Saturday in KIngston

Two members and two sympathisers ran a street stall in the centre of Kingston for two hours on Saturday. Slow start but it picked up later with discussions on the EU referendum (the Leave and Remain leafletters were out again, amazing how people are concerned with the British capitalists' trading arrangements while the only thing they trade is is their labour-power) and Ken Livingstone's alleged anti-semitism rather than the GLA elections. Leaflets (both on the election and on the referendum) handed out. A couple of pamphlets sold and a couple taken without paying (the person chose carefully as he took How the Gods Were Made and Marxism and Darwinism). Contacted by a member of the Zeitgeist movement who had come from the other side of London to do this.

This will be the last of the election stalls. Next date: polling day, Thursday 5 May (also Marx's birthday).

All aboard for Ken?

The "Communist" Party of Britain (the successor party to the late, unlamented "Communist" Party) has come out in favour not just of voting for Ken Livingstone for Mayor but of voting Labour everywhere. They say:

"The Communist Party urges the left to unite in support of Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London at the Greater London Authority elections on May 3 2012 (...)
"The Communist Party considers the political priority in the May elections to be the defeat of the Right. This must be achieved through:
The election of Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London.
The election of a Labour majority in the Greater London Assembly."

This puts them at odds with Bob Crow, leader of the RMT (and one of their former members), and the Trotskyists of Militant and the SWP, who have come together to put up a London-wide list composed of leftwing trade unionists -- TUSC (Trade Unionist and "Socialist" Coalition) -- to oppose the Labour Party list. However, this doesn't mean that they won't be voting for Livingstone for Mayor or for Labour candidates in the constituencies. They're not saying anything on this, but this is probably what they will be doing. There's an intriguing paragraph in the report in Socialist Worker on a TUSC conference held earlier this month:

"The meeting discussed the fact that TUSC had decided not to put up a candidate for mayor against Ken Livingstone, after some parts of the coalition including the FBU felt it would not be the best strategy".

They reckon they have a good chance of getting somebody elected and have calculated they will need to get 150,000 votes to do this. If past experience of militant trade unionists standing for political office is anything to go by, they won't get even half that number.

Anyway, here's their reformist programme:
So, capitalism is still going to exist, except that instead of profits coming before people, people's needs are somehow going to be made to come before profits: the banks and big business are going to continue to exist and to make profits but these are going to be taxed to pay for public services, cheap transport and affordable homes. This is classic, failed and impossible reformism.

Meanwhile our candidates will be pointing out that capitalism can never be reformed so as to work in the interests of those who depend on having to work for a wage or a salary to live. We will advocating socialism as a society where there will be no banks and big business, and no profits, but where all productive resources will be commonly owned and democratically controlled by the whole community in the interests of all.This is the only basis on which to provide decent public services, transport, housing and education as it means there can be production geared to satisfying people's needs instead of for profit. People Not Profits, that's the real socialist slogan.

Freedom for Tooting!

Sorry, couldn't resist. It is, though, the logical extension of SNP style nationalism (see our editorial here on the subject). Obviously, Ken Livingstone has taken up the batton:KEN Livingstone has vowed to let the south of the borough of Croydon break free from London and join Surrey...Before the then Tory government made these changes, Croydon really stopped at New Addington. If people really hate that and they wanted to go back to Surrey I don't think I would send in troops to shoot them. I'm sure the burghers of Croydon will be glad not to be shot. I can remember in the 90's when Yarm wanted to secede from Cleveland and join North Yorkshire because of the difference in council tax rates.

This just shows how contingent communities are, and the arrangements are often made to best suite the people in charge. Boundaries shuffle back and forth, without ever changing the real problems that underlie them. Devolution in London was supposed to make great changes, and yet someone living here wouldn't really notice the difference. What we notice is the unemployment, the market failure in housing, the poverty. The conditions we experience as are workers, irrespective of the label on the town council notice board.

The voice of our rivals

Interesting excepts of an interview with Ken Livingstone (the man who would-be-mayor-again) here. This is a fascinating insight into his politics:

The world is run by monsters and you have to deal with them. Some of them run countries, some of them run banks, some of them run news corporations.

That seems, to me, to sum up his whole career. He doesn't want to slay the monsters, but work with them: Jack the Giant Facilitator.

Now, we might want to ask how the ogres come to power? How it is that the world is so monstrous it takes monsters to run it?

Slightly more than tantatively, we would suggest that it is because we have the domination of the few over the many. We have a world run in the interest of the tiny number of people who own it: and the rest of us need to be quelled in order that to protect those interests; and to do that on a regular basis would make a monster of anyone. We have the option of ridding the world of monsters by ending that monstrous system. That we choose to make that our sole aim is what marks us out as different from those who would befriend the monsters.

The candidates' manifestos

The official booklet, sent to all electors, listing all the candidates for Mayor and their programme (if they pay £10,000) has arrived. Fairly democratic actually, except of course for the £10,000 which one candidate apparently couldn't afford.

It makes informative and amusing reading.

We learn that, like Ken, the BNP is going for the Irish vote. A young student is featured saying "I'm voting BNP because I'm Irish and the BNP are the only party that cares about the indigenous peoples of these islands" and a builder says "We should celebrate things like St. George's Day and other Christian festivals like St. Patrick's Day instead of other festivals such as Ramadan and Eid".

The candidate of the English Democrats disagrees. His campaign slogan is "Save London from Labour's Tartan Taxes" and he complains that "currently £100,000 is spent on a festival such as St Patrick's Day whereas St George's Day is mocked with a screening of 'The Life of Brian' in Trafalgar Square". He ends up sloganising "Vote for England. Vote for Matt . . . O'Connor".

The Christian Party candidate isn't very charitable either. "Stop the mega-mosque at West Ham", he proclaims.

