Manifestos have arrived

3500 copies of our manifesto arrived today. Here's what it looks like:

It's the same wording as in the Party's manifesto for the 2014 Euroelections. We decided to use this as our appeal is aimed at those interested in ideas rather than in potholes, street lights or cycle lanes.

Nomination accepted

The nomination papers for our candidate, Adam Buick, were handed in at Guildford Borough Council offices this afternoon and accepted. So we're on the ballot paper, with our emblem.

The artwork for the manifesto, with the same wording as the one for the 2014 Euroelections when we contested the South East Region, has arrived. We only need to change the colour from blue to orange.

We're off

The 5000 election leaflets duly arrived this morning. A couple of hundred have already been distributed in the north of the ward opposite Kennington Park. We thought we'd be the first, but the Liberals had been before. Unusually their leaflet didn't claim that "it's a two-horse race", probably because no-one would believe it as it's a one-horse race which Labour can't lose.

Our election address

Here's our leaflet (click to enlarge). The first 400 were distributed today. As the last post said, the big issue seems to be Whittington Hospital as there are a number of "Save Whittington Hospital" posters from the Labour Party in people's windows. This is Labour territory, where Old Labourite Jeremy Corbyn is the MP.

A BNP sympathiser claimed that there was a website www.benefity.pl. He's right. There is, but it's www.benefity.org.uk. So what? They are just propertyless workers moving from one part of the world to another in search of an income on which to live. As it's a local election, as EU citizens, they can also vote. Perhaps we should do a leaflet in Polish. In the meantime there's the articles on the World Socialist Movement website.

A press cutting

This week's Islington Gazette mentions that we are standing. Their main article on the by-elections (there are two on the same day, but we are only contesting one) will obviously be appearing next week or the week after. What it says can be found on page 6 here:

New Hopeful
A new leftwing candidate has entered the fray in the forthcoming Junction ward by-election. Bill Martin, 36, a university librarian, who lives in Hargrave Road, Archway, will stand for the Socialist Party of Great Britain on March 21.

In the meantime the 3000 election leaflets arrived in Clapham. Distribution starts next week.

Our election manifesto

This was adopted yesterday and will be sent to the printers on Monday to be ready by Wednesday or Thursday:

Vote for yourself for a change?

Why, when the resources exist to provide a decent standard of living for everyone, are we going through “austerity”?

It’s because the present system is not geared to meeting our needs but to making profits for businesses and the rich people who own and control them. At the moment this capitalist system is in an economic crisis where profits have fallen The only way out for the system is to restore profits at our expense.

That’s why what our wages can buy has shrunk. It’s why benefits are being slashed. And it’s why Lambeth council has been cutting local services.

It’s not just Lambeth. It’s councils everywhere, whichever party is in control. Councils get most of their money from the government, but market forces have obliged the government to reduce this. National and local politicians are just running the system in the only way it can be – as a profit system where priority has to be given to profit-making over meeting our needs.

It’s the system that’s to blame, not those elected to run it. That’s why changing the politicians in charge makes no difference. As the saying goes, “changing governments changes nothing”. It will be like this as long as the profit system lasts. So there is no point in voting for parties that accept this system.

The alternative is to change to a new system based on satisfying our needs, where the places where wealth is produced will no longer be owned by profit-seeking businesses but will be owned and democratically controlled by us all. That’s what the Socialist Party stands for. We are contesting this by-election to raise this issue, and to give those of you who agree a chance to be counted.

You can do this by voting for the Socialist candidate, Danny Lambert.
And then get in touch to help bring an end to the system that can never be made to work in your interest.

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.

Surveying the field

Well, since our nomination papers are in, we know who we are, and from the list on Wikipedia, a fair idea of who our rivals will be. Ten lists so far.

Of which four are nationalists of some stripe (UKIP, Libertas, BNP, English Democrats). So far, only Labour and the Green Party represent anything that can be called "the left" with the nationalists, plus the Tories being mainly on the right, and Jury Team and the Lib Dems bringing up the centre.

Anyway, I'll move one in future posts to examining party's manifestos...

To begin with, Labour. Although Labour will bring out their own manifesto, as part of the Party of European Socialists [sic] (PES) they will be committed to enacting this manifesto with their Parliamentary group. It makes for some interesting reading:

almost 17 million people in Europe [are] already out of work and many more in precarious jobs who are among the first to be hit by slow growth; the ever-present risk of home repossessions; and social inequalities, with some 78 million people – many of them children – living below the poverty line or at risk of poverty.

As ever, reformists are good at diagnosing the ills, but fail with their prescription. Their proposal? Regulate the markets. That's going to work. Honest. Of course, wing nut free marketeers nowadays try and blame market regulation for the crisis. After all, the markets are already regulated, it just didn't work.

We'd argue, though, that it can't work, that any system based on the market will eventually fall over. That issue, though, is going to be at the real centre of European politics though, regulation versus deregulation, for some time to come. The stale battle between capitalist parties.

Capitalist Parties? Oh, yes, that the piece of analysis I forgot, all but one of the parties standing is a faction of the capitalist party, there are ten lists, but only two parties. Go on, make the choice between capitalism or socialism, not what flavour capitalism you get.