ALB
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Of course there can and will be a deal in the end. What do you make of this:
Socialist ideas need to flow in society or it is dominated by propriety ideations
Exactly. That’s what we are currently organised to do as it easier as a group than as an isolated individual. Here in the islands off the north west coast of the Eurasian land mass we can publish a magazine, pamphlets and leaflets and distribute them, maintain a website, contest elections, etc, all with the above in view.
I can see it will be more difficult where you are in the southern hemisphere but in fact there are a few other socialists in your part of the world.
Yes it’s not easy to decide who is the moindre mal if you believe in that principle. I have always liked Steve Coleman’s quip that what we are faced with is the evil of two lessers.
Useful but not entirely reliable. For instance, Karl Vidol in Southgate and Wood Green is listed twice, once as Independent and once as TUSC. By coincidence, a link to the Statement of Persons Nominated for that constituency is given in an earlier post on this thread. He is clearly TUSC.
I don’t think Lefties will use the tactic of standing as independents again as they will suffer the fate that all little-known independents do — just getting the votes of friends and family, without getting over what you are standing for across: you just appear on the ballot paper as “Independent” with no emblem. You could be anybody standing for anything. Whats the point of that?
I see the author takes a potshot at us for standing against all of them if they happen to be standing. But then we are standing for socialism and nothing but while they are standing for anything but socialism. In fact when they do mention socialism they mean state capitalism.
The only one on that list who does say they are standing for an alternative society to capitalism that is recognisably more or less the same as what we mean by socialism is the Communist Future candidate in Manchester Central, but even they have a list of desirable reforms — and are accused by the others of being “reminiscent of the SPGB”. See their manifesto here:
Just received approval from Royal Mail of the artwork of the official Election Communication they will be distributing free to all 47,700 households in the Clapham and Brixton Hill constituency. The artwork is being sent to the printers tomorrow.
I see TUSC and the Workers Party are going head to head in Southgate & Wood Green:
Here’s the independent candidate in Clapham and Brixton Hill and what he stands for:
https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/117508/jon-key
If that photo is if him then he’s the author of this book:
We were already out in Brixton High Street this morning:
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/10048538/4337472891561440316
We get a mention in that issue, in a book review on page 40. So if Starmer read the whole issue (as presumably he will have done as a member if the “editorial collective”) he will have known of us, if only as “ultraleftists” who said Russia was state capitalist and for having an “intransigent stand”.
Lambeth Council has just announced the list of those validly nominated in Clapham and Brixton Hill. Besides us they are the usual 5 (Labour, LibDem, Green, Conservative, ReformUK) and an Independent:
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.