Apart from that, the BNP and Ken agree that pensioners should have 24-hour free travel passes and the Left List (aka SWP) and the Greens agree that the London "living wage" of £7.20 an hour should be forced on employers. The Left List candidate claims in passing to be a "socialist" even though she wants to keep gap between rich and poor but to make it smaller. UKIP wants to subsidise tube fares and reduce taxes both at the same time. Ken does his best to disguise the fact that he's the Labour Party candidate.

The candidates on the lists are also all listed as are those standing in the 14 constituencies. We are down as "The Socialist Party". This s-word only occurs in two other places. In the name of the "Communist" Party's "Unity for Peace and Socialism" list and of the Militant Tendency candidate in Greenwich and Lewisham who is standing as "Socialist Alternative" (not that he is).

The other end of the High Street...

This week's Private Eye (no. 1208) has an interesting peice on Ken Livingstone's associations with a different bunch of leftists - the Workers Revolutionary Party - one of the 57 flavours of Trotskyism, with a hint of added violence.

Sometimes referred to as a cult for their attempts to control members' private lives, and because of their slavish subordination to their leader Gerry Healy whom the Eye quotes Livingstone's biographer Andrew Hosken describing as: "a serial rapist and abuser of vulnerable young women, a violent drunken oaf, a celebrity-obsessed sycophant, a sectarian demagogyue, a vindictive bully, a political joke, a blatant anti-Semite...a possible accessory to torture and murder, a professional liar and a fraud as well as a stooge for sinister Middle East regimes."

If you think this is biased slandering, the prestigious Oxford Dictionary of National Biography actually gives Healy space, and says: "As the Workers' Revolutionary Party's financial position deteriorated in the early 1980s, Healy obtained funds from Libya, Iraq, the Gulf states, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, responding with political support. Opposition developed as the defeat of the 1984–5 miners' strike demoralized his organization. On 19 October 1985 Healy was expelled from the Workers' Revolutionary Party after revelations that he had sexually abused at least twenty-six women members."

Of course, to this day, Geoprge Galloway has demonstrated that money is still available from the Middle East, and Ken is capable of cosying up to despotic elements from that region to shore up his position today.

Of course, Socialists aren't interested in gossip or smearing opponents with a tarry brush and guilt by association, all that this proves is that all politicians have to swim with Sharks if they want to get ahead, and Ken has schmoozed with some particularly violent and nasty species.

Cuddly Ken is a smart player of the ruthless game of power politics, who draws support and personnel from authoritarian groups like the WRP and Socialist Action. The ultimate in entryism, and all to introduce some slightly lower bus fares. This is milk and water reformism, only without the milk.

(A prize to anyone who can guess the link between the article and its title in the comments.)

Ken commands the Irish

If you're Irish, chances are, according to the Irish Post, you've already voted - see, they think that: Irish back Ken to stay Mayor - not some Irish, mark you, but all of them, it seems. How they can know this before the Irish cast their ballots is anyone's guess.

They claim

THE IRISH community across London is coming together to back Ken Livingstone’s campaign to be re-elected as Mayor of London.

- that might come as a surprise to my comrade who posts here as Londonsocialist. A campaigner is quoted as saying:

“We think it is of utmost importance that the Irish voters and those of Irish descent come out and vote for Ken who has done so much as Mayor to ensure that our community has been recognised for its contribution to the city."

Well, that's me as well, then, I'm one of those of "Irish descendents" (via Yorkshire, figure that out). Maybe I secretly back Ken without knowing it?

In reality this is a stitch up between the "community leaders" who control the Irish post and Ken's team. It's what advertising folk call "segmenting", and Ken is very good at it. break the audience down into target identities, then give them a message that your brand is not just suited to them, but confirms their identity as a member of that group. Hence lines like:

The Irish vote was crucial in ensuring Ken Livingstone was returned as Mayor in his first campaign.

See, Irish, Ken owes you, he's yours. Of course, this is just primitive coalition building, snake oil salesmanship to try and schmooze to power. Ken is resting on divisions between workers, rather than trying to overcome them through the practical measures of building socialism. That way he can make himself the guarantor of social peace between the various communities.

Booting Ken

The big problem with Ken is, he has no excuse. He can rattle off the ills of capitalism till the cows come home; but all he has to offer is realpolitik of today.

Look at it this way, on housing, he says 50,000 affordable new homes over the next three years. Boris says 50,000 affordable new homes by 2011. the only difference is where they want to put them, with Ken's 50% quota imposing new build on Tory suburbs. Obviously, things like that do matter; but questions like, "Is that all?" and "What do you mean by 'affordable' anyway? Affordable to whom? How?" do spring to mind.

For instance, he cites the figure that there are 60,000 households with over 90,000 children in them, in temporary accomodation. This is an appalling scandal, and just the tip of the iceburg. 2.7 %, he says, of the housing stock is empty, because private owners are keeping them so.

On this he says

Policy has to be sensible and related to the real world. Boris Johnson’s 1 per cent target for empty homes is completely unachievable in practice: it couldn’t be achieved without stopping the private sale market from functioning.

Vile Trot that Ken is, he's protecting the housing market.

Indeed, his accomodation with the market is his hallmark. I've heard him discussing that jobs in industry just aren't coming back, and so we have to live with a nservice economy based London.

The bottom line is, his strategy is fatally flawed, he admits time and again that the power doesn't lie with him, and that he is doing little things here and there (some of which I'll discuss in coming posts) here and now.

We think that isn't enough, and the urgency of the situation is such that we need to mobilise to fundamentally change the system of society, and remove the burden of responsibility from people like Ken to ourselves.

Finally, Ken's constant reference to "Ordinary Londoners" would make Danny, our candidate, spit. Doubtless he'll tell you all about that himself soon.