ALB
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Piece of electoral gossip received at Head Office:yesterday
Quote:Earlier this evening I had Greg Hands,Conservative Candidate for Chelsea and Fulham,come canvassing. He was one Smug sort. When I told him I would be voting Labour on June 8th he viewed this as a challenge and cited an article in the current Socialist Standard as an example of how divided the Labour Party was and his pleasure at your advice to NOT Vote Labour on June 8th. I did try to explain that The Socialist Party and The Labour Party are not the same but it went over his head. I find it a bit of a concern that The Conservative Party are using your publication to attack Jeremy Corbyn. I was not going to Vote however that Smug git made me so angry I am going to Vote Labour.How does Greg Hands know the Socialist Standard? Have other Tories been using this argument?
We published lots of old general election statements on the SOYMB blog in the run-up to the 2015 General Election. Check there first before you duplicate work already done. Some of them were never published in the Standard anyway.I'm sure Alan will be able to help the two of you track them down.
Five people out in and around Battersea yesterday. Stall outside Head Office and leafletting at Clapham South and Wandsworth Town stations in the constituency. Only a few hundred leaflets left now. Remains to be seen if the online versions of the two local papers covering the area, the Wandsworth Guardian and the South London Press, deign to give their readers information on who is standing and what they stand for.
Matt wrote:I was fiddling with the subtitles.Subtitles? I wonder how they handled his frequent use of the Ancient Greek orators' device of temesis.
4 June, 2017: Added to the Edgar Hardcastle Internet Archive:Should We Join the Labour Party?, May 1923 A. J. Cook Returns to the Fold, April 1929 The King's Question Answered, April 1936 Socialists and General de Gaulle, July 1958 More Trouble in Africa, April 1959 They Never Had It So Good in 1860, February 1962 The Grim Liberal Record, May 1962 Labour Governments and Armaments, March 1965 A good time coming?, February 1972 Not Piffle but Propaganda for Capitalism, October 1974 Going Private, February 1983Click on to read. Once again all but originally on from Imposs1904's MtSpace blog.
gnome wrote:I think there's a far simpler explanation. Corbyn comes over as being far more radical than Blair and Brown ever did. So much so it seems that even some of our own 'inexperienced' members have been taken in by the rhetoric.Something like that was what I was trying to say. We know that one or two have already left to join the Labour Party.
gnome wrote:ALB wrote:That's going too far. The member who voted for the SDP only got hanged.No drawing and quartering then?
Voluntary exile would be the lesser evil, an argument they will surely understand. That is, if anyone does actually vote Labour rather than simply discussing whether or not to. Why we shouldn't is an argument worth going over but asking questions about it is not something that is out of order in itself. It's only actually voting Labour (or anti-Labour as for Seaham Popular Front) that would be.There is another aspect to this. The fact that even a few of our own members are questioning this is a sign of a change in the mood of critics of capitalism. After all, we never had this discussion when Blair and Brown were the Labour Party leaders. No member even dreamed of voting Labour in 2001, 2005 or 2010.The Green Party, apparently has the same problemwww.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-40110713and, despite being wishy-washy and touchy-feely, don't let it pass ….
It's not that rare. I think we've already got more than one copy. Better for it to be in circulation than stored in our archives !
The Tories are going to win, especially now that "security" has become an issue. They always were but this is going to seal it. Even so, it seems that Labour is going to do better than the media pundits predicted (and wanted). This in itself is an interesting phenomenon worth discussing. After all, the people who will be attracted by Labour under Corbyn and its leftwing programme are the sort of people who will be open to what we have to say, i.e discontented with capitalism as it is and wanting to do something about it.I think one of the reasons Labour is doing better than expected is that its current programme (a bit like the one Harold Wilson won the 1964 election on, less radical if anything) is attracting back not just the Trotskyists and other Old Labourites who deserted it when it openly embraced capitalism but also Greens (whose party stole their old clothes) and even UKIP voters (May is harbouring a big delusion if she thinks that the traditional working class voters are going to flock to her as a snooty vicar's daughter who still goes to church).
Yes, he's right. The money is there, in the form of accumulated profits that in theory the government could tax or borrow. Our case is not that it isn't (as the Tories claim), but that if a reformist government took too much of this it would provoke an economic downward as profits are what makes the capitalist economic system go round, i.e it wouldn't work and the government would have to backtrack and accept and apply that priority has to be given to profits and conditions for profit-making. As we've seen time and again. In short, the money is there but you can't touch it without disrupting the system. Profits are the forbidden fruit on the Money Tree.Incidentally, in the video that follows the one you link to, the bloke interviews Aaron Bastani who once advocated "Fully Automated Luxury Communism". Now it's Jeremy Corbyn. Quite an effective pro-Labour video, I'd have thought. Trouble is it would all end in tears.
More from Swansea. Letter published in the South Wales Evening Post on 31 May:
Quote:Your correspondent Karen Laurence argued that we should use our advanced technology to create not to destroy (Postbox, 26 May). In other words we should use it to give everyone decent and peaceful lives rather than to produce weaponry to disrupt and destroy those lives. How can anyone disagree with this? But the fly in the ointment is that the system we live under is simply not geared to using its inventions, its discoveries and its technology in this way. Its sole purpose is to produce goods and services to sell on the market and make a profit. This system – whether it’s in Europe, USA, Russia or China – is not called capitalism for nothing. Its purpose is to allow those who own capital to invest it in order to accumulate more wealth not to further human wellbeing. Under this system technology, whether old or new, will be used in this way, and if the consequences are negative or destructive to humanity (e.g. environmental degradation or war), then so be it. 'Progress perverted' it can be called. What’s the alternative? Well the only possible alternative is a worldwide society of common ownership and production for use not profit. We are talking about a society without states and frontiers, without owners and wage/salary workers, without buying and selling but based on democratic cooperative organisation where everyone has access to what they require to satisfy their needs without the rationing system that is money. It’s only in this context that we’ll be able to use advanced technology and the resources it gives us rationally and sustainably to produce what we really need when we need it. Only in this way will everyone be enabled to contribute their, knowledge, skills and experience freely to ensure a decent, comfortable life for themselves and for the whole of humanity. Howard Moss.Unfortunately they left out: Agent for Brian Johnson, Socialist Party of Great Britain candidate for Swansea West constituency
There is something in what you say but it depends on the constituency. In Swansea there have been at least two hustings and local press coverage which have not yet been reported here.There never was that much press coverage in the London constituencies as there is no real local press there. The London evening paper covers the whole of London and is not going to give coverage to 70 or so individual constituencies while the print versions of local papers have been reduced to free advertising rags distributed along with pizza menus. Hustings were due in the two constituencies we are contesting but both were cancelled because of the Manchester massacre. We actually got more publicity contesting the local election in Guildford than we have had in London.If we had contested Oxford and Brighton, which for various different reasons we chose not to, the situation would have been different. In fact, in both places we received invitations to hustings before nominations closed. On reflection we should probably have contested these, even if it would have been more difficult to organise the campaign.There are on-line newspapers and it remains to be seen if they will mention all the local candidates and what they stand for (and a photo or equivalent).
Our candidate in Swansea West gets a brief passing reference here. Better than nothing, I suppose:http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/gower-labour-candidate-reveals-came-13126096
