London Borough Elections 5 May
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Each of the three London branches will be standing a candidate in these elections: North London in Junction ward of Islington Council, South London in Borough & Bankside ward of Southwark Council, and West London in Barnes ward of Richmond Council.
The Notice of Poll was published on Tuesday. Nominations have to be by midday next Friday (6 April). In the meantime members of the branches involved are collecting the signatures of 10 local electors required to stand. Those for Barnes have already been collected and are due to be handed in on Tuesday.
The nomination papers for us to stand in the three wards have now all been accepted, Our candidates (just names for people to put an X against if they want socialism) are:Isligton Junction ward: Bill MartinRichmond Barnes ward: Adam BuickSouthwark Borough & Bankside ward: Kevin ParkinThese are all in areas we contested in he Greater London Council elections in 2016.We won't know who our opponents are till after nominations close at noon on Friday. The election leaflet (based on the inserts we have been putting in national newspapers and magazines) will hopefully be delivered next Friday.
For the record, ex-comrade Gareth Thomas is standing for the Labour Party in the Coombe Vale ward of Kingston Council. The last time he stood in a local election was in Uplands ward in Swansea in 1987. In his manifesto he declared:
Quote:On May 7th you have a choice to make. You can vote Labour, Tory, Alliance, Plaid Cymru … or Socialist. The first four parties will be making promises. They'll be promising to fight for Singleton hospital, They'll be promising to keep rates down. They'll be promising to povide better local services, like pavements, schools and rubbish collection. And they'll all be blaming the othe parties for the things that aren't right. (…) The plain fact is that all these parties are committed to running a system where the single most important factor in decision-making at all levels is, and must be, "how much does it cost?" — profit takes priority and human needs come a poor second.And they're committed to running the system — because it can't be run in any other way — for the benefit of the smalll minority of people (about 10 per cent) who own most of the wealth of society and to whom the profit from the labour of the majority goes.Good suff but no doubt this time he'll be promising to fight for Kingston hospital, to keep the rates down ….
The list of candidates has now been publshed. In London the voting system is that there are 3 councillors per ward, with the first 3 past the post being elected. Electors can cast up to 3 votes (which must be for different candidates).In Islington Junction ward: it's a straight fight between us and 3 candidates each from the usual suspects (Tories, Labour, LibDems, Greens), making a total of 13 candidates.In Richmond Barnes ward: besides us there are 3 Tories, 3 Labourites, 2 LibDems and 1 Green (the Lib-Dems and Greens have formed an electoral pact), making 10 candidates in all.In Southwark Borough & Bankside ward: we're are up against 3 candidates each from the usual suspects plus 1 from the Women's Equality Party, a total of 14 candidatest
2018 London Borough Council Elections – 3 MayMANIFESTO – 8000 being delivered next Monday************************************************************EVER THOUGHT OF DOING IT YOURSELF?Our world contains massive resources —raw materials, systems of manufacture, communications technology, sophisticated transport. Enough to give everyone a comfortable and fulfilling life.It is also beset by perennial problems —constant war, never-ending poverty, economic and other kinds of insecurity. Life is becoming more and more commercialised and people are increasingly isolated from each other, with drug abuse and mental illness on the increase. The standard of living may have risen a little for some, but the quality of life deteriorates.Why don't we change our world so that we have the benefit of those resources without the problems?“How can we do that?”By holding the resources in common and using them directly to serve everyone's needs instead of just creating ever greater profits for a tiny minority. Genuine socialism – a moneyless society of free access to goods and services.