Another local by-election in Lambeth
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I'd opt for World Socialist Movement for the Euro elections. And i would concentrate our propaganda on breaking down the walls of the EU Fortress – that pro-EU are just replacing one nationalism with another.World Socialist Party (EU) may imply that we support the EU as a stepping stone to a world government, World Socialist Party(GB) should have been (GB Section)
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. Let’s take to the streets to demand that councilsbecome 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.Bill M.
Revolution cafe Here’s the suitably-named cafe where we were planning to meet recently. Meanwhile the Brixtonblog has published the list of candidates here. Don’t know if they’ll be organising a hustings as for the last two Lambeth council by-elections. Most of Vassall is in Brixton but outside their area. We’ll see.
CLR James and socialism All the letterboxes we can get to have been leafletted. Only gated communities have been left out. We’re not too worried about the snooty ones but some are council properties. We’re working on a way to access them. No election activity on Brixton High Road yesterday. The Militant stall did not even have copies of their election leaflet. We might do a stall there ourselves next Saturday. The Vassall ward Labour Party has published the list of candidates on their site. Gratifying to see us referred to as the Socialist Party as on the front of our offices in Clapham High Street, but no doubt annoying to those who have attempted to usurp our name and claim that the “Socialist Party” supports the TUSC candidate. According to the Brixtonblog, a meeting to launch research on the life of CLR James is to be held at the Oval cricket ground on Saturday 23 November. This is just outside the ward, but we would be going anyway as James is an interesting person. A Trotskyist in the 1930s he came round to the view in the 1940s that Russia was a form of state capitalism, i.e not socialist nor (as our TUSC opponent still maintains it was) a “Workers State”. In view of the fact that he looked forward, eventually (in full communism), to a society in which money would not be necessary it was a travesty that his picture should have appeared on the now virtually-defunct and always pointless Brixton pound. The authorities are obviously trying to promote him as a role model for black people, but this could backfire on them as his life can also be used to get a word in on socialist ideas. That’s why we’ll be at the meeting on 23 November.
Voting begins …. Those that applied for postal votes for #vassall ward by-election, you should have rec’d by now, pls send back before 28th (election day)So Says the Lambeth Democracy Team. So, if you’ve got your ballot paper in front of you, and you’ve come here to check us out after reading our leaflet: “Hello!” This is your chance to make history: you can start a revolution. No leader can do it for you. You have an awesome weapon in your hands. Just use it: refuse to give your consent to parties that will allow the status quo to continue. Vote for yourself: vote socialism. (Also, today is the deadline for applying for proxy votes, so you can ask someone else to vote for you for a change…)*************************************************************************…. and continues The Returning Officer has just informed candidates and agents:We sent out just over 1,000 postal votes and around 300 have been returned so far. Hopefully we’ll receive at least double that number by this time next week.Don’t know if they will but, if they do, that would be a 60 percent turnout of postal voters. As the turnout of the other 9000 or so electors cannot be expected to be much more than 20 percent, this means that over 40 percent of those who vote will be postal voters. A bit worrying from one point of view because the election campaign still has a week to go. Having distributed most of our leaflets there’s not much to do, though we did see the Tory candidate canvassing in Vassall Road the other day when we managed get into one of the gated communities to distribute our leaflet. Next activity (weather permitting and at the moment it doesn’t look as if it will) will be a stall on Saturday morning in Brixton High Road as near as we can get to the exit from Brixton tube station.
A bit of local history I don’t want to turn this into a local history blog, but since nothing much else is happening at the moment. By coincidence the latest issue of the William Morris Society Newsletter just out has an article on “Susan Minet — Saviour of Kelmscott Manor?” Apparently she made a substantial donation which prevented Kelmscott Manor having to be sold off. The name “Minet” rings a bell as there’s a “Minet Library” in Knatchbull Road. It is the same family. According to the article, the Minet family were Huguenot refugees from Catholic France who made their money by buying freehold land in Camberwell (and elsewhere) in the 18th which soared in value as London expanded. This enabled the Minet family to be philanthropists and they build a model estate in Camberwell (this part of Vassall ward has an SE5 postcode). The article quotes a report from the 1890s when they were built describing some of the buildings on this estate:two five-storey blocks of apartmentss which have decorative steeped gables and exotic fluted chimneys. Richly clad with invy, they appear freshingly human compared with others of the period outside the Estate and are democratically given a prime location overlooking the parks.These are the buildings on Cormont Road facing Myatt’s Fields park. They were sold to Lambeth Council in 1968. The article says of the buildings that “Morris would surely have approved!” Actually, he surely wouldn’t have as they’re the sort of ornate mock-Gothic buildings he used to rail against. Our objection is different: they don’t have any outside letterboxes and the 230 or so residents have still not received our leaflet. While on local history, not far away is Burton Road where John Major, the new champion of the “genteel poor” (from which he came) and scourge of the toffs who make up most of the Tory cabinet ministers, used to live. But there’s no blue plaque there to mark the house.ALB
Interesting factoids London by-elections since 2010: Holds – Lab 32, Con 26, LD 6. Causes of by-elections: death 19, resignation 49, disqualification 5.London by-election gains since 2010: Lab 3 in Barnet, Islington, Lewisham; Con 1 in Kingston; LD 1 in K&C; UKIP 1 in Havering, Ind 2 elsewhere. Next week’s by-election in Vassall ward in LB Lambeth will be the 73rd and last since the 2010 London Borough elections. Only 8 saw gains.Clearly people don’t change their minds readily. But when they do, they can move mountains.
