ALB
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How about tweeting the link to this article, James?
I see Biden has followed the tradition of previous US Presidents in declaring 1 May “Loyalty Day”.
It enrages us too that the day of international working class solidarity should be hi-jacked in the name of anti-socialism as:
“A day set aside for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.”
Report from Kent & Sussex Branch:
Results and Activity
We have substantially increased our vote compared to the last (first!) time we contested the same County Council seats:
Folkestone East = 89 (2017 = 48)
Folkestone West = 55 (2017 = 23)We also stood in a town council by-election in Folkestone Central (which covers just over half of Folkestone West) and got 61 votes, which suggests some tactical voting may have taken place. And we didn’t come last.
In total this means that at least 150 people voted for an SPGB candidate in these two county divisions that cover one third of Folkestone & Hythe. In absolute terms, this is the best we have done since we started standing in 2014… including when we have contested the whole area such as for the UK or EU parliaments.
As previously reported two separate leaflets were printed for distribution during the campaign, delivered using a mixture of commercial and membership distribution.
The first was distributed across the whole of both County divisions (approximately 17,500 dwellings), before the postal votes were issued.
A second reminder leaflet was distributed in the last few days of the campaign. About 9,000 were delivered, mainly in the Harbour and some other areas of Folkestone East and in Central ward in Folkestone West.
Both leaflets contained local contact details and the first an ad for the Socialist Standard with a QR code. At least 3 people replied so far ordering a free trial sub.
Just noticed that the link to the Cardiff candidates’ photos has a link to our website via this (as well as to Brian’s class war record):
Here are the results for Folkestone East and West.
And the Folkestone Town Council by-election in Central Ward.
They said on the news that the last time Hartlepool had a Tory MP was in 1964 but I don’t know whether that was before or after the General Election in October that year which retuned Labour to power under Harold Wilson after what they called “14 years of Tory misrule”. In any event if Hartlepool was that much of a “red wall” constituency how come it had a Tory MP until 1964?
“…decided that the creation of an elite vanguard party was not the way to build towards socialism.
Yes, that rather would invoke the ire of orthodox trots. It seem to be true, according to this interview he gave last year (scroll down to his last few answers).
Ironically, he seems to have reached the same sort of conclusion as those who were expelled from the SLL in 1960 who set up Solidarity
I remember him. He was one of the leading theoreticians of the old Socialist Labour League where quite a few CP intellectuals went after leaving the CP over Hungary. Out of the frying pan into the fire. The SLL was notorious for defending Russia’s nuclear weapons as the “workers’ bomb”.
I thought I had debated him once but it turned out to have been with TomKemp, his fellow editor of the SLL’s theoretical magazine “Labour Review”. In any event, both of them defended the absurd view that Russia was a “degenerate workers state” while its puppet states in Eastern Europe were “deformed workers states”, the difference being that the latter never degenerated from once having been the outcome of a proletarian revolution that had established a genuine workers state.
I didn’t follow what he did later but he was obviously in a different Trotskyist sect than the WSWS lot and their website.
But it’s also half full. Even if the Paris target would not be met if all the planned reductions were successfully implemented, the worst case scenarios of 3 to 4 percent wouldn’t be either.
Capitalist states do seem to be doing something about the threat of global overwarmimg, as was predictable since they were never really going to let Rome burn. That would not be in the overall capitalist interest.
Kent & Sussex branch report:
On Sunday we distributed about 1800 leaflets, across three areas including the East and West Folkestone County divisions and the Central ward where the town council by-election is taking place.
In all we must have managed to have got out at least at least 9,000 of the 10,000 reminder leaflets printed.
Polling takes place today but the votes won’t be counted until tomorrow morning.
Kent and Sussex branch members are meeting in central Folkestone tomorrow, Sunday 2 May, at 10.30 to distribute the remaining second leaflet door to door. Local council wards are small enough to leaflet the area twice.
For exact details of where to meet phone or text Rob (scroll up for the number).
South Wales comrades are holding a street stall tomorrow, Saturday 1 May, in Cardiff outside the Capitol Shopping Centre, Queen Street (Newport Road end)from 1pm-3pm.
It seems that decentralisation has gone to heads of the local politicians. Not only have they changed the name of their assembly to Senate but there’s also a Capitol. Next they’ll be calling the First Minister a President.
But it’s only a glorified County Council financed almost entirely by the central government in London.
Still, our declaration of principles, commits us to urging the working class to “organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local.”
No politician, no matter how demagogic or potent or capable they are, is going to be able to change what the market is doing.
This is what Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, is reported to have told the virtual climate change conference that Biden summoned last week.
He was talking about it becoming profitable to invest in technologies that reduced CO2 emissions like green hydrogen, carbon capture, more efficient batteries, cheaper renewables.
He may or may not be right about what “the market” is doing, but in any event becoming profitable to invest in such technologies is the only thing that is going to get capitalism to do something about global over-warming.
But what he said is also true outside the context of climate change. Isn’t that what we say about the limitations of what governments can do, given capitalism?
Came across this article from 1926 on sport showing we have been consistent if nothing else:
