ALB
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alanjjohnstone wrote:ALB, Have we ever been in touch with this person and this organisation?
You know him, Alan. He used to be on the WSM Forum where he made a nuisance of himself and got banned a number of times as a troll. He seems to have calmed down a bit since and is on our facebook page behaving properly.As to the difference, one no doubt is the one Robbo raises (but he would, wouldn't he!), but the more important one is that he does what Vin says we should avoid (and which we do avoid) of painting a "money-free society" as a nice, ideal society that can be established without class struggle and revolution.I think this video by him has been posted here before:https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=595597503903313&permPage=1
There was also a Yorkshire First party. All this is an expression of the "politics of scarcity" where people accept capitalism and its artificial scarcity and band together in separate groups to try to get as much of the scarce resources (as reflected in money) as they can. It inevitably involves squabbling with other groups.This is what the SNP phenomenon is all about. They don't really want "independence". In fact they'd shit themselves if they got it as that woild deprive the government there of any grants from the central UK government. Like the DUP in Northern Ireland what they want is more money from the central UK government, only they are adopting a different approach. Rather than saying they deserve more as loyal Unionists they are waving the threat of breaking away. It might work. In fact it probably will given that they now have 54 of Scotland 57 MPs.But this kind of nasty, divisive politics pitting imagined "national" groups against each other over crumbs from the capitalist table is working both ways. I hadn't followed the election campaign in London till the last week and was rather surprised to see the tactics employed by the Tories to get their erstwhile coalition partners, the LibDems, out. They ruthlessly played the anti-SNP, not to say anti-Scottish, card.I found leaflet headed "SNP puts Miliband in Downing Street. Your vote can stop this" which says:
Quote:A vote for the Lib Dems or anyone else risks getting the chaos of Ed Miliband, with Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon holding Britain to ransom for the next five years. Don't risk it — Ed Miliband and the SNP will take us back to square one.Another leadlet said:
Quote:Clegg opens the door to Miliband government backed by SNP.And, in a leaflet for a local council by-election, another said that there was a choice between a Conservative government:
Quote:Or we have a Labour/Scottish Nationalist Government, taxing London and harming Britain."Scotland holding the rest of Britain to ransom for more money", "England/London being taxed more to give more money to Scotland", this is the dismal prospect of conventional politics over the coming years.And completely unnecessary as the world has the resources to adequately feed, clothe and house not just the population of England and Scotland but that of the whole world's once class ownership and production for profit have been replaced by common ownership, democratic control, production directly for use, and free access to what has been produced.
We have tended to analyse the slave economy of the Southern States as "plantation capitalism", using the word "capitalism" on the grounds that it involved the investment of money in production for sale on a market with a view to profit. There's something on this in chapter 4 of one of our pamphlets on Racism here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/racism
I don't know how relevant this is but there was some discussion about comparing how we did with how others putting a broadly similar view but not using the word "socialist" did, but here's the result for a council ward contested by the Money Free Party in Poole:http://prntscr.com/72za3fIt's not all that different, considering the sizes of the wards, from what we got in a ward in Folkestone:http://www.shepway.gov.uk/UserFiles/File/pdf/Elections%202015/Folkestone%20Harbour%20District.pdf
Another (more important and significant) set of figures relevant for judging the impact of the campaign are those Gnome has been posting here from time to time. What they show are the number of hits on our website via a code for a particular constituency, leaflet or email.The figures as of today are:Brighton (both constituencies) 223Oxford (both constituencies) 102Swansea West 51Vauxhall 38Islington North 29Canterbury 26Folkestone & Hythe 17Easington 15Rest of country (where we weren't contesting) 20Two Half page Morning Star adverts 8We also have a measure of how many people looked up our election video from one of our election leaflets: 80.These hits will have come mainly from email replies to enquirers (mostly from 38 Degrees members) rather than the leaflets. They reflect whether those replying gave the specific code in their email. Not every candidate did, but if they gave the general website address any hit on our website would not have been recorded separately.The next set of relevant statistics will be the number who took up the offer on our website of an information pack and a free 3-month trial subscription to the Socialist Standard and other enquiries by email, letter or phone call. These are still being collated.
alanjjohnstone wrote:How did Max Hess get on in his local election?The result is here:http://www.shepway.gov.uk/UserFiles/File/pdf/Elections%202015/Folkestone%20Harbour%20District.pdfAs this is a ward electing two councillors where we (and the LibDems) only put up one candidate it is difficult (in fact impossible) to calculate the percentage share of each party. But 35 as a percentage of the number of ballot papers used is 2.4%, our best election result this time. Who'd have thought that the revolution would begin in Folkestone !
