General Election – Campaign News
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Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, one of the constituencies we will be contesting in the General Election, is apparently struggling "to rise above Green Party Brighton woes".http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/caroline-lucas-struggles-to-rise-above-green-partys-brighton-woes-9880649.html
Not even a pic of SPEW but of Kshama Sawant, elected to Seattle city council, member of the CWI's American wing Socialist Organizer.
Here's something about which of our opponents will and won't be standing in Brighton (from here):
Quote:Brighton is an unusual situation for two reasons. Firstly, the entire council is re-elected every 4 years, rather than the rolling programme that exists in most areas. We are also the only city in the country with a Green M.P and a council in which the Greens are the largest single partyNobody on the left that I'm aware of is suggesting standing agamst Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion. Here is a an M.P. who has: turned up to picket lines to support striking Cityclean workers in dispute with the Green council, fought plans for Hove Park school to become an academy, been arrested on an anti-fracking protest and spoken at a rally of striking teachers.The situation in Brighton Kemptown is complicated for several reasons. We understand that the local RMT branch is supporting the Labour Candidate as she has made a commitment to highlight the call for the renationatisation of the railways in her literature. As Clive Heemskerk made clear at the recent TUSC meeting in Brighton, this wouldn't necessarily lead to a veto from the RMT nationally but would mean the local RMT branch couldn't support the campaign.Brighton Kemptown is also a Tory marginal, with a local poll published in October showing Labour on 37% and the Tones on 33%. Were TUSC to secure say 5%of the vote and the Tories were to squeeze in then this would give ammunition to those within the RMT who want to withdraw their support for TUSC. My personal view is that experience suggests a strong left challenge actually bolsters Labours vote by raising the political temperature and cutting across the drift of disaffected voters towards UKIP and the right.The other complication in Brighton Kemptown is that the Green candidate, Davey Jones, is a founder of Red Pepper, supports BDS in Brighton and has signed the local anti -austerity pledge. Supporters of the SWP at the TUSC meeting argued against standing in Kemplown for a variety of reasons, including that 'Davey Jones wants to be the next Caroline Lucas'. I argued for standing, as did the majority of the meeting, but a decision on whether or not to stand was deferred until February.Finally there is Hove. All three Brighton seats are on Labour's list of key marginals but opinion polls suggest Hove is their most likely gain. Both Labour and the Greens have selected candidates for Hove that are from the right and the meeting decided unanimously to stand in Hove at the general election. Outsiders might think Hove is all leafy suburbs and retired colonels but there are large working class estates and socially deprived areas behind the beautiful primrose coloured regency seafront with which visitors will be familiar.The meeting also decided, subject to sufficient candidates being available, that TUSC would stand in every ward. This ought to be possible without standing against anyone who has signed an anti-austerity pledgeInteresting that the SPEW people don't want to antagonise the RMT for fear of losing funding while the SWP appear soft on the Greens. We are not standing in Hove but they (TUSC) are.
Information about all of our candidates was sent to yournextmp@society.org together with a variety of links. This information, apart from candidates' names and constituencies, was subsequently removed by the site because the links were not deemed to be "candidate specific".When I restored the deleted information I received this email:
Quote:I'm an admin on yournextmp.com and am emailing to thank you for your contributions in adding all the SPGB candidates. I'd also like to inform you about some of the changes I made to your revisions and why I made them. I previously removed the general party links (e.g. the SPGB wikipedia page, the SPGB email address) from the candidates you added as these aren't candidate specific. Since the intention of the database is to give the personal details of candidates, these are inappropriate. Don't worry about people not being able to find the information — we'll eventually have additional general party links for everyone of a particular party, in addition to their personal links. So in summary, thanks for your contributions, but please contact us rather than reverting edits if you disagree! It's not good for anyone if people engage in edit wars.to which I responded:
Quote:We're extremely disappointed that you've felt the need to remove every piece of information except the candidates' names and constituencies they'll be contesting. Surely at the very least you could have retained the link to our website. The SPGB is unlike all other political parties insofar as it places ideas and policies above personalities which is just one of the reasons why the party has never had a leader in his entire history (it's the second oldest extant political party in the country) and why we rarely, if ever, publish photographs of individual members. As we always say: "it's the case, not the face, that matters". On the latter issue we requested that our logo appear (file attached) instead of our candidates photographs and your colleague RichCBury appeared to be in agreement with this idea and was sent an image of our current logo which will be appearing on General Election ballot papers. It has yet to appear. We're sure you'd agree with us that it's of vital importance that unfettered dissemination of information be permitted within a democratic society.Dave CheshamElection AgentSPGB Brighton ConstituenciesReply to my response above:
