The London Elects site has now published the results by borough (and ward). Here are our results by borough:
Lambeth 729 (0.74%)
Southwark 604 (0.69)
Hounslow 504 (0.65)
Waltham Forest 496 (0.64)
Hackney 464 (0.60)
Kingston 293 (0.50)
Islington 333 (0.45)
Richmond 268 (0.35)
This confirms past experience that we do better in Labour areas than elsewhere, though the rather surprising result in Islington (where we have contested many elections over the years) would seem go against this.
Socialist Party Election Blog : The blog by Socialists involved in Socialist Party campaigning in London Elections. For the main party website click Here
Showing posts with label Kingston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kingston. Show all posts
Monday, May 16, 2016
Monday, May 02, 2016
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).
This will be the last of the election stalls. Next date: polling day, Thursday 5 May (also Marx's birthday).
Friday, April 29, 2016
News from the South Western Front
Today's Richmond and Twickenham Times has a full page on the six candidates standing in the South West constituency. Unfortunately it is about who I am rather than what the Party stands for. The information on our candidate was not supplied by us but was taken from wikipedia. The nearest it gets to saying what we stand for is where says I am a "speaker and writer about a moneyless and wageless society". We have agreed, though, to supply a photo for the online version despite that for us it's "the case not the face" that counts, on the grounds that a "face" will attract more people to read what's underneath it than just plain text. But don't worry, the chosen photo shows a Party banner in the background saying "Abolish the Wages System".
The same paper's online edition also carried a report on the hustings in Twickenham on 12 April (where the candidate's face can also be seen). It's here.
The Surrey Comet only has a page on 5 of the 12 candidates for mayor and nothing on who's standing for the GLA but we can't really complain as they had published two letters from us. The Liberal candidate will have more reason to as she's never been mentioned and the UKIP candidate might not have liked being reminded on the front page that he once denounced the "gaystapo" (on the other hand, maybe he accepts that any publicity is better than none).
We have now finished distributing our quota of one-third of the 30,000 election manifestos and only have an 1000 or so, found at Head Office, left to do. By chance they have been distributed more or less equally between the three boroughs of Kingston, Richmond and Hounslow. This was not the plan as the intention was to concentrate on Hounslow where the branch meets. 11-12000 is slightly more than a token coverage as it's only about 4% of the total number of postal drops in the constituency.
A hundred were distributed in Oxford as on a visit there for a William Morris event (saw the room in University College where Morris gave his first talk as a socialist entitled "Art under Plutocracy", part of which we first republished in 1907 as Art, Labour and Socialism) I noticed that nearly all the streets near where I was saying had houses displaying "Vote Green" or "Vote Labour" posters in their windows. They all got the only leaflet I had with me (our GLA manifesto). Assuming that those displaying posters are among the 5% of the population said to follow politics this is a self-selected target and 100 delivered to them should be the equivalent of 2000 delivered to all doors. It will also serve here as a reminder that, after contesting both the Euroelections in 2014 and the General Election last year in Oxford, we are still around. More of the leaflets will be distributed at the Mayday trade union event in Oxford on Saturday.
Tomorrow we will be having a street stall in Kingston but not in Brentford as announced.
The same paper's online edition also carried a report on the hustings in Twickenham on 12 April (where the candidate's face can also be seen). It's here.
The Surrey Comet only has a page on 5 of the 12 candidates for mayor and nothing on who's standing for the GLA but we can't really complain as they had published two letters from us. The Liberal candidate will have more reason to as she's never been mentioned and the UKIP candidate might not have liked being reminded on the front page that he once denounced the "gaystapo" (on the other hand, maybe he accepts that any publicity is better than none).
We have now finished distributing our quota of one-third of the 30,000 election manifestos and only have an 1000 or so, found at Head Office, left to do. By chance they have been distributed more or less equally between the three boroughs of Kingston, Richmond and Hounslow. This was not the plan as the intention was to concentrate on Hounslow where the branch meets. 11-12000 is slightly more than a token coverage as it's only about 4% of the total number of postal drops in the constituency.
