For the record.

Here is the letter the South London Press actually printed.

Someone has pointed me to this fine quote:

Private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information. It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. Albert Einstein.

What corruption?

Further proof - as if any is needed - that we do not live in a democracy, but in a plutocracy - rule by wealth.

David Sainsbury - Lord Sainsbury as we are apparently compelled to call him, has given the Labour Party a pre-election gift of £2 million, according to the BBC. He must have found some loose change down the back of the sofa.

Obviously, this fabulous gift of money from a billionaire has nothing to do with him becoming a permenant fixture in the legislature of the House of Lords, or of becoming a government minister - in an area highly conducive to a Supermarket magnate's business interests, science and technology.

And, more obviously, this sort of gift for a party that delivers a vision of economic prosperity for supermarket billionaires, helps them win elections - which are an expensive business.

Government and power are bought and sold, that's the golden rule: them as have the gold rule.

Another Letter published

Bill's letter on housing was published in yersterday's South London Press, but simply as from "The Socialist Party", ie the "Election Agent" bit was cut out. So, the local press has still not informed people in the area that we're standing in Vauxhall.

Get yer votes out...

Well, today is the last day to get yourself on the electoral roll if you want to be registered in time to vote on May 5th (likely polling day).

Rolling registration meansthat turnout should be technically higher than previously, because the traditional registration in the autumn gave plenty of people a chance to move house or die, but still remain on the roll. We'll see.

Unlike other revolutionary groups - i.e. groups calling for a fundamental change in society - we encourage people to get out and vote, we do believe it has some effect (the candidate chosen by the majority will win, they will decide laws, etc.) even if the odds are stacked against outsiders (for now).

Fundamentally, we consider that voting is a way of co-ordinating between people. In some dictatorships, there may well be an effective majority capable of sweeping aside the esteblished order, but lacking the infamous 'spark' no one is prepared to go first and risk being caught on their own.

We have the same problem. Many many people say to us: "Socialism is a wonderful idea, but I don't think anyone else will go for it." Almost everyone says that. We need to send a clear signal that we are thousands strong, that we are not alone. Voters in Vauxhall have that chance, by voting for us if they agree with our ideas.

Elsewhere, where we are not standing, you still have the chance to make a write-in vote for socialism, by writing 'World Socialism' across the ballot paper.

Letter published in South London Press

Last Friday's (4 March) South London Press published the following letter from a member, edited and under their title of "Ken's been quangoed":

The incident between Ken Livingstone and an over-insistent journalist has revealed the existence of an unelected quango with the power to suspend or ban from office any elected councillor deemed to have brought their office into disrepute. Two Lambeth councillors have already fallen foul of the "ethical standards officers" (what next!) of the so-called Standards Board for England ("Two councillors are rocketed for 'misleading' election propaganda", South London Press, February 18). This was for printing "misleading" information on an election leaflet (don't they all do that?). If the board bans Livingstone from office simply for expressing a view -- it's not as if he's been caught with his hand in the till -- it would go against all principles of democracy and freedom of speech. That would, I believe, turn them into thought police.
In a real democracy, it would be up to the electors and no one else, and certainly not some unelected board of appointees with pretentious titles, to throw out an elected official."

But still no mention that the Socialist Party will be standing a candidate in Vauxhall. Perhaps it'll be in tomorrow's edition. Meanwhile, the Gang of Three parties including the sitting (Labour) MP -- sitting on a horse at the Duke of Beaufort's hunt -- get twice-weekly local publicity.

Letter to the Authoritahs...

South Bank Board
South Bank Centre
Royal Festival Hall
Belvedere Road
LONDON SE1 8XX
2 March 2005

Dear Sir/Madam

On Saturday 19 February some members of our party were distributing leaflets outside the Queen Elizabeth Hall. This was in connection with the coming general election when our party is standing a candidate for the Vauxhall constituency into which this part of the South Bank falls. They were approached by two security guards and told that permission to do this was required.

