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Busy day of activity in Oxford yesterday, two hustings and a street stall. Six of us did a stall in Broad Street in the centre from 5pm to 7pm organised by the Oxford Communist Corresponding Society. Also present, handing out his own pamphlet and a bit of nuisance, was Ernie Reynolds who stood as an "Abolish Money" (but only in one country) candidate in Swindon in 2005.Our candidate in Oxford West & Abingdon represented the Party at the hustings in St Barnabus church (actually more a basilica) in Jericho organised by the Oxfordshire branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. An audience of 100 or so. All the other candidates (first time we'd seen the Tory, who wants to bring back the killing of foxes for pleasure) were there except the UKIP one who withdrew because of alleged "death threats" following the exposing of his prejudiced comments a year or so ago on facebook. Mainly local issues. Mike's introduction can be found here. His vision differed from William Morris's in News from Nowhere which is partly set in Oxfordshire but where it never rains. The event was filmed by three TV companies. A report on it should be on BBC South local news at 6.30pm and 10.30pm today if anyone here is that catchment area. One of the others was Brookes TV, an internet TV station run by and for students of Brookes University in Oxford. Still trying to track it down.Our candidate in Oxford East was not invited to a hustings in Headington organised by the local churches. This was in effect a selective hustings as only 5 of the 9 declared candidates were invited, the fig-leaf selection criteria being parties which had had MPs. When the moderator introduced "the candidates" it turned out that 3 of them weren't actually candidates but their representative. Two of us at the back heckled him on this. So, in fact, there were only 2 candidates on the platform with a further 2 excluded ones (not ours) in the meeting hall. The moderator rather let the cat out of the bag when he declared an interest: that he was a member of the Labour Party. He would want to exclude candidates which the Labour Party might think would take votes from them, wouldn't he? And could it be a co-incidence that of the 5 hustings organised by local churches, this was the only one not to invite all the candidates? In any event he wasn't like Ceasar's wife. Both us and the TUSC candidate made certain everyone of the 80 or so present had our respective leaflets.
Editorial from the Abingdon Herald (1 April):
Quote:The Greens, the Labour Party, the National Health Action Party and the Great British Socialist Party are all fielding candidates for the same "ultra-marginal" seat.Unfortunately, it wasn't an April fool.
Vauxhall nomination papers and deposit handed in and accepted today. That means only Easington left. They'll be handed in tomorrow (but have already been checked by the returning officer and are in order). So, we're off, all ten constituencies.Meanwhile the "election communications" that Royal Mail will distribute in the 10 constituencies, totally 500,000 in all, have been sent to them for vetting.
Probably for one of our regular street stalls. We're planning these on every Thursday evening from 5pm to 7pm in central Oxford and every Saturday from 12 noon and maybe in the afternoon (or door-to-door leafletting) from now until election date.The first Thursday one is this Thursday (9 April) in Broad Street.The second Saturday one was planned for this Saturday but we may change this to Sunday as we've been invited to a hustings on Sunday 12 April at 6pm:http://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/events/221615962/We'll decide at the branch tonight. I'll let you know.In any event, from next week it will be every Thursday at 5pm and every Saturday. On Thursday 30 April we'll be holding an election meeting, with the Oxford Communist Corresponding Society, at 7.30 in central Oxford
We were unable to leaflet this event in Oxford as it coincided with our annual conference:http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/12869043.5_30PM_UPDATE__VIDEO__Three_arrested_and_one_police_officer_injured_during_EDL_march_in_Oxford/?ref=arA number of our leaflets were, however, distributed in Kidlington, which despite being part of Cherwell (Banbury) council, is included in the Oxford West & Abingdon constituency.
A member has posted our election video here:https://vimeo.com/123923032So it's here as well as on Youtube.
One of the questions about which our candidates have been asked from hundreds of members of the 38 Degrees campaigning group is to sign Greenpeace's anti-fracking pledge. None have, not necessarily because they or we are in favour of fracking, but because in elections we don't make any pledges or promises on any subject. Greenpeace say that 780 had signed up by 1 April:
Quote:The Frack Free Promise, an online platform launched by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, has already seen 780 candidates pledge to oppose fracking in their constituencies or help block it across Britain if their areas have not been licensed.Click here to see which candidates have made the Frack Free PromiseAt last check, 402 Green Party, 104 Lib Dem, 100 Labour, 23 Plaid Cymru, 7 SNP, and 7 Ukip candidates had taken the pledge. No Tory election hopefuls have signed up so far.At least one of our candidates has replied direct to Greenpeace itself but he is recorded as not having replied. There appears to be no provision on their interactive page for candidates who have replied without signing the pledge. We are taking this up with them.