A hundred were distributed in Oxford as on a visit there for a William Morris event (saw the room in University College where Morris gave his first talk as a socialist entitled "Art under Plutocracy", part of which we first republished in 1907 as Art, Labour and Socialism) I noticed that nearly all the streets near where I was saying had houses displaying "Vote Green" or "Vote Labour" posters in their windows. They all got the only leaflet I had with me (our GLA manifesto). Assuming that those displaying posters are among the 5% of the population said to follow politics this is a self-selected target and 100 delivered to them should be the equivalent of 2000 delivered to all doors. It will also serve here as a reminder that, after contesting both the Euroelections in 2014 and the General Election last year in Oxford, we are still around. More of the leaflets will be distributed at the Mayday trade union event in Oxford on Saturday.
Tomorrow we will be having a street stall in Kingston but not in Brentford as announced.
Sunday, April 24, 2016
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.
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.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Another Saturday's stalls
West London members were out again yesterday with two street stalls in different parts of the South West constituency.
Brentford turned out to be a bad choice as there weren't many passing by, so we moved on to Hounslow and gave out leaflets, sold the Socialist Standard, made a few contacts, even got a £5 spontaneous donation, and engaged in discussions with workers from eastern Europe including one from Russia who agreed with us. That's the second week running that we've been in Hounslow, so people there will be beginning to note our presence.
The stall in Kingston went on as planned despite the cold (8 degrees centigrade). Both the Remain and the Leave campaigns were leafletting, so we changed our tactic and gave out our election leaflet inside our one on the referendum headed "An Irrelevant Sideshow. The Socialist view on the EU referendum". This provoked a discussion with three young supporters of staying in. They put us on the spot a bit when, after we had said that one minor benefit of being in the EU was the free movement of workers and the relaxing of border controls and couldn't see any benefit to workers from leaving, they said why not vote to stay in as an out vote would take this benefit even if minor away. We had to reply that for us the over-riding issue was capitalism or socialism and that, in or out, capitalism and its problems would still continue. They turned out to be Labour Party members from Leatherhead in Tory Surrey, so they must know what it is like to be in a small minority faced at election times with an alternative (Tory or LibDem) both of which they reject. An Out supporter told us he was going off to live in Bulgaria, apparently not realising that this might not be so easy if his side won.
Next week it's Chiswick again and Feltham but if Feltham turns out to be like Brentford it could be Hounslow for a third time.
Brentford turned out to be a bad choice as there weren't many passing by, so we moved on to Hounslow and gave out leaflets, sold the Socialist Standard, made a few contacts, even got a £5 spontaneous donation, and engaged in discussions with workers from eastern Europe including one from Russia who agreed with us. That's the second week running that we've been in Hounslow, so people there will be beginning to note our presence.
The stall in Kingston went on as planned despite the cold (8 degrees centigrade). Both the Remain and the Leave campaigns were leafletting, so we changed our tactic and gave out our election leaflet inside our one on the referendum headed "An Irrelevant Sideshow. The Socialist view on the EU referendum". This provoked a discussion with three young supporters of staying in. They put us on the spot a bit when, after we had said that one minor benefit of being in the EU was the free movement of workers and the relaxing of border controls and couldn't see any benefit to workers from leaving, they said why not vote to stay in as an out vote would take this benefit even if minor away. We had to reply that for us the over-riding issue was capitalism or socialism and that, in or out, capitalism and its problems would still continue. They turned out to be Labour Party members from Leatherhead in Tory Surrey, so they must know what it is like to be in a small minority faced at election times with an alternative (Tory or LibDem) both of which they reject. An Out supporter told us he was going off to live in Bulgaria, apparently not realising that this might not be so easy if his side won.
Next week it's Chiswick again and Feltham but if Feltham turns out to be like Brentford it could be Hounslow for a third time.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
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.
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.
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