As we find it difficult to believe that candidates in an election for Parliament require permission to campaign in a part of the constituency which they are contesting, we should be grateful if you would confirm whether or not the information our members were given was correct. In the event of it being so, we should be grateful if you would communicate the name of the person who apparently has the power to grant or refuse such permission so that we can contact them on the matter.

We should be grateful for an early reply as the next date we have fixed for leafleting in the area is Saturday 19 March.

Yours faithfully
Bill Martin (Election Agent for Danny Lambert, Prospective Socialist Party candidate for Vauxhall).

Bullet in the Head...

It was with almost incredulity that I heard that the IRA had offered to shoot the killers of Robert McCartney.

A moments reflection, though, suggested that it wasn't some monstrous joke, but simply the logical expression of what the IRA is. It is a state in waiting, exerting command over a community by threats of death and violence. It tries to project itself as the legitimate authority in Ireland.

Essentially, they are amatuers emulating the big boys. The politicians who furl their lips into a snarl and declaim the barbarity of the IRA's offer, are the same murderers who launched thousands of rockets in wars across the globe, which have killed more people with less discrimination than the weekend mass-murderers of the IRA ever could. They accept the principle that tens of thousands of deaths are an acceptable cost of their political goals.

Socialists have a long record of opposing the barabarity of the death penalty. We also have a long record of stating that the border divisions in Ireland - or anywhere else of Earth - did not justify the shedding of one drop of workers' blood.

Peace is not going to come from the barrel of a gun, but through common interest and a solid community based on a co-operative commonwealth and the free association of producers. Socialism must be worldwide or nothing and we need to start to build this real movement - the only way to stop the killers getting their way. With such a society, we can decomission all armies.

Another letter

This one to the South London Press...

Dear Friend,

It should be clear to any fair minded person that the debate about stock transfer in Clapham Park estate is a scandal. Not the question over whether the stock should be the property of Lambeth council or of a housing association, but the fact that there is a dispute at all over whether people should be decently housed; that renovations and repairs should be conditional upon the right financial chicanery.

Given that we have the wit, wealth and capacity to ensure that no-one need go without a proper roof over their head, it is a crime that people are homeless in the streets or living in run-down accommodation in our world. The problems with accommodation do not lie in council ownership or pure mismanagement, but in the fact that the condition of our having access to housing is a column of figures in the account books of them as own our world which must be satisfactorily arranged.

Whether council owned or housing association run, the capitalists and financiers must be satisfied before we can have access to the housing we need. So long as our society is owned by a tiny fraction of the population wealth and human life and talent will be squandered in pandering to their account books.

In the coming election, the Socialist Party will be contesting Vauxhall constituency to promote the campaign for the common ownership of society - so that everyone can have free access to food, clothes and housing - without exception and without having to go cap in hand to profiteers.

Incidentally, if you send anyone any letters in support of our campaign, do e-mail them to us and let us know.

Fairtrade?

Well, the Executive Committee didn't come to a definitive agreement about our election leaflet on Saturday - some doubts about the wording and the figures, so it is all still under discussion. I thus cannot bring you the text just yet.

I can, however, bring you a letter I sent to The Guardian this morning, in response to this letter.

Dear Friend,

in talking about minimum wage levels and working with employers Ian Bretman of the Fairtrade Foundation (letters 07/03/05) illustrates the futility of his own organisation.

How can trade based upon people being compelled to sell their ability to work or otherwise face poverty possibly be fair?

Their only answer is to ask other workers forced into similar prostitution of their skills to subsidise exploiters. That is, they stand for a redistribution of poverty.

We should be setting our sights higher - to the abolition of the wages system and exploitation, not trying to fix it.

Only through common ownership - not so-called Fairtrade - we will really be able to abolish poverty once and for all.

Bill Martin (Socialist Party)

Open Letter

A comrade in the North sends an open letter to the voters of Vauxhall...