“So, we vote you in and you create this wonderful world for us. Why should we trust you to do that?”Please don't, we can do absolutely nothing for you. (Ask yourself how many political parties are prepared to say that!) The new society can only be created when a majority of people like you actively decide to do so. You can use the Socialist Party as an instrument of democratic revolutionary change but you are yourselves in control of what happens.“Isn't this all fantasy politics? People are too selfish to put everything at risk for the sake of pie in the sky.”Stick to the case you know best – yourself. Are you too selfish to realise that your own interests can be advanced by making an alliance with others and pursuing joint interests? Are you not sufficiently open-minded to consider alternatives to our present social arrangements? Prove that you can do this by taking advantage of our offer of a free subscription to the Socialist Standard. Do it for yourself.“Hasn't all this been tried and shown not to work?”No. Small political minorities have tried concentrating resources in the hands of the state and just continued the profit system in another form. Instead, we are talking of a world where we all democratically decide how to use those resources directly for our own benefit.“This is all a long way off. In the meantime, shouldn't left-wing organisations sink their differences, defend working people against attacks on their living standards and eventually work towards a socialist society?”We all have to live in the here and now, but how far off socialism is depends on when people are prepared to take action to establish it. More than a century of attempts by the left to reform capitalism have shown that none of its major problems can be removed. So be clear about this: if you do nothing about socialism now, the meantime lasts forever. You will be putting off for all time the greatest advance that human society could ever make.IF NOT NOW, WHEN?************************************************************ISLINGTON JUNCTION:Bill MartinRICHMOND BARNES:Adam BuickSOUTHWARK BOROUGH AND BANKSIDE:Kevin Parkin
Hustings in SouthwarkWe have received one invitation to a hustings in Southwark and know of two others.The invitation is from the Southwark Pensioners Action Group from 10am to noon on Monday 23 April in the Crypt at St. Peter's Church, Liverpool Grove, Walworth, SE17 2HH.The other two are:Saturday 14 April 3pm to 5pm at Christ Church Peckham, 676-680 Old Kent Road, SE15 1JF on Planning & Regeneration, organised by Southwark Planning Network.Wednesday 18 April 7pm to 9pm at Bells Gardens Community Centre, 19 Buller Close, SE15 6UJ on Housing, organised by the Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations.As a pensioner and member of a tenants organisation our candidate, Kevin Parkin, happens to be overqualified to attend the ones on 18 and 23 April but, as a football fan, may find the one this Saturday afternoon difficult to fit into his calendar but should be able to get back in time for the Big Match.
Five comrades, including one visiting from New Zealand, were out in King Street, Hammersmith (just over the bridge from Barnes ward of Richmond where we are standing) last Saturday, running a street stall for a couple of hours. Nearby was a rival stall from the European Movement handing out anti-Brexit leaflets calling for another referendum. As our election leaflets won't be arriving until today we handed out the one "The problem is not the Tories … it's capitalism" which also has a tear-off freepost reply coupon. Must have given out 200-300. Two responses that day to Head Office by phone and email (well above par for the course). Also sold a couple of Socialist Standards and a couple of pamphlets. We don't know how many of the passers-by were from Barnes (not that it really matters), but we met a Green Party candidate standing in Chelsea & Kensington. Meanwhile in Peckham on the other side of London our candidate in Borough & Bankside ward of Southwark, Kevin Parkin, told a hustings on planning and regeneration there that the problem of houses left empty to speculate on rising prices existed in his area of the borough too and was a consequence of housing, like everything else under capitalism, being produced for profit not for use.
I wonder if the comrade from New Zealand could tell us more about the sort of broadcasts on Radio Imagine?
I won't be at conference, so can someone take the member of WSP(NZ) aside and badger him into contributing to the blog. Ply him with drink if you have to.
