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Another 600 or so leaflets distributed today, both outside Archway tube station and in streets throughout the ward. In fact, apart from those sent to local members to distribute near where they live, all the streets in the wards have now been covered. Only a part of one housing estate remains. There are now only about 300 left at Head Office which should be enough to do this next Saturday.
Much political activity outside Archway tube station and in Navigator Square (so named after the Irish navvies who built the railways in Victorian times – at one time North Islington had a large Irish population) this morning. The Corbynist candidate was there with 20 or so canvassers as was Jeremy Corbyn himself (who retired to the local station cafe when the others went canvassing). Also there were the Labour candidate and about a dozen Labour councillors. So of course were we.
We again came across both Corbynist and Labour canvassers as we were distributing leaflets door to door. We met Jackson Caines door-knocking in Despard Road. There is a pub at the end of the road called the Charlotte Despard, but this was not its original name nor was the road named after her. She was in the SDF, a suffragette, opponent the First World War, Sinn Feiner and, towards the end, Communist Party member. She knew Eleanor Marx.
Incidentally, Marx’s grave is only a short distance outside the ward.
No sign of any activity by the Greens, LibDems or Tories.
Quoted by a comrade in the US:
Always remember the data below on the 2024 election:
245 million eligible voters
76 million for Trump
73 million for Harris
2.5 million for third partyTrump got 31% of the vote.
Harris got 30% of the vote.
Millions of liberal/progressives did not vote.
This was not a Trump landslide.
It was a protest vote against Democrats (mostly inflation).Belfast Bax put the same sort of argument in his article “On Immortality” (against its possibility) in 1888:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1888/04/immortality.htm
Some 300 or so more leaflets were handed out yesterday afternoon outside Tufnell Park tube station and a nearby street.
A further 1000 had been delivered to our offices on Tuesday so we have plenty more as, for instance, for this rally to be addressed by Corbyn himself on Saturday:
https://jackson4junction.org/events
Incidentally, we were at the Tufnell Park Tavern at 6.30 yesterday but none of them turned up.
Yesterday 850 leaflets were distributed door to door in different parts of the ward.
The only evidence of other election activity were leaflets from Jackson Caines in one of the “social housing” estates. Labour can’t lose here – at the last council elections in 2022 some two-thirds of voters opted for them — so maybe other candidates aren’t putting much effort in to contesting.
Corbyn endorses Jackson Caines. So he is now an official Corbynist candidate.
Most of the points he makes are valid enough but there is something odd about this passage:
“Marx seems far ahead of his time in explaining why money need not be a commodity, since it is its role in circulation and not its physical substance that allows it to represent commodity values. This is why, he stresses, it is in credit money—like today’s Federal Reserve Notes, the basis of the worldwide money system—that ‘money … takes on its own peculiar form of existence …’”
The first sentence is correct: gold (or silver) coins don’t need to circulate but can be replaced by metallic tokens or pieces of paper (or, these days, a computer code). Other writers before Marx had made this point.
But the second sentence doesn’t follow from the first and is incorrect. Marx did not say, let alone “stress”, that “credit-money” was money’s particular form of existence.
The full quote is the Penguin translation of part of this passage from chapter 3, section 3B (Means of Payment) of Volume I of Capital:
“Credit-money springs directly out of the function of money as a means of payment, in that certificates of debt owing for already purchased commodities themselves circulate as a means for transferring those debts to others. On the other hand, the function of money undergoes expansion in proportion as the credit system itself expands. As the means of payment money takes on its own peculiar forms [NB forms plural not form as in Mattick] of existence, in which in inhabits the sphere of large-scale commercial transactions. Gold and silver coin, on the other hand, are mostly relegated to the retail trade.”
In other words, he is talking about money as a means of payment not about money in general. He was not defining money as debt.
A footnote indicates that what Marx had in mind were bankers’ and merchants’ bills, which were accepted as means of payment (until their due date). He was not talking about Federal Reserve Notes, which fit his description, earlier in the chapter, of an “inconvertible paper money issued by the state and given forced currency”. And dollar bills are hardly the basis of the world money system. Maybe he is thinking of US Treasury Bills?
This (from the paper of the American Communist party) on the results of other votes that took place on 5 November is interesting. It shows that workers are capable of distinguishing voting for Trump from everyday bread-and-butter issues he might not agree with.
Anyway, here it is:
Voters back pro-worker and abortion rights measures across the country
More on the Corbynist candidate here:
https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/independent-calls-for-council-shake-up
2000 leaflets arrived yesterday at Head Office in Clapham. Distribution will begin tomorrow at a street stall outside Archway tube station at 12.
Here is the “Corbynist” candidate, Jackson Caines, expounding his policy on local housing:
More on him and his views here:
Well, it’s happened. If you noticed that the percentage votes for the two main candidates in the various states didn’t add up to 100% it will be because there were other candidates standing;
Our election leaflet published here:
ISLINGTON LBC; Junction (Lab resigned)
Candidates:
CAINES, Jackson
JONES, Rebecca (Liberal Democrat)
MARTIN, Bill (Socialist Party of Great Britain)
OSBORNE, Devon (Green)
POTTER, Brian Steve (Independent)
POTTS, James Christopher (Labour)
WILKIN, John (Conservative)2022: Lab 2111, 2004, 2001; Grn 761, 545, 507; Con 279, 252, 240; LD 240, 194, 182
Devon Osborne (Grn) stood in Tufnell Park in 2022 and John Wilkin (Con) in Holloway. Wilkin stood here on previous boundaries in 2018. Rebecca Jones (LD) was the candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington at the General Election and North East at the London Assembly elections this year. Bill Martin (Soc) stood in Clapham & Brixton Hill at the General and Barnet & Camden at the London Assembly elections and stood in this ward back in 2018 on previous boundaries.
Current Council: Lab 43; Islington Ind 4; Grn 3; 1 vacancy