An Open Letter to the Abstentionists of the Vauxhall Parliamentary Constituency from the Socialist Party

You are again faced with a bunch of politicians who can only be distinguishable by the colour of their rosettes, and you may already be of the opinion that there is little that separates the mainstream parties and have no intention of voting. Millions of people are not prepared to support any of them. Indeed, recent elctions have resulted in the lowest turnout since World War II and the trend is repeating itself across the globe. It is particularly to those members of the electorate who are not prepared to follow leaders, who think they are all tarred with the same brush, and unwilling to put their faith in the promises of Blair, Howard and Kennedy, that this article is dedicated.

Many of you will know little about The Socialist Party or our idea, unless you are a regular reader of our literature or visitor to our web site. Certainly many people have heard the word “socialist” and imagine it has something to do with the nationalised industries or with countries like China and the former Soviet Union. It is understandable that many people regard socialism as just another political cliché, once used by Labour politicians to win votes, but having very little meaning.

The Socialist Party stands solely for socialism because we do not think that the present social system – capitalism – can ever be made to work in the interests of the majority of the people. This is not the fault of government policies, but the present social system in which they are operating. Capitalism always puts the needs of a minority who own and control the factories, farms, offices, mines, media, the means of wealth production and distribution before the needs of ourselves, the working class.

It is a hard but undeniable fact that no political party – including The Socialist Party – can legislate to humanise capitalism or make it run in the interest of the working class. That is why it is important that the working class stops giving its support to politicians who support the profit system. None of them can solve unemployment or crime or any of the other social problems we face today, despite their proclaimed recipes for success. None of them will prevent tens of millions starving to death each year. None of them will provide decent housing for everyone. None of them will end the threat of human annihilation as a result of war, because militarism is inevitable within a system based upon the ferocious competition for resources, markets and trade. Why waste your time voting for parties that cannot make any of these urgently needed changes? Why go on in the hope that some miracle will happen and end the insanity of the profit system?

So what’s the alternative? We say that the resources of society must be taken into the hands of the whole community – and by that we do not mean the state, but all of us, organised together, consciously and democratically.

In a socialist society we will produce for use, not profit. This means producing food to feed the world’s population, not to dump in the sea if it cannot be sold profitably. Producing for use means ending the colossal waste of resources on armies, armaments, trade, banking and insurance and all the other social features which are only necessary within capitalism. By running society on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production for use we can all have free access to all goods and services.

Two points should be clear to you by now. Firstly, this is no ordinary political argument. We have made you no false promises; we have not patronised you and neither do we beg for your support. Indeed we do not ask for your support unless you are convinced that the case for socialism is a rational one and in your interest.

Socialism, if it is to be the democratic and sane society that we envisage it will be, can only be established when a majority of the people understand it and want it, so there is no point in seeking support on any other basis.

Secondly, you will have noticed that what we are advocating is different – it has never existed. The Tory have-beens have nothing new to offer. The Labour Party, if re-elected, will continue its futile exercise of trying to run a system based upon exploitation in the interest of the exploited. The Liberals, if given half the chance, will pursue the vicious policy of dancing to the tune of profitability while human needs are ignored, with just as much gusto as Blair’s henchmen or Howard's confusionists.

This short pre-election statement can be summarised: Do you agree with the following statements.

1)Capitalism puts profits for the few before the needs of the many.
2)Labour governments, “Communist” states and proposals to reform the present system cannot establish socialism.
3)Socialism is yet to exist.
4)Socialism means a society of common ownership and democratic control, where production is solely for use.
5)Socialism means a world without buying or selling, where people give freely of their abilities and take according to their needs.
6)When a majority - including those who have previously abstained – understand and want socialism, the new system will be established.

If you think the above statements are correct then we thank you - if you are on the electoral roll for the Vauxhall constituency - to take the time to vote for us. If you disagree, please tell us why.

Campaign Update

OK, tomorrow our executive committee will be meeting. They will, hopefully, finalise our election statement which will be delivered to all the homes in Vauxhall Constuency during the election. As a democratic organisation, we have included in our rules a provision that our EC - directly elected by the membership as a whole - must approve election statements to ensure they conform to the party case agreed at conference by the whole membership of the party. You can see both conference resolutions and rules here. They should also agree our budget, but I need to arrange that.

