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Click here to go direct to what Danny says:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Qhjp3PbV8
The Wales Report has been in touch and will be interviewing one of our candidates, Howard Moss, tomorrow (Friday). According to their website, there's a special edition on the European Elections on Wednesday 14 May at 22.40 on BBC Wales, so it looks as if it will be shown then.Here is what Howard intends to say if they give him enough time:
Quote:In or out of Europe doesn’t matter. We’re looking for a real change. Not the kind of change that puts a different set of leaders in charge of the same old system. We’ve got a system which is ruled by money and the drive for profit and by its nature it causes insecurity, divisions and conflicts between people and grotesque inequality. It allows the world’s richest 85 people to own more wealth than half the world’s population put together. This obviously won’t do. The Socialist Party of Great Britain stands for the kind of change that in Wales, Europe and over the whole planet and calls upon people to vote for a free access society without money and wages, without borders, without leaders and led. It’s a society based on democratic co-operation in using the world’s resources rationally to feed, clothe, house and give a decent life to everyone. It’s not a utopia either, it’s a real tangible prospect and more and more people are seeing that. Social consciousness is the key to this common ownership society and that’s what we’re trying to achieve by asking people to vote for us on May 22nd.Can't someone turn Danny's 5-minute speech into a separate video clip that we can put on Youtube too as it's a good presentation of our case? More time than he/we are going to get on BBCTV South East Region or any other TV or radio programme during the election, longer even than our Party Election Broadcast
BBC TV South-East (covering Surrey, Sussex and Kent) have just let us know that a clip of a short interview which one of our candidates, Danny Lambert, did when he was at the hustings at Southampton University on 1 May will be broadcast either tomorrow (Friday) or on Tuesday in the local news at lunchtime and early evening (half six).
A visitor to Head Office has sent us a copy of his new party's manifesto which seems to be an amalgam of Rifkin's idea and our view:http://www.dirtybeach.tv/2014/04/the-beach-party/
We have been asked by the Carmarthen Journal to answer in up to 80 words three set questions for publication in their paper along with the replies of all the other lists. Here's the questions and answers:
Quote:1. What is the party’s stance on Britain’s future in the EU?Whether Britain should stay in or get out of the EU is irrelevant as, in or out, capitalism will continue and so the problems it causes as a system in which profits have to come before people. The answer is not to retreat into an impossible “independent Britain” but to go forward to world society. It is only on a global scale that problems such as climate change, world hunger and war can be tackled.2. What would be the party’s main aims if elected to the European Parliament?Use it as a platform from which to denounce the way the profit system works against the interest of the vast majority by imposing its logic of “no profit, no production” and “can’t pay, can’t have”. To argue instead for a world community without frontiers based on the planet’s resources being the common heritage of all humanity under democratic control and where the principle “from each according to their ability to each according to their needs” would apply.3. How can having a Socialist Party/World Socialist Movement MEP benefit the people of Carmarthenshire?They would have a voice expressing their interest in getting rid of the profit system, even though having a genuinely socialist MEP wouldn’t, and, because of the nature of the system, couldn’t, mean much in practical terms.For those unfamiliar with Wales, Llanelli is the biggest town in the county.
First the good news. The BBC1 TV programme "Sunday Politics South" contacted one of the candidates on our list, Sean Deegan, for a short interview. He was contacted because he lives in Basingstoke which, being in Hampshire, is in the catchment area of the BBC's South. He will be interviewed next week so presumably the programme will be broadcast on the following Sunday, 18 May. More details later.Four members and sympathisers ventured into Surrey, the only county where none of our leaflets are being distributed by Royal Mail. Well over a thousand were distributed in Hersham and Molesey. We came across other leaflet distributors, but for the local elections, a Tory who told us that the Monster Raving Loony Party was also contesting the local elections and a Ratepayer who wouldn't give us a copy of their leaflet even though we gave her one of ours. Neither of them were interested in the European elections although they did know that they are taking place too. Ratepayers verus Monster Raving Loonies sounds like an interesting local political scene.The Sevenoaks Chronicle contacted the Kent & Sussex branch to ask for one hundred words on what a Socialist MEP would be able to do for Sevenoaks. A difficult one that.Now for the bad news, or at least partially bad news. All of our 984,000 leaflets for the South East Region were delivered to the six Royal Mail Centres concerned (Gatwick, Maidstone, Swindon, Southampton, Greenford and Leicester). Most seem to have been distributed today but those for Slough didn't arrive at Greenford on time and so won't be distributed until Friday. Boxes containing 142,600 for the two Southampton constituencies and Portsmouth North did arrive on time but were not distributed because of a technicality and also won't be distributed until Friday. Not the end of the world, but sort of hitch that always happens.
