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

Labour's Utopian dream

Just seen this The council of 2043 by Lib Peck, leader of Lambeth Council. A vision of where councils may be in 30 years time. We can see the inspiring vision of Labour:

For other councils, such as the pioneering then London borough of Lambeth (now part of the South London authority) the dire financial situation added impetus to the cooperative approach that the Council had adopted several years earlier: putting residents at the heart of decision making. It meant identifying strengths and skills in the community and building on those; it meant that decisions were made on a social as well as financial basis. In doing so, the cooperative approach generated a wealth of innovative ways and means to deliver activities – with the council providing a platform to make things happen rather than delivering itself.

Wow. I'm stirred. Lets take to the streets to demand that councils

become the connectors and enablers of local society: assessing local needs; joining up the right people and right organisations; enabling the most creative and socially productive projects; and critically, acting as the custodian of the peoples values.

Basically, what councils do now, only with a fancy Dan name. March forward under the slogan of 'Accomodating to Austerity'. I for one am enthused. So, it's clear, from their own pens: vote Labour for a redistribution of poverty!

It is entirely utopian to believe that this means anything other than living within the dictates of the interests of them as own the world, and can only be considered a pipe-dream. But what a modest pipe dream.