Quote:As I explained, the candidate profiles are for candidate-specific information. Party links will be available on party profiles when they are made available. However, for now, the task of gathering all the candidate-specific information is the biggest and most important. This effort will allow us to showcase candidates from all parties to voters, including smaller parties such as your own, which I think is a big improvement in the dissemination of information within our democratic society. Having discussed using the party logo as the candidate photos with my colleagues, including Richard, we have decided that for the purpose of building our database, only actual photos of the candidates should be added as the candidate photo, as it doesn't make sense to add a party logo as the picture of someone's face! However, this is more of a technical database-design issue than a philosophical disagreement between us. I imagine that in any eventual usage of the site, should a candidate photo be missing, we will automatically use the party logo instead. We actually currently possess the party logos from the Electoral Commission but don't yet display them — so I've added this as a new feature idea to our current list. This will have the effect you desire, so I hope this is satisfactory. These policies apply to all candidates and parties. Thanks for emailing, it's useful to be able to discuss these issues.Comment published on a recent letter in the Oxford Mail:http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/yoursay/letters/11712139.General_Election__Why_my_party_is_a_contender/
Quote:Danny Dorling may be interested that another "minor party" candidate will be standing in Oxford West & Abingdon, Mike Foster for the Socialist Party, and with a much more radical programme than the National Health Action Party: not just a free health service but a free access society.We are also preparing a leaflet to be entitled "Why Danny Dorling should support socialism".See articles and reviews of his books in the Socialist Standard:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2006/no-1219-march-2006/here%E2%80%99s-successhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2006/no-1220-april-2006/letters (scroll down to his letter)http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2011/no-1282-june-2011/book-reviews-venezuela-revolution-spectacle-injustic (scroll down to review of this book).
Our candidate in Oxford West & Abingdon has received the following invitation:
Quote:Dear SPGB. Over the weekend 7/8 March, people living in Cumnor are organising a clean up on the roads in our area. This is an annual event and this year we propose to invite all the candidates standing in the General Election in May 2015 to participate. I have been asked to get in touch with all the candidates and I wondered if you could give me the email address for Mr Mike Foster who I understand will be the Socialist Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon.As we say that it's the "case not the face" that counts, maybe he can plead this and some other member go along.
A meeting of the Election 2015 Strategy Outreach Department has been planned for Sunday, 15th February and be held, starting at 12 noon, at Head Office, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.The meeting will specifically focus on the party's plans to contest ten Parliamentary Constituencies in the General Election scheduled for Thursday, 7th May. It will also consider the viability of standing candidates in local elections. The agenda will include the following topics:1. Constituencies, 2. Candidates, 3. Agents, 4. Key Theme, 5. Manifesto, 6. Media, 7. Advertising, 8. Meetings, 9. Rest of the country, 10. Election FundThis will be the largest UK Parliamentary election campaign undertaken by The Socialist Party since it first stood a candidate in the historic 1945 General Election.
A bit early, but we've received our first invitation to a hustings. The vicar of Botley, a subsurb of Oxford just outside the city limits, has invited our candidate in Oxford West & Abingdon, Mike Foster, to one at a date yet to be fixed.
Dear Comrades Candidates/Speakers Presentation Skills Training at Head Office Saturday 28th February 2015 – 10:30am to 4pm – 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN There is an opportunity for prospective Party candidates and speakers to receive some free training. This event is to be facilitated by Howard Pilott who as well as being SPGB prospective parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion, is an experienced trainer in this field. There will be an opportunity to be filmed making a presentation and to receive feedback. The full programe for the day will be available later. Please let me know as soon as possible if you are interested in attending this event, as places will be limited. Contact me by email at spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org If you would just like more information or are unable to attend but you think you could benefit from some training or support in this area I would still like to hear from you. NB I apologise if you already received this message – I thought I had sent it out on Thursday but it seems to have got lost.