A sympathiser in France has done an equivalent in French:http://bataillesocialiste.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/spgb2.pdfThere should of course be a link to it from the World Socialist Movement site but who is dealing with this now?Can it also be read on kindle, etc and, if so, advertised that it can be?
The lively local online paper, the Brixtonblog, is organising a hustings next Tuesday 13 May of all the parties putting up candidates for Lambeth council. Details can be found here:http://www.brixtonblog.com/vote-brixton-your-chance-to-quiz-council-candidates/22274 They have also offered parties standing in the 5 Brixton wards (Brixton Hill, Tulse Hill, Herne Hill, Coldharbour Lane, and Ferndale) space on their blog for a 300 word statement. We have already sent ours off.Meanwhile leafletting of the three wards we are contesting is continuing. So far we must have distributed some 3000 of the 9500 allocated for this (the other 2500 of the 12,000 printed has been allocated for Islington Junction ward).
Hatchet job in today's London Evening Standard on one of those standing to become Bon Crow's successor as RMT General Secretary:http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/the-wouldbe-next-bob-crow-who-revels-in-bringing-london-to-a-standstill-9325940.htmlAt a TUSC meeting for the Greater London elections in 2012 Steve Hedley called us "Mensheviks". I got the impression he doesn't think much of "Trotskyites" either.
Interesting that it should be getting a more favourable reception on RevLeft (except for a couple of bigots with a bee in their bonnet) than on Libcom, but then Libcommers are prejudiced against anything electoral.
We've now got a precise time for this evening's showing on ITV Wales: It's 22.53 after the regional news:http://theguardiandev.tvgenius.net/text-only/?c=itv-1-wales
A statement of the case for socialism from another of the candidates on our list, for circulation amongst his neighbours in Burgess Hill in Sussex and also hopefully for publication in the local paper there:
Quote:Dear Fellow CitizenI have been nominated to stand in the European election by the Kent and Sussex branch of the Socialist Party/World Socialist Movement. My/our understanding is that our Earth is part of the universal offshoot of the Sun and has evolved over the vast period of time. Subsequently life developed and evolved and human society itself arose and developed with the changing ecology. It has been a wonderful evolution.The Socialist Party considers that our present 20/21st century society has now passed its zenith of useful development – “past its sell-by date” – as did past societies, the Hunter Gatherers, Greeks, Romans, Middle Europeans, etc. Now we are increasingly “global”, we recognise and understand. Today we have not only local and national elections, but, also, European Elections.We think that it is now time to take the next step. To replace the narrow, competitive, divisive, private ownership of the means of production with an open community of those means and true democratic control by all. To make this change, we have to understand and want it. Yes, we have to think about it – despite the constant control of the news. Yes, it is now possible. It is a basic society change for the better where all the human family give freely of their ability and in true democracy, having freely of their needs as produced. True Socialism.Collectively, we have marvellous scientific and intellectual abilities, but the present system has inbuilt unbalances and conflicts and is inherently flawed and cannot act in the interest of the vast majority of men, women and children – to say nothing of the natural world ! E. g. to recruit, train and arm our “heroes” to fight and kill other “heroes”, as in the Blair/Brown Iraq Oil. Still there are those to defend and perpetuate the system – the reformists, the pseudo-socialists, the Communists with their “state capitalism”, the billionaires.In the last war we sang “It’s a lovely tomorrow” – yes, always tomorrow! Let’s make it today, every day. Let us rise to our true civilisation human nature and make our world a better place for us and all to come. The alternative confronts us. Think about it!Best wishes and thank you for your attention.Leslie CourtneyInteresting article in last week's Independent speculating on who his successor as RMT General Secretary might be:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/tube-strikes-could-the-new-bob-crow-bring-rmt-in-from-the-cold-9318570.htmlIf the current acting general secretary Mick Cash wins this could mean the end of TUSC as well as No2EU. He is a member and supporter of the Labour Party , even a former member of its national executive.SPEW must be facing the prospect of the collapse of their current strategy of using RMT money and support to try to build up a Labour Party Mark 2. And if they back someone else for RMT general sectretary and Cash still wins that will make it even more likely that RMT money for TUSC will dry up.
There's also this written exchange between us and the man himself:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2006/no-1220-april-2006/parecon-or-socialismParecon is a utopian blueprint for the oxymoronic concept of a "market socialism".
