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In this week’s edition of the Weekly Worker Robin Cox accedes to ZJW’s request above.
There is also a letter from our philosophical friend from Liverpool which is not bad.
Meanwhile the others are still disputing on what is a minimum programme. We have certainly put the cat amongst the pidgeons there, an unintended bonus of our decision to contest the GLA elections.
Definitely not him. He went on to join the Labour Party and even, I think, became a Labour councillor.
The Revolutionary Communist Group were outside Brixton Tube station this morning (and so got one of our leaflets) handing out a leaflet headed “A vote for Labour is a vote for genocide!” which says:
“The mantra “kick out the Tories” is a dog whistle for a Labour vote, since the Tories can only be ‘kicked out’ of government by a Labour general election victory. It is a call to replace one virulently racist, imperialist, anti-working class government by another. But it enables left organisations like the SWP, Socialist Party, Socialist Alternative, Revolutionary Communist Party to name but four, to maintain their support for Labour while pretending to oppose it. Meanwhile, the many organisations created by disillusioned Labour supporters – Transform Politics, No Ceasefire – No Vote, Collective, TUSC, Muslim Vote, We Deserve Better, Reliance Party, the Rise Movement, etc etc – are endorsing left Labour candidates like Zarah Sultana, even when such people brazenly place their parliamentary careers before any political principles. They are standing “independent” candidates ostensibly to challenge Labour’s support for the Zionist onslaught – but they have no intention of threatening a Labour victory and are targeting constituencies with a solid Labour majority and a right-wing Labour candidate.”
and
“A vote for Corbyn is a vote for nostalgia and nothing more, a vote for Galloway is a vote for a sexist, homophobic and transphobic charlatan, a vote for Feinstein is a vote for personal ambition. Such votes do not take the movement forward one iota. Nor does a vote for the many other opportunists.”
Their conclusion “Don’t Vote, Organise!” (in their vanguard party of course)
A sympathiser took a photo of their postal vote ballot paper with “World Socialism” written across it and posted it on Twitter. It is now marked as “unavailable”. Maybe because a Twitter employee thought that photoing your ballot paper is illegal. In fact taking a photo of your own postal ballot paper is not illegal, at least not in Britain. Postal voters here are perfectly entitled to show how they voted.
Are you saying that workers should vote for Feinstein, Galloway, Corbyn and the others or just letting us know that this is Jonathan Cook’s view?
More on the Workers’ Party candidate in Battersea, Dan Smith. According to this interview with a local
online paper, he is not simply a Remainer but a Rejoiner.Asked:
“In the 2016 EU referendum there was a 70 % remain vote here, one of the highest in the country. There is still a lot of strong feeling about Brexit – but how relevant is it as an issue in this election?”
He replied:
“I voted remain and if there is the right opportunity to rejoin, I will push hard for this. I know politicians like to be overly prolix with their words but I prefer my responses to be more concise and to the point.”
At least he wasn’t a Brexiteer — unlike the Leader of his party who campaigned for Brexit and even supported the Brexit party in the 2019 European Parliament elections.
Meet Dan Smith, Workers Party of Britain candidate for Battersea
The independent candidate for Clapham and Brixton Hill, Jon Key, called in at our office this morning. He said most people hated the main political parties and hoped that we would debate against the Reform Party in particular. He took our leaflet and the July Socialist Standard, out today so it can circulate a week before election day (since quite a bit is on the election).
An Irish Trotskyist party, People before Profit, is standing in 3 constituencies in Northern Ireland. Here is their election broadcast:
The BBC have committed simple error. Go here and click The Socialist Party of Great Britain and see where it takes you:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3gg454qw15o.amp
A member has complained but the complaints procedure is so convoluted that an answer is unlikely before the date of the election.
We are contacting them officially as a party demanding an urgent correction.
The link should take you to:
There was an article in last Friday’s Times headlined “Reeves’s plan for growth is built on private cash”. Precisely. The author thought this was a brilliant idea but it could prove to be why the plan will fail — as private capitalists will only put up the cash if they judge there’s a profit in it for them. If not, they won’t.
The incoming Labour government may be able to get things started by offering them a bribe in the form of contracts and subsidies. But this planned crony capitalism won’t be sustainable unless profits are generated at some point.
