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TUSC have published their list of candidates. There are only 40. They are not standing in Clapham and Brixton Hill but we still don’t the names of all who are.
They say this of their candidate in a Folkestone and Hythe:
“Meanwhile, in Folkstone & Hythe, the TUSC banner is being carried by the anti-war campaigner and Folkestone Stands With Palestine group member Momtaz Khanom.”
So here they are going for the local anti-Gaza vote rather than the usual militant trade unionist one.
It has now been officially confirmed that there are 8 candidates standing in Folkestone and Hythe. Besides ourselves they are:
Conservative
Labour
Liberal Democrat
Green
Reform UK
TUSC
Fairer Voting PartyThe same number as in 2019.
I hadn’t realised that documentary proof had been found that Starmer used to be Yrotskist but all the references and facsimiles of his articles are or are linked to here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternatives
Ok, it wasn’t one of the hard-line sects, only a wishy-washy one that was apparently more into feminism and ecology. But Michael Raptis was the Pablo of the “Pabloites”.
Ps Did your letter appear in the Islington Tribune in the end? If not, how about sending it to the Weekly Worker. Corbyn the parish pump independent is worth wider coverage.
We do indeed get a mention in the letters column of this week’s Weekly Worker in a letter from “Jack Conrad” himself.
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1494/letters/
He comments on the programme of a group in Manchester called “Communist Future” which is standing a candidate in Manchester Central in the general election.
He writes that their programme (see https://communistfuture.com/manifesto/)
“is vague, parochial and politically pointless. Empty phrases are piled upon empty phrases. Capitalism is counterposed to communism in a manner reminiscent of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. In other words, we have soggy abstractions and pious wishes. Of course, this is just the flipside of the usual broad-frontist approach that sees disorientated leftwingers advocate unity around the lowest-common-denominator politics of tailism and economism.”
What reminds him of us is that the group puts forward “communism” (by which they mean, as far as we can see, more or less the same as we do by “socialism”) as its main aim. However, this doesn’t prevent them having a programme of immediate demands as well. Some of them, apparently, are former members of his group.
He has a point about “disoriented leftwingers” advocating “lowest-common denominator politics” but ends his letter by saying
“Vote left where you can (and that includes the few left Labourites who are being allowed to stand), vote Labour where you must (ie, mainstream Labour).”
There’s some interesting gossip in the letters column about the new “Revolutionary Communist Party” standing a candidate in Stratford and Bow as an independent and about the Spartacist League trying to enter TUSC to recruit members. Talk about little fleas having lesser fleas upon their backs to bite them.
Actually, we should probably have a separate thread under General Discussion to discuss these groups attitude to the Labour Party in the election.
The Who Can I Vote For site is reporting that TUSC is fielding a candidate in Folkestone and Hythe:
https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/elections/parl.folkestone-and-hythe.2024-07-04/folkestone-and-hythe/
They may be one in Clapham and Brixton too but to know we will have to wait till 5 o’clock this afternoon.
Just heard on the news that Russia was not invited to the D-day event today but the old USSR and its army was represented by …. Ukraine. This despite the fact that there were probably Ukrainians fighting with the German army to resist the landing. Our rulers and their media must take us for fools. In 1944 it was Uncle Joe and the valiant Red Army. Today it’s Putin the evil dictator and his brutal army while Ukraine is good. True, Zelensky’s grandfather fought with the Russian Army against Nazi Germany but there are others in his regime who see pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalist Bandera as their hero.
Here’s our best election result ever:
https://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/ward/9721/
That’s what it will be like in the last days of capitalism when it will be a straight fight between the socialist party and all the capitalist parties coalesced into the Labour Party!
Wikipedia are quick off the mark, referencing this thread. Must be one of us?
Scroll down to Elections.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clapham_and_Brixton_Hill_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Kent and Sussex branch report that the nomination papers for our candidate in Folkestone and Hythe, Andy Thomas, were also handed in and accepted today.
They also report that, judging by large ads placed in the local papers, one of our opponents will be the Fairer Voting Party. Its founder, who lives in Folkestone, has devised what he considers to be the perfect voting system. It’s not very straightforward And of course won’t make any difference to the way that the capitalist economic system works.
The nomination papers for our candidate in Clapham and Brixton Hill, Bill Martin, were handed in this morning and accepted. We won’t know who are opponents will be till after nominations close at 4pm on Friday. But they are certain to include the same gang of five (Labour, Tory, Liberal, Green and ReformUK) as at the GLA elections last month.
Incidentally, the 10 subscribers from amongst local electors required to be nominated were all either members, sympathisers or contacts so we didn’t have to do any cold calling on electors.
Meanwhile the election communication which Royal Mail will distribute free to all 47,700 households in the constituency has been prepared.
Just saw a truck from the haulage firm Tony Starmer. Perhaps a long-lost relative but evidently a true blue patriot too:
Two letters from us in this week’s Weekly Worker in reply to Mike McNair’s article:
Reeves has refused to say that she is a socialist. Which is rather obvious and it’s a good thing she doesn’t claim to be one, as the word has been dragged through the mud enough already:
She says here that she has “always called myself a social democrat” (which today means a bourgeois democrat who favours a few social measures for people). But in her book The Women who made Modern Economics, at the end of the chapter on Rosa Luxemburg, she says that she is a Fabian rather than a Marxist. Yet the Fabians claimed to be socialists (by which they meant state capitalism run by them). Maybe she didn’t know this. Or maybe this was part of her book that was exposed as plagiarism. And of course Rosa Luxemburg also called herself a Social Democrat (which at one time meant a socialist).
Looks as if Starmer has inadvertently brought socialism back on the agenda, giving us a foot in the door.
We will need to answer this at some point.
He certainly sounds like someone trying to dig themself out of a hole. And on the same day that a number of capitalists call for a vote for Labour in a letter to the Times
