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The by-election in Hammersmith Broadway took place yesterday. The result can be found here:
In terms of conventional politics, Labour won easily but with their share of the poll down by 19 percent with ReformUK second, confirming that they are still been punished by voters.
From our point of view, it’s the rejected ballot papers that are of interest. A ballot paper can be rejected for a number of reasons: if the polling station staff forget to perforate the paper, if the voter voted for more than 1 candidate, if they sign it, or if it is blank or has something written on it.
If something is written across a ballot paper, by convention this is classified as “wholly void for uncertainty”. This is a fiction since in most cases it is quite certain what the voter meant such as “None of the Above”, “socialism”, “free Palestine”, the Anarchist A sign or, simply, “Fuck the lot of them” (to quote some I have seen).
In the by-election there were 12 rejected papers, 9 for blank or “uncertainty”. In the council elections in May 2022 there were 7 rejected papers and only 1 for blank or uncertainty.
It is hard to believe that this increase from 1 to 9 on a smaller turnout had nothing to do with the 950 leaflets we distributed.
Something else which suggests this might be the case is that there happened to be another by-election in Hammersmith & Fulham yesterday, in Lillie ward where we didn’t distribute any of our leaflets. There the number of rejected papers was down from 7 to 5, with those blank or “uncertain” down from 4 to 3.
The other by-election we are covering is Syon & Brentford Lock in the borough of Hounslow in West London.
The by-election is on Thursday 6 March and we plan to start leafleting this weekend. Meanwhile a local news outlet has provided advance publicity (I am not sure if you need to be on Facebook to see it but it’s a photo of the leaflet):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/brentfordtoday/posts/1843231109771976/
The editorial in today’s Times literally calls for “Guns Before Butter” (that’s the headline) and starts:
“To underpin Europe’s security, Sir Keir Starmer must expand defence spending at a time of economic difficulty. That means taking an axe to the bloated welfare system.”
Can there be any doubt about what the Labour government is going to do?
We would also have to suddenly stop being the financial center of the global economy.
Yes, Trump does seem to be obsessed with the “balance of trade” (the price paid for physical imports as compared with the income from selling physical exports) and punishing countries with which the US has an unfavourable balance.
But there is no need for this to balance. What does need to balance is the overall balance of payments, including loans made to the US government. The dollar is the world’s reserve and main trading currency which other countries hold, mainly in the form of short-term US Treasury bills. This represents a huge loan by the rest of the capitalist world to the US — enabled by there being a favourable balance of trade vis-à-vis the US by the EU, China, Japan etc.
If the US forces, for instance, China to balance its trade with it, then China would not have a surplus of income to invest in US bonds, to lend to the US.
Trump needs to be careful as to what he wishes.
Meanwhile the Leader of the Tory party (a non-entity who surely won’t last for long) has let slip that she’s completely bonkers:
Three hundred leaflets were distributed in Vincent Square, Westminster, yesterday, resulting in 3 visits to our website. One in a hundred is not a bad response. Maybe because this is a by-election where the outcome is unclear, either Labour or the Tories could win and each is campaigning hard.
The Tory candidate has wished our campaign for a write-in vote for socialism a success. He would of course, since he imagines this would take votes from Labour and maybe let him in. He forgets that nobody who wants socialism would even think of voting Labour.
A real threat to Labour might come from the Greens who have issued a statement promising “a beautiful life on a beautiful planet – for everyone”. A change from fixing potholes and telephone kiosks.
This part of her peroration seems good advice:
“DON’T VOTE RUBBISH ANYMORE”.
Yes and he’s tied to paying a basket case £3 billion a year for the next 100 years. It’ll probably go straight towards repaying the interest on the debt that Ukraine owes the US.
Trump is showing them how to do it : be “transactional”. I’m sure if he was the German Chancellor he’d start buying Russian oil again on the grounds that it’s cheaper than the LNG from the US and those paragons of democracy the Gulf States.
Mind you, it was the Biden regime that pulled that one off. By cutting itself off from cheap Russian oil Germany has shot itself in the foot by undermining its competitiveness.
No wonder the European leaders are running around like headless chickens. They’ve been had.
Cravan boarded a ship of men fleeing the war to New York, which also had Trotsky on board, with whom he had a fist fight.
That’s interesting? What was the fight about and who won?
According to the blurb for his book on Jack London, Barltrop seems to have regarded himself as a re-incarnation of Jack London:
“Robert Barltrop has done many things. He has been a professional boxer and, at various times, a cartoonist, sign painter, labourer, schoolteacher, editor and, always, a writer.”
Leafletting of Hammersmith Broadway has now finished, nearly 1000 distributed in all, behind schedule due to the weather and illness. The election is next Thursday.
It’s an ultra-safe Labour ward and if they lose here there’ll be in serious trouble. On one housing estate there is a social centre called “Nye Bevan Hall” with a plaque saying “opened by former Leader of the Labour Party Michael Foot in 1996”. The plaque had been partially defaced. The question is by who? Someone who doesn’t like the Labour Party or by the Labour Party itself, now that it is “the Party of Business” and wants to repudiate its leftwing past? Foot was of course the Corbyn of his day (the early 1980s).
The Anarchist Communist Group has also been putting stickers on lampposts saying “Freeze Rents not Renters”. Amusing but not very anarchist as who is supposed to “freeze rents” if not the capitalist state? The ACG is behaving in the same reformist way to attract support as the Trotskyists. You might have thought they would campaign rather for an anarchist communist society, but there you are.
Another distinction is who the “demand” is made on: in the case of trade union action over wages and working conditions it’s the employer(s). In the case of reforms, it is the government, whether through legislation or administrative decision.
Also, the fact that we think trade unionism is ok, doesn’t mean that we as a party campaign for higher wages all round as well as for socialism.
Robbo’s letter of reply can be found here on page 2:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/assets/ww/pdf/WW1525-web01.pdf
Incidentally, the first letter is from an ex-member. Why someone would leave to join the Communist Party of Britain (the Morning Star) needs some explaining, but at least he treats us with some respect as, in fact, did Mcnair.
It seems that those who wanted to expand NATO and its missiles right up to the border of Russia and in fact into territory that had long been part of Russia have come unstuck.
Starmer with his 100-year treaty with Ukraine might want to continue but (fortunately) hasn’t the capacity to do so.
But you really should not allow people like me to have access to the members’ area. I am in favour of the party, in a benign way, but other ex-members may not be as well-intentioned.
This a technical question we can’t find a way around. For the software “Members” can mean members of the forum which of course is open to non-members as well as members. In fact we’d like to see more non-members here.
Invidentally. there have been quite a few not well-intentioned ex-members here.
Non-members can access the forum through this link:
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/
They can also access it via the Members Area but wouldn’t normally.
Yes, we have always said that we are not opposed to reforms as such but that our position is that “we are against reformism not reforms”. Some reforms are and have been beneficial, for instance laws about health and safety at work.
We are even prepared to countenance Socialist MPs and councillors voting for reforms proposed by other MPs and councillors if the party judged them to be in the interest of the working class and or the socialist movement.