Now that all the results are in and published in the papers here's a more detailed breakdown of how we did in terms of votes (and some of the factors which influence this):Easington 146 votes. 0.42%. Labour seat. 7 candidatesCanterbury 165 votes. 0.31%. Tory seat. 6 candidates.Islington North 112 votes. 0.23%. Labour seat. 6 candidatesVauxhall 82 votes. 0.17%. Labour seat. 10 candidates. Left Unity candidateBrighton Pavilion 88 votes. 0.16%. Green seat. 7 candidatesBrighton Kemptown 73 votes. 0.16% Tory seat. 7 candidatesSwansea West 49 votes. 0.14%. Labour seat. 9 candidates. TUSC candidate.Folkestone & Hythe 68 votes. 0.12%. Tory seat. 8 candidates. TUSC candidate.Oxford West & Abingdon 66 votes 0.12%. Tory seat (was LibDem). 7 candidates.Oxford East 50 votes. 0.10%. Labour seat. 9 candidates. TUSC candidate.
According to the BBC website, TUSC's 135 candidates got a total of 36,327 votes, an average of 269 per constituency, which will be less than 1%. OK, we only got an average of 90 per constituency but then we were standing for socialism and nothing else while they were promising a whole host of reforms (a million more council houses, £10 an hour minumum wage now, etc, etc, etc).Lesson: you might as well ask for whole bakery rather than just some bigger crumbs.
For the record, here's the election result for Vauxhall, the one constituency where there was a head-on clash between us and Left Unity:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14001008As can be seen, we got 82 and they only got 188. Further confirmation of Stuart's view (and reason for resigning from them) that they are just another small leftwing party.More speculation on this particular result here.
alanjjohnstone wrote:How did Max Hess get on in his local election?They're not counting the District Council votes until today (Saturday).
Actually, people should watch this. In it he virtually says that he was misled into getting involved and saying vote Labour. It's only about 5 minutes and you can see his cat.
Vin wrote:I would add:5) What should our key message be?as I wholeheartedly disagree with the conference resolution on the matterIt wasn't a conference resolution but only a pious floor resolution carried accidently which nobody took any notice of anyway and weren't required to.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I know i should be ashamed of myself for not following the EU referendum debate bits , but am i correct in understanding that it will now be the Party's next big campaign?What is the likely time-table for it ? Does anybody know?The next elections are those to regional assemblies in London, Scotland and Wales next year. I would think we'd do London and Wales. Don't know about Scotland. In/Out EU referendum is supposed to be (Tory election "pledge" for what it's worth) before the end of 2017. Can't see much of interest for our intervention in it, except a few leaflets.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Steve Colborn, 146 votes, 0.4% of a 56% turnout Robert Cox, 165 votes, 0.3% of a 64% turnoutMike Foster, 66 votes, 0.1% of a 72% turnout Brian Johnson, 49 voters, 0.1% of a 60% turnout Danny Lambert, 82 votes, 0.2% of a 59% turnout Bill Martin, 112 votes, 0.2% of a 67% turnoutKevin Parkin, 50 votes, 0.1% of a 64% turnoutHoward Pilott, 88 votes, 0.2% of a 71% turnoutJacqueline Shodeke, 73 votes, 0.2% of 67% turnout Andy Thomas, 68 votes, 0.1% of a 66% turnout So we have a total of 826 votes from 10 candidates.I make that 899 votes in total (not 826), not too far off the average of 100 per constituency I predicted. As I guessed too, we did best in Easington (Steve Colborn), at least in percentage terms but it was Canterbury (Rob Cox) in vote terms.Actually it wasn't entirely a guess as past experiences indicates that we do best in safe Labour seats and worst in seats with a largre number of candidates especially if one also claims to be socialist .We also contested a local by-election in Lamberth (Prince's ward) where Danny Lambert got 42 votes (0.5%) and a council seat in Shepway District Council (Harbour ward) not yet announced. Since we presumably got more than 40 votes in total in the other seven wards that make up the Vauxhall constituency this means that some people there voted for us in the local election but not in the general election.
Just remembered that I got a Labour Party leaflet through my door headed "Conservatives and Lib Dems — Two sides of the same coin". Why, I ask our Labour supporter here, can they say that while we can't say "Labour, Tory, Same Old Story" (because it's capitalism not which party is in power is the root cause of the problems parties promise to deal with). Or does he think that a LibDem government would be the same as a Tory one? If so, why? And why would (yet another) Labour government be any different?
