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The election leaflets arrived on Wednesday and London branch members were out yesterday, with a stall outside Head Office (while participating in the EC meeting via zoom) and distributing the leaflets through letter boxes, mainly in the Stockwell West & Larkhill ward.
This ward is just round the corner from Head Office and on our way there we met some people outside Stockwell tube station masquerading as the “Socialist Party”. They were of course SPEWers. They revealed that as Lambeth Your Party, which some of them had entered, was split and was putting up only one candidate in one ward, they had decided to stand 3 or 4 of their members under the guise of their front organisation TUSC. This won’t be in the ward where the Your Party is standing (St. Martins) as that would get them expelled. We don’t know where yet but will have to wait until the list of candidates is published on Friday.
It’s look that there is going to be quite a variety of runners in Lambeth. A part from the Labour, Tory, Liberal, Green, and Reform, there’ll be the YP (who are calling themselves “Yorpies”, presumably to distinguish themselves from Yuppies), TUSC, Roger Hallam’s Shakeitup, and us.
Here is the other letter:
Following the events in Clapham High Street on Tuesday a dispersal zone is currently in force covering two wards: Town (where our head office is situated) and Clapham Common & Abbeville (where we are standing). It shouldn’t affect our activity.
The nomination papers for our 3 candidates were handed in today and were accepted. The election addresses are being delivered tomorrow. So the election campaign as such is starting, but won’t know the names of the other candidates till after nominations close on Thursday 9 April. But we know that Roger Hallam’s Shakeitup Independents have announced candidates for Brixton North and Stockwell West & Larkhall.
London branch has decided to meet every Saturday at 12 noon before the election on 7 May at head office in Clapham High Street to carry out election activity of one kind or another. The first will be this Saturday 4 April.
The book review is already ready for publication in the May issue.
The author knows us having visited our street stall in Cardiff and also written a couple of letters to the Socialist Standard.
He sees Russia as never having stopped being capitalist despite, in his view, a “proletarian revolution” having taken place there (but doomed to fail since no world revolution took place).
SPEW has decided to take part in the May local elections using its TUSC name, claiming that this is to help the Your Party:
Over 300 socialists on the ballot in May elections – but still time for more!
Presumably most of these will be SPEW members instructed by their central committee to stand to give the appearance that a band wagon is rolling.
On Saturday we held a stall outside our offices in Clapham High Street to hand out the last of the pre-election leaflets. These had to handed out before our prospective candidates officially become candidates when their nomination papers are handed in and accepted on Tuesday. From that point on all expenditure on leaflets, etc has to be recorded and declared as there limits on spending.
Despite this, 3 branch members and a comrade from South West Regional Branch distributed leaflets on the national march against the far right in central London the same day.
At its meeting on Sunday the branch decided not to proceed with contesting a ward in Islington and to concentrate on Lambeth. Some 800 leaflets saying we would be standing had been distributed, but this was still publicity for socialism.
The supporters of private-enterprise capitalism are again accusing Trump of state capitalism:
One of our candidates has commented on that article (which fails to mention that we are standing as well as Haljam’s group and the Your Party). Here it is in case it gets deleted:
“The Socialist Party does not seek to manage capitalism. We seek to abolish it.
Your Party promises to “fight cuts” and “stand up for the community.” Laudable. But their councillors will still balance Westminster’s books, collect business rates, and administer poverty. That is not socialism. That is reform. These are the same people who implemented cuts under Corbyn’s Labour. Now they call themselves “independent socialists.” They are not independent or socialist. They are a collection of rejected Labourites and Trotskyist entristsWe are standing three candidates in Lambeth not to win office, but to win socialists. We will use every platform to state this truth: socialism cannot be administered. It requires the revolutionary transformation of property relations not better management of the existing system
To those asking why we urge “FOR SOCIALISM” where we have no candidate: we reject false choices. A spoiled ballot is not invisible. It is a conscious refusal to legitimise competing managers of misery. It declares that no solution exists within this system
Your Party’s turmoil, exposed transphobia, resignations, factional warfare illustrates the reformist trap. Seek power within capitalism, and capitalism absorbs you. They learned nothing from their expulsion over antisemitism; now they repeat the pattern. We avoid these contradictions by stating plainly: councils cannot build socialism. Only a conscious, organised working class can
Vote for us if you understand this. Write “FOR SOCIALISM” if you reject the alternatives. But do not vote for better managers and expect revolution.
Anya Krycek candidate for the Socialist Party (GB)
For socialism, not reform!”It’s ok (I think). The comrade who’s agreed to take up his offer has already made direct contact and something is being fixed up. More details later.
Activity continued last week with a stall outside Head Office in Clapham High Street and some leafletting in Stockwell West & Larkhall Ward on Sunday.
Also some fall-out from our presence at the anti-far right event the previous Saturday — an article in the Brixton Buzz on the elections and the Your Party with a photo of their candidate in which you can see our banner in the background.
Those who read her election address at the end of the article will immediately be able to work out that the banner can’t be hers. She is standing as a localist parish pump independent.
Next Friday nominations open for candidates for the 7 May elections. All the papers have been filled in for two of our candidates; a third requires just one more signature. These can be submitted next week for an informal check and will be.
Yesterday a further 500 leaflets were distributed through letter boxes in the Clapham Common & Abbeville ward. This is one the LibDems expect to win and they have also been distributing leaflets there. They reckon they can manage the austerity imposed by the central government better than the Labourites who currently control the council.
Actually, he is making a valid point about the word “socialism”. The word is used in practice to cover such a wide variety of different political and economic regimes that it has become virtually meaningless.
He has always been consistent about this, refusing to call his alternative to “free market” capitalism “socialism”, even though its content — a system based on “no ownership” with “open access” — is what we can recognise as similar to what we mean by “socialism” and “communism”. He doesn’t want to call this “socialism” as he thinks — in fact, knows — people will associate this with other systems that call themselves or are called “socialist” and the failure of some of these will be used discredit the whole idea of an alternative to “private enterprise” caputakusm.
We know this is the case from our own experience and that many of the arguments we have with others often end up being often about terminology rather than substance. Which is why some members have suggested that we too drop the word “socialism” and use some other forms of words such as “world of free access” and “world cooperative commonwealth” to describe what we stand for.
What this brings out is the importance of defining the meaning of the words that are used in any debate. Which is something we have always insisted on and why we always define from the beginning of any discussion what it is we mean by the word “socialism”.
We have found a volunteer to take him on. Max, can you reply from our Twitter account letting him know and asking him how our representative should contact him.
We were out yesterday in Brixton with the battle bike at an event organised to publicise the national anti-far right demonstration in London on 28 March handing out our anti-racism leaflet, and also to put the new leaflet saying we are standing through letter boxes.
Also present in Brixton High Street, apart from the usual evangelical christians, were the “Workers Revolutionary Party” and the “Revolutionary Communist Parry”.
