ALB
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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.
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.
