Richmond Park by-election

Six of us braved the cold for a couple of hours this morning. The other parties were there too. The Christian Peoples Alliance were outside the station (their candidate is a local "pastor") alongside the LibDems with a flagpole flying the Union Jack and an EU flag (with the EU one on top).Near to us in the Square were the supporters of Zac Goldsmith, the Tory MP whose resignation in protest against the government decision to expand Heathrow Airport provoked the by-election, standing as an Independent. As we were so many (more than them) we were able to cover all approaches. Later LibDem leafletters telling passers-by that their candidate was "a lovely lady" appeared. Maybe she is and maybe Zac's a good guy., but so what? Groups of rugger buggers were milling around up for the game between England and Fiji, down the road at "Twickers". Probably all Tories.We distributed most of the leaflets we had. Quite a few who stopped to comment said they agreed that "the problem is not the Tories… it's capitalism". It turned out that, although Richmond politics hasn't emerged from the 19th century (it's still Liberals and Conservatives taking turns) we were surprised how many supported neither and were sympathic to those opposed to both. One postal worker told us he had voted Brexit "from a socialist position". Someone else told us he used to vote Labour but had given up long ago. A Labour supporter asked where was the Labour Party stall. We said we didn't know.We haven't decided whether or not to do it again next Saturday. The weather will be a factor and we've only got a hundred or so leaflets left. Anyway, what we have shown is that we can intervene in a by-election without a candidate as during one people expect to be leafletted for a few weeks. One drawback this time is that the journalists on the local paper are on strike, so nobody including can use that to get across their ideas on the election. But good luck to the NUJ strikers.

Forgot to add that one of the comrades took some leaflets and Socialist Standards to cover this student demonstration in central London later that day:http://londonstudent.coop/news/2016/11/19/nus-nov19-demo/Also, in the meantime I've read the leaflets those I said were LibDems were handing out and in fact they (and the flagpole) were supporters of the Vote for Europe campaign group calling for a tactical vote for the LibDem candidate "to stop Brexit in its tracks". They claim to be "a non-party pressure group dedicated to endorsing just one person in every seat".

Thanks, Rob. Meanwhile, a Green Party leaflet has dropped through my letter box. They are not standing a candidate, explaining:

Reading between the lines they are saying vote for the LibDem candidate. They can't say this openly because, under election law, the cost of their leaflet would have to be part of the LibDem's election spending which is likely to be the maximum from their own spending (they are pouring money and campaigners into the constituency).They also say:

They will be expecting something in return for not standing against the LibDems: an election pact with them under which in some constituencies the parties will not stand against each other. For local elections, this will be easier as many wards elect 2 or 3 councillors so a carve-up can be arranged. We will see

As was to be expected on the last weekend before polling day, everybody was there, including Goldsmith himself being interviwed (and heckled by someone calling him a racist because he played the anti-Muslim card in the London mayor election). This time the three of us were outnumbered by his supporters and by those of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign who had a stall opposite ours. Also present were Compass, a Labour leaning group, campaigning in effect for the LibDem candidate and again the Vote for Europe group doing the same more explicity (only this time the Union Jack was above the EU flag on their flagpole). Pastor Stockford, the Christian Alliance candidate, was there handing out a leadlet supporting a new airport in the Thames Estuary (God moves in a mysterious way).We handed out a few hundred leaflets and had a few conversations about socialism. We were interviewed by an author writing a book on "Brexit Britain" (see: http://www.brexitbritain.org.uk ). He wanted to know why we didn't support Jeremy Corbyn and John  McDonnell. We said that while their policies were different from the Labour Party's in recent years they were a throwback to Old Labour, which had also failed. In any event they didn't control the Labour Party (the Labour candidate here has a photo of Sadiq Khan not Corbyn on his manifesto). And of course that no government can control the way capitalism works, even less make it work in the interests of the wage and salary earning majority. We had to make the same point in a discussion with a Compass leafletter who challenged the claim on our leaflet that "the problem is not the Tories". We asked one of Palestine Solidarity people how they were going to vote. She said she was going to write "Support Palestine" across her ballot paper as none of the candidates did. Fair enough if that's what you think is most important. We said we'd be writing "World Socialism" on ours.We still have a couple of hundred or so left but we'll distribute these door-to-door, probably in the Kingston part of the constituency. That won't take long. And that'll be the end of our leaflet with Cameron on the front.

From the 700 or so leaflets we distributed in the constituency we have had 2 replies asking, on a tear-off addressed freepost card, for an information pack and a 3-month trial subscription. This — 1 per 350 leaflets — is actually quite a good reponse rate these days. In any event, higher than the rate from the 3000 or so distributed during the Witney by-election:  3 useful replies (we actually got 9 replies, but 6 of these were blank ones from opponents, probably Tories who didn't like "socialists", who wanted to make us pay for using freepost — freepost is only free to the sender not the recipient). Of course we've no way of measuring the number who read them.The trick seems to be the tear-off reply card. I wonder if we can't find a way of incorporating one into our election leaflets — or would this provoke more malicious replies?