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

An opponent's meeting

They must be disappointed. TUSC lined up an impressive top table: April Ashley, UNISON Executive Council member, Steve Hedley, RMT London Regional Organiser, Paul Holborow, of the SWP and a founder and leader of the Anti-Nazi League, and Steve Nally, one-time organiser of the Anti-Poll Tax Federation. All people more used to addressing mass meetings but faced last night with an audience of 12, 4 of whom we brought along. All the same it was an interesting and revealing meeting.

Holborow, for the SWP, said he'd been out leafletting in the ward for TUSC but he chose to criticise trade union leaders for being cowardly and high-paid and to say that Len McCluskey of UNITE was just a talker (apparently there's a disagreement amongst leftwingers as to whether or not to back his re-election, the SWP being against, Militant being for). Steve Hedley, who spoke next, took him to task for this, saying that it was not the case that the working class was eager for a general strike and was being held back by cowardly trade union leaders; the working class did not (yet) want this as, he pointedly remarked, the attendance at this meeting showed. He criticised other unions for still giving money to the Labour Party which acted against the working class. He said that the unions needed to resist the cuts but in the end there would have to be political action to get rid of capitalism and replace it by a socialist society. We nodded in agreement. Nally, the TUSC candidate, didn't go that far but merely described the human consequences of the cuts without offering any alternative beyond "no cuts".

In the discussion we said we agreed that socialism was the only way-out but that this was not what TUSC was advocating in this election whereas we were. This brought Hedley back on message. The Bolsheviks, he said, had not won power on the basis of advocating socialism but on the slogans of "Peace, Land and Bread". The SPGB, he said, agreed with the Mensheviks that the Bolsheviks should not have seized power but should have handed the keys of power back to the capitalists. He's probably more of a Stalinist than a Trotskyist (he actually looks like Bob Crow). Even so, he was the best speaker of the evening, making some valid points.

Apparently, they think they are going to get 200 or so votes which, according to Holborow, would be enough to have the Labour Council shaking in their boots. We doubt either.

"Why We Are Against Capitalism"

Letter published in last Friday's South London Press in reply to Trotskyist Steve McNally's in the previous week's issue :

Why we are against capitalism

Steve Nally (Letters, South London Press, December 8) is right. Local services and amenities are being cut and people shouldn't put up with this, but this is the fault of the capitalist profit system as it goes through one of its economic crises. So, it is misleading to blame those who administer this system at local level, as he does, rather than the system itself. In calling on Lambeth council to adopt an alternative budget without cuts, he is encouraging the illusion that things could be different under capitalism if only there were militant leftwingers in charge. But the only way capitalism can get out of a crisis is by cutting living standards.

This is why Socialists should be campaigning for the abolition of capitalism, not for a change in the people running it or trying to make it work in a way it just cannot. We, too, will be standing in some wards in the Lambeth council elections in 2014, just as we did in 2010.
Adam Buick The Socialist Party, Clapham High Street

They chose the title (which is not bad). The only change they made was to replace "Militant" (with a capital M) by "militant" (without one). Perhaps the capital M was too subtle -- or too unsubtle.