ALB
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The Weekly Worker have now published the results of all those they call "left candidates":http://www.cpgb.org.uk/may2015candidates.htmlWhat is noticeable is how well the Socialist Labour Party did compared with TUSC. Can't think why. The name perhaps? Class War got even less than us.
No, it's a meeting about the elections, formally of the Outreach Dept together with the candidates, election agents and branches involved. Obviously there will be a report to the party via the EC. Admitting religious people, changing the party name or getting involved in social activism are not on the agenda. The title of this thread is silly anyway as the future of the party is not an issue or in doubt.Those who can't attend have been invited to contribute in writing.
In preparation for the famous meeting on 23 May to carry out a post-mortem on the elections campaign, I've transcribed the various questions that were put in three 5-minute video interviews we had.Here's Andrew Neil's questions on BBC2's Daily Politics Show:
Quote:It's a bit confusing isn't it? You're the Socialist Party of Great Britain. What makes you different from the other socialist parties?Are you a bit anarchist?You're like the one on the train in Dr Zhivago just after the Bolshevik revolution who was being shipped off because the Bolsheviks didn't want anything to do with them?You are the Socialist Party of Great Britain. We've got the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance, the Trade Union and Socialist party, Left Unity, the Scottish Socialist Party, the Alliance for Green Socialism, the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party. You can see the problem there? It's a bit like the scene in Monty Python's the Life of Brian, isn't it? Shouldn't you all get together and have a proper Left Marxist Alternative?In my obviously failing bid to encourage left unity here, can I just suggest that you would do better if you were a bit more [united]? It's the perennial problem of the far left. You seem to to hate each other more than you hate the Tories or the Labour Party. I suggest that it is not helped by your rulebook which says: “A member shall not belong to any other political organisation or write or speak for any other political party except in opposition, or otherwise assist any other political party.”Neil was nothing if not persistent (I didn't see the interviews he did with the other parties he mentions: was he so persistent with them on the same subject?) Compared with his the questions the other interviewers put were gifts.
Quote:For BBC News 24 and BBC Parliament channel: What do you mean by socialism?Why do you want to “abolish the wages system”?You only have 10 candidates, why would you say people should vote for you?If you were elected to parliament what would be the top policies you would implement?What's wrong with the other parties? Cherwell (Oxford student newspaper) You are not connected to the Socialist Workers Party, are you?So, this is what has been called the battle between the “impossiblists” and the “reformists”?Do you want to be an MP?What do you say to people who agree with your ideas and give you a few votes but recognise that this isn't the main focus of the Socialist Party of Great Britain? What should they do to bring about the revolution?Vin wrote:I know we laugh at this but there is a serious side to it, in fact it could be THE problem.if it is, then we'd have to drop "socialist" from our name. Which is not going to happen of course. So we'll have to face it. I agree with Bill that the best way is to pre-empt it by bringing it up first and answering the question by beginning "Yes, we're the People's Front of Judea and they're the Judean People's Front" and then answer seriously.. Anyway, an item for discussion at the post-mortem on 23 May and maybe also at ADM.