Nomination accepted and deposit paid, in Abingdon, for Oxford West & Abingdon. This tile saw a Tory poster too.Today's Oxford Mail has the front page headline: FACEBOOK TIRADE BY UKIP MAN IS PROBED. Page 9 carries a report on the hustings on civil liberties organised by 38 Degrees on Tuesday:http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/12867739.Candidates_hit_out_at_rise_in_state_control_under_coalition/The print version has a photo of the other candidates too, but Kevin can be seen in the online photo, at the end on the right.
More news from Oxford:http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/01/ukip-candidate-alan-harris-accused-of-racist-and-homophobic-facebook-posts_n_6984154.htmlDon't know if it's true, but what is it about the UKIP candidates standing against us?. First, their candidate in Swansea West brings out an unofficial leaflet that they had to reudiate, then their candidate in Folkestone & Hythe is sacked for trying to fiddle her expenses to "repatriate" money from the EU, and now this.
Here's a reply to a reply we sent to somebody who asked, via 38 Degrees, our candidate in Oxford East to do pledge to do something about tax-dodging by rich corporations and individuals.
We Wrote wrote:To be quite honest, the Socialist Party is not particularly concerned that the super-rich dodge paying their taxes. We are more concerned with
the very existence of a class of super-rich within society.Their income and wealth derives from the exploitation of the rest of us who, by our work, produce all the wealth of society. Socialism will put an
end to this by making the means of wealth production common property under the democratic control of the community. There will be no rich or
super-rich nor poor or super-poor, just a classless society of free and equal men and women cooperating to produce and distribute what they need
in accordance with the socialist principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs".We are standing in this election to promote this idea.
He replied:
Quote:I take your point, which is fair enough I guess.But I am 73 years old and I'm tired of waiting for the revolution to happen. I guess
it won't be in my lifetime!!In the meantime, any way we can get the bastards is better than none in my book!!
Good to see that basic class consciousness is alive and kicking.
The nomination papers for our candidate in Oxford East, Kevin Parkin, were accepted yesterday. They are not accepting nominations for Oxford West & Abingdon till Thursday. Still, the visit to Abingdon, a historic country town that was in Berkshire for most of its history, wasn't entirely wasted. Pleased to see that the local paper, the Abingdon Herald, listed our candidate, Mike Foster, as among those standing. Also, local shops had posters for a couple of the hustings he'll be attending. It's the only place so far that I've seen posters for the election, all three for the LibDem candidate (they are hoping to regain the seat after losing it last time by a few hundred votes).In the evening, Kevin represented us at a hustings organised by local members of 38 Degrees, the internet campaigning group that has been sending candidates all over the country emails asking them to support various, generally leftwing causes. There were 40 or so people present. The theme of this hustings was civil liberties. Six of the (now) ten declared candidates were present. Absent were the Tories (refusal), UKIP (other engagement), the Raving Looney and one of the declared Independents. The other, a local personality and campaigner, Artwell, was and expressed views similar to the Greens. In the absence of the Tories and UKIP, the LibDems became the whipping boy but their representative was able to hold his own by pointing out that his party's record on the issue was better than Labour's (as it was the last Labour government that tried to introduce identity cards and did arm the police with tasers).TUSC and the Greens vied with each other in making wild, unrealistic promises (often the same) as to what they would do if they were the government under capitalism. Kevin explained that the problems in the fields of housing, education and health care were caused by capitalism and could not be solved under capitalism and that was why he was advocating socialism as the solution.There's an EDL demonstration in Oxford on Saturday and also a counter-demonstration. This came up, with only us, Artwell and the LibDems defending the right of the EDL (and anyone else) to express their views, however obnoxious, as well as of those opposed to the EDL to protest.
Critisticuffs may be anti-parliamentarists but they are not anarchists. They are much better than that and have produced some useful "Marxist" stuff:https://critisticuffs.org/links/I imagine they will be saying that elections are a way of legitimising capitalist rule. They are but of course can also be used to delegitimise it
Somebody else who didn't agree with Chomsky's approach to language:http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/obits/obituaries/11880077.Obituary__Academic_formed_a_linguistics_theory_that_jettisoned_the_rules/?ref=rss
