Another local by-election
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Due to the sudden death of a Labour councillor, a sudden by-election has been called for 25 July in the Tulse Hill ward of Lambeth Council in London. As Tulse Hill ward is next door to the Brixton Hill ward where we contested a by-election in January, we will be contesting this by-election too. Tulse Hill ward is a safe Labour seat and part of the parliamentary constituency of Streatham (MP: Labour front bench spokesperson Chuka Umunna). Nominations close tomorrow at noon, so we don't yet know who the other candidates will be.
People will be able to follow our campaign on our election blog at: http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk
Here are all the candidates standing in this by-electionAmna Ahmed Liberal DemocratMary Atkins LabourBernard Atwell GreenTimothy Briggs ConservativeAdam Buick The Socialist Party (GB)Elizabeth Jones UKIPSteve Nally TUSCValentine Walker IndependentEight candidates for a by-election; political life in the Capital is interesting to say the least.http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/
Two of us leafletted the Tulse Hill Estate this morning. On our way there we passed Strathleven Road (off Acre Lane) and saw it was closed with police everywhere. Apparently, two people had been shot while trying to evict a tenant, an example of the violence generated by capitalist society. On the Tulse Hill Estate itself we saw Irby House where Ken Livingston was brought up but we couldn’t find any blue plaque marking this. We also found a TUSC leaflet which made the dubious claim that:If even a handful of councils defied the Con-Dems and refused to implement the cuts the government could be made to back down and fund social services properly.Could they really? Could the government be made to “fund social services properly”? It’s not as if the government is imposing cuts because they’re bastards (even if some of them could well be) who want to deprive pensioners of their outings or kids of their playgrounds or drive people out of their homes because they’ve got a spare bedroom. It’s because they are in government when capitalism is in one of its slump periods and in slumps government spending has to be cut to help restore profits. Profits before people that’s how capitalism works and can only work. There is no alternative within capitalism and it’s misleading and even dishonest to suggest that there could be. The only way out is socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, with production directly for use not profit and the application of the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.
As for the by-election in January Lambeth Council are planning to put a photo of the candidates in Tulse Hill ward on their website and also a link to the candidates' websites. This, in a bid to increase interest and turnout.We have managed to get them to accept not a photo of the candidate ("the face") but of Head Office (the nearest we can get to "the case"). As to website, we have revamped and un-named "Vaux Populi" and inserted a prominent link to our main website. Here's the link (the URL hasn't changed):http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/Even though they say it's a one-off which they won't be able to repeat at next May's full council elections it's a pity other Councils are not as enterprising as Lambeth.
i like the idea of the photo. May attract a caller or two when they recognise it in the street. Perhaps next time they will accept a V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masked candidate. That should raise our profile…who is that masked candidate – Hi-Ho the Lone Socialist . The website new design is excellent. Our others are in need of a much needed freshening up too but we await a volunteer. One nit-pick, why include a link to a blog that for all purposes is now defunct. i suggest it is deleted, the last post being over two years ago and since it is Canadian i don't think we will suffer much loss unless Tulse Hill has a teeming canuck population.
Amusing series of tweets here:https://twitter.com/langrabbie/status/352175689698521089Something else to amuse One Eye Grey.
UKIP misses the point More of our newsletters were distributed in the ward yesterday. More evidence this time of political activity. In fact some streets would have received our leaflet and UKIP’s at the same time. A LibDem leaflet carried the same “It’s a two-horse race” bar chart that they all do, even though the figures they gave showed that it’s really only a one-horse race (as everyone knows) since even if all the Tory voters switched to the LibDems that would only be get them to 35% compared to Labour’s 51%. The Labour leaflet was a tribute to their councillor whose untimely death provoked the by-election.UKIP is an opportunist, populist party but don’t seem to have yet learnt (as all vote-catching parties must if they are going to get anywhere) how to adapt what they say to those whose votes they are chasing. Asking people to help them “End mass immigration” wouldn’t seem to find much of an echo in this part of the world. They need to take some advice from the LibDems on how to be all things to all people (bringing back smoking in pubs and abolishing parking meters might not be enough). UKIP suffered a blow this week when their flagship policy of withdrawing from the EU but still having access to the Single European Market as a non-member like Norway was rejected by the employers organisation, the CBI. They want Britain to stay in, so UKIP are on their own on this one as far as the major British capitalist corporations are concerned. In any event, whether Britain is in or out of the EU makes no fundamental difference to the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependents. It’s not the EU that is the cause of our problems, but capitalism. So the way out is not to withdraw from the EU (the problems would still continue) but to establish socialism based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production so that production can be geared to satisfying people’s needs instead of to making a profit. If there’s ever a referendum on the EU (what a waste of time) we’ll be writing “WORLD SOCIALISM” across the ballot paper.
