Our 2025 local election campaign
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This year there are county council elections in England, on Thursday 1 May.
County councils run certain services in the historic counties outside any large cities there. Some of these elections have been suspended while the Labour government introduces the undemocratic mayor-system instead.
We are contesting 2 seats for Kent CC, in Folkestone as on previous occasions, and 1 for Gloucestershire CC, in Stroud for the first time.
There is also a council by-election taking place in London, in Lambeth, the same day.
The nomination papers of our 4 candidates have all been handed in and accepted. We won’t know exactly who are opponents are till after nominations close on Wednesday. But we do know already that in Stroud one of them will be TUSC, the reformist outfit masquerading as socialist.
Here is the official list of candidates standing in Stroud Central of Gloucestershire County Council. As can be seen, we are up against the usual suspects plus TUSC.
https://www.stroud.gov.uk/media/pwdaal4v/stroud-central-division.pdf
Here is the official list of candidates standing in the local by-election in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction ward of Lambeth Council in London. As can be seen, here too we are up against the usual suspects and TUSC:
Here’s the official list of candidates standing in Folkestone West and Folkestone East of Kent County Council.
The Homeland Party appears to be a fascistic party, according to Wikipedia;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Party_(United_Kingdom)
We were outside Herne Hill overground station this morning distributing leaflets and back copies of the Socialist Standard to make our presence known.
This is going to be a hotly contested election between Labour and the Greens (who once had a councillor elected for the ward) and so should attract some local publicity.
The Labour people have already been out distributing leaflets.
County councils run certain services in the historic counties outside any large cities there. Some of these elections have been suspended while the Labour government introduces the undemocratic mayor-system instead.
that’s interesting. i don’t keep up with bourgeois politics but the slaver party’s getting in more gauleiters? bit like them police commissioners innit. no one votes in the election and the guy that’s elected is some random nonce with no power. the police then rape and murder whoever they want. but “democratic control”.
Local online news site comments on the by-election in Lambeth:
The Green Oarty candidate in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction has launched his campaign. He is promising cleaner air but has stopped short of promising more sunshine:
The 3000 leaflets for distribution in the Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction local by-election in London arrived from the printers yesterday. Here is what it says.
Real change, not damage limitation
Fellow workers
They call it democracy but it’s nothing of the sort.
Labour didn’t even want this by-election. They’d rather stitch it up behind closed doors than face a real challenge. This isn’t about serving the people, it’s about protecting their grip on power. Councillors are parachuted in, selections are stage-managed, and decisions are made long before you ever see a ballot paper.
Meanwhile, rents rise, wages stagnate, benefits are cut, food banks multiply and estates are handed over to developers. Labour’s record in Lambeth is clear enough.
Now they ask for your vote again. So do the Greens, Lib Dems and others who promise change but only offer better management of a system built on exploitation. They won’t end your problems. They won’t challenge the class system. They won’t stop capitalism — they serve it.
No confidence in their system. No votes for our bosses’ parties. Until we end capitalism, nothing changes.
That’s why the Socialist Party is standing in this election. Not for tweaks or token reforms, but for real change. Common ownership, democratic control, production for need not profit.
If you want that, you can show it by voting for the Socialist candidate, Adam Buick.
Promoted and publish by Mark Hutton on behalf of Adam Buick, both at 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.
The leaflet for the Gloucestershire County Council Election arrived yesterday and the first delivery took place this morning (~350). The text reads:
This might be the last Gloucestershire County Council Election. The government seems intent on reorganising the County and District Councils. This will result in fewer representatives and a concentration of strategic power in the hands of a regional Mayor.
This is democracy in the capitalist system: a choice between candidates for office with only marginally different sets of policies. Once elected those in office can tinker with the system but not the rules of capitalism: those without wealth are beholden to those who do, profit comes first not human needs, and can’t pay – can’t have.
But what can we do? Unlike the architects of local government devolution, Socialists believe not that there is too much democracy, but that there isn’t enough. The rules of capitalism have not been in place for all of human history and we don’t need them in future. Getting rid of the rules of capitalism and creating a real democratic future can’t be brought about from above. It has to come from a majority of people.
You can show support for real democracy, socialism, by voting for the Socialist Party of Great Britain on May 1st.
