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The local media outlet Brixton Buzz confirms the woes of the Lambeth YP branch. It’s a poor show if a proto-branch half full of Trotskyists “entryists” (SWP, SPEW, AWL, ACR, even Workers Power) can only field one candidate.
Incidentally, a part of St.Martins Ward is in the parliamentary constituency of Clapham & Brixton Hill which we contested in the 2024 general election. Which means that electors there will have had our manifesto courtesy of free delivery by Royal Mail. If their candidate claims to be a socialist we might have to intervene to repudiate this.
The Your Party proto-branch (which is split over the definition of a woman) has decided to put up only one candidate in Lambeth, in St. Martin’s Ward, which is in Streatham, the southern part of the borough. It elects two councillors and they are hoping to do a deal with the Green Party, under which each party would put up a single candidate and urge their supporters to vote for both.
It is not clear if the Greens will agree to this. The only advantage to them would be if the YP agreed to campaign for them in the other wards. Which half the YP will be unlikely to do (even if they might vote Green) as they are supporters of Trotskyist groups which have denounced the Green Party as “pro-capitalist” (which is true but so are they as they for state capitalism).
Also not clear is under what name the YP candidate will be on the ballot paper. The proto-branch has applied to the Electoral Commission to register as “Lambeth Independent Socialists”. Normally, the Commission should reject this as they have people wanting to stand as “Independent Labour” or “Independent Conservative”.
Also in doubt is whether their candidate will even be endorsed by the YP Central Executive Committee.
Before the election period starts on 30 March and new rules regarding leaflets come into force, we like others are distributing pre-election leaflets. 2000 of one prepared for Lambeth have already been distributed. Some of the 1000 for Islington remain to be put through letter boxes.
Another 3000, this time on the housing question, have arrived and will all have to be distributed before 30 March, all in Lambeth in fact. 500 were yesterday in the Clapham Common and Abbeville ward.
On Wednesday we were outside Stockwell tube station.
Tomorrow we will be leafletting an event in Windrush Square in Brixton to publicise the national anti-far right march in London on 28 March.
Roger Hallam’s Shake It Up group is certainly getting the publicity:
Coalition of Independents Challenge Labour Grip on Lambeth Council 2026
We were out leafletting this weekend in both Islington and Lambeth.
On Saturday leaflets were put through letter boxes in Junction Ward announcing that we will be standing in Islington. Discarded Labour leaflets indicated that their candidates will be the outgoing councillors Chapman, Gregg and Potts.
On Sunday we leafletted Nine Elms tube station which is just outside the Stockwell West & Larkhall ward in Lambeth which we have also decided to contest, meaning we will be standing on three wards in Lambeth.
SPEW held its conference last week and decided this on elections:
“May elections
Congress discussed the elections on 7 May, which will be the first in many cities under a Labour government since 2010. As there is unlikely to be a national Your Party stand, the Socialist Party will be supporting and promoting the appeal of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, which we participate in, to ‘help get socialism on the ballot paper’, and its aim to get a sufficient number of candidates to achieve ‘fair media coverage’. The key task for Socialist Party members is encouraging trade unionists, young people, community and anti-war campaigners, Your Party supporters and all those opposing war and austerity to stand.”I can’t imagine anyone except a SPEW member on instructions wanting to stand under the TUSC label. It’s toxic. And — now that Corbyn has stated that the Greens are allies not opponents — if they stand against Green Party candidates that risks all SPEW members being expelled from the Your Party.
And of course if there are TUSC candidates that won’t be ‘socialism on the ballot paper’ but reformism plus state capitalism.
We now know who are Corbynite opponents in Junction Ward in Islington will be: Faith Obiaka-Hayward, Ruth O’Dowd and Pat Prendergast. They are not standing for the Your Party as such but for a front for it at local level called the “Islington Community Independents” (ICI). They have already started canvassing and will be out again this Sunday:
https://actionnetwork.org/events/ici-canvassing-join-us-in-junction-ward-3/
We will be out ourselves on the Saturday.
More on Shake It Up in this report of a meeting round the corner from our Head Office in Clapham High Street on Wednesday:
Coalition of Independents aim to end Labour’s vice-like grip on Lambeth Council
It remains to be seen if the Green Party will do a deal with them. They wouldn’t seem to have a political interest in this.
Your Party (now controlled by the Corbyn faction) has issued a statement on the Greens’s by-election victory. Here is the most significant part (which some on the Sultana wing — the Trotskyist entryists whose support she had cultivated — don’t agree with as they say the Greens are “pro-capitalist”):
“Moving forward, Your Party will work together with the Greens as friends and allies, not opponents.”
We will see what this means for the local elections in May.
There was an article in the Standard last year on a breakaway from the RCG. Maybe they are even nuttier.
There is something wrong with that chatbox response. Given that the RCP, like all Leninist groups, is committed to communism (what we call socialism) as a long term goal, it is understandable why the chatbot should come up with that description it has.
It’s the concluding section that this means they reject a so-called workers state based on a state-capitalist economy as a necessary stage towards this that is wrong. They don’t reject this but are ultra-orthodox Trots, descended from the old Militant Tendency, the wing that stayed in the Labour Party when the others left to form SPEW until they too were expelled.
I’ve been to a couple of their meetings. At one the audience was told that the RCP was in the Marxist tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Ted Grant. Grant will be turning in his grave at the suggestion that he was not an orthodox Marxist-Leninist but some sort of council communist.
Here is their website: https://communist.red/
Which all goes to show that you can’t trust a chatbox.
It looks as if, in promising free buses, Mamdani was promising something that the Mayor of New York doesn’t have the political power to deliver. And is admitting it here:
“However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state-controlled agency, sets bus policy and fare structures. Mamdani lacks direct authority to implement the change unilaterally, requiring state legislative action and potential state funding to replace fare revenue. The MTA typically collects approximately $1 billion annually from bus fares. State Senator Jabari Brisport, a Democratic Socialist ally of the mayor, has discussed the possibility of securing state funding for free bus rides, but such action remains unlikely without significant shifts in state politics or budget priorities.”
I don’t know if he mentioned that proviso in his election campaign.
Free Buses and Housing Reform: Mamdani Outlines Ambitious Agenda Despite Budget Constraints
Just listened to that. She is very good at demolishing all the arguments in favour of capitalism. I think I’ll get a copy of her book. But I think the recent discussion in the thread on the Labour theory of value is relevant here as her alternative would seem to accept the view that exploitation would be ended if the workers had full democratic control over how the value they produce over and above their wages should be used.
An attempt by the CWO to convince anarchists that, as advocates of minority action, they too believe in a vanguard and should take the next step and become Leninists. They might also have the same trouble convincing the anarchists of the CWO’s position, alluded to in the last paragraph, that a third world war is inevitable because without one capital accumulation cannot continue.
The last chapter of the book, on anarchists in Britain in the Second World Slaughter, looks interesting as it discusses the SPGB position and members’ actions in a fair way. The SPGB was of course opposed to the war but took the position that, as it wasn’t a mere anti-war party, there was no point in taking on a state at war, with the support of most workers, by calling on troops to mutiny or to turn “the war into civil war” (not that the anarchists really did anyway) or “revolutionary defeatism” (ie hope that the other side wins), and getting smashed by it.
Members were out yesterday, outside the tube station and putting leaflets through letter boxes. Also there was Roger Hallam, ex-Just Stop Oil, himself, leafletting for “Shake it up” who are standing “independent” candidates. They may be standing in the two wards we are contesting (Brixton North and Clapham Common).
More on them here: http://www.shakeitup.org.uk