That should mean hopefully on Sunday I could reveal the statement on this blog. It is the centre peice of our campaign and is, I hope, a concise statement of our case.

On Sunday the London Election Delegates Meeting will be gathering at our Head Office to continue co-ordinating the campaign. Three of our London Branches are involved in the campaign, so we need to make sure we can co-ordinate between them. More news when it comes.

Class War

The class war is the basis of socialist politics. The Hallmark.

The Labour Party has always shied from accusations of class warfare, aiming to speak for the whole community. Socialists contend, though, that where the community is divided by class it cannot be treated as a whole. Inevitably, government policies will benefit one side or another in the struggle between the tiny minority who own the wealth of society, and the vast majority who only own their ability to work.

When we talk of class warfare, we are not talking about rioting in the streets, attacking middle class people or anything of the sort, but the continual day to day struggle to secure access to the mneans of living for millions of people.

So far as we are concerned, there is no middle class, no separate privilleged mid-layer between the workers and the capitalists, only a vast army on different pay scales being exploited by the same bunch of owners.

Once we accept this, we cannot conscience co-operation with parties that advocate policies to the betterment of the ruling class. We are hostile to them - Labour, Liberals, Tories - and seek to frustrate their ends by building a socialist movement to abolish the system they prop up. Workers run society from top to bottom, it's time they ran it in their own interest...

Kites and Crows

Fortunately, if you're stuck for something to discuss, the Guardian can often come up with a choice morsel. David McKei today discusses the immense increase in choice at the ballot box:

Fifty years ago, the average number of names on a constituency ballot sheet was 2.2: artificially low because some MPs were still returned unopposed, but nevertheless reflecting a politics which essentially was Conservative v Labour. The Liberals stood in only 110 seats out of 630 in 1955. The nationalists in Wales fought 11 of 36 seats, the nationalists in Scotland just two out of 71.

Of the 76.7% of electors who seized on their chance to make a choice from these mingy ballot sheets, 49.7% backed the Conservatives, 46.4% Labour and a paltry 2.7% the Liberals, with other parties accounting for just 1.2% of the vote. Contrast that with 2001, an election in which only 59.4% voted. The number of candidates then was 3,319, with an average choice of five per constituency. That was below the figure for 1997, when a record 3,724 candidates stood (5.7 per constituency)

Yet such choice is largely illusory. Almost all of those parties start their politics from the premise of the capitalist system, of retaining production for sale on a market, rather than common ownership and democratic production for use. They are all factions of the Capitalist Party.

Yet Labour wants to frighten us with the Tory Bogey - to keep people backing them and so backing capitalism. When all along, Labour and Tories are very much "just a battle of the Kites and Crows." At the end of the day, all their polcies are about who gets the profits.

We are the only Party putting Common Ownership on the agenda - the Socialist Party.

Revolution number 19

Socialists stand for a social revolution - that is a fundamental change in the way our society operates - where a tiny minority own the means of production and the rest of us slave upon them. There was a time when, if you mentioned revolution, people immediately thought of guillotines from the French revolution, or firing squads and gullags from the Russian.

The modern world though, is changing that. Year on year we are being treated to popular uprisings and mass movements bringing down unpopular regimes. The former Portugal, Poland, Romania, East Germany, Serbia, Albania, Bolivia, Indonesia, Ukraine and now Lebanon. General strikes and streets full of demonstrators have been able to topple the mighty and powerful.

Of course, socialists are far from satisfied with these revolts - often instigated by splits within the ruling elite, or for nationalist causes - we want more. They are often hijacked by the professional politicians who take control and return to almost business as usual after the fireworks have died away. So long as they leave the fundamental aspect of ownership of the productive wealth in a tiny minority's hands, so the effects of these revolts will be a new elite.

But we take heart that they show that it can be done, that peaceful radical changes could be made. They are a part of the learning curve for all humankind, and we can look to the day when we take to the streets to secure democratic control over the means of production, to back up our democratic organisation, and we can do without elites entirely.

