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Photo from the Herne Hill hustings;
Candidates now making final short speeches.
Thanks to all of them for putting themselves forward, and for attending tonight.
Thank you also to everyone for participating so positively.
A great community event. pic.twitter.com/vYjd7dZwIx
— Herne Hill Forum (@hernehillforum) April 24, 2024
When did we ever describe workers as citizens? We have always called them subjects. I remember us ridiculing Tony Benn’s suggestions that, if the head of state was elected, that would transform workers from subjects into citizens.
There is nothing to return to as we never departed from calling workers subjects (of some state or other).
This article by Hugo Rifkind well describes the situation between “secular Jews” and the religious Jews represented by the Board of Jewish Deputies (who led the campaign to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and are now gunning for the London police chief).
The person at the centre of the controversy turns out not to have been a Jewish person returning from a synagogue but the leader of the “Campaign against Anti-Semitism” who set out to provoke an incident and did so probably even beyond his own expectations.
Ban the marches & Jews will get the blame
“For all the tin-eared idiocy of the Met, antisemitism is not a policing problem. It is a social one. Notice it, worry about it, counter it… have a care, all the while, not to make it worse” @hugorifkindhttps://t.co/BcBK5xZ5Mp
— Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) April 23, 2024
“We’ll be the most pro-business government ever, vows Reeves” is the headline across two pages in today’s Times.
More pro-business than Gladstone in the 19th century, the Tory governments of the 1920s, or Madame Thatcher in the 1980s? That would be some achievement but the incoming Labour government is clearly intending to have a go.
The actual quote, for future reference and for throwing at Labourites and those who say we should vote Labour (it’s from an interview with the Times) is:
If I become chancellor, the next Labour government is going to be the most pro-business government this country has ever seen.
Never has Labour’s intention to govern in the interest of the capitalist class been so openly and unashamedly proclaimed.
Lesser evil? What lesser evil?
Full house of over a hundred at the hustings in Herne Hill last night. Over 70 leaflets handed out. Also leafletting outside the meeting were the Women’s Rights Network with a leaflet insisting that “women are defined by biological sex NOT by chosen gender identity” presumably aimed at the Green Party whose candidate for Mayor has aggressively taken the other side in this “culture war”. And a group of social housing tenants threatened with eviction by Lambeth’s Labour Council which they say they are going to resist.
No show by the Reform-UK candidate but the reformist position was ably represented by the Labour, Green, LibDem and Tory candidates. Questions about housing, crime, air pollution, buses and other problems of everyday life to which the other candidates offered solutions which amounted to no more than tinkering within the system of class ownership of the means of life and production for sale and profit. In any event, these proposed reforms could not be implemented by the Greater London Assembly which doesn’t have the formal power to even try to do anything; all it does is scrutinise what the Mayor does.
The local press were present. It will be interesting to see if and how they report the presentation of the socialist case that these problems arise from the wages-prices-profits system that is capitalism; and can only be dealt with within the framework of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control the means of living with production directly to meet people’s needs not profit.
Door-to-door distribution of the leaflet continued today and yesterday: 500 in The Elephant and Castle area, 350 in Clapham Common, 350 in Streatham and 250 in Kentish Town.
There are now only about 1000 left (out of 15,000) to distribute, 500 out for distribution and 500 at Head Office. These latter will be kept to hand out at stalls, hustings, other meetings and tube stations from now till polling day a week on Thursday.
Herne Hill hustings mentioned in Southwark News:
We have discovered why we didn’t get an invite to that hustings. It was sent to SPEW, the spurious “socialist party” that used to be the old Militant Tendency.
It so happens that on Thursday their South West London branch is holding a meeting in Vauxhall on “Reform or Revolution?” The perfect subject to distinguish us from them.
We are standing in Lambeth and Southwark on a straight programme of socialism, a social revolution from class ownership to common ownership of the means by which society lives. In next door Croydon & Sutton they are standing via their front organisation TUSC on a programme of attractive-sounding reforms to capitalism:
For those who want to see the difference between Revolution and Reform here’s the details:
7.30 at the Bonnington Centre, Vauxhall Grove, SW8 1TD.
We actually left some of our leaflets at the centre the other day.
Here are the details about the hustings in Herne Hill (in Southwark) on Wednesday:
It says all the candidates are being invited. Ours hasn’t arrived yet. It must be in the post. But we will be there anyway, but will have to check up what the talk is at the parish pump.
The Baptists must have had a bob or two in those days (it was built about the time we was founded in 1904), no doubt from practising the Protestant Ethic of not using the profits from their small businesses to live a life of luxury but reinvesting as much as possible in the business.
Somebody, presumably a postal voter, has posted a copy of the Barnet & Camden ballot paper on Facebook.
For those who are curious to know how we appear on the ballot paper, with our party name and emblem, here it is (I hope this works):
http://spgb.blogspot.com/2024/04/barnet-camden-ballot-paper.html
Not enough people, not enough members even, get a chance to see one.
Here’s the ex-prosecutor general Sir Keith Starmer praising National Front flag-waving day.
On behalf of the Labour Party, I wish everyone in England a very happy St George’s Day! pic.twitter.com/aE1MBVccqU
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) April 23, 2023
See also:
I think he is trying to say that the Tory party is no longer the Tory party but that this is what the Labour party now is.
North London comrades report competition outside Camden Tube station from religious revivalists and street performers but still gave out leaflets and had some conversations with interested passers-by.
Street stalls held this afternoon outside Camden Town tube station in north London and outside our premises in Clapham in south London.
In Clapham we met someone who had already voted for us by post. We saw 6 vans from the Territorial Support Unit, the Met’s paramilitary wing, speeding up Clapham High Street lights flashing. We went to investigate and, as far as we could see, it must have been an event organised on Clapham Common by the anti-vaxx group, StandUpX (www.standupx.info). Anyway, they got leafleted too.
They are inveterate conspiracy-mongers must have some interest in the election as their site advertises a rally in Trafalgar Square next Saturday to “Get Khan Out” for bringing in Ulez.
Actually it costs £10,000 to get into that booklet — £5000 (which you don’t get back unless you get 5% of the vote) plus another £5000 to get your address in the booklet. In addition you need to get 10 signatories from each of the ten districts which make up Greater Manchester (Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, etc), 100 in all. Doable but a lot of work.
In London it’s £10,000 + £10,000 + 330 signatories. There, we are doing the next best thing (or even the better thing) — contesting the elections to the Greater London Assembly which is elected at the same time as the Mayor. That gets us into the booklet, even if only that we are standing without what we are standing for. There is a deposit of £1000 to stand in a constituency. We are contesting two, so that’s £2000. It costs us nothing extra to get a mention in the booklet.
Here’s the London booklet. We’re on pages 37 and 39:
https://www.londonelects.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-04/Election%20booklet%20final%202024_1.pdf
Apparently there is a political party advocating independence for “Northumbria”:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Independence_Party
They say they stand for “socialism with a northern accent”. So if you say “Newcarsle” rather than “Newcassle” you can’t join but presumably are spared the fate on those in the bible who said “sibboleth” instead of “shibboleth”.
