ALB
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Six members and sympathisers were out yesterday for our stall at the Levellers Day event in Burford. As this is an olde worlde village of antique shops and tea rooms we didn’t see it as a priority to leaflet locally. However, plans were laid to leaflet Chipping Norton and Woodstock as more suitable places in Oxfordshire, outside Oxford itself, to leaflet.
In Burford we concentrated exclusively on letting the leftwingers who had come for the Levellers event know that we standing in the area. This was the first occasion that the manifesto itself (that arrived in Head Office on Thursday) was handed out. Pamphlet sales too including the new ones on Pankhurst, Luxemburg and Martov.
Here’s the details of the street stall in Reading from 2pm on Saturday 18 May: outside the Broad Street entrance to the Oracle Shopping Centre, RG1 2AG.
Meanwhile Reading Quakers have sent all parties standing in the election a questionnaire about the EU and its policies. Here is our reply.
Thanks. Despite what it says, we have not had an invitation, but we are arranging to get one and will be represented.
Disappointing turnout at the OCC meeting last night on the options, for socialists, of how to vote in the Euroelections. The speaker discussed 4 and mentioned a fifth: Brexit Party (for those who saw it as important for political democracy that the result of a referendum should be respected), spoiling the ballot paper (for those who saw the issue as trivial and the election as meaningless), the SPGB (for those who want to affirm that they wanted socialism), or the Labour Party (to set down a marker for a win in the next general election). The fifth would be to vote Green (for those who thought it was better for the working class if the UK stayed in the EU). He himself favoured a vote for the Labour Party on the grounds that, led by people like Corbyn and McDonnell, this would be the most favourable situation ever to show whether (or not) a Labour government could start out on the road to socialism.
The chairman said he would vote for the SPGB. Mike, for us, refuted the view that the Labour Party had anything to with socialism or that a Corbyn Labour government could or would favour progress towards socialism. Others in the audience were sceptical about this too but still intended voting Labour.
The date and details of the big hustings, organised by the European Movement, have been finalised. They are: Friday 17 May from 7pm-9pm, Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford OX1 2DH. The church can hold 200 people and as Oxford is a Remain stronghold so there should be a big turnout. Mike will again represent us.
Before the meeting some 500 leaflets were distributed in Oxford West, chosen because Royal Mail will be distributing 50,000 of our leaflet in Oxford East. As it happened the area we chose (Jericho) seemed to be a LibDem stronghold with their Stop Brexit posters in at least one house in every other street.
A street stall is planned in the centre of Oxford (Carfax) for Wednesday 15 May from 3pm.
What do people make of this, from “The Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist-Leninist” (not to be confused with “The Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist which is openly chauvinist)?
https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2019/05/07/news/galloway-farage-brexit-party-eu-election/
“Let us state unequivocally that we think Galloway made the correct decision to stand against Scottish independence, and now correctly stands against the EU when he calls for a one-time-only vote for the Brexit party in EU elections, which Britain should not be taking part in at all, in view of the “critical situation we have reached with the implementation of the Brexit referendum”.
Are they calling for a “one-time-only vote for the Brexit party” or simply stating unequivocally that Galloway is correct to call for this? Is there a difference?
Here from the BBC’s site is the full list of parties and their candidates standing in the South East Region. Apart from our candidates I don’t suppose anyone here will recognise anyone except Farage and maybe Daniel Hannan, the Tory lead candidate and outgoing MEP and loud-mouthed Brexiteer. Larry Sanders on the Green Party list is Bernie’s elder brother. We met him when we stood in the Oxford West & Abingdon constituency in the 2015 General Election and he was the Green Party candidate. He advocated many of the things we do, as e.g. on education, but thought (as the Greens do) that these could be achieved under capitalism.
Two developments today.
The government has confirmed that the elections are definitely going ahead. Which is good news and bad news fo us. The bad news is that we won’t get our £5,000 election deposit back unless we get at least 2% of the votes cast (not just in Folkestone but across the whole region). The good news is that we now know that any money we spend on printing leaflets for free postal distribution is not going to be wasted with us ending up 315,000 dated leaflets to distribute.
