Leafletting yesterday

West London members were out again yesterday running street stalls in two different parts of the South West constituency.

In Feltham 3 members, helped for a while by a bored balloon seller, handed out leaflets outside the Shopping Centre. At first we set up stall inside the Centre but were requested to move on by security staff who said we required permission True as the Centre is private property (an increasing trend with these places), so we moved just outside on to the pavement of the High Street.

Some political discussion. With a UKIP member and a Kurdish leftwinger who spoke about the collapse of state capitalism in Russia and told us how the Kurdish militias were defeating ISIS. Someone else told us she never voted as politicians were all the same and never did anything for ordinary people. We said we agreed and that it was because they were running capitalism whose economic laws forced them to put profits before people. She asked us what we would do for people. When we replied "nothing" and that people had to do things for themselves she took our leaflet. A skinhead draped in a flag of St George, it being his day, sang "You are the left wing, We are the right wing" as he passed by. We told him we could see that, but we couldn't identify which football club he supported.

Chiswick was quieter than a fortnight ago with people more interested in the EU referendum than the London elections. A sympathiser who went to Kingston thinking it was this Saturday we'd be there (it was last Saturday) reported that the Leave and Remain leafletters were out again. So, when we are there next Saturday we'll come armed with a good supply of our "EU Referendum - An Irrelevant Sideshow" leaflet.

South West street stalls

West London branch's experiment with doing two street stalls in different parts of the constituency with two members each rather than one with four members worked. Successful stalls were held in Hounslow and Chiswick. As it happened, with the same result: leaflets handed out, a few pamphlets sold, a contact made and our presence noticed.

It also gave us a chance to get the feel of the areas which are in fact different. Richmond and Kingston are leafy suburbs with only a couple of Labour councillors between them (the one in Richmond a defector from the LibDems rather than directly elected). Hounslow is Labour-dominated with only a handful of Tories (from wards in Chiswick as it happens), with a large population of people from a South Asian background and migrants from Poland and Rumania.

In Hounslow there were three rival stalls, all religious, two christian and one muslim (who gave us a free copy of the koran), fulfilling the role of being the heart of a heartless world as Marx once put it.In fact we had to discuss religion as much as politics, with a sikh and a christain who were both highly critical of islam and, as they saw it, the preference given to its followers by the government and the likes of the SWP. We said that we were not afraid to criticise islam as a religion, but we were opposed to all religion and all religions. We would have sold another copy of our pamphlet How the Gods Were Made if we'd another one with us.

On the political side, a man from Poland shouted at us that he had come from a "post-communist country". We shouted back that he'd come from a post-state-capitalist one. At least two people defended extending Heathrow airport as this would provide more local jobs, one saying that Boris was mad because he wanted to close down Heathrow. A bit of an exaggeration of his position, though in line with its logic because this would be the only way of stopping the inhabitants of the leafy suburbs being disturbed in their back yards by aircraft noise.

Next Saturday we'll have two stalls again, one in Kingston and the other in Brentford.