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Zelensky must have a personal as well as a political problem over VE Day celebrations as his grandfather fought in the Red
Army against the German army in Ukraine and some of his relatives were killed under German rule. On the other hand, a section of the Kiev regime is descended from those Ukrainian nationalists who fought on the German side, carried out pogroms against Jews and supplied concentration guards. They won’t want to celebrate the day of their defeat.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1k41z4g3pzo.amp
The present Labour government continues that of the first one in 1924 of bombing tribesmen in the Middle East.
Online and video report in the Brixton Buzz on tomorrow’s local council by-election in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction:l.
Note that the Green candidate describes himself as an “ecosocialist”.
Actually, there is an article in this month’s Socialist Standard that deals with this:
Cooking the Books 1 – Guns before butter, 2 – Blowing bubbles
I would have thought that the explanation is fairly straightforward. The US has decided to cut its military spending on Europe, so from now on the European states are going to have to spend their own money on this. To get their populations to accept this “guns before butter” they have come up with scare stories about Russia preparing to conquer Europe and, to bring this home to people at a personal level, have told them what to do in that event (stocking up with food and water, etc).
Whether this pro-military spending propaganda barrage will work remains to be seen.
Some bad news for you — Russia declares a ceasefire, albeit only temporary for the moment:
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/4/28/russia-declares-unilateral-two-day-ceasefire-in-ukraine
Merton Stand Up To Racism (from a neighbouring borough) show that they have been leafletting door to door in parts of Herne Hill:
Actually, people living in Milton Road will have been aware that there is a by-election as that street had already been leafleted by Labour, the Greens and us. But still a contribution to the political debate sparked by the by-election.
TUSC have finally made an appearance on Saturday in Herne Herne & Loughborough Junction or, rather, just in Loughborough Junction:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1063662945798676&id=100064649413665
The photo there was taken on another day outside the ward in a different part of Lambeth. Other photos on the Facebook page of London SPEW are of a literature stall outside a mosque and a photo op outside an evangelical church, presumably indicating the groups they are targetting for votes.
Their manifesto proposes the following:
“Lambeth council should use its borrowing powers and reserves to stop all cuts and instead fund the services that people in Lambeth desperately need. Then they should demand that the Labour government picks up the tab.”
There is no chance of the Labour government doing that of course. In fact the opposite would happen. The government would send in a Commissioner to run the council and balance the budget, including cuts to services and amenities.
This is what happened the last time this was tried, in 1984 when Trotskyist Ted Knight was the Leader of Lambeth Council. He and 31 other councillors were “surcharged” (made to pick up the tab themselves), kicked off the council and banned for 5 years from being a councillor.
That this is, at least as far as SPEW’s leaders are concerned, just a traditional Trotskyist “transitional demand” is hinted at in the manifesto:
“Lambeth has lost £200 million in funding since 2010. Let’s build a mass campaign of trade unions, community campaigns and local people to win that funding back! If our councillors aren’t willing to lead that campaign, then they should step aside for those who will.”
Trotskyist textbook stuff: Raise an impossible demand; when it fails, lead in a different direction those who were duped into struggling for it. In any event, seek to be leaders.
But, as we have always advised workers, tell leaders to get lost and organise things yourselves.
Successful street stall in Herne Hill earlier today. The candidate was interviewed on video by the Brixtonbuzz, the online local news outlet; conversations with a lone member from Stand Up To Racism handing out their “Don’t Vote for Reform UK” leaflet; the Conservative candidate who was passing by; and someone who thought that all the patients in A&E departments these days don’t talk in English (and who had never heard of Reform UK). We even sold a couple of pamphlets (the two William Morris reprints) even though the pamphlets were mainly there for display and received a donation.
London branch is holding a street stall outside Herne Hill station from 12.30 today for a couple of Hours.
They seem to be saying that it is language as the basis of abstract thinking (ie thinking about something in its absence):
“… the authors of the present study propose that human culture is distinctive for its “open-endedness.” In contrast to all other animals, humans have the ability to learn and execute complex sequences of steps to accomplish an ultimate goal. These steps or subgoals are “modular” in the sense that they can be employed individually to accomplish a number of different tasks. Furthermore, they can be creatively recombined in novel sequences to meet new needs.
This is evident, for example, with respect to language, which can be employed very fluidly to accommodate and adapt to a wide range of factors. Though the authors do not specifically refer to this, the basis of this flexibility lies in the nature of language itself, that is, the mechanism of thought by which actions and phenomena in the external world are abstracted into mental symbols or ideas. This allows ideas to be manipulated and applied in new ways to situations distinct from those from which they were originally derived, in the same way as words can be combined to make new sentences which in turn can be combined into novel paragraphs, and so to express things that did not previously exist.”
Another letter from us in this week’s Weekly Worker. A reply to Andrew Northall about what happens if you have a programme of reforms to be implemented under capitalism:
This person, who also died recently, seems a much more interesting Trotskyoid:
She was a member of the old POUM Party in Spain.
Unfortunately this is behind a paywall But there’s this in Spanish:
https://vientosur.info/maria-teresa-carbonell-1926-2025/
and this in Catalan:
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Teresa_Carbonell_i_Cornejo
“Theoretician”, “Workers’ Leader”. He was neither, just a common or garden manipulative Trotskyist political operator. And not a very clever one. He oversaw Militant’s brazen attempt in 1997 to steal one of the names we’d been using for over 90 years. But didn’t realise that “Socialist Party of England and Wales” gave, appropriately enough, SPEW as the acronym.
Two of us leafletted a protest demonstration outside Lambeth Town Hall this evening. It was against the Labour-controlled council’s decision to have recourse to no-fault evictions (even though the government has said it is going abolish this). About 30 people there including the Green Party candidate (who spoke to express solidarity) and Green councillor Scott Ainslie. The SWP had a stall. No sign of TUSC/SPEW and their candidate.
Earlier, while distributing leaflets in the ward, we came across the LibDem candidate’s leaflet. It makes one good point:
“Labour ministers cut benefits because they say they can’t be afforded. But then ministers admit they are looking at reducing UK taxes on big US tech companies — because Donald Trump has demanded it.”
No mention of the fact that the Tory-LibDem coalition government in office 2010-2015 also cut benefits — to reduce the burden of taxation on profits in a failed bid to get the profit-driven, capitalist economy expanding again after the Crash of 2008.
As the popular saying has it: Labour, Liberal, Tory, Same Old Boring Story.
Here is an election statement from our reformist, state-capitalist opponent in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction:
https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/119341/marco-tesei
He doesn’t mention socialism (which is good) but he does claim to be a member of the Socialist Party (which isn’t).