Yesterday in Brixton As it was sunny we went ahead with the stall outside Brixton station yesterday. This is the place to be on a Saturday for leafletting. Amongst our rivals were Roman Catholics giving away free rosary beads, people giving out leaflets for “The End of the World Spectacular”, Mr Kajali and Mr Moussa both claiming to be “from birth a gifted African spiritual healer and advisor” promising 100% guaranteed results for “problems concerning black magic, love voodoo, sexual impotency, business transactions, exams & court cases” (for a fee of course). Also competing were people paid to hand leaflets for some business, in this case a local gym but it could have been Specsavers. Among the more rational were protesters against selling the main Lambeth College building on Brixton Hill to property speculators (one of them said he thought he had once voted for us), two young women campaigning against female genital mutilation (they said they didn’t want to attack the culture of those who did this; we told them they should; they gave us a cup cake), and “Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism” who seem to be propagandists for leftwing governments in Latin America especially Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Absent were the Spanish-language pentecostals and Militant who are usually there. We imagine Militant were all out distributing their election leaflets which seem to have arrived late. We sold a couple of our pamplet on Marxian economics and gave away our leaflets for an-hour-and-a-half. Also met a comrade out shopping. It’s a small world. On the way to the CLR James meeting at the Oval cricket pavilion in the afternoon, we managed to gain access to some closed buildings by following a Labour canvasser. At first he thought we were TUSC but then realised who we were, saying “You’re the people who want to get rid of money and let people take what they need”. Well, yes, more or less. The Labour Party seem to be pulling out the stops. We’ve seen at least 5 different leaflets they’ve put out. One of their promises is that, if they win the next election, they’ll overturn the Bedroom Tax. We’ll see. As the Labour candidate said in one of his leaflets:In past campaigns I’ve met people who told me that there wasn’t much difference between the main parties.So have we, and they’re right. At the CLR James meeting much of it was about English literature and what books should be studied at school and university. The organisers did not present James as a black role model but the opposite: as somebody who believed in universal values. Not black or any other identity but human identity. Some in the audience didn’t approve of this approach and didn’t clap all the speakers. His widow, Selma James, said he held that “Every Cook Can Govern”. This comes from Lenin (though he relegated this to the distant future; in the meantime the Single Vanguard Should Govern). James, it appears, took it more literally. His widow in fact presented it in the way our candidate likes to. She said it didn’t mean that “ordinary” people could govern since every individual was “extraordinary”; what he was advocating was collective action by these extraordinary individuals to change society and then run it. But she then spoilt it by saying that he was a leader. His writings on state capitalism in Russia, as well as those on cricket and his book on the slave uprising in Haiti during the French Revolution, The Black Jacobins. One of the speakers (Kenon Malik) described this as the first recorded successful slave uprising in history. I suppose it was. Must read the book. It’s in our library. The Oval is a few streets away to the north-west of the ward. Meanwhile a couple of streets to the south of the ward police were asking locals about the alleged case of slavery. They say it resulted from once commonly-held political ideas. It will be interesting to see what these were.ALB
From our archives Although Peckford Place is not in the ward, it’s only a few streets away. So here’s an old leaflet (see below) from the Maoist cult that is said to be lodged there.Needless to say (for our followers here, though not for the mainstream media), Maoism has nothing to do with either Marxism or socialism. It was the ideology of the state capitalist rulers of China. Based on leader-worship it is completely repugnant to socialists. We envisage socialism as a society of free and equal men and women based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production that can only be established by the democratic action of people who want and understand it. Only sheep need leaders. We put our money where our mouth is. In the Lambeth Central by-election in April 1978 they were amongst our ten opponents. We got 91 votes. They (standing as the South London People’s Front) got 38. Our TUSC opponents in this by-election, on the other hand, see China as some sort of “deformed Workers’ State”. Deformed, yes, but apart from that it’s just capitalist as everybody can see now. In the meantime a volunteer has come forward to help us access the blocks of flats in Cormont Road, so these will be leafletted this evening. Better late than never. Also the Brixtonblog have asked for a 300-word statement. More on this later.
