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Here is the wording of the advert that appeared in the Cardiff edition of the South Wales Echo on 5 December.
General Election Thursday 12th December 2019
Cardiff Central Constituency
Vote for Brain Johnson
What is this election about?
This election is about one way or another of organising the profit system, capitalism, so it doesn’t matter which of the major parties is elected. Nothing will change. Brexit is a small detail in that system, so it doesn’t matter that an arrangement has been made to manipulate that detail in the interests of the tiny minority who hold most of the wealth. What does matter is how many voters understand the case we are putting for a real social upgrade – a world community without states or frontiers based on participatory democracy.
We are talking about a society of material abundance, without buying and selling, where everyone has access to what they need without the rationing system called money.
We are talking about a rational and sustainable society where people are the Earth’s custodians, not its destroyers, where they contribute the knowledge, skills and effort to maintain it.
Capitalism will do all it can to discredit the idea of world socialism. Don’t let it succeed. Take a first step by voting for our candidate, Brian Johnson.
For further details of our policy, an information pack and three months free subscription to our journal ‘Socialist Standard’ write to:
The Socialist Party FREEPOST,
52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.
Phone: 020 7622 3811
E-mail: spgb@worldsocialism.org
Website: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb
All the candidates in Cardiff Central, including the Socialist (and his cat), have their say:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/cardiff-central-general-election-candidates-16891903
This Saturday, 7 December, there will be an insert in the<i> i </i> paper on sale in the south of England and Wales of 160,000 copies of a Party statement on the general election, with a cut-off reply form for more information, as we successfully did during the Euroelections in May. If anyone here wants to buy that paper that day, it’s only £1.20.
It looks as if the Tories are on course to win. One reason might be that Johnson is promising something he can deliver, i.e. the formal withdrawal of the UK from the EU (even though trade negotiations will continue) while Corbyn is promising what many voters judge to be pie in the sky (as it is under capitalism).
Another factor may be resentment amongst some that they were asked a question (as doesn’t happen all that often) only to find that attempts have been made to ignore or reverse their answer. In other words, such voters are now not so much concerned about the question (which they didn’t really want or ask to be asked) or even about the consequences of their answer as that their vote is being ignored. Lesson for the ruling class: don’t bring the people into your quarrels.
Despite the cold, South Wales comrades held two stalls in different parts of the Cardiff Central constituency yesterday for nearly two hours. They met someone who had already voted for us by post. However, this might be as unrepresentative as the other person who told us that she too had voted, switching from Tory to Labour, as she was one of those Waspi women who had been swindled out of an expected earlier State pension.
Andy Thomas was interviewed this morning by BBC South East for their news if anyone out there can get on that on their TV.
Kent comrades also report more coverage in the local printed press.
What about the opposite but unlikely outcome of a Labour win? I don’t want to sound like a Trot tactician but, as we know that they would fail in less than two years and end up being forced by the economic laws of capitalism to put profits before their promises to meet people’s needs and improve their lot, that should make a few more turn to socialism. On the other hand past failures of Labour governments has led many more to turn to outfits like the National Front.
Our election address for Folkestone and Hythe will be delivered to Royal Mail at 10 am on Friday tor them to deliver to the 56,500 households in the constituency as from then.
That’s the way to go about it. Mass demonstrations plus the vote. Not violence or “direct action” alone.
Further demonstration of our contention that, when a mass movement gets off the ground and the opportunity to vote exists, the movement will use the ballot box. The same can be expected to apply to the movement for socialism, leaving anarchists, ultraleftists and other anti-parliamentarists on the sidelines shouting “don’t vote” as workers pass them by on the way to the polling stations.
“Bloomberg bid to topple Trump in battle of the billionaires” (headline in today’s Times. US politics neatly summed up.
The results of the current local council elections there as the only ones held under universal suffrage will be interesting and could be more effective than the turn to violence.
People here may recall that before this site was hacked and this forum became inaccessible there was an ongoing discussion about an alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government on rebels in Douma, a suburb of Damascus, in April 2018.
The Western media, taking the cue from their governments, was saying that it was the Syrian government but, because on the face of it the government had no need to do this as it was winning the civil war and knew that the West would attack them if it did, people here were urging caution. The West did bomb Syria, in support of the rebels they had sponsored in a bid to bring about “regime change” and establish a pro-West government there. We issued this anti-war statement:
Later, after the government won control of the area, it allowed inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in to check what had happened. The OPCW eventually issued a report saying that chemical weapons (chlorine) had been used, so justifying after the fact the Western bombing.
It now emerges that this report was doctored, as explained in this article by Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday:
The same scenario, then, as over the Weapons of Mass Destruction allegedly possessed by the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq that was used as a pretext for the Western capitalist powers to go to war there, and which were afterwards found not to have existed.
A mention in the Kent online newspaper:
And on Wikipedia here with a link to their entry on us.