Oxford West seems to be the place. We've received a third invitation for our candidate there. This time to speak on a Sunday evening at a meeting in St Margarets Institute, Polstead Road, in North Oxford. The organisers are inviting all seven candidates declared so far (Tory, Liberal, Labour, UKIP, Green, National Health Action Party and us) to speak on their own and answer questions. The first, with the National Health Action Party candidate, is this evening:http://www.smi-oxford.org.uk/editor/content/upload/The%20Sunday%20Politics%20Helen%20Salisbury.pdfWatch this space for when our candidate, Mike Foster, will be the speaker.Meanwhile, elsewhere in Oxford, we have begun distributing a leaflet announcing that we are standing in both Oxford constituencies. Here's what it says:
Quote:The General Election: We will be standing hereIn both Oxford East and Oxford West & Abingdon.We are standing to raise the issue of the need to end capitalism and replace it with a system geared to meeting people’s needs rather than to making profits for the few. We want a world cooperative society where wealth is produced and owned in common and freely shared according to need. A classless democratic society where decisions are made for the common good rather than to benefit vested business interests.Tinkering around with the present system trying to fix it has been tried for years but the same problems remain and for the same reason: capitalism is a profit-driven system where making profits takes, and has to take, priority over meeting people’s needs and safeguarding the environment. No government can change this. What is required is a complete Revolution to get rid of capitalism altogether. We will be standing for that and nothing else.Our candidates will be Kevin Parkin in Oxford East and Mike Foster in Oxford West & Abingdon.The next occasion to distribute this will be on Thursday 5 February when the leader of the French Front National, Marine Le Pen, is due to speak at the Oxford Union Debating Society and the "No Platform for Fascists" lot have organised a demonstration to try to stop her speaking.
ALB wrote:Oxford West seems to be the place. We've received a third invitation for our candidate there. This time to speak on a Sunday evening at a meeting in St Margarets Institute, Polstead Road, in North Oxford. The organisers are inviting all seven candidates declared so far (Tory, Liberal, Labour, UKIP, Green, National Health Action Party and us) to speak on their own and answer questions. The first, with the National Health Action Party candidate, is this evening:http://www.smi-oxford.org.uk/editor/content/upload/The%20Sunday%20Politics%20Helen%20Salisbury.pdfWatch this space for when our candidate, Mike Foster, will be the speaker.It's earlier than expected — this Sunday, 8 February at 8pm.For more details see:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/meet-socialist-candidate-oxford-west-8pm
Pleased to confirm I've arranged debates with the Greens and UKIP for the first Mondays in March and April in Swansea. Details to follow.
Re- the clean up – I see as an ideal opportunity to distribute various reprints of "Who will do the dirty work in socialism" articles and would suggest Mike views it as indeed a different form of hustings where many participants will be asking one-to one questions or eavesdropping on the answers given by the candidate and indeed take up the challenge. And with any hustings i expect other members of the party to attend and assist him.
A letter published on Fri 30th of Jan, in the Sunderland Echo, under the title; Socialism not the same as Labour.G Whitter, Echo Thurs 22nd Jan, is the latest correspondent to the Letters Pages of the Echo to misrepresent what "Socialism" really is.It isn't Nationalisation, nor can it be placed, or enacted within the boundaries of a single country. Socialism is and can only exist, within a world wide framework, to replace world wide Capitalism. It is a system of society, where what is produced, will be produced for direct "human use", not as at present, to be bought and sold for profit, for the benefit of a few.The means and instruments for producing what we, as humans need, will be owned by "us all" in common and as we all freely contribute to this production, we will all freely take of the resultant bounty.The above can be best summed up by the quote " 'From' each according to 'ability', 'to' each according to 'need' ".None of the above, nor indeed the many other ideas which encompass the Socialist ethos, can be linked in any way, shape or form to Labour, nor countries such as China, Cuba, N.Korea, nor indeed the old USSR. These were and are, supporters of Capitalism and share the classic indicators of the same.Just because some place false large ears and a trunk on an dog, it does not make it an Elephant. If it barks like a dog and growls like a dog, I've found it invariably is a dog!A lesson G. Whitter, J. Watson, M. Brown et al would do well to heed!!! Steve Colborn. Prospective Parliamentary Candidate,The Socialist Party.
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