The other development is that Royal Mail have approved the artwork for these leaflets which has been sent for printing. They are going to be distributed in 6 selected Westminster constituencies:
Brighton Pavilion, Oxford East, Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone & Hythe, and Maidstone & the Weald.
Five members were out yesterday in Southampton to do a stall at the TUC May Day event there. We were surprised to hear somebody high-up in Southampton Labour Party (didn’t catch his name) say capitalism existed in both the UK and the EU, that Leave or Remain wasn’t the issue and that socialism was the answer. More or less what we say. Of course he didn’t mean the same. For him capitalism “neo-liberal capitalism” and “socialism” was a Labour government under Jeremy.
As things were quiet at the stall and there were five of us, four went out leafletting and one stayed to look after the stall. In all, we must have shifted about a 1,000. One reaction, from a polite enough Brexshitter, was that 23 May, the date of the election, was “traitors’ day”. The shape of things to come in the rest of the campaign and if there’s another referendum, as conditions begin to resemble those in the Weimar Republic in Germany after WWI (well, sort of)?
Back at the stall, one person agreed to take some of our leaflets to put in the pidgeon-holes at her student hostel. Further activity in the area is the hustings in the Isle of Wight tomorrow evening and leafletting in New Milton.
I didn’t mean it that way at all. I was contrasting the 131 votes we got in one election with the 59 votes we got in another in the same area and was seeking a reason why some decided to vote for us in one but not the other. I did say in an earlier post that the 59 votes (4.2%) would have been the result of sustained electoral and other activity in the area.
I know we used to get this sort of result in the North East, with on one occasion us being the only non-Labour candidate in a 6-member ward and that, had there been a particularly unpopular Labour candidate, we could have ended up with our first local councillor, though hardly one elected by in the main consciously socialist voters.
The second salvo in our campaign took place yesterday with leafletting in the Wolverton area of Milton Keynes. This week the campaign is to really get under way with leafletting and stalls in Southampton, Oxford and Oxfordshire, meetings and hustings in Oxford and the Isle of Wight, and the printing of half-a-million leaflets.
Here is the result of the seat on Folkestone Town Council we contested. With (I think) the same electorate but different candidates and voters having 3 rather than 2 votes, here is the result.
The 131 votes, which is 9.4% of the 1397 who voted, is no doubt to be explained by the absence of LibDem or Green candidates compared with the District Council elections. Nobody else, except for the ex-Ukipper who got elected, for those who are anti-Tory and anti-Labour to vote for, not that we want such votes.
Newport Pagnell, isn’t that a service station on the M1? Sounds alright but you know the area better than the rest of us. To cover two wards you will need more leaflets of course.
Meanwhile, we have received another invitation to a hustings, again in the North of the region:
Monday 13 May 7pm-9pm. Banbury Town Hall, 1 Bridge St, Banbury OX16 5QB
Mike Foster will be our representative.
Interesting to see that deliberately spoiled ballot papers, which we used to get mocked for for advocating when faced with a choice of pro-capitalist candidates only, is gaining some legitimacy as a political tactic when you don’t agree with the options on offer:
Since everybody seems to be doing it I think I’ll take a photo of my write-in vote for socialism on 23 May (if the election takes place).
I’ve worked it out. 1,411 people voted. Of these 59 cast one of their two votes for the Socialist candidate. That’s 4.2%.
We always do better in local than in general elections but this is better than usual even in local elections and no doubt reflects the electoral and other activity put in in Folkestone over a number of years. It will also reflect that last time four years ago, when we got 35 votes, TUSC was also standing. This time the weren’t but one of the Labour candidates elected had stood for them in 2014.
A Brexit Party leaflet has just dropped through my letter box. They are quick off the mark. I suppose they want to get their stuff out before the government cancels the elections (as they intent if they can get a deal with Labour). Among those on the leaflet calling for a Brexit Party vote is ex “Revolutionary Communist Party” Trot, billed as a “writer”, Clare Fox who says: “Left-wing democrats should vote to deliver the referendum result”. Presumably she still regards herself as “left-wing”.
