerised with capitalism and could not see beyond its existence and all believed if they were in power they could tweak it and it would be a positive and good thing for people. Steve Nally for TUSC, sponsored by Trots SPEW and SWP and RMT trade union, would oppose all cuts and declare 'illegal' budgets, the usual activist reformist nonsense with no mention that the working class have the power to emancipate themselves, abolish capitalism and transform society to a socialist society of production to meet human needs and democratic control.

Danny put forward the Socialist case, he was on good form, and got a good reception from the assorted Leftists in the room although they would probably still vote TUSC or Green. Afterwards a man came up to Danny to say how much he enjoyed what Danny had to say but it turned out he was a Green Party candidate from another part of London...
Steve

Elsewhere in Lambeth

The full list of candidate for Lambeth reveals that TUSC are contesting 10 wards with a total of 13 candidates (3 in Brixton Hill and 2 in Tulse Hill) and that the Pirate Party is standing in Vassall (as is TUSC). TUSC is standing in 2 or the 3 wards we are contesting (Ferndale and Larkhall).

Labour, Liberals, Tories are contesting all the(three-member) seats and UKIP all the wards. There is one independent. It was rumoured that Respect would be standing but there's no sign of them nor of Left Unity.

New reformists on the block

A new reformist party was founded in central London on Saturday called "Left Unity". It has a branch in Lambeth, but from this on Syria, calling for "arms without conditions for the freedom fighters", i.e mainly jihadists fighting to impose sharia law, appears to be continuing the "loony leftism" associated with Lambeth in the past.

In any event, we look forward to confronting them at future elections (though we suspect we might already have done so at the 2010 General Election when they then called themselves "Workers Power").

Landslide victory for abstentionists

Here's the official result (for the 19% who bothered to vote):

Paul Gadsby Labour 1319 60%
Colette Thomas LibDem 468 21%
Kelly Ben-Maimon Con 153 7%
Rachel Laurence Green 113 5%
Elizabeth Eirwen Jones UKIP 87 4%
Steve Nally TUSC 44 2%
Daniel Lambert Soc 22 1%

There were 11618 electors, of whom 2206 voted, i.e a mere 19% or less than 1 in 5. In other words, a massive 81% abstained. This must represent a feeling (justified) that it doesn't make much difference who you vote for or which party runs the council things will be the same.

As predicted Labour won easily. Of the three council by-elections in Lambeth over the last year, this represents the best result for UKIP and the worst for TUSC. It confirms (for what it's worth, which is probably not much) that the "left of Labour" vote in Lambeth divides 2 to 1 between TUSC and us. Which puts them in the same league as us rather than as any sort of challenger to the Labour Party. The new Left Party that is to be founded tomorrow in Bloomsbury should also bear this in mind. They are unlikely to do much better if that. In any event, we'll carry on putting the straight case for socialism without making any election promises or proposals to try to reform capitalism.

Three of us went to the count (which was over by 11.30). The Tories told us that their canvassers came across 8 people who said they were going to vote for us. Most of them may well not have gone to vote in the end but at least, after reading our "Revolution the only solution" leaflet, they were prepared to tell canvassers that they wanted to get rid of the whole present system.

The next local elections will be the full borough elections on 22 May next year. We'll probably have a couple of candidates in Lambeth.