Socialism is a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society or, a democracy in which free and socially equal men and women co-operate to produce the things they need to live and enjoy life, to which they have free access: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.
The Socialist Party is like no other political party in Britain. It is made up of people who have joined together because we want to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism.
Our aim is to encourage others to become socialist and act for themselves, organising democratically and without leaders, to bring about the kind of society that we advocate.
We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not a reformist party with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.
If elected, Piers Hobson will work for socialism at every opportunity, vote on issues according to the democratic decisions of his branch of the Socialist Party and always be for socialism and nothing else.
Promoted by Piers Hobson of 63 Ben Grazebrooks Well, Stroud, GL5 1DL.
Here is the wording of the leaflet for the two electoral divisions we are contesting in Folkestone. 20,000 have been printed, 15,000 for distributed by a commercial firm and 5,000 by members.
Human Needs or Profit first?
We live in an economic system, capitalism, that ensures nothing gets built or created unless someone, somewhere expects to make a handsome profit. Human needs come very much second.
That is why Folkestone’s stunning harbour is going to be submerged in ugly blocks of concrete and glass. They are built, not for the needs of local people, but to make a profit for the developers and the owners of the land. No surprise there. That is how capitalism works.
All around us everything crumbles, from schools to libraries and social services, even as the vast wealth of a tiny minority continues to increase. And this will go on so long as we keep voting for political parties which think this absurd and cruel system can be reformed.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain has for the last 120 years advocated a quite different society built on the common, democratic ownership of the planet and its resources. A society in which every one of us gets to participate in decisions like the building of new houses, the planting of crops, how we get our energy. A truly human society where sustainable decisions are made based on human needs and the need to maintain a healthy planet.
At current levels of science and technology the earth can easily provide an abundance of resources for everyone to live a happy and fulfilled life. Then there will be no need to artificially ration the necessities of life with money. We will contribute our physical and mental labour freely and take freely from the common store.
That will need a world revolution. And every revolution starts somewhere. Why not Folkestone?
If you agree VOTE SOCIALIST.
Promoted by Robert Cox on behalf of Andy Thomas and Max Hess, all at 74 Linden Crescent, Folkestone CT19 5SB
Another batch of leaflets (~450) delivered in Stroud today. And all the Newsquest-owned local papers have reproduced the same article listing all the candidates in the county – so lots more people can see we are standing than just those in one ward.
Some 1200 leaflets have been distributed door to door so far in Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction ward. We only ordered 3000 but it looks as if this might not be enough to cover the whole ward.
Apart from us, only Labour and Greens have been leafletting.
Pictures spotted in an advice centre on Railton Road of CLR James (the Trotskyist from Trinidad who came to see Russia as state capitalist) and also of the much more famous Winifred Atwell. Railton Road between Effra Parade and Chaucher Road is literally where 1981 Brixton Riots stated and is (just) in the ward. The people living there now have been leafleted.
The Brixton Riots and Winifred Atwell – The Amazing Honky Tonk Woman
https://www.guidetags.com/mindmaps/explore/3049-brixton-riots-railton-road
Half a dozen Green Party window posters also spotted; which confirms that they are making a big effort to win here (where they once had councillors). They may well given the situation the Labour Party is in.
Not that the Greens would have fared any better had they been the government. The only difference would have been that they would have been forced by “economic headwinds” to do bigger U-turns since their promises to reform capitalism for the better are more extravagant than Labour’s.
The fact is that no government can make capitalism work to benefit the majority. All governments that try are bound to fail. That’s why socialism, as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, is the only way out.
More leaflets distributed today in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction. More Green Party window posters spotted. Also, the SWP, in the form of Stand Up to Racism, has made an intervention in the election, putting a leaflet through letter boxes in Railton Road saying “Reform UK is a racist party. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is a danger to us all. Don’t vote for it”. Which is more than Reform UK is doing. Not their territory really.
More leaflets distributed in Gloucestershire today. This time in the area around the former Stroud Workhouse, a large building on top of a hill. It was built to house 500 persons in what was early-stage capitalism’s version of “social care”.
This was the very place Laurie Lee described in Cider With Rosie: “grey shadow falling on the close of life, most feared by the old, abhorred more than debt, or prison, or beggary, or even the stain of madness”.
One of the Party’s early members grew up in a nearby village in full view of the imposing Stroud Workhouse: Ted Ford.
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