Stat attack! The people of Tulse Hill should be rich. Some 5,000 or so of you work between 31 and 48 hours per week. That is, Tulse Hill Ward alone is producing a minimum of 155,000 hours of work a week. There’s a further thousand working more than 49 hours. This is a highly educated workforce: over 800 work in education, 700 in Information and communication and nearly a thousand in professional and scientific activities. So, this is an area that would be called by some “middle class”, with professional office based work predominating.Yet, in such an area, only 600 households own their home outright, and thirteen hundred homes are owner occupied with mortgages. Over two thousand households are in social accommodation, and fifteen hundred rent privately. 2,400 households have one dimension of deprivation (unemployment, overcrowding, lack of education or disability), twelve hundred have two and 490 have three of those four states. The picture is, that the majority of people in Tulse Hill have to work in order to keep their home, or to keep deprivation away. They may work with their minds or skills, but they are working class non-the-less, selling their ability to work in order to access the means of living. So, they don’t get to use those 155,000 hours of weekly work to make their area better, to look after those unable to work, or anything of the sort. Those 155,000 hours are fed into a system that generates profits for the tiny minority who own the means of living and who demand our labour to get to it. All statistics from here
One statistic that particularly stood out for me was the number of people stating that they had no religion: at 4298 out of the ward's population of 15771, this is 27.3%, which is higher than both the London average (20.7%) and even the national average (24.7%). See here. Our position on religion may still be a minority one but the trend is in our direction.
Think locally, act globally Although we make no apology for raising the issue of world socialism in a local election (as it’s the workings of world capitalism that are ultimately responsible for the cuts to local services) we don’t neglect local issues. Here is an extract from the leaflet on this that we are distributing in Tulse Hill (and before in other parts of Lambeth) mentioned in yesterday’s blog:Feeding the Five Thousand Capitalism is in crisis and they are making us pay for it. ‘Austerity’ means increased hardship, attacks on the living conditions and wages of the working class, and ‘reforms’ to Social Security. Here in Lambeth job losses, cuts in housing benefit, and low pay are forcing families to seek free, charity handouts of food from the Food Bank at St Paul’s Church in Ferndale Road. The Church has said that it is feeding 5,000 people. David Cameron likes Food Banks. His Cabinet Minister for Food Caroline Spelman thinks they are an example of good citizenship in Cameron’s ‘Big Society’. In reality it is a case of the capitalist state saving money by ridding itself of its role of providing basic support for destitute working class families – of, basically, feeding its hungry citizens – and forcing them to rely instead on religious charities. Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat politicians all accept capitalism and apply its economic law of profit before people. If Labour was in government they would be following the same economic course. In fact Labour is in power in Lambeth and is imposing cuts to benefits and services. ‘I was hungry and you fed me,’ says the Food Bank’s mission statement, ‘thirsty and you gave me a drink.’ Socialism, as a society of common ownership and democratic control, will provide food and drink, and much more, to everyone as of right in accordance with the principle ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. Nobody should have to rely on charity and nobody would. Bedroom Tax As part of making the working class pay for the capitalist crisis, the Coalition government are changing the rules on Housing Benefit from April. The capitalist state will charge you for the bedrooms you have in your council or housing association house. It will be a ‘bedroom tax’. The government says it will affect over half a million households. The capitalist state will be taxing your living space if your children have flown the nest for college or somewhere else to live. If you have one spare room you will face a 14 percent cut in housing benefit, two or more spare rooms and the capitalist state will cut your housing benefit by a quarter ! The capitalist state is making rules on how many bedrooms you can have and who sleeps where. Your kids will have to share a bedroom if they are under 16 and the same gender, and if they are under 10 they have to share whatever gender. Under capitalism people only get the housing they can afford. The lower your income, the worse your housing. In a socialist society of common ownership, housing will be about what people need to live and not how much rent they have to pay. Safety Second Tory Mayor Boris Johnson wants to save £45 million from the Fire Brigade budget. So he plans to close 12 Fire Stations in London. This will affect people in Lambeth as among those he wants to close are the one at the Clapham Old Town and the one in the next-door borough on Southwark Bridge Road. These closures will put in danger the safety of millions of Londoners because people will have to wait longer for a fire engine. Economic considerations not people’s safety are the priority in capitalism. No more adventures In August last year Lambeth Labour Council ‘temporarily’ closed four Children’s Adventure Playgrounds in Lambeth. The adventure playgrounds at Bolton Crescent in Camberwell, Lollard Street in Kennington, Loughborough Park on Moorland Road just off Coldharbour Lane in Brixton, and Wilmington Road, off Landor Road near Clapham North Tube Station all remain closed. These Adventure Playgrounds were free to access for children ages 5 to 16 but are easy targets for the ‘economic austerity cuts’ required by capitalism and imposed by the Coalition government and Lambeth Labour Council. Former Lambeth Labour leader Steve Reed promised at a Council meeting in April 2011 that no adventure playgrounds would close. He has now moved up the greasy pole into the House of Commons where he can better serve capitalism when it’s Labour’s turn again to run capitalism, in the only way to can be – as a profit-making system against the interests of the majority class of wage and salary workers. In a socialist society children’s lives would be one great adventure playground, education a creative journey, and the free development of each child the condition for the free development of all children.