I thought this was a discussion about the future not the past !The election review meeting has now been fixed for 1pm on Saturday 23 May at Head Office.This from an account of one hustings is the sort of the thing we will/should be discussing as it is one example of how others see us and of the difficulties of putting our case across alongside the conventional politicians:
Quote:The Socialist: The contrast between the clarity, tactical calculation, local passion and pure politics of Moran and Mike Foster the Socialist candidate was almost painful. Even before he spoke Foster had created an amusing moment. The chairman announced that he had been asked to make it clear that Foster was not the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party, as he had mistakenly announced, but of the Socialist Party. The audience chuckled quietly and I'm quite sure that hundreds immediately recalled as I did the Life of Brian and his introduction to the difference between the People’s Judean Front and the People’s Front of Judea!Foster seemed to be a good guy but he was quite out of it and had nothing to say to the actual circumstances of Botley. Only the common ownership of everything would make things better, meanwhile everyone including MPs are powerless. “What would you be able to offer Oxford West and Abingdon that other candidates can’t?” he was asked by The Oxford Student (I am quoting from a printed source so that you do not think I am making it up): “I’m not standing in this election to make promises about what I would do if I was elected…. The state, and the very way that our society is put together, can’t be made to work in the interests of the vast majority of people… If you vote for the Socialist Party, you wouldn’t be voting to put me in that position, thankfully. Instead, you’d be making the point that the whole system which we live under has to be replaced.”It is not utopian to have a great vision – provided you also have an argument about how we get from here to there. But the Socialist party had nothing practical to offer. Foster works to help homeless people but he was not campaigning to help the people of Botley in any concrete way. This brought him the funniest point of the evening. When it was his turn to answer the question, with whom would he not go in to coalition?, he shrugged his shoulders with a smile as the audience laughed. He wouldn't go into coalition with anyone nor, he admitted, would any other party want to go into coalition with his.The great financial crash that started in August 2007 has thrown millions of people out of work and set back the standard of living of countless more while the super-rich get even richer. Yet this is the first time such a crisis of capitalism has not been met by even the spectre of socialism. The Occupy movement is broadly anarchist, the indignados do not define their populism in terms of left and right, the green movement has appropriated the politics of the totality from Marxism. I'm quite confident that a politics which challenges the neoliberal order will emerge. Its name will not be socialism. The futility of the Socialist Party, not to speak of the complete absence of the "world socialist movement" it proclaims, signals the historic end of this form of anti-capitalism. It was noted with a benign tolerance by the people of Botley, a further indication of its irrelevance.stuartw2112 wrote:Does Russell Brand, to keep to the subject of this thread, divide political activities into revolutionary ones to be supported and reformist ones to be rejected? Not as far as I know.Actually, he does distinguish between "reformist" and other activity. I've heard him use the term "reformist" in relation to activity in parliament, as by Caroline Lucas, to get the same sort of things as he supports by direct action outside it. Which, actually, comes nearto our definition of the term !And there's this from p. 336 of his book on Revolution. It's about a Swedish proposal to pay workers partly in shares of the company they work for:
Quote:… that's one idea, that in my view is a piece of pipsqueak reformism and not worth dying for …I believe you said you hadn't read the book.I'd just add that not all the activities Brand supports fall into the category of even our definition of "reformism".
I think this comment on Urban75 sums up why some vote for TUSC (even if nobody does in Rainham)http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/lefty-party-predictions.334708/page-5#post-13886637
Young Master Smeet wrote:Eric Williams' (one of the leaders of Grenada the US deposed)That can't be (isn't) right. He was from Trinidad (its first Prime Minister) and died in 1981, two years before the US invasion of Grenada.
nicktap wrote:ALB, i do know Ray Carr but have been unable to contact him for some time, and got the impression he might be avoiding me?If the MFP and Ray Carr only disagree with us on language or on some issue of approach rather than principle, the solution is obvious: join us ! Come to think of it, so should Robbo.
Fair enough Nick. Let's let by-gones be bygones, but are you in touch with this group in the same town?http://www.stephenshenfield.net/pdf/lib_com/Lib_Com_11.pdfI don't thonk they're against election activity.
alanjjohnstone wrote:So ALB does that mean we are now to be hostile to MFP?That wasn't the point I was making. It was that, unlike Zeitgeist, they had at least seen the need to organise politically.
Were all these gains from the Lib Dems? Of course as Bristol has an elected mayor the council is pretty powerless, but aren't the Bristol Greens well in with the Independent mayor (even though he was caught speeding at 30mph on one of their favoured 20 mph roads)?.
Just seen this from a past Minutes of Kent & Sussex Branch:
Quote:iii) Money Free PartyA member had asked for clarification about this organisation and if there were any similarities between its aims and the party's. A brief discussion ensued in which it was explained that the party's position was based on class analysis and materialism and not on idealism. Money would only become redundant with the ending of exchange relationships once the minority ownership of the means of production had been converted into the common property of the whole of society.They are a registered political party with the Electoral Commission.
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/12941298.Labour_sweep_to_power_in_Brighton_and_Hove_as_the_Greens_are_ousted/That's the end of that experiment then.Meanwhile another experiment starts:http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ukip-running-first-council-after-5667766Local builders must be rubbing their hands with glee in view of UKIP's propensity to attract dodgy candidates.