Profit is a dirty word

So, the HSBC bank made profits of nearly £10 billion in 2004, a record for any "British" bank (as, of course, a bank called the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation must be). A lot of people don't like banks and assume that they make profits by ripping off their customers. No doubt, like all businesses, they do go in for this to the extent that they can get away with it, but this is not the source of their profits. Profits represent wealth (a claim on useful things) and there is only one source of wealth: the application of human labour, mental and physical, to materials that originally came from Nature. Since banks produce nothing, where do their profits come from? Where did the HSBC's £10 billion come from? There is only one possible source: the work of those who actually produce wealth. These produce surplus value for their immediate employers, a part of which is passed on to banks and other non-producing businesses performing a useful role in the capitalist economy through the averaging of the rate of profit on equal amounts of capital invested. In other words, the surplus value extracted from the immediate wealth-producers is shared out, through competition, amongst the various sections of the capitalist class. That's the source of all profits, not just those of the banks. According to today's papers Tory leader Michael Howard is too complain in a speech today that "too often in our country profit is used as a dirty word". We'd say it is not used often enough in this way since it really is a dirty word, describing as it does the proceeds of the exploitation of the class of wage and salary workers.
Nobody made this point in the various phone-in programmes that commented on HSBC's record profits, not even those who criticised them. Some callers saw nothing wrong with the bank's profits, the patriots among them saying it was a good thing that a "British company" should make profits. The critics only criticised the profits as excessive. BBC Radio 2 phoned someone they called a "socialist". It turned out to be ex-Labour MP and leader of the Militant Tendency, Dave Nellist, whose Trotskyist group has been trying to usurp our name of "Socialist Party". He wasn't against profits either; he just wanted the bank to be nationalised so that its profits could be used "for the benefit of the people". In other words, private profits "obscene", State profits OK. Or, private capitalism bad, State capitalism good. Next time the BBC want the opinion of a socialist perhaps they'll contact somebody who really is a socialist. They'd have told them that in a society based on common ownership and democratic control with production solely for use there'd be no need for banks as there'd be no need for money. And of course no profits or exploitation either.

Letter to the editor

We've just sent this letter off to the South London Press:

We are writing to you as Series Editor since we have not been able to get very far with your Lambeth desk.

On two occasions we have informed them that we will be standing a candidate in Vauxhall in the coming general election, but nothing informing the public of this has appeared. Asking why not, we told over the phone that election coverage would be done nearer the election. Fair enough if that’s the editorial policy but, if so, it is not being consistently applied as you can see from the attached cutting from your 25 February issue about a candidate standing in Tooting.

What we are expecting from the only local paper covering the constituency is not a long article on who we are, or what we stand for, but at this stage simply a short notice that we will be standing, the name of the candidate (Danny Lambert) and, ideally, perhaps the address of our election blog at spgb.blogspot.com (which we would have thought your reporters might want to look at from time to time in any event).

Established parties get press 24hrs hours a day, all year round. Yet, come election time, the privately owned press has no interest in offering the various alternatives to the electorate. This is democracy?

Perhaps you might like to e-mail them with your views on this?

Terrifying

Well, Today the Government will try to write it's legacy into law - the new terror legislationgiving ministers the power to impose house arrest on people that there may or may not be enough evidence to indicate that they are a terrorist.

They say they are motivated by their duty to protect citizens right to life. Yet thousands die on the roads each year, and we hear not a peep about internment of motorists. More plausibly, they claim the security services have asked for this power, because they feel they need something between simple surveillance and a full scale trial. It beggars belief, though, given the plethora of anti-terrorist laws - and other laws - that they could not find one charge to lay against a terror suspect that would not endanger their sources.

The reality, though, is that irrespective of the legislation - which is dubious at best - state power can and will be arbitrarilly used in the interests of the ruling elites anyway.

During the miners strike the Thatcher government established an unlawful national police force, unofficially suspended freedom of movement and used arbitrary arrests to break the miners movement. More recently, the Movement Against the Monarchy crowd were arbitrarilly arrested to avoid them causing trouble at the Queen's Jubilleee - the state just decided to pay the compensation for it's arbitrary abuse of power.