Revolution the only solution The Brixtonblog has just put up our candidate’s 300-word statement. Scroll down through the reformist promises of the other candidates here.For those who’ve heard it all before from the other parties, here’s the socialist message from Danny Lambert:”In that interview with Paxman, Russell Brand called for a revolution against the present system of elite rule and neglect of people’s needs. I agree. But no more than Brand’s is our idea of revolution one of riots, barricades and blood on the streets. It’s about a complete change in the basis of society. From the present minority class ownership and production for profit to common ownership, democratic control and production to meet people’s needs. The present system can never be reformed to work in the interest of the majority. All the other candidates disagree and are promising to reform it in one way or another. But reform has been tried many times and look where we still are. The present system can only work by putting profits before people. That’s why, faced with an economic crisis, the government has been reducing services and cutting benefits. And why local councils have been forced to do the same. It’s to leave businesses with more profit in the hope that this will lead them to start expanding again. That’s how capitalism works and can only work. I make no apology for raising this in a local election. It’s not what local councils, or even national governments, do that shapes how we live. It’s the economic system. And that’s what got to be changed. Brand says we shouldn’t vote. I agree we shouldn’t vote for parties that are out to run the system. I don’t either. But we shouldn’t allow them a free run. That’s why the Socialist Party is contesting this election. To give people a chance to show they want an essentially peaceful democratic majority revolution to replace capitalism with a system in which productive resources have become the common heritage of all to be used for the benefit of all.”
The last leaflets Finally managed to get yesterday evening into the flats in Cormont Road and to distribute our leaflets to the occupants, with the help of a non-member volunteer. He particularly wanted TUSC to do badly. It appears that their tactic of trying to hi-jack other struggles really puts some people off. Anyway, that’s virtually the whole ward covered by 4,500 or so leaflets.Came across some TUSC leaflets for the first time, on the ground. Also a Liberal leaflet in red and giving the impression of a being a leftwing Labour one critical of the Labour-controlled Council. As we know, the main parties play dirty in their scramble for votes.Not seen any Green activity, but their candidate does make a valid point in her statement on the Brixtonblog about Labour’s claim to have frozen Council Tax for everybody:freezing council tax for the wealthiest while taking away council tax benefit from those who earn the least,This is a reference to the fact that Council Tax Benefit has been reduced for those under pension age on other benefits, meaning that they have to pay some Council Tax whereas they didn’t before. One of the cuts imposed on local councils by the government, imposed in turn on them by the economic crisis and the need to reduce spending and so taxes on profits. Nothing more to do before the count tomorrow after the polls close at 10pm. Three of us will be there.
alanjjohnstone wrote:All the best and well done for all the effort put in.ditto
Official result here (Lambeth Council are quick off the mark):http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/moderngov/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=106&RPID=19407432
ALB wrote:Official result here (Lambeth Council are quick off the mark):http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/moderngov/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=106&RPID=19407432Interesting factoids. Turnout just under 19% (must be something of a record) and almost half the votes cast were postal ones.There were 11618 electors, of whom 2206 voted, i.e a mere 19% or less than 1 in 5. In other words, a massive 81% abstained. This must represent a feeling (justified) that it doesn't make much difference who you vote for or which party runs the council things will be the same. As predicted Labour won easily. Of the three council by-elections in Lambeth over the last year, this represents the best result for UKIP and the worst for TUSC. It confirms (for what it's worth, which is probably not much) that the "left of Labour" vote in Lambeth divides 2 to 1 between TUSC and us. Which puts them in the same league as us rather than as any sort of challenger to the Labour Party. The new Left Party that is to be founded tomorrow in Bloomsbury should also bear this in mind. They are unlikely to do much better if that. In any event, we'll carry on putting the straight case for socialism without making any election promises or proposals to try to reform capitalism. Three of us went to the count (which was over by 11.30). The Tories told us that their canvassers came across 8 people who said they were going to vote for us. Most of them may well not have gone to vote in the end but at least, after reading our "Revolution the only solution" leaflet, they were prepared to tell canvassers that they wanted to get rid of the whole present system. The next local elections will be the full borough elections on 22 May next year. We'll probably have a couple of candidates in Lambeth.
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