Here behind a pay wall:
Incidentally, the title of this thread is a bit outdated with private capitalists jumping on the bandwagon in the hope of getting a contract, subsidy or knighthood.
The normal working of the law of supply and demand that regulates short-term market prices. Ironically, if the incoming Labour government succeeds in stimulating growth or, more likely, if growth happens spontaneously, then gas prices will go up again.
“The slump in Europe’s energy markets has already filtered through to homes. In the UK, the regulator Ofgem’s energy price cap, which sets the maximum price that suppliers can charge per unit of gas or electricity, fell by £238 to £1,690 for the typical annual dual-fuel bill earlier this week – its lowest for two years.
“But lower prices alone are not enough to articulate the end of the energy crisis,” according to Marzec-Manser. “There’s a wider economic picture to consider.”
The recent fall in market prices is in part due to the economic gloom caused by the energy crisis itself, he says. Rising energy bills have triggered inflation across major economies, leading to a cost of living crisis that has slowed consumer demand for new products.
This in turn has reduced economic activity across Europe’s industrial heartlands, and has kept a lid on gas demand from heavy industry. Marzec-Manser expects industrial gas demand to remain 20% below pre-pandemic levels this year.
“Even though gas is more affordable there is still a diminished demand for products due to the cost of living crisis, which means industrial gas demand has not yet recovered,” he says.
A rebound in industrial demand would prevent gas prices from falling to pre-pandemic lows and serve to underline Europe’s growing reliance on more expensive sources of gas.”The CPB’s position amounts to: Vote Labour except in the few constituencies where we are contesting which are all safe Labour seats where we won’t get enough votes to let the Tories in.
In a dig presumably at the Galloway Party and SPEW’s TUSC, Robert Griffiths, their General Secretary has written:
“Tory victories at the ballot box, while the left pursues ‘will o’ the wisp’ substitutes for the Labour Party outside the labour movement, offer no way forward” (Morning Star, 1 May 2024).
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/defeat-tories-priority-local-elections
They seem to see the way forward as a different will o’ the wisp — the CP becoming affiliated to the Labour Party.
Just realised that we have been labouring under a misapprehension. It is not 12.5 percent of the votes cast but 12.5 percent of the total electorate. Which means that it is very unlikely that more than 3 candidates can get through to the second round ( if they choose to). In fact it makes 3-way contests much less common.
It’s a genuine quote from something Marx wrote, the ending of this article from November 1848:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/11/06.htm
As can be seen, Marx was commenting on the suppression of the bourgeois revolution against feudal and dynastic rule in Austria following defeats elsewhere in Europe, all due in his opinion to the timidity, cowardice and betrayal of the bourgeoisie itself.
He was making the point that a successful bourgeois revolution to establish the rule of the capitalist class would have to do what a part of the bourgeoisie in France had done in 1793-4 under Robespierre and the others.
In other words, he was talking about the bourgeois revolution not the socialist revolution, the coming to power of the capitalist class not the working class. He was, however, in favour of a bourgeois revolution in Germany including Austria as clearing the way for a “proletarian revolution” which he expected to rapidly follow.
It didn’t of course and neither revolution occurred. Marx later recognised that he had grossly over-rated the prospects of a proletarian revolution in 1848.
In the event the capitalist class didn’t gain full control of the state in Germany and Austria until after the end, and as a consequence of the First World War. Which was a festival of bloody violence if ever there was.
Later, in the 1870s. Marx spoke of the possibility in certain countries of the working class winning control of political power via the ballot box, though he expected a “slaveholders’ revolt” against this democratic decision to end capitalism by a section of the capitalist class which would have to be suppressed.
Are you suggesting we place a bet on it? Will we get into trouble for insider trading? I don’t know what constituency you are in. Bournemouth? Christchurch? Both Bournemouth seats are predicted to go Labour. Christchurch should be one of the few Tory certainties, so you might be right about there. I see the Animal Welfare Party are standing.
I was in Tory territory this morning myself for a funeral near Guildford. The only posters I saw were for Jeremy Hunt. On checking I found I had been in Godalming and Ash, in deepest Surrey, but even he is considered at risk. It seems the forelock-tugging vote is not as strong as used to be.