Judges have never been any help in the past. Hide-bound and caught up in their support of deference and power, they defend the establishment - and are no more likely to protect people from arbitrary arrest than a Home Secretary would.

These powers, though, are part of a war being fought between the capitalists of Britain and Midle-Eastern capitalists, wanna be capitalists and their respective camp followers. It is a war of power, control and oil.

The threat of terrorism cannot be removed by ever greater use of power, but by removing the source of the conflict - greedy men seeking to own the riches of the Earth. Today's events in Parliament are a side-show.

Tough on the causes of crime

Like Labour, socialists think we should be tough on the causes of crime. We have plenty of reason to want to do so. According to South London Press there is going to be a protest this weekend against gun crime in Lambeth.

[An Anti-Gun Campaigner] told the South London Press: "Gun crime is a threat to the whole of society. To sit at home and do nothing is as good as giving these people the green light.

Indeed, and we need to recognise that the cause of crime is free enterprise. These gangs aren't killing for the sake of it, but because it is business. They are entrepreneurs, looking at the comparative advantage of using guns to extract profits.

They're not the only ones making a profit. Arms manufacturers are making a tidy deal. According to a UN conference back in 2001:

[The] statistics include: 500 million small arms worldwide, $1 billion in annual illicit trade of arms, and armed conflict as the second cause of death worldwide after AIDS[Source

In a sane society where everyone could usefully employ their energy in self-fulfilling ways, where everyone could have access to leisure and culture, where there was no impetus of the fear of poverty or proseletysed creed of naked greed, then maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't need to protest about gun-crime on our streets. the statistics back this up, gun laws are irrelevent, it is economic prosperity that drives crime rates.

Minimum bribe?

On another front, the Labour government seems set to raise the minimum wage, according to the BBC:

The Low Pay Commission, which advises ministers on the issue, is reported to want the minimum wage to increase to £5.05 in October and £5.30 next year.

Mr Blair is expected to back the recommendation at his monthly news conference. Raising the £4.85 wage is one of Labour's key election pledges.

Strangely, we hear most about minimum wage rises around election times. You might actually think that they were, gosh, trying to bribe us. As Bernard Shaw once wrote, any government that promises to rob Peter to pay Paul can count on the support of Paul.

Of course, rises in the miniumum wage are welcome, anything to ameliorate poverty is a fine thing, except, when we have the wealth, talent and capacity to end poverty altogether, and simply don't, because holy private property stands in the way. A rise in the miniumum pittance is nothing compared to abolishing the wages system once and for all, and establishing a system of society bsed on from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

People are greeeeedy!

Well, the TUC has another day of plebian pleading with the masters - this time in Work Proper Hours Day. According to their press release

The average long hours employee does almost an extra day of work each week (7 hours 18 minutes) according to official statistics. If paid at the average wage for these hours they would get an extra £4,650 in their pay packet a year.

Apparently, today is the day thatif the average long hours employee did all their unpaid overtime at the start of the year, [...] they would start to be paid.

And we're always being told that socialism can't work because people are greedy, and won't work for free. When here and now, we find people slaving away because they want to get the job done.

But what the TUC miss is that even if employers paid for every hour properly, and we always worked to time, we`d still be exploited. Exploitation is not low wages, it is the wages system itself. We are not paid for the work and wealth we produce, but for oure abilities to work, which we loan out to a boss on a daily basis. They pocket the wealth we create, and the difference between the cost of our skills and that wealth is their profits.

So long as this exploitation continues, so long will workers feel the need to slong themselves into a waking coma each night, to slave away to try and battle to keep their jobs which hang solely upon the profitability of their employers` firm.

But, of course, the TUC are up to their necks in propping up a government that proudly and consciously supports capitalism, so they themselves proudly and consciously support exploitation. The workers of Vauxhall have the chance to send the message that there is an alternative to wage-slavery, where each contribute their freely given labour to work on the commonly owned means of production to secure the goods society needs to which each is entitled to their share. Socialism, not pleading with bosses.