Hustings last week in Peckham, organised by the Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations, with speakers from Labour, LibDems, Greens and us. The Tories were invited but apparently are boycotting all hustings. About 40 people present. The main theme was housing, a major problem in Southwark due to demand for housing near the Thames with easy and quick access to central London driving up land prices, so making it profitable even for the council to encourage up-market housing projects proposed by developers. This has given rise to criticism of "social cleansing". In fact the hustings was filmed by someone making a film on the subject. Our candidate, Kevin Parkin, said that we had nothing against tenants association — he himself was vice-president of his local one — anymore than we were against trade unions; but they were only defensive organisations for workers under capitalism; the solution to problems workers faced could only be found within socialism; the housing problem, for instance, arose because under capitalism houses were built for profit. Councillor Peter John, the Labour Leader of the Council, conceded at one point that councils could only tinker with the problem as long as they had to rely on profit-seeking businesses to build houses; to get (so-called) "affordable housing" (80 percent of the market rate, still unaffordable for most people in an area of rising land prices) they had to do deals with developers which allowed these to make a profit. This is true. Having to provide social housing reduces their profits, so if pushed to provide too much the "developer" can simply walk away, resulting in no "affordable housing". Peter John said this could only be rectified by national legislation to allow councils to build houses themselves. This of course (though he didn't say so) would still involve paying money to capitalists as the money to finance this would have to be borrowed from the money market. The LibDem representative, Tim McNally, billed as "a former Councillor and Cabinet Member" was completely demagogic, promising to stand up to the developers and accusing Councillor John of being in bed with them, as if the LibDem/Tory coalition, of which he was a Cabinet Member, that had run the council from 2006 to 2010 hadn't had to behave in the same way. For instance, here is what a Tory former Cabinet Member of that coalition, the one in charge of Housing, Kim Humphries (now, incidentally, himself a Developer — the revolving door operates at local council level too), said at a hustings for the 2008 Greater London Assembly election in April 2008:Councillor Humphries was surprisingly honest. He was against having a quota of "affordable housing" in all new housing developments as this could sabotage such schemes. In other words, would reduce the profits of the developers who would take their money and invest it somewhere else where they could make a bigger profit.The Green representative wanted people to be nice to each other. The SWP were selling "Socialist Worker" outside the venue.
[Edit]Hustings last week in Peckham, organised by the Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations, with speakers from Labour, LibDems, Greens and us. The Tories were invited but apparently are boycotting all hustings. About 40 people present. The main theme was housing, a major problem in Southwark due to demand for housing near the Thames with easy and quick access to central London driving up land prices, so making it profitable even for the council to encourage up-market housing projects proposed by developers. This has given rise to criticism of "social cleansing". In fact the hustings was filmed by someone making a film on the subject. Our candidate, Kevin Parkin, said that we had nothing against tenants association — he himself was vice-president of his local one — anymore than we were against trade unions; but they were only defensive organisations for workers under capitalism; the solution to problems workers faced could only be found within socialism; the housing problem, for instance, arose because under capitalism houses were built for profit. Councillor Peter John, the Labour Leader of the Council, conceded at one point that councils could only tinker with the problem as long as they had to rely on profit-seeking businesses to build houses; to get (so-called) "affordable housing" (80 percent of the market rate, still unaffordable for most people in an area of rising land prices) they had to do deals with developers which allowed these to make a profit. This is true. Having to provide social housing reduces their profits, so if pushed to provide too much the "developer" can simply walk away, resulting in no "affordable housing". Peter John said this could only be rectified by national legislation to allow councils to build houses themselves. This of course (though he didn't say so) would still involve paying money to capitalists as the money to finance this would have to be borrowed from the money market. The LibDem representative, Tim McNally, billed as "a former Councillor and Cabinet Member" was completely demagogic, promising to stand up to the developers and accusing Councillor John of being in bed with them, as if the LibDem/Tory coalition, of which he was a Cabinet Member, that had run the council from 2006 to 2010 hadn't had to behave in the same way. For instance, here is what a Tory former Cabinet Member of that coalition, the one in charge of Housing, Kim Humphries (now, incidentally, himself a Developer — the revolving door operates at local council level too), said at a hustings for the 2008 Greater London Assembly election in April 2008:
Quote:Councillor Humphries was surprisingly honest. He was against having a quota of "affordable housing" in all new housing developments as this could sabotage such schemes. In other words, would reduce the profits of the developers who would take their money and invest it somewhere else where they could make a bigger profit.The Green representative wanted people to be nice to each other. The SWP were selling "Socialist Worker" outside the venue.
From yesterday's Southwark News:https://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/local-election-2018-socialist-party-of-great-britains-kevin-parkin-says-southwarks-problems-cant-be-solved-by-capitalism/As they say, it's the case not the face.
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