Down on the farm Of course, in Tulse Hill we also have the agricultural vote to think of. As can be seen at the Tulse Hill Polytunnel. This is a good example of the local growing out of the global: the polythene for the tunnel has to be refined from hydrocarbons using vast industrial processes, but it does allow residents of Tulse Hill to grow food efficiently and locally. There’s no reason why thousands of like projects couldn’t happen with all the energy and enthusiasm of this one (especially if instead of having to try and be a commercial ‘Social Enterprise’ the volunteers could just provide food to other volunteers in restaurants or in their homes). The point is the technology is there not just to feed every human on the planet, but to make effective use of even the most unlikely scraps of land. The labour is there, else people wouldn’t be volunteering.
More publicity for the socialist idea here on the Lambeth Council website:http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/Services/CouncilDemocracy/DemocracyElections/ElectionsVoting/StatementOfPersonsNominatedTulseHillNot only have they accepted a photo of Head Office instead of the candidate but they've also provided a link to one of our blogs which has an easy link to our main website.
Half-way there Five of us were out on Saturday, doing a stall outside Brixton tube station and leafletting the ward. More than half has now been covered and the rest will be this week. We came across an arty event in Josephine Avenue and took a break in a cafe in Upper Tulse Hill. The owner told us it was frequented by the Labour candidate, so we left some leaflets for her (and anyone else). Some householders will have found our leaflet and the TUSC one together on their doormat. This might cause some confusion as the TUSC candidate is taking a risk, for a vote-catching party, by declaring “I am a member of the Socialist Party”. He isn’t. He’s a member of the Judean Peoples Front. His claim is risky as our candidate will be described on the ballot paper as “The Socialist Party (GB)” and there’s a shop front in Clapham High Street saying “The Socialist Party”. This could lead to some people who meant to vote for him voting for us, not that we want reformist votes. Lambeth Council has published on its website more details of the 8 candidates from which it emerges that the mysterious Independent candidate is standing to protest against the closure and demolition of a sheltered housing unit in Streatham. Brixtonblog are organising a hustings on Tuesday 23 July. Details here
A day in the life of capitalismPicture by Kim Taylor @PoppydustBailiffs and police have closed off Rushcroft Road this morning as they attempt to evict up to 75 squatters from six mansion blocks in Rushcroft Road, Brixton.Pictures show wheelie bins set alight, and a heavy police presence on Rushcroft Road this morning. Others have gathered in the street to support the residents as they fight the move.Police outside Oval House, Rushcroft Road. Picture by @Housingforthe99 on TwitterTwo years ago, the eviction of another Brixton squat, Clifton Mansions in Coldharbour Lane, saw a large-scale policing operation to help bailiffs. Residents expect a similarly heavy handed approach to be taken this time, with local shops around Rushcroft Road being warned to expect disruption.Resident Jake McCarthy said last week: “I am scared about the possibility of a heavy police eviction. This has been our home for 13 years. I don’t see why the council wont accept our offer to set up a housing co-operative- when we have put in the work to make the flats liveable when they left them to rot – now there’s money coming into the area they want them back.”One long term resident Emma Hodge said last week: “All the properties from previous evictions on Rushcroft Road, nearby Clifton Mansions and a large proportion of Brixton’s original short life housing have been sold as private housing, fetching eye-watering prices.”Picture by Kim Taylor @PoppydustFire crews put out bin fires in Rushcroft Road. Cllr Pete Robbins, cabinet member for housing and regeneration at Lambeth council, told Brixton Blog last week: ”We are taking this action because it is unfair on the thousands of residents in need of housing in Lambeth that a small minority are unlawfully squatting in six mansion blocks on Rushcroft Road and not paying any rent or council tax.”The council has held housing advice surgeries for the squatters to “understand their housing need, and provide advice and assistance on how that household can secure accommodation in future.”
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